synopsisrobby's going away and he's very worried about his two singular house plants and mail, so he's asked you to house sit. he gave you keys and the lay out of the neighbours, he maybe just forgot to mention one tiny detail. the cameras in almost every room
warnings, perv robby! watching through camera's SMUT MDNI, masturbation (f! and m!) language, dom robby, dirty talk, robby watched reader masturbate through cameras and gets off to her. please do not read if pervy behaviour makes you uncomfortable.
authornote this is super super pervy but listen, it's been in my head for ages. and this gif does things to me!!!!! please don't read if pervy behaviour makes you uncomfortable and remember this is all made up and fictinioal things about fictional characters. That being said, dr robby i am free on thursday, thursday i am free if you want to hook up on thursday, the day im free
pitt masterlist. another robby fic!
Perhaps Robby should've mentioned the camera's he had installed around his house, perhaps it just slipped his mind.
They were security measures, really they were. He'd had a break in a few years back when he had a serious lack of things to steal. Since then he'd collected a few things that he wanted to keep a hold of so he installed some security cameras and had it linked to his phone.
Robby wasn't one for strangers in the house, or co-workers or anything of the sort so he'd almost forgotten they were there.
Until of course he asked you to house sit and suddenly he was painfully aware of every corner he'd installed them in.
It was Trinity Santos's fault, really.
As all things typically were.
Or maybe it was Robby's for taking an interest. He'd asked her about her home stuff, noticing some things he wanted to iron out before he went away for three months.
“Whitakers kind of weird, but you know, she helps iron it out,” said Santos, gesturing behind Robby.
You stood with Mohan, laughing at something she said, neck tilting back, cheeks red. That sort of laugh. Even by noise and without looking, Robby would have known it was you.
He'd memorised the way a room shifted when you entered it, or the soft patter of your steps, the gentle feel of your presence at his side. He hadn't even tried not to. You'd come in, straight out of medical school and Robby was hooked like a fish.
But you were younger than him, ambitious, hopeful in making a change in the world.
Robby kept it professional.
Most of the time.
“That's when she's home, anyway.”
Robby looked back to her. “What's that?”
“Oh she's been seeing this guy for a few months or something,” said Santos off-handily. “He was the brother of a patient that came in with Sepsis, had to lose a portion of his leg. The guy really liked her.”
“The patient?”
“No the patient's brother. She's been seeing him, but...” she trailed off with a sigh, fingers going down harder on the keys of the computer.
Robby edged closer. “But?”
Was something wrong? He had no idea you were seeing someone which made all his advances you hadn't bat away scandalous.
Santos glanced at you. “I dunno, he's a bit older than us and just seems... controlling I guess?”
His jaw ticked. “Controlling?”
“Maybe it's just me, I'm seeing things that aren't there,” she said, dismissing it. But Santos was a keen doctor, or would be. She looked too close and sadly usually got the nail on first go. If she thought something was going on with you then there was something.
“I'll have a word,” said Robby, straightening up and drumming his knuckles on the counter.
“Hey, your call.”
He turned, leaning his back on the counter and stared at you, rather openly.
Dana had moved to your side, ipad at the hip where it usually was glued. She was directing you to a patient and, as usual, you took it with a smile and darted off.
He watched the way you walked, eyes following you and trying to find a tell in the way you moved if there was someone. Did you walk with a limp from how good this guy friend of yours fucked you? Were you trying to hide any part of you?
After the patient Robby found you. He couldn't make himself productive if he tried, not with the nagging feeling that he had to talk to you eating at his vocal chords.
You were in the lounge, stirring away at the coffee you'd just poured. “Hey,” you greeted as the door closed behind him.
It was just you and him. And a dummy to practise CPR on.
He jerked his head up in response as he let the door close behind him.
“Want some coffee?” you offered as he slid into a seat at the table.
“Always.”
You poured him a cup, black, as you knew he liked and slid it over to him.
“Hey, sit down a minute,” said Robby, stretching himself out, legs wide, resting back. Giving to all the world a sense of at ease he did not feel.
Though hesitant, you did. “Okay.”
“You're an empathetic soul,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“I'm not finished.”
“Oh.”
“You're a good doctor,” he continued. “You want to be there for your patients?”
“Don't you.”
“Shhh.”
You blushed. “Sorry.”
Robby didn't mind. A secret part of him loved ordered you around, different than he did the others. He didn't bark orders so much, but told you what to do. He got a kick seeing you carry out those orders so well and got a belt in the stomach when you rewarded him with a smile and thanks.
“So this relationship that you're having with this guy,” he said, looking to you. He realised he hadn't even got the name from Trinity.
You took your turn to speak but you lowered your head down. “Shawn?”
“Yeah, Shawn.”
“Santos talk to you?”
He shrugged. “Well she's worried, I'm worried.”
You sipped your coffee. “There's nothing to worry about. We've just been a couple of dates, you know. His brothers really struggling to come to terms with his new life after losing his leg and he takes it out on Shawn sometimes, and...”
“Does he take it out on you?” asked Robby.
“No, no!” you said at once. “It's nothing like that. He just... I dunno, I'm not that interested anymore but it's like kicking a puppy when he's down, you know.”
“So he's not telling you what to do?” he judged.
You looked up at him, an amused smirk to your lips. “There's only one who can tell me what to do and that's you, boss.”
The words shouldn't have effected him as much as they did. Heat crept into his body, invading his senses. He glanced down and pulled at his scrub pants just to make sure the rush of want that coursed through him didn't manifest in his cock.
Robby didn't know what he was thinking, asking you to house sit. It was going to go to Abbott originally, then he thought Langdon if it weren't for all the shit going on there. Maybe even Whitaker but he was sat in front of you and the words were out before he realised.
“Hey, you want to house sit for me while I'm gone?” he asked.
You straightened up. “What?”
“You'd be doing me a favour. Nobody else is up for it-” lies, he hadn't even asked anyone else. “- save you a bit on rent. Have a place to yourself for a change.”
“Really?”
“No smoking, no parties, no babies, no pets, no boyfriends.”
“I don't- I don't have a boyfriend.”
Good, he thought. “Then the place is yours.... or I can ask around.”
“I'd- yeah- that'd be great,” you said with a smile. “As long as you're sure? I mean I don't smoke and I don't really have time to just have friends around.”
“Santos can come visit if she likes,” suggested Robby. He liked you but he wasn't trying to isolate you. “So long as she doesn't bring Garcia.”
“Deal,” you said.
“Great,” he said.
The two of you sat in the quiet of the lounge a moment longer, the outside world waiting.
Robby pushed himself up, brushing your hand on the table as he did. “I'll find you before you I go, give you the keys and security code.”
“Thanks. Great.”
When he left he realised he'd be travelling for three months, leaving you in an apartment that was him. It was his dream and hell all in one.
The thought of you in Robby's apartment had him contemplating cancelling his trip all together, but that would give you no reason to stay and he did really need a break. Not even seeing you everyday could dampen what the Pitt did to you after a time.
He found you at the end of the day at the lockers, already supporting his bag over his shoulder.
“You ready?” he asked. He could almost imagine this was his life. The two of you working around each other, stealing glances with promises of what time alone would hold. Coming to fetch you at the end of the day, rubbing his hands at the tired spots on your shoulders and coaxing you into his arms.
“Yeah.”
Robby was stealing time, stealing distractions from everything. “I'll give you a ride down.”
“Are you sure?” you asked, fetching your bag from the locker. “Don't you want to get on the road?”
“The road will still be there, besides it's not far, I just wanna show you,” he said, taking your bag from your hand with an almost unconscious mind as he led the way out.
When you were both down the ambulance bay, standing in front of his bike he got busy securing your bags to the back of it.
“Oh,” you uttered.
“What's up?”
“I've never ridden on one before.”
Robby hid himself in his bike a moment longer, banishing the dirty thoughts. He was past a fifty year old man, he didn't need to be hanging on every one of your dirty words like he was sixteen discovering sex for the first time. “I'll do all the work. You just have to sit there and hold on tight.”
“But you only have one helmet?”
“You wear it.”
You frowned. “But isn't that kind of un-safe?”
Yes, it was. But Robby wasn't trying to get himself killed like everyone thought. He just wanted a break. He wanted you in his apartment, knowing you respected him enough to not break the rules and bring a boyfriend you did or didn't have.
“I'm about to be wearing a helmet for thirty six hours. C'mere.” Robby took his helmet and gently propped it on your head. He tightened the straps under your chin and gently brushed back any hair that was peaking out.
You watched him but Robby was concentrating on where his hands your chin.
It was still a little big on you and still had his heart soaring.
“There we go, hop on.”
Robby had a motorbike because it was a hobby. He knew what others thought about middle aged men and motorbikes. He'd never done it to impress before... until now.
He revved the bike at the chances he got and relished in the feel of your arms around his waist. When he took corners or passed by a car your arms squeezed and it went straight down to the place it shouldn't.
At stop signs or lights he checked in with you, getting a glimpse of your wide grin when he did.
By the time he'd pulled up in front of his apartment building, your body was practically buzzing against his and you stood up on shaky legs.
“How does it feel to have your motorcycle virginity taken?” he asked, helping you up and your helmet off.
You shook out your hair, laughing. “I feel like a changed woman.”
Robby chuckled.
He gave you the security code at the door and led you to his place. The building, practically full of old people (he told you as much) was practically dead when he got home from work, only the faint buzzing of TV's through doors could be heard.
He told you there's a good thai place on the corner, some take out menus he had. He told you he didn't have much food in as he was going away so he'd been chucking it out.
When he opened the door to his place he tried picturing it through your eyes. Was it too sparse? Were the walls to plain? Was it clear a sad, old man lived here?
But you didn't say anything other than 'nice place.'
He showed you the kitchen, the living room, all neat and tidy and empty when he looked at it again. He gave you codes that you'd need, a spare set of keys on the table. He showed you the wi-fi.
“This is the spare room,” he said, nudging open a door. “Bathrooms down the hall. It's not so nice in here, I don't have many people around. Usually just Abbott but he doesn't sleep.”
It was al grey walls, heck the bed wasn't even made up. Just sheets piled up, all greys and whites and probably scratchy because he only cared enough to get the cheapest set.
“My room's down here,” he said, leading you down the hall. His room was lived in. Green sheets rumpled and his jacket hanging of the chair at his desk with books and some old framed pictures of his grandparents. “There's an ensuite but the choice is yours.”
He wasn't gonna force you into sleeping in his bedroom. But he was going to hope you did.
“Thanks, Robby, I promise the place will still be standing by the time you get back,” you said, now walking him out his place like you lived there.
“I'll hold you to that.”
Robby fished out his wallet and left some cash on the table. He'd taken some out to help him on his travels but he couldn't leave you with no food.
“Oh, Robby, you don't have to-”
“I am,” he said. “Get some food in, order some take out, I don't want a dollar left on my counter by the time I get back.”
You were resigned to argue but you always did what Robby said. “You got it, boss.”
The first time Robby checked the camera's was when he remembered he had them. And it wasn't his fault.
If anything it was yours.
He'd already made his home at his first stop, trying his best to think good things and not text Dana to see how it was all going. He was pushing himself to find the beauty of the mountains and the lakes.
That was when his phone alerted him. An odd notification he didn't have the words for.
He checked in while on a walk and was met by the sight of his apartment.
Fuck, the cameras!
He really had forgotten all about them.
Through the cameras he saw the kitchen and you frantically waving a tea towel up high at the smoke alarm.
At first Robby was worried but then the alarm stopped and he focused enough to see you. It had only been a week and he hadn't gone a day without thinking of you but this was different.
This was you, in his kitchen, wearing only a baggy shirt and panties.
Any other time the shirt would have been too long to see anything but you were jumping around, waving away the smoke and even through the camera Robby could see the panties.
His body went rigid.
He turned channel on the camera. It was wrong to watch but so far... he hadn't, right? He hadn't watched. He'd seen you in a 'delicate' state and switched.
The living room was pretty much the same. An extra med text book on the side and his blanket scrunched up.
Then, just to check, he went into the other room. The spare room. The same as he left it with the bedding piled up.
So that meant.
“Jesus,” he mumbled to himself, feeling the tightness of his pants as they pulled over his crotch.
Your overnight bad and suitcase was in his room, pressed up against the wall. His green sheets were a mess and there was a pile of discarded scrubs on the floor.
You were sleeping in his bed.
Robby didn't mean to- really, his finger slipped- but he checked in on the kitchen again. You were back to bustling around, taking whatever you'd burnt out the oven and moving around quickly, trying to salvage what you could of your food.
You bent over to the oven and though the island blocked most of it he got a grainy and all too far away shot of your backside.
He turned his phone off and hid his face in his hands.
He wished he could say that was the only time.
It wasn't.
At first he told himself it was just to check in. Knowing when your shift ended he'd log into his phone, checking the app connected to his cameras and making sure you got in safe. Of course there was never an issue. Sometimes you were home later, so exhausted you fell asleep on the sofa.
It was like falling asleep on call to someone, except, he fell asleep with the sight of you sleeping soundly. It calmed him, in a way. He told himself it was nice to see his place so looked after, lived in. He didn't question if that was the real reason why.
Robby was almost tempted to text at times, asking if you were sleeping well, asking if the place hadn't burnt down, or when he saw you do something he just wanted you to know he was there.
But wouldn't it be creepy?
You'd shared texts, sent him pictures of envelopes that you deemed looked important. Sometimes he text random things like 'sometimes the wi-fi plays up, let me know if it does,' or 'hope the neighbours aren't being too loud' (which was stupid considering half of them were deaf)
You were so polite and quick in your responses.
Robby never knew how to keep the conversation flowing. Not over text. Not when all he wanted to say was how pretty you looked in the mornings, rolling out of his bed and stretching like you'd had the best sleep.
Somewhere in his head he knew it wasn't right but maybe he'd been so de-censored to everything that nothing felt like crossing the line.
There weren't camera's in the bathroom, obviously but it didn't matter.
You changed in his room.
When Robby could spot you were about to change he forced the phone down. He didn't log out the app but he at least stepped away to give you some privacy. Privacy you didn't know he was invading.
This was wrong, so wrong.
Only once he caught a glimpse or your skin and curves of your body. Your back was to the camera but he saw the towel drop, saw the flex of your body as you pulled on scrubs for the day.
Robby had dragged his hand down his face and ignored the desperate ache in his cock. The want had made its home in his pants and hardly ever left him.
He remembered Jack telling him to call if it ever got dark but this, Robby was sure, wasn't the sort of darkness he was talking about.
In two weeks on his trip Robby had spent more time watching you then anything else.
It was a random Tuesday when he got another notification- having turned them on for any goings on alerted in his apartment.
He was out in a diner he found on the side of the road, dragging himself out of the hut and his up building un-healthy habits. His phone buzzed next to him and he logged into the cameras as if logging into emails.
You and Santos were in his place. You held open the door for her, leading here in. “Home sweet home.”
Robby tried to imagine it again, if that really was your home. If he was.
Coming home together at the end of the day, Robby could use you for all his pleasures and frustrations. He could have you on his island counter, on his sofa, on the rug, in his room and the spare room. He could spread you out and love you right, have you wake up sleepy in the mornings. He could turn up to work late with you on his arm and everyone would share a sly smirk, knowing just why they were late.
He watched, and imagined while he was thousands of miles away.
Robby watched as you showed Trinity around, marvelling as you laid out his apartment and everything you knew.
“He left me some cash if you want to order a pizza,” you said.
“God, he's so whipped,” Santos chuckled.
“Stop it.”
He figured what 'whipped' meant and you were trying to defend him when there was really no point. He was whipped. He was wrapped around your finger and you didn't even know.
“Is this his room?”
Robby didn't know if he liked Santos in his room but he liked that you showed it to her, liked that you moved around it like you'd always slept there.
“The spare room is colder and his room has the ensuite.”
Santos sat on the edge of his bed. “I can't believe you're sleeping in our bosses bed.”
You groaned, falling next to her. “Don't, I feel so bad. I'll get the sheets washed and everything before he's back.”
No. He didn't want the sheets washed. He wanted to be able to smell you on him when he returned, sleeping in your ghost.
You guys chatted some more and Robby finished his dinner, ordering himself a scotch as he kept his phone low, hoping it looked like he was just checking in on some reality show to anyone that looked hard enough.
“You know, bedside draws can tell a lot about a person,” he heard Santos say.
When he checked back on his phone you were scrabbling on the bed after her as Santos opened the top draw of his bedside table.
Robby wasn't ashamed. Sure, maybe he was angry that Santos thought she had the right to look through his things but then you were at her side, not encouraging the behaviour but not slamming them shut either.
Had you not snooped before? If he was in your shoes it would be the first thing he did. You were so good, so polite.
He didn't want you to be.
There was a couple medical articles he knew shoved in there, the sort he always said he'd get around to and never did. There was an old pack of contact lenses he never used and a broken pair of glasses too.
“Someone's been getting lu-cky,” said Santos in a teasing voice as she pulled out a scatter of lose condoms.
“Trin, c'mon, this is private.”
Santos gasped as she looked at them. “Large, large, large, extra large.”
You finally chuckled and Robby peered closer. There was a faint dusting of pink at your cheeks.
Robby was big, as a young man he liked to brag but as he got older he didn't feel there was that much to brag about. Did you like to think of him big? Did you like the idea that he was large?
Fuck the very idea of you rolling a condom onto him had his abused cock aching again under the table of the grotty diner.
He imagined you sliding the condom on before looming over him, holding him steady as you teased your entrance that would be so wet for him. Your hand would wrap around the base, maybe teasing his balls as you slowly sank down-
He downed the last of his scotch, readying himself to make a quick escape to his cabin.
Robby knew this was wrong to watch but so far he hadn't touched himself to the sights of you, he thought that was something he had to give himself credit for because he was so, so, so desperate.
And he was being so good not touching himself to the thought of you.
“Robby is freak-y,” said Santos, next finding his lube and the little pills he kept when he needed a hand.
“How the hell are you going to look him in the eyes after this?” you asked Santos.
“How are you? You're the one who's been sleeping next to this.”
Robby placed a couple bills on the table bidding night to those working before slipping through the door.
It was then that you started to strip out your scrubs in his room with Trinity still rummaging through his stuff. Clearly you had no problem with changing in front of her, you were housemates after all.
It was at that moment, just as he watched you pull your top off that his phone decided to die.
He pressed down on the black screen of his phone furiously. “Fuck.”
By the time Robby got back to his place and got his phone on charge Trinity had left you alone in his place and all the lights were off in his house.
You were readying yourself for bed.
As if this was a shared routine Robby did the same. He left his phone charging as he changed out of his clothes, leaving himself in his boxers. He ran cold water down his face, let the droplets roll down his neck and chest to cool the heat that lived in him.
By the time he got back to bed, leaving the curtains open for the sun to wake him early, you were in bed too.
Robby tried to read, really he did. He'd brought a book with him that had been sitting on his shelf abandoned for months. He'd managed a total fifty pages before he looked back at you.
You slept in the over sized night shirt, flicking through your phone.
Robby wasn't sure when it started but at some point your knees pulled up, taking his covers with you and your hand disappeared under his covers.
He sat up, alert.
This was where lines were drawn. Where he went from curious to damned old man.
But he was damned a long time ago.
You watched your phone closely, your hand undoubtably moving under his covers between your thighs.
“Oh,” Robby muttered to himself.
You, in his sheets, getting yourself off.
He could just about hear the pornographic moans coming from your phone when he turned the volume up. His sheets twisted and moved as you enjoyed yourself, slowly.
“Oh my god.” His hand crept his his boxers.
He just needed a small release. Just a squeeze, just a little bit of relief.
If you were doing so in his bed surely he was allowed to in return.
His cock answered his squeeze, swelling in his hand.
Robby imagined himself there, sitting on the edge of your bed and asking you to 'show me how you like it.' Your fingers would work inside of yourself, slow. You'd drag out your wetness to your bundle of nerves.
Were you relishing it in his sheets? Did they smell of him and was that helping you?
Robby had no choice- really no choice- as he freed himself from his boxers. He was leaking profusely. Wrapping his fingers around himself, he watched your next move.
You moaned through the camera. It came out crackled.
Robby's eyes were glued onto you.
Your eyes were fluttering shut, bottom lip tucked between your teeth as your back arched, body moving in waves as you tried to focus on your phone.
What porn were you watching? Was it hard? Was it soft? Was it an older man? Did you want a younger?
Were you dreaming of that fucking Shawn?
You kicked the sheets back and Robby could see where your fingers disappeared in your panties.
Robby licked his lips and spat into the palm of his hand. There was no denying it, he was hard watching you get off, in his bed, in his room. He worked his palm up and down slowly, wanting to last as long as you did.
“Moan,” he uttered to himself. “Moan baby.”
If he were there he'd push you into his sheets, make you turn your head and smell him there. You wouldn't have to work for anything. He'd have his fingers filling you up, have you wither on his tongue before he even thought about his cock.
Would he come back with his sheets smelling of you?
God, he hoped so. He hoped you never washed the sheets.
A noise slipped from you and Robby stilled, squeezing his cock again.
He sunk into the sofa. “Again.”
You ditched your phone at the side of you, some porn video playing as your other hand wound under you shirt.
You quickly discarded in and Robby got a eyeful of your chest.
“Oh my god,” Robby worked himself up and down.
He'd imagined your body before but never like this, laid out for him.
What he would do to smother himself in your breasts.
“So beautiful,” he said, sweeping his thumb over the head of himself. “Fuck.” He worked himself faster as you pushed yourself into your own hand.
“Please,” he heard you utter.
“Yeah, baby, yeah.”
Your mouth was agape in silent moans.
Robby wondered if anyone let you moan allowed, if living with Santos and Whitaker you had to be quiet.
You were alone, he wanted to tell you. He wanted you to be as loud as possible.
“C'mon... c'mon...” he mumbled working himself harder.
You gasped, legs moving around under his sheets and twisting them up. You were trembling, making a mess of the place he slept with no shame. The hand that wasn't working yourself into pleasure grasped in his sheets.
“Robby...”
He stilled, his hand flying away from his cock and eyes widening.
Did the camera work both ways? Could you hear him? Did you know he was there?
A thousand panic thoughts ran through his mind before he realised none of that was right.
You were just moaning out his name while touching yourself.
“Robby,” you gasped, body withering. “Fuck, Robby.”
He smirked to himself. “Oh, baby girl, moaning for me.”
You moaned, head thrown back onto his cushion.
“Say it again,” he begged, pumping himself as fast as he saw the imprint of your own hand move. “Say it.”
You kicked off the sheets as your legs moved, unable to stay still in fits of pleasure. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah, yeah you like that.” He didn't know what you liked but he'd try and give you anything.
“Miss you Robby, miss you so much.”
Robby groaned low he might've growled. What a fool he was for waiting so long, for running away. He'd left you in such a state. “Jesus, baby, this is torture.”
He stroked himself hard, squeezing till his tip was read and leaking over his hand.
“Robby please.” He watched one of your hands come up and wrap around your neck.
Robby smirked. “Dirty girl.”
Your legs began to shake and you couldn't even gasp out his name.
“Robby... Robby... please.”
He groaned and moaned with you, turning up the volume blindly as he heard your high pitched moan
He didn't know which one of you finished first. He burst all over his hand, his release spilling over in white ropes over his hand. He groaned out your name, jerking himself till he got every last drop and couldn't move his hand anymore.
When he looked back at the camera you were still,, only the rise and fall of your chest letting him into your climax. You turned off your phone, lying there.
With the hand that had your fingers inside you he watched as you ran your hands over his sheets, as if you wanted to mark your spot in his bed.
“Yeah, it's all yours baby girl.”
The next day, Robby was filling up his tank and coming home to you.
synopsisa patient tells you older is always better, Jack wants to know if you can confirm that.
warningsSMUT. MDNI. Oral (f and m receiving) fingering, dirty talk, slight dom Jack, penetration, p in v. language
authornotei dont even think god will take me after this one. this aint proofread
“So you think older is better?”
“Like anything good,” said Lu as you cleaned out her leg, pulling the light over to find the grit. “Like cheese... wine... sex.”
Your lips quipped up and you nodded. You didn't know how you started talking about this- you'd only asked what she was doing and how she fell. Date with an older guy, she said, was walking back from his when I fell. It must have been more of a tumble, roll and fall from the state of her leg that had got her through the waiting room and triage.
The next thing you knew she was highlighting how good sex was with an older man.
“It's like they have the experience and the confidence and they care more about getting you off than they do themselves,” she said.
“How many dates have you been on with the guy?” you asked, only trying to keep conversation while you plucked out the gravel. Trying to distract yourself from thinking about sex and older.
“Oh, this was the first one,” said Lu, laid back on the bed with a dreamy look in her eyes. “We've been talking for a few months on this app for older guys to meet women who are younger and interested. We met tonight and I had the best sex ever.”
The pling of gravel on the metal tray echoed out.
“You got a boyfriend?” she asked you.
You were silent, acting as if you were focused on the gravel. “I don't.”
Lu smirked at your silence. “But you got somebody?”
To that you had nothing to say. Maybe you did have somebody- or at least someone came to mind. Grey hair, stubbled chin and dark eyes in the shape of a doctor.
“Oh you got somebody,” said Lu.
You managed two more pieces of gravel and glass before she opened her mouth to speak again, to probably ask you another question but at the same time the door opened, bringing with it a small snap of the bustling sounds of the Pitt at night and the faint air of woodland and grease.
“How we doing in here?”
Jack walked in like he was un-aware to how you'd thought about him and then he came like you'd conjured him up. His grey hair, short stubble at the chin that he quickly rubbed at and dark eyes evaluating.
You betrayed yourself in looking to Lu.
“Is this him?” she asked, eyes lighting up.
Jack looked between the two of you. “Talking about me again, doc?” Jack asked.
You were focused on the task at hand but you didn't need to look to find him at your side, diligently watching you work.
“All good things,” said Lu.
He huffed out a little smile, hands held behind his back. His eyes bore into your head. “I'm Doctor Jack Abbott, I see you're in good hands here. How're her bloods?”
“Bloods are all clear though blood pressure is a bit high, we wanna keep an eye on that,” you said.
Jack nodded. “Well I'm sorry you're night took an unfortunate turn, Miss Marigold.”
She shrugged, rumpling her black dress. It was sleek and fit her in ways you could never imagine the dress fitting you. “Meh, it was pretty much done anyway.”
You were too caught up in the gossip she had been giving you that you didn't think about Jack not being informed. “He kicked you out?”
“No,” she said. “I left. Didn't want that awkward after sex small talk.”
“That's called aftercare.”
It was such a thrown away comment in Jack's words. He said it like he was prescribing her morphine. But the words rushed to your body, jolted you awake and alert to his presence.
Aftercare to some may have been normal, you didn't know other peoples sexual habits- you only knew yours and aftercare wasn't part of it. Your... sexual partners were few and far between and also loved to use your bathroom and sleep it off. Besides that was months ago before you started night shifts. Now your sex life was nothing but dry dry dry with the only occasional fantasy of your attending keeping you going.
“How old are you, Doctor Abbott?” asked your patient.
You caught Jack's smirk.
“Don't you know you should never ask a gentleman his age?” he said.
“Forties? Fifties?”
“Well I'm glad you ruled out thirties.”
You laughed.
“Are you single?”
“You asking?”
“And what do you think about younger women?” Lu asked with seemingly no shame. You carried it all in the blaze of heat in your cheeks.
“I don't know if this is an appropriate conversation to be having,” you said, trying to deflect. Looking between them, you found Lu waiting with curious eyes, not at all uncomfortable and Jack... surprisingly much of the same.
“You mean how do I feel about dating younger women?” asked Jack, standing at the other side of her bed.
In your eyeline.
“There's this app, called 'Always go older' it's catered for men over forty meeting younger women with similar interests. Go on dates, have long term relationships, or just sex.”
You couldn't believe the conversation you had been having with her before Jack came in, making the small space of the exam room even smaller. Having it with him in the room was your idea of a nightmare.
Jack nodded slowly, considering. “An app for... sugar daddies?”
You looked up at him. “You know what sugar daddies are?”
He pursed his lips at you in disappointment. “I'm old, I'm not clueless.”
“If you're interested I can get you a great discount,” said Lu like this was a business meeting. “Both of you.”
Jack looked at you but you missed whatever his eyes were trying to convey when you realised this app cost.
“You have to pay?”
“To be a member yeah, there can be a lot of creeps out there and they do real good work to make sure they're not in the club. You interested?”
“Not if I have to pay,” you said, thinking first of your bank account and nothing else. You only realised once you'd said it what it sounded like.
That you were interested. That older men and dating for you were hand in hand.
You looked up hoping at least Jack wouldn't have noticed. His eyes were on you, an amused tilt to his lips. “Okay!” you stood up, pulling off your gloves. “All the gravel and glass is out but I'm gonna get another blood test in to check your alcohol levels. I'll call a nurse to dress you up and we'll keep you for observation on that blood pressure.”
She nodded. “Do you think I could do a pregnancy test too? Just, while I'm here.”
Jack approached your side, watching you again. His head was tilted up but his eyes were down on you. He was attending but as always he waited on your say. He never overstepped, never made assumptions, always let you lead with your gut.
You wondered if that was what younger women were looking for...
“Sure, I'll get you a pot for a urine sample and we can get those tests.”
“Were you practising safe sex?” asked Jack.
Lu stretched out on the bed, pulling at the seams of her dress at her cleavage. “It feels better without.”
Jack seemed un-bothered, if anything understanding as his head slowly bobbed in a nod.
You'd never had sex without a condom before. Never wanted to risk it.
Jack held the door open for you, letting you lead the way out.
It was noisier and busier yet it was easier to breath. At least for a second before Jack's body brushed yours as he walked next to you.
“Is she a cop? Feel like we were being interrogated in there.”
“That or she gets paid to promote the app.”
You slid into a chair desperately trying not to look at the clock. You had a bad habit of doing so and the night would drag on. You pulled up her chart and distracted yourself with repeating what you'd already said to avoid the inevitable conversation you were gonna be having with Jack.
His mouth opened and you beat him to it.
“I swear we just started talking about that, I was just asking her how she fell and she told me about the guy and started talking about sex and the date and the app, I... I did not invite that conversation.”
He nodded. “It's okay if you did.”
“I didn't.”
“Okay.”
There was silence between you. Your finger moves quickly over the keyboard and Abbott stayed stood there, watching.
“If you're interested-”
“- I'm not,” you said, quickly, without really knowing what he was asking for.
Jack held his hands up in surrender. “Older men aren't too bad.”
“Oh no, I'm-I'm sure they're great, I have nothing against age, you know, old's great! Like.... like wine! Or-or cheese! I just, I mean, my love life- sex life is kinda, urm-” you stumbled over your words. It was annoying how Jack just stood there, letting you, without stopping or helping. “I just don't really have the time for dating.”
You worked nights and in the day you were catching up on sleeping and eating. The furthest your date life got was phone calls with Jack when he was grocery shopping and wanted your opinion, or sometimes in the morning when you got breakfast together before heading back.
He always walked you home, even if it meant an extra half hour before he got home. He was a gentleman like that.
He was still calm as he held his hands behind his back and watched you. “Are you looking to date?”
You chuckled. “Ha, you know a guy who works as crazy shifts as me?”
Jack's eyes lowered to yours. “Maybe. Might be a bit older though.”
You realised what he meant just as an ETA was called in.
The ETA had turned into five and for the rest of the night you and Abbott were too busy with the rest of the team to brush by each other. Every move was a hard move of shoulders to not bump or ripping of the gowns off and the harsh change of gloves. There was no time to talk about anything through the night, let alone whatever the hell had happened at the start of shift.
Your small reprise came when a man dressed in the makings of a rushed man walked in as the clock was striking past five in the morning.
“Excuse me, I'm looking for Lu Mari-gold?”
His hair was silver and growing at the back of his neck. It was brushed back handsomely and though he clearly must have been in his fifties (at least) he had a head full of hair and stubble growing on his chin.
He was handsome and even more so when you saw the bouquet of flowers he held in hand.
“Are you- are you family?”
“No I'm uh- I'm her partner.”
So you escorted him to her room, letting him in and giving him a small update on her care. He set the flowers next to her and you lingered, diligently checking her chart.
“Why'd you leave, honey?” he asked, sitting on the edge of her bed and petting back her hair.
“Oh you know,” she said, casually. “Didn't want to do the whole awkward morning after thing.”
“There'd be nothing awkward about it. I was gonna make you breakfast, had plans to make love two you in the morning.”
Your cheeks flamed up as he said it so casually, like he was laying out a list for morning plans which.... he well was.
You decided to give them some privacy and save yourself form listening. You gently closed the door over and watched them through. He kissed her gently on the forehead, cradling her and Lu soaked it all in in adoring eyes and gentle touches.
It was a sort of tender touch you weren't used to even seeing, let alone feeling.
“Hey,” there was a ghost of a touch on the small of your back and Jack came to stand next to you. “That her boyfriend?”
“Yeah, though I don't know if they're their yet,” you admitted. “They only met tonight- well, last night. But she ran out.”
“And he came to her,” observed Jack. “They'll be just fine.”
“How'd you know?”
“The way he looks at her.”
When you looked at Jack he was already looking at you.
The thousand moments between the two of you played out. The gentle ghosts of a hand, the watchful moments but Jack was like that with a lot of people, attentive.
Your eyes fluttered as you looked away from him to the scene playing out again. “Are you some sort of relationship whisperer?”
He huffed a small amused laugh and followed your eyes to look ahead. “I just know things.”
It wasn't long before Lu and her partner were walking out, the flowers in hand as his arm was around her waist, supporting her.
They stopped off by the nurses counter where both you and Jack lingered working on separate cases.
“We just wanted to say thank you,” said Lu. “And here. There's a ninety percent success rate.”
She handed you a business card with the app name and promo code applied.
“Oh, er, thank you,” you said, un-sure on what to say other than a thanks.
Lu smiled kindly, leaning in to you as subtle as possible. Her eyes lingered somewhere over your shoulder. “Though I don't think you'll need it.”
You turned, catching sight of what she was watching.
Jack stood with Crus who was thrusting a tablet to him but he was looking at you.
“I'll- er- put it to good use. I'll see you in a couple days to check out those stitches.”
Slowly they left and you were stood frozen, staring down at the card. Ten dollars a month wasn't so bad if you didn't count the subscriptions you already had at the student loan and bills and such. You got three months half price, maybe three months to meet the love of your life or at least get some-
The card was plucked from you fingers.
Jack twirled it around. “You thinking about it?” he said, an edge to his voice.
“What? No- I don't know, she just- it was a parting gift?”
He nodded, reading the card. “Always go older,” he read.
“It's the app, younger women with, um, older men.”
“Interested?”
The way he looked at you felt more like an invitation than a general question. His eyes were hooded as he looked at you. It was the way he always looked at you but it felt weighted.
“It's just an app,” you excused.
Jack held the card out between the two of you, letting you chose.
It should've been your choice but it felt like there was a right and wrong answer.
Slowly, you plucked it from his fingers.
Two days later you found Jack Abbott on the app.
You were scrolling in the bathroom on your three minute pee break. You'd got the app that morning, caving in after spending a night tossing and turning and dreaming. You could say the dream was any old man, a faceless sort but even if that were true you felt the hard press of the chest, the tickle of the stubble. You imagined the freckles along the arms and the low rumble of his voice in your ear.
“That's it... that's it... take me in... all the way... god you feel beautiful,”
You woke wet between your legs and hot all over with little to no time to do anything about it.
You were desperate, you told yourself as you hastily built up a profile, picking what small pictures you had of yourself not in scrubs.
You hadn't had time to check it until the bathroom break and you don't make it three profiles before you were faced with Abbott.
The pictures of him were pictures you'd seen before, a selfie with his stupid smirk, the peek of army uniform there. There was another of him that seemed to a couple years ago and the third and final was a picture of him in scrubs.
It was a picture of the night shift but you could tell there were several cropped out, but you who stood next to him were still there.
You stared down at the picture of you two, his arm was thrown over your shoulders casually. He was grinning at the camera and you had a small smile to, your body leant into him. You hadn't even realised you did that.
Didn't Abbott know it wasn't a good sign to have a picture of another woman on the dating app? Unless it was your mother and you were a mamas boy.
There was knocking on the bathroom stool doors.
“Have you coded in there?” Crus called out.
You huffed and got off the toilet, pulling up your pants and pocketing your phone.
“If only.”
The night continued as usual, abdominal pains, charting, lacerations, charting, traumas and charting.
You'd hardly got a look at Jack when it was turning to six in the morning and day shifters started piling in.
You were passing the break room when the door swung open.
Jack popped out, catching you, his arms braced at the door. “Get in here, now.”
You were worried, reading through every patient you'd seen that day. You were sure you dealt with them all attentively, you'd never misdiagnosed someone before and today couldn't have been the day.
Jack closed the door behind him, checking nobody was on their way to find you before speaking. He was calm as he walked over to you, leaning his hand on the table and crowding you. “Why do you think I need to talk to you?”
You tried to think of something you'd done wrong. Anything. “Trauma came in, I er, didn't intubate quick enough?”
He shook his head and you tried to think again.
Before you could hazard a guess, he spoke. “I thought if you were interested, you'd have said something.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Interested?”
Jack's chest rose and fell in a deep breath. “In going older.”
“In going-” your mind short-circuited to his profile. If you'd seen him just a few hours ago, he could have seen you before then.
“I thought I had made my invitation clear,” he uttered.
“Invitation?” you repeated, feeling like a stuck record player.
“To go older,” Jack stepped closer and you could feel the warmth of his breath. “I was inviting you to try it.”
His breath somehow still smelt of mint freshness whereas you were sure yours was coffee stained from the three cups you'd already drunk.
“And not through the app,” he added.
You gulped. “You saw me on the app?”
“I saw you on the app.”
“But you're on the app,” you pointed out, eyes flickering up to his.
“I got it two days ago to make sure you didn't get it,” he said. His eyes weren't focused on yours. They were flickering between your eyes and your lips.
You wondered if you were still dreaming. If you were still in your bed, still dampening your panties and sheets with this crazy dream of him. You pinched yourself slowly but you felt the pain and didn't wake.
You squeezed your eyes shut and opened them and he was still there. Still calm. “You want to have sex with me?”
Jack's jaw clenched. “Honey, I want so much more than that.”
His finger was light as it brushed the back of your hand that rested on the table there.
“I want what you want, and maybe even more,” said Jack, his hand cradled your face. thumb dragging over your cheekbone. “You just got to tell me what you want and I'll make it happen.”
You'd thought that being with an older man meant being told what to do, that you wouldn't get a word in edge ways and yes, it was hot to think about.
You imagined Jack would be that, gently guiding you through your pleasure like he understood it better than you did. “You, I want you.”
Jack's lips were soft on yours, his head tilted at the perfect angle that meant he reached every edge of your lips at once. He didn't push against you, annoyingly so, he just let you feel the press of his lips like a fresh summers breeze.
It was your hands that fell on his chest, it was you that tilted your head back so he could reach deeper. It was your tongue tracing the bottom of his lips to get in deeper.
The door clattered and you jumped from Jack like he'd scorched you.
Jack only opened his eyes slowly, turning.
Robby leant on the door frame, arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his lips as he sipped from his coffee cup. “Good morning, brother.”
Jack took you home to his and carefully man handled you through the door. Once it was closed his lips sort yours in a hunger even a twelve hour shift couldn't kill.
He breathed against you hard as he kissed you, stirring you through his house with his hands migrating from your cheeks, to your neck, to your waist, to your hips, to anyplace he could get a hold of you.
Your hands made his neatly combed hair a mess as you leant against him, letting yourself be moved around like a rag doll.
“Is this your house?” you asked against his lips. You couldn't look around to study his space, he was hardly letting you go to catch your breath let alone turn your head.
He nodded, kissing you. His tongue entered the warmth of your mouth and he moaned into you. “We didn't break and enter, baby.”
“But you-” you gasped as his hands travelled under your shirt, sending a chill. “You don't rent.”
This wasn't your best dirty talk.
Jack smiled against your lips. “No, I have a mortage.”
You kissed him again, holding him close as your hand slithered to the back of his neck.
He was still navigating you through his house till you felt your back hit a wall. “Does that turn you on?”
Slowly he pulled at the ties of your scrub pants and he slid his hand in enough to get a feel of the warmth of your cunt through your panties. You were wet, impossibly so just by kissing him.
“Yeah,” he said, breathless. “It turns you on.”
Jack's teeth scraped down your neck, his tongue soothing where he nipped.
You tilted your head back, a silent invite for more.
A thigh of his slotted between your legs and you fell onto it.
“You wanna- wanna tell me about tax returns next?” you teased.
“Maybe,” he said, lifting his head back to yours. “I kinda wanna taste you first.”
With strong hands on your hips he turned you and pushed you through the open door into a master of a bedroom. The bed was in the middle, a four postered type thing with clean and made sheets. There was nothing messy about it, nothing to signify the exhaustion of a night shift.
Jack held your body into his, hips rutting against yours.
You acknowledged somewhere in the back of your head that he'd told you years ago he moved into a bungalow. No stairs- easier on his leg.
“Do you know how many times I've touched myself thinking about you, on that bed?” he whispered into your skin, kissing the words there.
“You-You have?”
You felt his hair tickle you as he nodded. “Do you like knowing that?”
“Yes.” You reached over, cupping the back of his head till your tongues were meeting in a sloppy kiss.
Jack's hands slipped down your waist, down your underwear and spread at your cunt till he could easily slip in a finger.
You gasped against him, body curling in pleasure you'd never felt.
He moved with you as if he was chasing you, sucking on your bottom lip.
“You like that?” he uttered, dragging out your bottom lip.
You nodded as he slowly withdrew his finger to slip another in.
“Need to hear you like it, baby.”
“I like it, Jack, like your fingers inside of me.”
The fingers on his free hand moved to wrap around your neck, tilting your head back till it rested on his shoulder. With this advantage he could like on the skin, feel the heat of you and the jump of your pulse as he slowly worked his fingers in and out, curling at the spots that got you shaking.
Your held onto his arm, fingers digging into the skin.
“You're gonna like it,” he whispered. “You're gonna like it so much you'll never go back, never want anyone else.”
His fingers worked quicker as you felt him leave marks at your neck, in places you knew people would be able to see. “Still like my fingers inside of you?”
“Yes, god, yes!”
“How'd they make you feel, baby?”
“Good, so good.”
Jack withdrew his hands and turned you, guiding you up on the bed. He leant back on his knees, slowly undoing the ties of his scrub bants.
You'd never been happier that they were black, showing the outline of his cock, hard and begging for attention.
“Take your top off.” He gestured.
You did and his eyes grew darker though didn't know how that was possible. Your hands trembled with eager excitement to get your hands on him or for him to get his hands on you. You moved to un-clasp your bra but Jack shook his head.
“Keep it on. Take my shirt off.”
His chest was broad and slightly defined. Freckles dotted around and one or two scares you'd never seen before were littered there too.
It was instinct to move in to his neck to kiss him but his hand wrapped around your neck and pushed you down till you bounced off the mattress.
“Eyes on me, keep your eyes on me.”
You followed his order as he slowly dragged down your scrub pants and panties, getting a glimpse of how wet they were before they were chucked aside.
Hopefully that was the time Jack let you see all of him. No.
Like a prized possession Jack laid you out and spread your legs.
It was suddenly all too real. The haste of the drive over, his hand on your thigh, everything he said about being with an older guy and how Lu had told you how experienced they were. Would he expect something you couldn't deliver? Did you expect something?
“Jack,” you said only his name but you didn't know what else you were trying to lead on anyhow.
His eyes were earnest though clouded by desire as he pushed your legs up till you were sprawled out for him. “I'll stop any time you want.”
You watched him get closer to your heat. Felt yourself cry out for his attention.
“You're gonna like it, gonna love it,” he promised, eyes focused on you as he slid his middle finger inside of you. “Relax... relax.”
You tried to but as another one of his fingers slid into you, creating a slow thrusting pattern and his other hand kept playing with your cunt to get your lips spread you could do anything but relax.
Your breathing kicked up, your pulse was high.
As Jack leant down to slowly flick his tongue against your clit you threw your head back and moaned.
“Oh shit, Jack- Jack!”
His gaze flickered up to you, daring you to try to speak.
When you did it came out as another moan, his tongue flattening against your bud of nerves.
He played with you like that, moulding your legs around to where he wanted them. Flat on the bed, over his shoulders, up in the air. Anything to get him deeper inside of you.
All the while you alternated between watching him and falling back on the bed in aches of pleasure.
Jack watched where his fingers disappeared inside of you. “Swallowing me up, can't wait to get my cock inside of you.”
“Want it.... want it....” you mumbled, head back on the softness of his quilt.
“Yeah?” he whimpered.
Your hand fisted the quilt that smelt like him and you smothered your face in it as his fingers curled.
“Oh my god, honey... yeah....” Jack moaned before you felt the wet of his tongue on the heat of you.
You couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Whether it was his spit on your cunt or your want that was pooling into wetness on his sheets.
There was no warning, only your moans, as you came around his fingers and tongue. You had no idea you could come so quick, had no idea it could be pulled from your head to your toes.
Jack let your orgasm play out, pulling back to watch it leak. “Oh yeah... yeah...” his fingers swept up the mess lightly. “You're so sweet, oh yeah... moan like that...”
His tongue went in, licking up all the mess around you.
“Jack please, I can't- I can't!”
Your body was trembling beyond your control and he was still playing around with you and your sensitive bud. Your arms wrapped around yourself as if you could hold yourself together from breaking out in cries.
You hadn't noticed your eyes were screwed shut until you felt him move and heard the demand in his voice.
“Look at me.”
When you did you found Jack standing at the foot of his bed, scrub pants deserted and hand wrapped around his own cock.
You looked at him and then some.
“Touch me, touch me,” he said gently, prying your hands away from your chest with care.
With guidance he helped you sit up and helped you feel his cock.
You'd done this before but your mouth had never watered by the idea, your body never wept with the need to suck another guy off. Nothing about him disgusted you. Not the scars around his knee where he lost his leg, not the hair that dusted the base of his cock in tamed grey.
It moved you on.
You only jerked him off slow, only a little at first but his breath became laboured.
Jack's eyes closed as he grabbed a hold of your legs like they were his anchor.
You wanted to speed up.
“Go easy on me,” he said with a drunk grin. “It's been a while.”
You moaned and inched your body closer to the edge of the bed, your heat wanting to swallow him up.
Jack's eyes watched as you withered. He held onto your wrist that stayed wrapped around the base of his cock. “No, no, no, don't put it in yet.” Slowly he came to lean over you. “I want you to suck on it. You want it? Want to suck this old mans cock?”
In answer, the two of you moved quickly till he was lying flat on the bed and you were over him, slowly taking the tip in your mouth.
“Oh my god... oh yeah...” he moaned. Jack petted back your hair. “Take the tip.... take the tip... swirl your tongue...”
You took in his tip and swirled the tongue just as he said, watching him as you took him deeper with his careful help.
A string of 'oh yeah, don't stop' fell from him like a mantra as you took him deeper and faster, the need growing in you again.
“It's not- it's not too much?” he checked in, his head falling back.
You only took yourself off him to shake your head before sucking him into your mouth again, holding the base of him and working what you couldn't manage.
Jack groaned, hands flying to his head as his fists clenched. “You're so good... oh you're so good, baby.”
You took him deep and hollowed your cheeks.
Jack lurched. “Fuck! Fuck- shit, don't do that,” he moaned, guiding you off with pink cheeks. He chuckled, guiding you up to him. “I'll finish if you do that.”
He kissed you, never minding the both of your arousal on each other's lips. “They're are so many ways I want to be inside of you.”
You moaned against his lips. “I want you inside me, Jack.”
“I know, I know.” His brows pulled together as he seemed to have a battle in his own mind about just how to have you.
You didn't make it easier. In temptation you lied back on his bed and spread yourself out. All the while he was still caught up in thinking.
You almost started playing with yourself to relieve the build up when Jack grabbed your wrist and guided your fingers into his mouth.
He gently kissed the pads of your finger tips. “Turn around.”
Jack lied next to you, your back flush with his chest. He lined his cock up with your cunt, slowly sliding the length of it between your folds.
“Con-condom?” you mumbled, dreading the feel of anything that wasn't completely him.
Jake kissed your shoulder. “It feels better without. I'm clean.”
You nodded, breathless at the promise of feeling him. All of him. “I'm clean and I have a, an IUD.”
He kissed you again as he nudged the head of his cock into you.
Your moans echoed around the room as he held onto you, inching himself in further and further.
Only once you'd just got the feel of all of him he was slowly retreating to push back in again. For a moment it was only the sound of the both of you breathless and the gentle sounds of skin on skin as he moved at a steady pace, growing needier, getting deeper by every thrust.
“Oh my god... oh my god...” you moaned.
Jack's hands grabbed your hips, helping you meet his thrusts in urgency. The sun was just peeking through the blinds and a thin layer of sweat glowed off both your bodies.
You tried to grind your backside into him, desperate to feel relief as his pace remained steady.
Jack gripped your hip, leaning into your ear. “Don't rush it, don't rush it,” he nipped at your ear. “Don't be greedy, we'll go slow.”
You didn't want slow. You wanted fast. You wanted hard.
The slow drag of his cock through your walls drove you mad. He reached around, fingers circling your clit as his other hand finally un-hooked your bra.
It wasn't long before Jack was slamming into you, harder, your body rocking with his movements and the head of his bed hitting the wall.
“God, it's been so long.... you feel amazing...” said Jack as his fingers circled your clit hard.
“Jack I'm gonna-”
At the warning he stilled himself inside of you.
“Not yet, honey, not yet.”
You whined, hand moving round to grab at his ass and hold him in.
Jack groaned and bit into your neck. “I know, I know. Just gimme a minute.”
You had no choice as he slid out of you and moved you around so you were flat on the bed. You felt his fingers thrust inside of you again harder than before.
His breath was hard, chest rising and falling quickly. “I wanna make you come in so many ways I can't chose how.”
He was a man starved, ravenous as he dedicated time to licking you up again, if only for a minute. But he moaned around you, sucked in your nerves and released it to the mercy of his fingers.
“Jack!” you yelled, screw the neighbours.
There was a growl somewhere in the back of his throat as he loomed over you.
“You wanna fuck me?”
“Yes, Jack, bad so bad!”
“Okay, okay honey, fuck me then, come one baby.... I know you can.”
Jack pushed into you as the both of your eyes clashed watching the pleasure in each others eyes. He set a brutal pace, holding a leg up as he peppered kisses along your chest.
“J-Jack-”
“Tell me how good I feel.”
“So good.”
“So good, yeah baby, so good,” he gasped. “Oh fuck, god baby!” He reached over and gripped the headboard, body tight in pleasure.
You arched off the bed.
“I need you to come,” he announced, eyes screwed up in pleasure as he thrusted into you hard, the slap of his balls on you.
You watched where he met you as your legs shook.
“I need you to come so I can come.... one more time, baby.... one more time, please....” he begged.
The sight of him sweating, his body rigid, eyes shut in pleasure and mouth hanging open only to voice obscene moans was enough to have you coming over the edge.
Your walls tightened.
Jack must have felt it as he steadied himself over you, fingers falling between your bodies to work you through it. “That's it.... that's it.... that's it...” He kissed along your collarbone.
You released over him, gasping, body melting into him as Jack rode out your orgasm.
“Arg... oh god... you feel so good, I-urg-”
Dirty words spilled from your mouth as Jack latched onto your mouth and let go inside of you.
The both of you were a panting, sweating mess as he calmed down, slowly slipping out of you but kissing away every whine and protest.
Your breathes slowed and slowly Jack slipped out of you, watching his release leave you.
His eyes flickered back up to you, brushing away hair that had stuck. “I've never come like that in my life.”
You were still catching your breath, still waiting for the race of your heart to dull. “Your welcome?”
Jack chuckled, falling beside you and throwing an arm over you. “I think you can delete that app now.”
You groaned with a wave of embarrassment, covering your face. Gently, Jack pried away your hands and kissed the palms of them. You turned on your side. “Are you going to delete it too?”
“Honey I only got it cause I couldn't stand the thought of you getting it, and some other gut thinking he can treat you better.”
“I always hoped it would be you.”
Jack kissed you tenderly. “So?” he asked against you. “You think older is better?”
It all began in the briefing room when the task force returned from a long deployment. Everyone was exhausted after being stuck in those cargo planes for hours. You couldn't get comfortable in your chair; your backside was aching from those shitty, cold, netted seats.
Price was rambling about information you all already knew, gesturing at diagrams and maps, but your head was somewhere else. You were trying hard not to whine about the pain, scanning the room for anywhere more comfortable to sit. Suddenly, your eyes landed on Ghost’s well-defined, muscular thighs, and dear God, did they look cushioned.
"Ghost," you whispered, trying not to draw attention to yourselves. "Hey."
"Wot?" he grunted, his eyes fixed on Price.
"My ass really hurts from those shitty aircraft seats. I’m literally dying here. I was wondering if I could sit on your lap?" you begged.
"What? No. We’re in a bloody meeting."
"Please! It really hurts!"
Ghost remained silent for a long moment, analyzing the situation. You were just about to give up when you saw him spread his legs and pat his thigh softly. "You bloody nightmare."
You blinked several times, then immediately crawled onto his lap. Thank God—they were just as comfortable as you’d imagined. It was like sitting on a damn cloud. Seeking even more comfort, you grabbed both of Ghost’s arms and wrapped them around your waist. He was so massive that he simply rested his chin on the top of your head.
"The next mission will take place on—" Price cut off abruptly in the middle of his sentence, his eyes locked on the two of you.
"What? My ass hurts; you really should change the bloody seats on the aircraft," you defended yourself against Price’s judgmental stare.
That didn't stop you, though. From that day on, you were always found in your usual place: perched on Ghost's thighs. Without fail.
Oh I was CRAVING for something like this i just adore how fucking massive this man is RAWR
Simon kinda has a crush on you. The only time he sees you is on field, you two work on a different task force that occasionally teams up with the 141, but every time he sees you it reminds him of his crush on you. Most of the time he just ignores it, he only sees you during missions so there’s no point in dwelling on it. That is until on a mission your captain gets injured and so your whole team goes back to the 141’s base because it was closer. Shouldn't be a big deal, Simon just needs to ignore you for a few days, then he’ll eventually forget about you again like he always does.
Until he walks into the locker room and he realizes, other than your face he's never really seen your skin. He’s only ever seen you on the field, when you are fully covered. And now Simon is learning you are absolutely covered in tattoos, much like him. He just stands there in the doorway staring at you, he can't stop himself. “Need something lieutenant?” Simon ran a hand over his face, fuck you were hot. He shook his head and just walked out. It was weird but you brushed it off.
Simon couldn't sleep that night, couldn't stop thinking about you and those tattoos and how hot it would be to fuck you senseless. Simon got out of bed earlier, hoping a long run would get you out of his head but of course you were also up and getting ready to run. He couldn't even think of anything to say while he looked over your body, you had tattoos all over your arms and legs, the top of your chest and your stomach, it seemed like you had tattoos everywhere except your face. “Lieutenant?” Simon's eyes snapped up from your tattooed thighs, you were smirking at him “like what you see?” Simon's face went bright red and he attempted to walk away but you stopped him “I like your tattoos too Simon” if he didn't have a hard on from staring at you he definitely had one after you said his name.
Simon absolutely couldn't get you out of his head no matter what he did to distract himself, he spent days avoiding you, and even still he got hard just at the thought of you. It got so obvious Simon was avoiding you that Price even asked if something had happened between you two. You were so fed up you went straight to his room. Simon didn't argue as you came in “what's your problem Simon?” he didn't look you in the eyes, he was just looking over your body “do you have a problem with my tattoos or something” Simon shook his head finally looking you in the eyes. He pushed you back against the wall “I want ya to tell me about each tattoos while I fuck you senseless”
☆ SUMMARY: A week had passed since the end of your relationship and while you were slowly falling apart, Jack Abbot seemed to be doing just fine for himself. You didn’t want him to feel happy to have been with you– you wanted him to mourn the loss what could've been.
☆ CONTAINS: Angst, Younger, fem!reader. Mohan catching strays (England I know how you feel, I lost my queen too.) Mentions of jumping off a roof? Part two of SUGAR TALKING, but can be read alone!
☆AUTHORS NOTE: Okay, sorry this took some time– I’ve been in school and have only really been able to write at night. I genuinely didn’t expect the kind words and people wanting a part 2, so I’m sorry for the delay, folks. Also! In the last fic reader is on the day shift, but for the sake of continuity, let’s just say she was covering for someone and is originally on the night shift. Please leave your thoughts in the comments– the nice ones– or if you’d like more fics, and don’t forget to send any requests to my inbox!
☆ PAGE DIVIDERS BY: @angeliicide
Your heart feels heavy in your chest as you sit in the booth, wedged between Trinity and Parker.
The sound of the bar and low music filling the air is muffling the rest of the table’s conversation, but it’s not like you were paying attention anyway.
No, your attention is across the room by the bar, where none other than Jack Abbot is standing, his large hands wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle, and across from him stands Samira Mohan, dark curls let loose and plump lips stretched into a beautiful, wide smile.
It’s been a week since your last conversation with Jack, in the breakroom. A week since you had last let him into your bed, a week since he had touched you– a week since the two of you had ended things.
And Jack Abbot was clearly doing fucking fine.
Your stomach twists and before you know it, you’re grabbing your glass and chugging the rest of your drink down, grimacing at the bitter taste.
Parker sends you an impressed look, nodding in approval– clearly unaware of the internal battle you're going through.
“Atta girl!” she laughs, already motioning for the bartender to bring another round.
You give her a weak smile, eyes flickering past her and towards the bar once again.
They’re closer now, and you can see the faint smile on Jack’s face while his hand rests on her waist.
Jesus Christ, you’re gonna hurl.
Letting out a shaky sigh, you quickly stand up, almost falling into Trinity's lap when you climb over her.
“Woah– hey!” she exclaims, but you’re too lost in your head to hear her protests.
The alcohol in your system is making the room spin, but you manage to find an empty hallway, stumbling down it. Leaning against a wall, you let the cool plaster bring you back to earth, eyes still downcast as you take a few breaths, trying to your racing heart.
Fuck this night, fuck that old man and fuck this fucking job–
A pair of shoes end up walking into view, and suddenly the surrounding noise is rushing back into your ears. You look up, blinking as you come face to face with dark eyes, equally as dark hair and a faint smile on the strangers lips.
Nick Barker.
“Huh?” you mutter dumbly, having seen his lips move but not registered any sound.
Nick gives you a small grin, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he takes in your disheveled appearance.
“I said, are you okay, Doc?”
You blink once again, the nickname finally snapping you back into reality.
“Yeah,” you say automatically, even though you can still feel your heart in your throat, beating wildly. “I’m okay,”
You were far from okay.
“Had one too many, have we?” he teases, singlehandedly carrying the conversation while you try to get your shit together.
Charming, you think to yourself.
If only you could completely lose yourself in Nick Barker's pathetic attempts at flirting, rather than the sight of your…whatever, making eyes at your colleague in front of half the department.
“Something like that,” you muse weakly, unable to stop your eyes from flickering past him and towards the bar again.
“Wanna tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, Doc?” he asks, softer this time.
You hesitate, standing up straighter.
You don’t know Nick like that.
He’s… around. Familiar, in the way everyone that frequents the pitt is but not enough to spill relationship troubles to, and definitely not about a relationship that isn’t a relationship, but isn't nothing either.
You glance at him, then away again. He thankfully gets the hint.
“For what it’s worth, whatever it’s about, I doubt it's on you,”
You snort, shaking your head as you give him an incredulous look.
“And how would you know that?”
Nick shrugs, biting back a grin as his eyes dart across your face and you notice them linger on your lips.
“Pretty girls are rarely the issue,”
You actually let out a laugh at that– at his audacity and relentless flirting. It’s a respectable feat at this point.
“Christ, Barker–”
Your shared laughter is interrupted by Victoria stumbling into the hallway, already flushed cheeks growing even warmer as her doe eyes dart between you and the radiologist, looking so…cozy.
“Oh, I was just– I mean– I didn’t mean to– bathroom!” she laughs nervously, lips parted and face contorted in that trademark disgruntled look, before she squeezes herself between the two of you and through the doorway you were blocking.
Only then do you realize you’ve been gone from your table for quite some time, and Nick seems to have that same revelation.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he interrupts, just as you were about to come up with an excuse and leave, clearly thinking ahead of you.
A small wave of doubt flashes across your face, and Nick quickly speaks up again when he feels that you’re about to question his motives.
“You know, as an apology for my terrible attempts at flirting, and to take your mind off of…things,”
Still flirting horribly, but fuck it– you could use another drink and let yourself be distracted by pointless flirting for one night, right?
“How about we join the rest again?” you suggest instead, not bothering to wait for an answer as you grip his wrist, already tugging him back into the crowd.
The main room is still loud, still crowded and still way too warm, but this time, it proves itself to be a distraction you welcome with open arms.
The booth is right as you left it– Trinity laughing at something Parker is saying, Dennis is flushing in a way that reveals that he’s the butt of the joke and Victoria is somehow back in her seat again, giving you a sheepish smile.
The more time that passes, the closer you end up, until eventually, his arm stretches along the back of the booth where you’re sitting. Just then, the rest of the table is conveniently led to the dance floor by Trinity– though not before she sends you an imprudent wink.
Nick is fun, easy to talk to and definitely easy on the eyes. Hell, even Cassie gives you the stamp of approval– a single, smug nod from the other side of the room.
Everything feels normal.
And for a few minutes, you let it be just that.
You laugh when you’re supposed to, nod along to the conversation even when you’re barely following, take a sip of your drink just to have something to do with your hands.
It almost works.
Almost.
Like a magnet drawn to a forcefield, your eyes are drawn to where you saw Jack earlier.
Only this time your gaze is met by his.
It’s cliche– the way the rest of the room seems to blur, the noise fading away when your eyes lock, but it’s the truth.
It’s not for long though, because soon his stare shifts to the person that's supposed to be blocking your view of him. Jack’s eyes move to follow the length of Nick’s arm along the back of your seat, then to the way you’re leaning towards him, down the bare expanses of your crossed legs, before finally landing on you again– with a newfound tension.
Nick is still talking besides you, completely unaware of the fact that you’re not listening to a word he’s saying. No, instead you’re dialed in on everything that is Jack Abbot. And just as his gaze had shifted to Nick, your own now shifts towards Samira, observing the lack of space between the two of them.
You should look away. You should be listening to Nick rambling about something, yet you’re letting your attending eye-fuck you from across the bar.
Something akin to satisfaction settles deep in your stomach at the idea of Jack feeling even a semblance of what you have been feeling all night.
But it’s not enough. No, you want him to suffer just as you had.
So you tear your gaze away, reaching out to brush a lock of hair from Nick’s face. He freezes mid sentence, before sitting straighter, clearly pleased by your action. You don’t give him a moment to collect himself before you lean closer.
“Remember how you said you wanted to help me take my mind off of things?” you mutter, eyes flickering to his lips.
Nick nods, swallowing dryly.
“Now’s your chance,” you whisper, closing your eyes, and thankfully Nick doesn't need much convincing, because in an instant, his lips land on yours, moving softly, before he gains some confidence, pulling you closer. His palm lands on your thigh, squeezing it.
Your eyes flutter open mid-kiss, back to that same corner of the bar, back to those hazel ones.
Jack is in the same position you last saw him in, only you can sense the newfound tension in him radiating off his frame.
You let your hands slip into Nick’s hair, tugging slightly– eyes half-lidded and locked on the way Jack’s fingers tighten its grip around his bottle of beer, before he brings it to his lips, taking a large sip– still not looking away.
The moment stretches too long, and before you know it, the rest of the table is coming back. Pulling away from Nick, who’s looking a little dazed, you give him a pat on the shoulder, squeezing past him to get out of the booth.
“Thanks. I’m going to get some air, ‘kay?”
As soon as you step out of the bar, a flood of cold air is washing over you and you take your first proper breath of the night once you’ve rounded the corner of the building, a bit further away from the front entrance.
The little bell above the door rings again when it swings open and you don’t need to look behind you to see who has followed out.
“Quite the show you put on in there,” he drawls, and you already feel your irritation grow at the smugness in his voice.
“Wasn’t aware we had an audience” you quip back, blatantly lying.
Jack enters your field of vision, and you almost wish he had stayed behind you– out of sight, so that you could continue pretending that he doesn’t have an effect on you anymore.
His hands are shoved into the pockets of his grey jeans, the black t-shirt he’s wearing stretching deliciously over the broad expanse of his shoulders and the short sleeves constricting the bulging muscles in his arms.
You force yourself to stop checking him out.
You’re expecting a smirk– an unbothered, amused look on his face when you finally look at him. Instead, you’re met with a sharpened glare and a gritted jaw.
Oh?
“That was real mature, by the way,” he jeers sarcastically, Adam's apple bobbing when he awaits your answer, a reaction– anything to indicate you still give a fuck about him.
“Excuse me?” you say in disbelief, arms crossing at his harsh tone. You were used to the closed off version of him– one that held his cards close to his chest– but from here, the Jack standing in front of you was nothing like the calm and collected man from inside– out here, he was unabashedly unraveling.
Jack steps closer, close enough to where you can smell the beer on his breath and the last, lingering scent of the cologne he must have used before coming to the bar. His hands run through his short locks, and he gives you a torn look.
“What the fuck are you playing at?” he hisses, gripping your arm and pulling you closer to him.
You tilt your head, forced to strain your neck as you glare up at his towering frame.
“Not everything is about you, Abbot–”
“Oh, bullshit!” he snaps, chest heaving as he struggles with rationalizing what he’s feeling. “You’re messing with me on purpose, you knew how I’d feel seeing that,”
You splutter in disbelief once again, eyebrows furrowing at his words.
“Are you serious right now? I don't know shit about what you feel for me– that’s the entire fucking reason we’re here right now!” you spit, shoving him away from you.
Jack stumbles back, before catching himself and stepping right back into your space again– crowding you against the wall of the building.
For months on end you had compromised your own feelings for the sake of his, agreeing to something casual because that was what he wanted. You had spent months convincing yourself that it didn’t matter that Jack wouldn’t touch you in public, because behind closed doors, he was all yours.
For months you had begged for the same attention he so easily gave someone else tonight.
Tonight, he had proved once again that you should stop making excuses for him.
“What do you want from me?” you say weakly, breathing growing heavier as you swallow the lump in your throat.
Jack falters at your defeated tone of voice, so unlike the fire he knows lives within you.
Had he done this to you?
He wants you– how could you not know that? Everything Jack had done had been with your best interest in mind and yet here you were, falling apart because of him. Because he thought keeping his distance, letting you go was the right choice.
Because you had so much to do, and Jack had nothing ahead of him.
Jack’s stare searches your face, and you can feel his breath warming the side of your face. If you turned your head, you’d be close enough to feel his lips brush against yours. Pressing his nose to your temple, he breathes in the scent he’s been without for what feels like an eternity.
A final, sharp inhale and Jack is pulling away again.
“I can’t give you what you want,” he mumbles.
You sniffle, shaking your head at his words. The memory flashes in your head– his hand on Samira’s waist, the easy smile you hadn’t seen directed at you in weeks, the way he didn’t even look your way until it was too late.
“You can, you just don’t want to–”
“Of course I want to,” Jack cuts in immediately, shutting down whatever you were trying to allude to. “But it’s not fair to you if I take what I want,”
A sharp, bitter laugh bubbles in your chest, and you push his hands away from you, wiping your face harshly as you speak.
“What’s not fair is you treating me like this. You tell me we’re casual, then treat me like more– then you let me end things with you, only to act like some possessive jerk afterwards!”
Jack drags a hand down his face, exhaling sharply. “That wasn’t– fuck, you’re twisting it.”
“Then explain it to me,” you challenge, stepping closer despite everything. His eyes snap to yours, something frantic flickering in them.
“I screwed up,” he admits, voice rough. “Okay? I saw you with him and I–” he breaks off, jaw clenching. “I lost it,"
Your heart stutters at the revelation, but you don’t let it soften you.
“That’s not enough,” you say quietly, not looking away from him.
Jack sighs, running a hand through his hair restlessly.
“What do you want me to say huh? Just tell me and I’ll do it–”
“No, I’m done telling you what to feel!” you exclaim, unable to hold back any longer. A look of hurt flashes across your face and you step back, shaking your head in disappointment.
“Figure it out yourself,” you spit, giving him one last look, before rounding the corner and hailing yourself a cab to go back home.
The sound of your heels against the pavement is too loud in the quiet of the night and Jack can feel his heart constrict in his chest at the sight of your retreating figure.
“Hey– ” Jack’s voice calls after you, strained, but you don’t stop.
Not this time.
You lift a hand, waving down the first cab you see like your life depends on it. The car screeches to a halt a few feet ahead, and you don’t dare to look back, not until you're inside of it and it's pulling away.
Jack stands right where you left him, watching you slip away.
The next day, you get to work earlier than you have to, immediately zeroing in on Robby, who’s standing by the hub, staring up at the patient board.
Over the rim of his glasses, he squints, giving you a one over.
“Fancy seeing you here! Surely you heard that we were swamped and decided to come in early to help?” he says teasingly, giving you a tightlipped smile.
You barely slow your stride towards the lockers, matching his sarcasm with your own.
“Oh, you know me! Always happy to help–” you retort, not lingering long enough for him to find you something to do.
He huffs out a quiet laugh, adjusting his glasses as he turns back to the board, hands gripping each side of his stethoscope hanging around his neck.
“Bet you are, hoo-ahh,” he mocks as you pass him, and you bite back a smile at the reminder of the silly night shift chant the team does– to build morale, apparently.
Slipping into your work shoes, you roll the sleeves of your undershirt up then head back to the hub, where Robby is now joined by Dana.
“I do actually have to speak to you, though,” you try to say as casually as you can, but Dana still gives you an appraising look, while Robby turns to face you, putting the ipad in his hands, down.
“Okay,” he says carefully, sharing a glance with the equally as curious charge nurse, before looking back at you. “Shoot,”
You shift your weight on your feet, suddenly very aware of their expecting gazes.
“I’d like to be put on the day-shift,” you say simply.
The silence that ensues does nothing to calm the cold sweats you're starting to have.
“…You’re kidding,” Robby says first, raising his eyebrows like he’s waiting for the punchline.
“I am not,” you press, a shaky laugh escaping you when they continue to look at you like you’ve suddenly started to speak French.
That’s when Dana straightens a little, arms uncrossing as her attention sharpens fully, as she does a tentative scan over your frame..
“You’ve been fighting to stay on nights since you started here, kid, what’s with the sudden change of heart?”
“I know,” you say, shrugging slightly. “Just need a change of scenery,”
Robby lets out a low whistle, rocking back slightly on his heels as he studies you like you’ve just grown a second head.
“Does Abbot know about this?”
You look down, fiddling with your scrub top.
“No, why should he?”
“Well, he is the night shift attending–”
“It’s not a big deal. We don’t have to like…tell everyone,” you mutter as inconspicuously as you can.
Robby gives you a stiff smile, eyes darting to Dana, who gives him a shrug, equally as baffled.
“...Alright,” he sighs, scratching at his scruff.
You perk up, clearly surprised but quickly steel yourself again.
“Really?”
Robby nods, leaning back against the counter and holds your gaze a moment longer than necessary, like he’s weighing whether this is just a simple rescheduling request or something deeper.
Relief flickers through you before you can stop it.
“Thank you,” you say quickly, almost too quickly, then flash a smile at them, turning around and making your way towards the elevators, leaving them alone at the hub.
Dana watches you go, the faintest crease forming between her brows as you disappear around the corner. After making sure that you’ve left, she turns back to Robby.
“...You’re going to tell Abbot, right–”
“Who’s going to tell Abbot what?”
Jack saunters into the department, his backpack slung over his shoulder and looking ready for work, like he’s not an hour early.
“Scheduling,” Dana snorts, not bothering with greetings.
Jack grimaces, dumping his bag at the counter.
“Ah, my favorite topic of conversation,” he says dryly, leaning back as he squints at the board, assessing the current patients administered there.
Robby clears his throat, glancing up over his glasses before going back to reading on the ipad.
“Yeah, seems like you’ve got some residents jumping ship, brother,”
“Oh, yeah?” Jack hums, only half listening as he grabs a chart, ready to start his shift, “Who?”
The silence he’s met with has him coming to a halt. Setting the chart back on the counter, he sniffs, running his knuckles under his nose.
He knows who.
“When did she speak to you?”
Robby doesn’t respond immediately, debating whether or not he should tell him, but seeing Jack’s hardened glare he decides to spare himself the headache.
“She came in early, asked to be put on days and I said yes,” Robby responds earnestly, knowing better than to try and sugar coat anything related to you.
Jack chuckles dryly, shaking his head. A hand runs down the back of his neck as if he’s trying to calm himself down, but before he knows it he’s moving.
“She came in early?” he confirms, already starting to walk away from his oldest friend.
“Jack–” Robby starts, only to stop mid sentence once Jack raises his hand, effectively cutting him off. Sighing for what felt like the hundredth time in only 20 minutes, Robby gives up on trying to intervene, “...I saw her head upstairs.”
Jack doesn’t spare him another glance.
The door to the roof opens abruptly, breaking you out of your thoughts and sending you flinching.
At the scene of the crime is none other than Jack Abbot, looking very fucking pissed.
“You’re asking to be put on days?” he spits, not even bothering to act cool about it.
The wind tousles your hair when you turn around to face him
“I’m not asking, I’ve already switched–”
“Like hell you have,” Jack cuts in, slamming the door behind him harshly, before stalking over to where you’re standing. “Are you trying to get back at me– is that it?”
Scoffing, you resist the urge to roll your eyes instead meeting his glare with your own, face twisted in bewilderment.
“Get back at you?” you repeat incredulously, pushing off the railing and walking around him when he steps closer– keeping your distance.
Jack exhales, his palms rubbing into his eyes.
“Because of last night. Because of Mohan–”
“It’s not about her–”
But he’s not hearing you, continuing to ramble.
“ – you saw one moment, and now you’re cutting me out of your life completely–”
Frustration builds in your chest, bubbling up until you’re lashing out– the false, composed demeanor you had been trying to keep falling apart.
“I saw you give her what I’ve been wanting for months for, Jack!”
The words finally seem to register in his ears, and for the first time since he stepped onto the roof with you, Jack is silenced.
You continue speaking, voice shaking but sharp nonetheless, the wind howling between the two of you.
“I asked you, no I begged you for the bare minimum, and you made me feel like it was still too much. And then I walk into that bar,” you go on, a bitter laugh slipping out, “and suddenly you have no problems anymore. Touching her, laughing with her in front of everyone, like it’s easy?”
Jack swallows his words, fists clenching and unclenching as he tries to hold back– to stop himself from spilling everything he’s ever felt out on the roof of the hospital.
It’s a losing battle.
You watch him stay silent yet again, a look of disappointment flashing in your eyes before you turn around, moving towards the exit.
Jack would rather fling himself off the roof than have you look at him like that again.
“It is easier with her,” he finally speaks, and you end up wishing he wouldn’t.
“Go tell her that and spare me, Jack–”
"You told me to figure my shit out, so I am– just, hear me out okay?” he pleads, taking a deep breath and forcing himself to continue when you let him speak. “...It’s easier with her because I don’t care about her,”
You freeze in your step, his words causing your racing mind to finally quiet down.
“I never did. I–” he sighs and you hear him step closer to you, yet you refuse to turn around to face him. “...I was trying to forget,"
When you stay silent, Jack continues rambling, walking until he’s right in front of you, looking into your eyes with his own pleading ones.
“ –But then I saw you with him, and I realized I didn't want to see you with anyone but me. And I know it’s far too fucking late, and that I’ve been putting you through hell, but I…” he trails off, and you hear him breathe heavily, trying to collect his thoughts. “I thought I was doing the right thing…that I was helping you realize you didn’t actually want this,”
That you didn’t actually want me, Jack thinks to himself.
The sky is falling behind you, casting an orange hue over the rooftop where the two of you are standing. The distant sounds of ambulance sirens can be heard, as well as the honks from traffic, the sound of people walking on the street and a lone helicopter flying above, yet all Jack can focus on is the broken look on your face.
“I’ve always wanted you, Jack,”
You say, taking in the way his chest rises unevenly, the way his hands hang uselessly at his sides like he doesn’t trust himself to reach for you.
You feel your eyes well up, and you break away from his searching eyes, blinking away the tears threatening to spill.
Jack can’t fight it anymore– he can’t let the distance last. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he steps closer, cupping your face.
“I know and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, honey–” he mutters, pressing his forehead to yours. Your breath shudders when you feel his lips kiss the tears away, the familiar yet strange feeling of his coarse stubble scratching against your damp cheeks.
Pulling back just enough to look into your eyes, Jack doesn’t hesitate this time.
“I’m in love with you,” he says, the words catching in his throat, but he forces them out nonetheless. He wasn't going to let his fear win this time.
Your breath hitches at his words, eyes searching him for an inkling of doubt– of regret, anything that would indicate you being hurt by him again.
He hates that you have to be cautious around him, that you’re worried about protecting your heart when all he’s ever wanted was to hold it in his hands forever. To protect you, to love you.
“I love you,” he repeats, softer this time. “ And if you’ll let me, I’ll make sure to prove it– no matter how long it takes,”
You watch him– waiting for that same version of him that would let his walls down just enough to reel you in, before shutting you out again.
And when he doesn’t– when you realize that the person you see before you is nothing like him– a tentative, soft smile forms on your face.
Jack can’t take his eyes off of you– he never wants to take his eyes off of you again.
“Took you long enough,” you huff weakly, allowing yourself to relax in his arms when his lips press against your forehead.
That day, Jack Abbott decided to spend the rest of his life trying to make up for the biggest mistake he’s ever made– hurting you.
☆END NOTE: Yeah, yeah– sappy ending I know, but they've been through a lot, let them be happy! Speaking of going through a lot,I personally went through the five stages of grief writing this. It was supposed to be short n sweet (get it?), not an age gap-situationship-final boss fic. Not proud of it, man enough to say it and I hope you still like it?
i love photography i love art i love losing myself in books and going to exhibitions and the cinema and walking through cities and i love architecture and learning about history and no one will ever take that away from me
☆ SUMMARY: Months after Jack broke your heart, you attempt to move on by going on a date. The problem? You run into your ex-boyfriend before you even make it out of the parking lot.
☆ CONTAINS: Ex!Jack, younger, fem!reader, dating app slander, mentions of shooting someone. No descriptions of readers' appearance, except that hair is put up while at work, wearing makeup and a dress.
☆AUTHORS NOTE: Whipped this up in a day in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing! Almost done with school for the summer, so hopefully I can get back into writing<3 Is it meh? Yes. Is it also a start? Yes! PS. I have a 1K special up where you can request some things, so check it out if you’d like!
☆ PAGE DIVIDERS BY: @sweetmelodygraphics
“So, a little birdie told me someone's got a hot date tonight?”
The teasing lilt in Trinity Santos' voice does not go unnoticed by you, even after hours of saving lives and being slammed with paperwork as a reward.
That's healthcare for you.
“I’m going to shoot the little birdie,” you scoff, rubbing your eyes rougher than one probably should. “And it’s definitely not a hot one,”
“But it is a date,” Trinity perks up, a cheshire like grin forming on her face while she spins the chair you're sitting in and charting to face her. “Tell me everything– who is he, how did you meet, what are you going to wear–”
“Okay, slow down!” A small laugh unfortunately manages to escape you, and you don’t know whether to be touched or offended over the fact that she was this invested in your love life. “There’s nothing to tell, I haven’t even met the man yet,”
“Oh, ew,” she immediately says, grimacing in disgust, “You met him on the apps? That’s low, even for you babe,”
You stare at her blankly, momentarily stunned.
“Desperate times means desperate measures,” you finally say, officially finishing charting and logging out of the computer. Standing up, you start making your way towards the lockers, Trinity's excited voice following behind you.
“I mean, not that desperate. I know one man that would go out with you in a heartbeat,”
Opening your locker, you take out the little duffel bag you had to bring into work today. In order to make it to the date on time, you’d have to get ready at work, and as much as you hated drawing attention to yourself, you wouldn’t have time to make it back home.
So you’d done your hair the night before, hoping for the best when you tied it up for work, shoved your makeup kit, as well as your dress and heels into a bag and made your way to work.
This was also the exact reason you had asked to get out before handoffs. And Robby owed you just enough favors to let it slide, but not before giving you a suspicious look. You knew better than to tell your ex-husbands best friend– and by default spy– why you suddenly needed to cash in on those very handy, very hard earned favors.
“Yeah, and me and that man are broken up for a reason,” you snort, promptly shutting down any insinuations and blaming it on her sleep depravity.
Slipping off your scrubs, you falter when you hear Trinity snort at the action.
“Excuse me? What happened to privacy–”
“Alright, alright– sorry!” She amends, throwing her hands up in defeat and turning around.
But the sound of her laughter is already replaying in your mind and you huff at your own insecurity, crossing your arms.
“What is it, Santos?”
Immediately turning back around, Trinity gives you a sheepish smile, before her eyes dart to you, still standing in your underwear.
“Are we, like, super committed to the granny panties?”
You gasp, throwing your scrub top at her face when she speaks.
“Rude! They’re not granny panties, they’re just, you know…” you defend yourself, digging through your duffel for your dress. “Comfortable. They’re comfortable, Trinity,”
“That’s kind of the problem, babe. You’re going for sexy and alluring– not comfort! Trust me, I’m the last person to tell someone to change for a man, but those–” she points an accusing finger at your matching set, “Are just one big turnoff, my friend,”
You groan, running a hand through your hair.
“You cannot be telling me this right now. I don’t have any spare underwear with me– are you sure you’re not just biased?”
Trinity gives you a sad look, then walks to the door, peeking her head around the corner.
“Mohan! Get in here–”
You gape, quickly tugging your work pants back on and crossing your arms over your chest.
“What the hell? Hello, I’m like naked in here–”
“Oh calm down, we’re doctors,” Trinity waves you off, and before you can say anything else, Samira Mohan walks into the tiny excuse of a locker room.
Her eyes dart between Trinity and you, before going down to your chest, where a very sturdy looking bra is in place.
“For the date tonight?” she says carefully, noting the agitation on your face and the amusement on Trinity’s.
“Does everyone know?” your answer confirms her words, and Samira gives you a gentle smile, officially dismantling the last irritation in you.
Slumping against the lockers, your head hits the metal with a small thump!
“Okay,” she finally says, adopting the same, comforting tone she uses when explaining treatment plans to patients, “I don't think they're bad,”
“You lie, sweet child of mine,” Trinity sighs dramatically, crossing her arms when she looks back at you.“Literally just go commando at this point,”
Shaking your head, you snap out of your haze, going back to your bag and digging your dress out.
It’s not like you’re going to sleep with the man.
You weren’t ready for that just yet, your mind echoes to you, but you quickly stop the spiral you feel forming.
If you were still with Jack, you wouldn’t have to worry about first dates and underwear–
Okay, no.
“Zip me up please?” is what you say instead, looking between the two women helplessly.
Noticing your sudden quietness, Trinity obliges and does what you ask. The zipper slides up your back smoothly, and for once, she’s quiet.
“Hey, come on,” she says softly, giving your shoulder a squeeze once she's finished. “You look pretty,”
Samira nods, taking a hold of your other shoulder and leading you to the mirror, a small smile on her face as you watch her reflection watch you.
“You look good,” she says simply, in a way she knows does more of an impact on you than an overflow of compliments would.
Your eyes linger on your reflection, smoothing down any crinkled pieces of fabric as an attempt to self soothe. But there was something deeply humiliating about standing in a hospital locker room, while two coworkers attempted to convince you that you weren't a complete disaster.
Admittedly, you do agree. You looked pretty wearing something other than scrubs and letting your hair down for once– hell, even applying new lipstick makes you feel reborn.
Taking one final look, you straighten your shoulders before walking back to your bag and taking your heels out, putting them on and shoving your bag back into the locker and dumping your dirty scrubs into Trinity’s arms.
Payback for the panty comments.
“Wish me luck, ladies,” you say, the small purse you’d brought with now swinging on your shoulder.
“Knock him dead, babe!” Trinity grins, and Samira gives you a supportive thumbs up beside her.
Twenty more meters and you're out of here, on your way before anyone can properly see you.
You take a deep breath, trying not to cringe or look at people as your heels click against the linoleum floors. The doors to the ambulance bay hiss when you step through them, a small sigh of relief escaping you once the evening breeze washes over your face.
Rounding the corner towards the parking lot, a yelp escapes you when you crash into someone.
“Shit!”
Strong hands grab your arms before you can stumble backwards and crack your skull open on the pavement and die in your granny panties.
“Christ, slow down,” a familiar voice mutters and your stomach instantly drops.
Fuck.
The last person you wanted to see, the reason you were leaving work thirty minutes early and watching your back like a criminal, instead of a grown woman simply going on a date.
Jack Abbot, in all his fine glory, dressed in one of those tight, white shirts he loves and his usual cargos.
His hands are still wrapped around your arms, your own are still gripping his forearms, far too close for your already scrambled mind to be able to handle right now.
Pulling away, you quickly smooth down your dress once again, clearing your throat.
“Hi! Uh– nice catching up, I should probably–” you laugh awkwardly, motioning vaguely with your hands towards your car.
Jack doesn’t say anything, his eyes unabashedly travelling across your body. First your styled hair, then to your painted lips, then to the dress, gaze lingering on your exposed legs.
“You’re awfully dressed up for work,” He mutters dryly, head tilting once his eyes lock with yours once again. “But I suppose this wasn’t how you came in at seven am,”
“Wow, nothing gets past you, huh?” you can’t help but quip, ignoring the warm feeling in your belly at the sight of him fighting a smile at your words.
The evening breeze catches a loose strand of your hair and blows it across your face. Before you can move it away, you notice Jack's hand twitch, but ultimately stay rooted by his side.
"Clearly not. Are you going to answer or keep being a smartass?”
Against your will, a small smile forms on your face, and you shake your head and cross your arms.
“I should be on my way to a date,” You finally concede, gauging his reaction.
Yeah, to see if he even cares anymore.
Unfortunately, as Jack glances toward the parking lot before looking back at you, he asks:
“Is he not picking you up?”
For some reason, his words send a wave of embarrassment through you. Like you have to prove to him that you’re not going out with a piece of shit, like you’re not downgrading, or settling, or desperately trying to get over Jack by going on shitty dates.
“It’s the first date, I’m not having him know where I work,” you mutter petulantly, shifting on your feet, the pain growing more intense the longer you stand there. “That’s just common sense,”
Jack hums thoughtfully, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants.
“You’ll have to excuse my ignorance, then. I haven’t been on a proper date in a while,”
Asshole.
You know he’s talking about your relationship, that petty bastard.
“And who’s fault is that?” the words come out sharper than intended, but you’re too deep into this to notice, or even care about it.
“You know, normal people would just let it go,” Jack muses, eyes narrowed in amusement as he takes a step closer to you.
“Normal people also don’t interrogate their ex in the parking lot,” you retort, chin raising defiantly as your irritation spikes at his indifference towards seeing you moving on.
You’d once heard a rumor of another attending on the surgical floor reportedly laying it on pretty thick at some gala.
It had you eating ice cream for dinner for a week, just the thought of him moving on from you that easily.
Your phone buzzing in your purse fills the silence, and you’re suddenly made aware of the entire reason you're standing here in a dress and heels instead of driving home to watch terrible reality television.
“I should go,” you say quieter than intended, clearing your throat afterwards.
The amusement fades from his face, replaced by something harder to read, and for a moment, Jack doesn't say anything, his eyes flickering to your purse and where your phone is buzzing.
A cruel reminder to him of the fact that you indeed are moving on, probably with some guy your age that wouldn’t have to worry about how you’d look walking down the street with him.
“Yeah, don’t let me keep you,” Jack mumbles, shifting on his feet as he follows you with his head when you walk past him slowly.
Your heels sound against the pavement, the loud clicks taunting in his ears, like a clock reminding him of the time he's running out of, both in life and with you.
“Fuck,” He mutters under his breath, scratching the scruff on his face harshly, before walking after you. “Hey, wait–”
“I really have to go, Jack,” you don’t stop walking, in fact speeding up a bit.
You couldn’t trust yourself around him.
“You don’t even know this guy!” Jack throws out in a desperate attempt to get you to stay, to make you argue with him, anything to make you stay– to choose him again, even if it only were for a moment.
You stop so abruptly your heel almost catches on a crack in the pavement, before you’re whirling back to glare at him.
“Are you serious right now?
Despite your anger, Jack can’t help but notice how pretty you look while glaring at him, and even though he'd be six feet under if looks could kill.
“I’m just looking out for you,” He has the nerve to say, shrugging slightly while he walks up to where you’ve come to a stop.
“I don’t want you to look out for me! You wouldn’t need to if you hadn’t–” you stop yourself from lashing out, closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. “...Why are you doing this?”
“I’m worried about you, I mean– leaving work early, dressing up, then running straight into me because you aren’t paying attention–” Jack lists, the lies falling from his lips unconvincingly.
You scoff, turning around and walking back towards your car.
“Goodbye, Jack,”
Panic fills his veins, and his hand shoots out and grabs your arm, pulling you towards him.
“Fuck, okay! Alright, just–” Jack sighs, running his free hand through his silver curls, “Just wait, okay? Don’t just…go,”
“Then tell me why you’re being like this,” you press him again, impatiently.
Jack takes it as a small victory when you don’t rip your arm out of his grip.
“I don’t want you to go out with him,”
“You don’t even know him–” you roll your eyes at his shitty explanation.
“I don’t want you to go out with anyone,” Jack interrupts, jaw clenching as he forces the words out. “I don’t want to see you laugh with anyone, or leave work early because you’re seeing someone, or see you get dolled up for another man,”
The words echo in the empty parking lot and land bitterly in your ears.
Your mind couldn’t help but betray you at this moment.
Why wait until now? Is it to make sure his words are devastating enough? To make you lose the progress you thought you had made after he broke your heart?
Was it really all his fault if you could let yourself be this affected by his words?
“You’re such an asshole,” you say shakily, eyes welling up with unshed tears.
Jack nods, a bitter smile forming on his face.
“Yeah, I know,”
He doesn’t argue with you, because he agrees.
He is an asshole. A selfish, greedy asshole who wants nothing more than to get on his knee and grovel at your feet, because the biggest mistake he’s made is thinking that letting you go is an act of love.
Over the fear of what others might think.
Over the fear that there will come a day where instead of him taking care of you, you’ll be taking care of him, while he takes advantage of your youth, all while knowing you’d be too sweet to leave him.
Jack stares at you, your teary eyes and trembling lips, he stands there and he stares at the woman he still loves.
“I’m fucked up, I know. But every morning I wake up and you're still the first thing I think about,” he begins, swallowing thickly when he feels a lump form in his throat. “I look for your car in the parking lot before I walk in. I mean fuck, even at handoffs, I look for the charts that have your signature,”
The tears are definitely ruining your makeup now. You were late beyond belief for the date, and the buzzing in your purse had ceased ten minutes ago.
And yet you have no urge to go anywhere anymore.
“That’s kind of sad,” you sniffle, muttering weakly.
Jack chuckles weakly, fingers tightening around your arm before he reluctantly lets go.
“It’s really fucking sad,” he agrees easily, resisting the urge to wipe the tear tracks off your face.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” you meet his gaze at last, and Jack sees the confusion and fear in your eyes that comes with the possibility of forgiving him, or letting him make it up to you.
“I don’t know, I just…” he begins,“I couldn’t let you leave thinking I didn’t care. That I don’t care,”
“Do you think your age is secret or something?”
Jack blinks, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
“What? No–”
“Do you think I didn’t see the grey hair, and wrinkles, and the glaring at screens before we got together?” You continue, stepping closer to him, gaze landing on the evident smile lines, and signs of his life actually being lived.
“You’re making me sound worse than I am,” he grumbles quietly.
“And what really sucked is that you thought I hadn’t already thought of all that when we started this, that there would come a time when you needed me more than I needed you. You keep acting like you lured me into a relationship with you, and acting like I didn’t consider any of it,”
Your voice is steady when you speak, finally wiping the tears away as your feelings spill, the weight on your chest lightening up with each word you speak.
“I saw it. I saw it and I still chose to be with you, so I really don’t understand what favor you thought you did me when you ended things,”
Jack is silent, for once. No sarcastic quip, no flirty deflection– he just stands there and lets the words sink in, feeling incredibly stupid.
He knew you were bright, incredibly empathetic and intuitive. Of course you hadn’t just thrown yourself into this blindly. You’d chosen him on purpose, and Jack was too blinded by his own fears to let you love him the way you wanted to. In turn, he’d hurt himself, but most importantly, he’d hurt you.
“I may have overestimated my own charm,” he says, sounding almost embarrassed.
Despite the earlier tension, his words make you laugh softly, and Jack perks up like he’s been rewarded with something.
“For what it's worth, breaking up with you was the stupidest thing I've ever done,” Jack adds, lips stretching into a tight lipped smile, and you resist the urge to roll your eyes, still stubbornly resisting the urge to just give in to him.
“You’re still not fully forgiven,”
“I know,” He nods solemnly.“I’d love it if you did, but I know you can’t, and that’s okay,”
“And you have a lot to make up for,” you continue, not letting up. You had, after all, been tortured for months.
“I do,” Jack says instantly, the answer coming so quickly it almost throws you off.
After everything the two of you had been through, it felt like a step in the right direction. A moment of tense silence ensues, and you know it’s because Jack doesn’t want to immediately jump back into things and make it seem like he's brushing things under the rug.
You decide to throw him a bone.
“...You’re way too old to be playing with people's feelings,” You finally joke, and Jack bites his lip until he’s unable to hold the grin back any longer.
“Hey, that’s still a sensitive topic,” He tuts, a faux hurt expression forming on his face. “And if I’m so old, I guess I won’t be able to drive us to that restaurant you like so much?”
Your eyebrows raise in suspicion.
“That’s real cute, but don't you have work?”
“Robby owes me one,” He shrugs, hand landing on your waist, “Besides, we can’t have this dress go to waste, right?”
You let him lead you towards his car, the smile on your face growing wider at his ridiculousness.
“I suppose not,”
And for the first time in months, Jack didn’t feel that sharp, stinging in his chest whenever he took a breath.
Snowed in after a conference, you and Jack Abbott are forced to share a hotel room, where one bed, a power outage, and months of unspoken tension make “professional courtesy” harder to believe.
Jack Abbott looked like he would rather be intubating someone in a supply closet during a power outage than standing in the ballroom of the Philadelphia Grand Hotel wearing a name badge.
That was your first thought. Your second thought was that he looked unfairly good for a man who had spent the last twenty minutes silently judging an entire conference hall.
He stood beside one of the tall cocktail tables near the back of the room, one hand wrapped around a paper cup of coffee he had not actually drunk from, his conference lanyard hanging crooked against the front of his dark sweater. He had taken off his blazer sometime between the trauma systems panel and the keynote address on "Innovative Compassion in High-Pressure Emergency Environments," which was a title Jack had heard once and immediately decided was a personal attack.
The ballroom was too warm. Too bright. Too full of physicians pretending they had never once eaten a vending machine granola bar over a trash can at three in the morning.
There were banners everywhere. There were sponsored pens. There was a man from Boston wearing a bow tie and explaining airway management like he had personally invented oxygen.
Jack had been quiet for most of it. Not polite quiet. Jack quiet. The kind of quiet that made residents straighten their backs and consultants reconsider their tone. The kind of quiet that looked harmless from across the room right up until someone said something stupid near it.
You had watched three people attempt to make small talk with him already. The first had asked what hospital he was representing. Jack had said, "UPMC Mercy." The second had asked if Pittsburgh had "much trauma volume."
Jack had stared at him for one full second too long before saying, "Enough." The third had smiled too brightly and said, "I always think emergency medicine is really about resilience."
Jack had said, "It's mostly about staffing." You had nearly choked on your coffee. Now he was standing beside you at the back of the room, radiating the particular kind of irritation that came from being professionally trapped.
"You know," you said, keeping your voice low as the speaker at the front of the ballroom advanced to another slide full of stock photos and bullet points, "some people enjoy conferences."
Jack did not look at you. "Those people need hobbies." "You're a doctor. You're at an emergency medicine conference. This is technically one of your hobbies." "No," he said. "This is Robby losing a bet and somehow making it my problem."
You turned your head, smiling into your coffee. "He made you come?" "He strongly suggested." "That sounds like Robby." "He used the phrase 'good for department visibility.'"
"Oh, no." Jack finally glanced at you. There was nothing overtly warm in his expression, exactly. Jack did not really do overt. His face was all sharp restraint and tired intelligence, mouth set like he was holding back three separate complaints and a legal disclaimer.
But his eyes shifted when they landed on you. Only slightly. Enough that you felt it. Enough that you hated that you felt it. "You laughing at my suffering?" he asked. "Yes."
"Good to know." "I'm enjoying your commitment to misery." "I commit to things." "You do," you said, before you could stop yourself. It came out softer than you meant it to.
Not flirtatious, not exactly. But too honest for a ballroom full of laminated schedules and sponsored tote bags. Jack looked at you for half a second longer than necessary.
There it was again. That pause. That tiny, dangerous bit of space that kept opening between you lately. At work, you could usually avoid it. The ED was useful that way. There was always something screaming, bleeding, crashing, coding, ringing, paging, demanding. There was always a monitor alarm or a consult call or someone yelling for a blanket warmer key.
There was no room for pauses in the ED. There was no time to notice that Jack brought you coffee when he made some for himself. No time to wonder why he always seemed to appear when a patient's family member started getting aggressive near your workstation.
No time to think about the way his voice changed when he said your name instead of your title. No time to think about his hand at your back when he moved behind you in a crowded trauma bay, not touching exactly, but close enough that you felt the heat of it through your scrubs.
No time for any of that. Here, unfortunately, there was nothing but time. Time and bad coffee. Time and Jack standing too close beside you because the back of the ballroom was crowded and neither of you had moved away.
On stage, the speaker clicked to the next slide. COMPASSION FATIGUE: RECOGNIZING THE WARNING SIGNS. Jack made a sound low in his throat. You looked over. "Don't." "I didn't say anything."
"You made a noise." "A clinical noise." "A judgmental noise." "Same system." You pressed your lips together to keep from smiling too obviously. The woman seated in front of you turned halfway in her chair and gave you both a tight look.
Jack stared back with no change in expression whatsoever. The woman turned around again. "You're going to get us kicked out," you whispered. "From this?" "That would be a shame."
"Would it?" You tried to look stern. "We are representing the hospital." "We're standing in the back drinking burnt coffee while a man named Brent tells a room full of emergency physicians to try mindfulness."
"His name is Brett." "I don't care." You lost the fight with your smile then. Jack saw it. Of course he saw it. Jack noticed everything he had no business noticing. His gaze flicked to your mouth, barely there and gone so quickly you could have convinced yourself you imagined it.
Except you had stopped giving yourself that much credit. You had been imagining things with Jack Abbott for months. Or maybe you had not been imagining them at all. That was the problem.
The speaker's microphone crackled. Somewhere near the middle of the room, someone coughed. Outside the tall ballroom windows, snow pressed thickly against the glass, turning the city beyond it into a blur of white and grey.
It had started that morning as a pretty dusting. The kind of snow people from conference registration desks called seasonal atmosphere. By lunch, it had become an inconvenience.
By three, it was an advisory. Now, at almost five in the evening, it was beginning to look like a problem. You checked your phone under the edge of the cocktail table. Three weather alerts. Two emails from the airline. One text from Dana.
DANA: Heard Philly's getting buried. Tell Abbott not to pick a fight with cardiology. You snorted. Jack's eyes shifted down. "What?" "Nothing." "You laughed." "Dana says hi."
"She does not." "She said to tell you not to pick a fight with cardiology." Jack's expression did not change. "Cardiology started it." "You haven't even seen cardiology today."
"That you know of." You sent Dana a quick reply. YOU: Too late. He's fighting the concept of conferences as a whole. Dana responded almost immediately. DANA: Sounds right. Bring him back alive. Or don't. I'm flexible.
You tucked your phone away, still smiling. Jack watched you do it. "What did she say?" "Nothing." "You're a bad liar." "You're nosy." "I'm observant." "You're nosy with a medical degree."
"That's the profession." That pulled another laugh out of you, quiet but real. Jack's mouth moved like he was trying very hard not to let his own expression change. He failed, just slightly.
It was not a smile, not by normal standards. But for Jack Abbott, it was practically fireworks. You looked away first. You had to. The thing about Jack was that he made stillness feel loud. You could handle him in motion. In the ED, with his hands gloved and his voice clipped and his body angled toward disaster, he made sense. He was built for crisis. He was decisive, sharp, controlled. He moved through chaos like he had made some private agreement with it years ago.
But stillness made him harder to manage. Stillness let you notice the tired lines at the corners of his eyes. The scarred steadiness of him. The careful way he shifted his weight after standing too long. The fact that his left hand had settled near his hip, thumb brushing absently over the edge of his pocket.
Stillness let you remember that under all that competence was a person who got tired. A person who hurt. A person who, for reasons you were trying very hard not to interrogate, had started keeping track of whether you ate during twelve-hour shifts.
You looked down into your coffee. It had gone cold. "You okay?" Jack asked. It was so quiet you almost missed it under the speaker's voice. You glanced up. "What?" He was not looking at the stage anymore.
"You went quiet." "I'm listening." "No, you're not." "You don't know that." "What was the last slide?" You opened your mouth. Closed it. Jack raised his eyebrows. You sighed. "Fine. I wasn't listening."
"Good choice." "I'm okay," you said, because you understood then that the question had not really been about the presentation. Jack held your gaze. There were days when that look irritated you. The steady, unblinking attention of it. Like he could read your pulse without touching your wrist. Like he saw whatever you were trying to tuck out of view and simply decided whether or not he was going to let you get away with it.
Today, it did not irritate you. Today, it made something behind your ribs go a little unsteady. "Long day," you added. His expression softened by a degree. For anyone else, it would have been nothing.
For Jack, it was practically a hand offered. "Yeah," he said. You both looked back toward the stage. The speaker had moved on to a case study about physician burnout that somehow included a clip-art image of a candle.
Jack stared at it. "You've got to be kidding me," he muttered. You coughed into your cup to cover the laugh. The woman in front of you turned around again. This time, she looked only at Jack.
Jack looked back. You gently touched his sleeve. It was instinctive. Barely a touch. Your fingers against the dark fabric at his forearm for one second, maybe less. "Behave," you murmured.
Jack's eyes dropped to where your hand had been. You pulled it back too quickly. Too obviously. Heat climbed up your neck, which was ridiculous. You worked in emergency medicine. You had held pressure on arterial bleeds. You had told surgeons where to stand. You had been vomited on by strangers and once had to explain to a grown man that shampoo bottles did not belong there, no matter what the internet said.
You should have been able to touch Jack Abbott's sleeve without forgetting how breathing worked. Jack said nothing. That was almost worse. The room clapped suddenly, polite and scattered. The session was ending.
Chairs scraped. People stood. Voices swelled all at once, filling the ballroom with that post-lecture noise of professional relief. Lanyards swung. Tote bags rustled. Someone near the doors started talking loudly about dinner reservations.
You stepped back from the cocktail table, grateful for the movement. "Well," you said, "that was very informative." Jack looked at you. You managed to keep a straight face for two seconds.
"Okay, no. It was terrible." "Thank you." "But we survived." He glanced toward the windows. The snow was falling harder now, fast and thick under the streetlights outside. It moved sideways in violent gusts, smearing white across the glass. People were beginning to cluster near the lobby entrance, phones out, faces lit with the blue glow of cancellation alerts.
Jack's jaw tightened. "What?" you asked. "Storm's worse." You followed his gaze. "It was supposed to slow down." "It didn't." "You secretly a meteorologist too?" "No. I have eyes."
You rolled yours, but you checked your phone again. Another airline email. Your stomach dropped. FLIGHT CANCELLED: PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURGH. "Oh," you said. Jack looked over immediately. "Cancelled?"
"Yeah." He did not ask to see your phone. He just read your face. His mouth flattened. You refreshed the app pointlessly, because apparently denial had a user interface. "All flights tonight?" he asked.
"Looks like mine, at least." You tapped through the airline page. "The app says earliest rebook is tomorrow afternoon, but that's assuming the airport opens properly." Jack pulled his own phone out.
He did not look surprised by whatever he found. "Mine's cancelled too." "Great." "Roads?" You opened the weather alert. The words hazardous travel, whiteout conditions, and avoid unnecessary trips were not especially comforting.
"Also great," you said. Jack slid his phone back into his pocket. "We stay another night." You looked toward the lobby, where a line was already forming at the front desk.
"Everyone is going to try to stay another night." "Then we get there before the orthopedic surgeons." You laughed despite yourself. Jack started walking.
You followed him out of the ballroom and into the broad hotel corridor. The conference had spilled everywhere now — doctors and nurses and vendors in branded fleeces, everyone talking too loudly over everyone else. The lights overhead were warm and expensive. The carpet was patterned in a way that made you suspect someone had been paid too much money to make beige feel important.
At the far end of the hall, the lobby opened wide and bright, all marble floors and high ceilings and enormous windows looking out onto a city disappearing under snow. The front desk line was already fifteen people deep.
Jack stopped. You nearly bumped into him. He glanced over his shoulder. "You checked out this morning?" "Yeah. My room was only booked through today because my flight was supposed to be tonight."
"Conference block?" "Full. I tried earlier when the delays started." His face shifted. Not much. But you saw the calculation begin. "No," you said immediately. "I haven't said anything."
"You're about to." "You don't know that." "I know your face." That made him pause. Something flickered in his eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or something warmer pretending to be amusement.
"You know my face?" "I know your about-to-be-stubborn face." "That's just my face." "No, your regular face is more quietly judgmental." He gave you a dry look. You smiled sweetly.
The line at the front desk moved one person forward and somehow became more chaotic. A woman in a navy pantsuit was telling the receptionist that she was a keynote speaker and therefore needed a room. A man behind her was arguing with someone on speakerphone. Near the windows, two residents were sitting on their suitcases, looking exhausted.
Jack's attention moved over the lobby once, quick and assessing. Then he looked back at you. "You can take my room." You crossed your arms. "There it is." "It's a room." "It's your room."
"You need one." "So do you." "I can figure it out." You gave him a look. He gave you one back. The trouble with Jack was that he did not posture. He did not make generous offers with softness around the edges. He did not say things to be gallant. He simply looked at a problem, decided on the cleanest solution, and expected everyone else to fall into line.
Which was irritating. Because sometimes the cleanest solution involved him being quietly self-sacrificial in a way that made you want to shake him. "You are not sleeping in the lobby," you said.
"Neither are you." "Jack." His name came out sharper than you intended. He noticed. Of course he noticed. His expression eased by a fraction, but his voice stayed even. "I'm not arguing about this in a hotel lobby."
"Then stop being wrong in one." His eyes narrowed. Not angry. Almost amused. Almost. "You always this difficult?" he asked. "With you? Yes." "Lucky me." "You bring it out in me."
Jack held your gaze for one beat too long. The noise of the lobby seemed to pull back for a second. Around you, people were still moving. Suitcases rolled over marble. Phones rang. The automatic doors slid open and let in a blast of cold air sharp enough to make someone curse.
But Jack was looking at you, and you were looking back, and there was that pause again. That impossible little pause. The one neither of you ever knew what to do with. Then the front desk clerk called, "Next guest, please," and the spell cracked.
Jack stepped toward the desk. You caught his sleeve again. This time, you did not pull away immediately. "Don't give up your room," you said, quieter now. His gaze dropped to your hand.
Then back to your face. "Don't sleep in a lobby," he said. "That's not an answer." "It is if you listen." You let go of his sleeve. He moved to the desk before you could argue again.
You stood beside him, close enough that your shoulders nearly touched, and watched as he gave his name to the exhausted-looking receptionist. "Abbott," he said. "I have a room for tonight. Need to extend it."
The receptionist typed quickly, her face already apologetic in the way customer service workers got when the computer was about to ruin someone's day. "I'm so sorry, Doctor Abbott. We're completely sold out for tomorrow night at this point. The storm has stranded most of the conference guests."
Jack's expression did not change. "Existing reservation," he said. "Room 1117." "I understand, sir. But all rooms are currently booked. If housekeeping confirms no-shows or cancellations, we can add you to the waitlist."
You leaned in slightly. "What about my reservation? I checked out this morning, but with the flight cancellations—" The receptionist looked at you with genuine sympathy. "I'm sorry. We don't have anything available."
Jack looked at her. "Anything." "I'm afraid not." "A cot?" "No cots left." "Conference room?" "Sir—" "Not for me," he said, impatient now. "For her." Your stomach did something stupid.
The receptionist glanced between the two of you. A tiny, knowing sort of understanding moved across her face. You hated her a little. "I'm sorry," she said again. "We really don't have a safe accommodation option outside of existing rooms. The city has issued travel warnings, so we're advising all guests not to leave the property unless absolutely necessary."
Jack went still. You could almost see him biting back a response. You touched his arm again, this time with warning. "Jack." His jaw worked once. Then he looked at the receptionist. "Keep the room under my name."
"Of course." "And if anything else opens, call up." "Yes, Doctor Abbott." He gave a short nod and stepped away from the desk. You followed him toward the edge of the lobby, away from the worst of the noise.
"No," you said. Jack turned. "You don't know what I'm going to say." "You're going to say I should take your room and you'll do something ridiculous like sleep sitting upright by the vending machines."
"I wasn't going to specify vending machines." "Jack." "What?" "No." He exhaled through his nose. Outside, the wind threw snow hard against the windows. Somewhere overhead, the lights flickered once, just enough for half the lobby to pause and look up.
When they steadied again, Jack's face had changed. Not softened. Settled. Like something in him had made a decision and locked the door behind it. "You're not going anywhere tonight," he said.
"Neither are you." "No." "No?" "No," he repeated. "We're not doing the noble idiot routine." You blinked. "That was directed at you, right?" His mouth twitched. Barely. "Both of us."
"Oh, progress." "We share the room." The words landed between you with the subtlety of a dropped instrument tray. You stared at him. Jack, infuriatingly, looked completely calm.
"We what?" "We share the room," he said again, like saying it plainly made it less insane. Your voice lowered. "Jack." "It has a lock. Heat. Bathroom. Presumably fewer orthopedic surgeons."
"That is not the issue." "It's a room." "It's your room." "You already said that." "With one bed?" He paused. And there. There it was. Not much. Not enough that anyone else would have caught it.
But you did. The tiny hitch in his expression. The one beat where practical Jack Abbott, the man who could handle blood and death and impossible decisions without blinking, appeared to remember that you were not simply a stranded colleague but a woman he had been standing too close to for months.
His eyes shifted away first. That almost never happened. "I'll take the chair," he said. "You will not." "I've slept in worse places." "I know," you said, softer before you could stop it. "That doesn't mean you should."
He looked back at you. The argument died a little in his face. Not completely. Jack was not built for surrender. But enough. The lobby carried on around you. People complained. Phones buzzed. The storm kept pressing itself against the glass like it wanted in.
You could feel the heat in your cheeks now. Not embarrassment exactly. Something worse. Awareness. Sharp and immediate. One room. One bed. Jack Abbott standing in front of you, close enough that you could see the dark flecks in his eyes, telling you in that maddeningly practical voice that he was not going to let you be unsafe tonight.
He cleared his throat. "It's not ideal." You let out a small laugh, mostly because if you did not laugh, you might say something dangerous. "No. I'd say it's a little past ideal."
"We're adults." "Are we?" His eyes narrowed. You lifted both hands. "Sorry. Tension response." "Clearly." "We work together." "I noticed." "People will talk." "People always talk."
"You hate when people talk." "I hate when people are stupid. Overlap, not causation." Despite everything, you smiled. He looked at your mouth again. This time, you were sure of it.
The smile faded. Jack looked away, jaw tightening like he had caught himself doing something he had not given himself permission to do. "Room's there," he said, his voice lower now. Rougher around the edges. "You can have the bed. I'll figure out the rest."
You should have said no again. You should have insisted on the lobby or found another stranded doctor to double up with or called Dana and let her laugh you through a nervous breakdown.
Instead, you looked outside. At the snow. At the city disappearing. At the people sitting on suitcases under expensive chandeliers, trying to pretend they were not scared of being stuck.
Then you looked back at Jack. He was tired. You could see it now, in the way he held himself. The conference chairs had been bad for him; standing through the reception had been worse. The cold would not help. Neither would an argument that lasted another twenty minutes because both of you were too stubborn to admit the obvious.
You sighed. "Only if you don't sleep in the chair." His brows drew together. "That's not—" "No," you said. "We are not doing the noble idiot routine. You said it. It applies."
Jack stared at you. You stared back. "I'm serious," you said. "So am I." "You always are." "Someone has to be." "You're impossible." "You keep saying that like it changes anything."
You looked at him for a long second. Then, because apparently the storm had knocked all common sense out of the sky along with the snow, you said, "Fine." Jack blinked once.
"Fine?" "Fine. We share the room." His face was very still. Very controlled. Too controlled. "But," you added quickly, "we are establishing rules." "Rules." "Yes." "For sleeping."
"For survival." His mouth twitched again. That almost-smile. The one that should not have had the power to make your chest feel too small. "Fine," he said. "Rule one: no chair."
He looked annoyed. You pointed at him. "No." "I didn't say anything." "You were thinking loudly." "Occupational hazard." "Rule two," you said, trying very hard not to think about the fact that you had apparently agreed to share a hotel room with Jack Abbott. "No being weird."
Jack looked at you. "You think I'm going to be weird?" "I think we're both going to be weird." "That's probably accurate." "And rule three…" You stopped. Because you had no idea what rule three was.
Do not look at me like that. Do not stand too close. Do not make this feel safer than it should. Do not be kind in that quiet, gruff way that makes me want things I have no business wanting.
Jack waited. You swallowed. "Rule three," you said, "we pretend this is normal." His gaze held yours. For a moment, neither of you moved. Then Jack gave one short nod. "Professional courtesy," he said.
You laughed. You could not help it. It came out softer than before, edged with nerves. "Is that what this is?" His expression was unreadable. The storm threw another gust of snow against the windows.
"Sure," he said. But he did not sound convinced. And God help you, neither were you. The elevator ride to the eleventh floor was silent. Not peaceful silent. Not comfortable silent.
The kind of silence that had bones in it. You stood on one side of the elevator with your overnight bag tucked against your hip and your coat still buttoned to your throat. Jack stood on the other side, his conference tote hanging off one shoulder, his gaze fixed on the glowing numbers above the doors like they had personally offended him.
Four. Five. Six. The elevator hummed upward. You watched his reflection in the polished metal doors because looking at the actual man felt like a risky decision. He looked tired now.
More tired than he had in the ballroom. There was a set to his jaw you had learned to read over months of working beside him. Pain, probably. Or irritation. With Jack, the two had a habit of presenting similarly unless you knew where to look.
His weight was shifted slightly more onto one side. Not dramatically. Jack did not do dramatically when it came to his own body. He was careful in a way that pretended not to be care. Precise. Controlled. Almost invisible about it.
But you knew. You had no right to know, maybe. But you did. "You're doing it again," Jack said. You looked away so quickly you nearly gave yourself whiplash. "Doing what?"
"Watching me in reflective surfaces." Heat crept up your neck. "I was not." "You were." "It's an elevator. Everything is reflective." "Convenient." "You're very suspicious for a man who just invited me to share his hotel room."
He turned his head then. Slowly. "That was not an invitation." You raised your eyebrows. His mouth flattened. "It was a logistical decision." "Ah." His eyes narrowed. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything." "You made a noise." "A clinical noise." "That's my line." "I'm borrowing it." "You need better material." "You need better coffee." "I know." That, somehow, eased the air between you.
Not by much. But enough that you could breathe again. The elevator climbed past eight. A family got on at nine, two exhausted parents and a little boy in dinosaur pyjamas clutching a stuffed bear by one ear. The mother gave you both a brief, tired smile. The father looked like he had spent the last hour on hold with an airline. The little boy looked at Jack's conference lanyard, then at his face, and immediately decided Jack was the most interesting person in the elevator.
Jack stared forward. The little boy stared harder. You bit the inside of your cheek. Jack's eyes flicked sideways. "What?" "Nothing." "You're laughing again." "I'm not." "You are internally laughing."
"Can you diagnose that?" "Yes." The little boy tugged on his mother's coat and whispered, much too loudly, "Is he a spy?" His mother's eyes went wide. "Elliot." Jack did not move.
You looked at the ceiling. The father closed his eyes like he wanted to disappear. The little boy kept staring. Jack turned his head just slightly and looked down at him.
"No," he said. Elliot blinked. "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Because you look like one." Jack considered that. Then said, "I get that a lot." You made a small, strangled sound.
The little boy nodded seriously, apparently satisfied. The elevator stopped at eleven. Jack stepped forward as the doors opened. You followed him out, barely keeping your laugh contained until the doors slid shut behind you.
Then you lost it. Not loud. Not enough to carry far down the hotel corridor. But enough that you had to press a hand to your mouth. Jack glanced at you. "Don't start." "He thought you were a spy."
"I heard." "You told him you get that a lot." "He was under stress." "He was six." "Children are often under stress." You laughed again, softer this time. Jack's expression shifted.
You almost missed it because it was small and gone quickly, but there was something there. Something like satisfaction. Not smugness. Not exactly amusement. More like he liked making you laugh and did not know what to do with that information.
That made you stop laughing. The corridor was quieter than the lobby, muffled by thick carpet and expensive wallpaper. The air smelled faintly of linen, citrus cleaner, and overheated radiators. Somewhere far down the hall, an ice machine rattled. Beyond the windows at the end of the corridor, snow blew hard against the glass.
Jack started walking. You followed half a step behind. For some reason, that felt worse than walking beside him. Maybe because it made you look at things you usually avoided looking at. The slope of his shoulders under the dark fabric of his sweater. The careful steadiness of his gait. The conference tote knocking against his side. The back of his neck where his hair sat slightly mussed from the collar of his coat.
This was ridiculous. You were an adult. A medical professional. A person who could calmly handle a dislocated shoulder, a combative drunk, and a cardiologist with an ego the size of Allegheny County.
You could walk down a hotel corridor behind Jack Abbott without constructing an entire emotional crisis out of it. Probably. Room 1117 was near the end of the hall. Of course it was.
Because apparently the universe had decided to commit to the bit. Jack stopped outside the door and pulled his key card from his pocket. Then he paused. You stopped beside him.
"What?" you asked. He did not look at you. "Last chance." "Last chance for what?" "To decide the lobby's better." You stared at him. Jack kept his gaze on the door like it was suddenly fascinating.
The awkwardness of the situation had finally caught up with him, you realised. Not because he regretted offering. Jack was too stubborn and too protective for that. But because he was aware of you.
Painfully aware. The same way you were aware of him. You were both standing in a hotel hallway with snow trapping you inside and a single room waiting beyond the door, and the months of not saying things had followed you upstairs like another piece of luggage.
You shifted your bag on your shoulder. "Do you want me to say the lobby's better?" His jaw tightened. "No." The answer came too fast. Too honest. You looked at him. He still did not look back.
"No," you said quietly. "I don't either." That made him turn. Only a little. Enough. His eyes met yours, and for one breath, the corridor felt narrower. You had said nothing shocking. Nothing romantic. Nothing that should have made his expression change.
But it did. It softened in the smallest possible way. Then the ice machine rattled again, brutally loud, and both of you looked away like teenagers caught holding hands behind the gym.
Jack cleared his throat and tapped the key card to the lock. The light flashed green. He pushed the door open. "After you," he said. You looked at him. "Professional courtesy?"
His mouth twitched. "Don't push your luck." You stepped into the room. And stopped. Because the hotel room was not bad. That was the problem. If it had been cramped or ugly or strange, you could have laughed. If the carpet had been stained or the heating had sounded like aircraft failure, you could have turned the whole thing into a joke.
But the room was warm. Quiet. Low-lit. The curtains were partly open, showing a wall of storm-dark sky and snow-lashed glass. A small desk sat near the window with a conference programme folded beside the lamp. Jack's suitcase was open on the luggage rack, clothes folded with a level of military precision that should not have surprised you and still somehow did. His coat hung over the back of the desk chair. A pair of boots sat neatly near the wall.
And the bed. The bed was large, white, neatly made, and extremely singular. One bed. One. Not two small beds pushed together. Not a fold-out couch. Not even an ottoman that could plausibly become a desperate sleeping surface.
Just one king-sized bed sitting in the middle of the room like an accusation. You heard Jack come in behind you. The door clicked shut. Neither of you said anything. The silence immediately became unhinged.
You stared at the bed. Jack stared at the bed. The bed, smugly, remained a bed. Finally, you said, "Well." Jack dropped his key card on the desk with unnecessary precision. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything." "You were about to." "I was only going to say it's… roomy." He looked at you. You looked back. "It is," you said. "It's a bed." "Yes, Jack. That's the issue."
"It's a large bed." "Again. Not helping." He exhaled through his nose and turned away, moving toward the thermostat near the door. "Heat's on." "Good." "You can take the bathroom first."
"Fine." "And the bed." You turned. "We already discussed this." "We discussed the room." "We discussed the noble idiot routine." "I'm not being noble." "You are physically incapable of not being noble in the most aggravating way possible."
Jack shot you a look over his shoulder. "That is not a sentence that makes sense." "It does to me." "That's concerning." "You are not sleeping in the chair." He glanced at the chair.
You did too. It was a perfectly nice hotel desk chair, upholstered in grey fabric, with curved wooden arms and absolutely no business being considered a sleeping arrangement by any person over the age of twelve.
Jack looked back at you. "I've slept sitting up before." "Yes," you said, "and now you are older and more breakable." His eyebrows lifted. You froze. "Not breakable," you corrected quickly. "That came out wrong."
"Did it?" "Yes." His face was unreadable, but there was a dry edge to his voice. "Older, then?" You closed your eyes briefly. "I am making this worse." "You are." "I meant your leg."
"I gathered." You opened your eyes. Jack's expression had changed again, but not in the way you feared. He did not look angry. Not offended. Maybe a little guarded, but that was Jack's baseline around any mention of his body that did not come from a medical chart.
You softened your voice. "I meant you've been on your feet all day. Conference chairs are awful. It's freezing outside. You're not sleeping upright because of me." The guard shifted.
Just slightly. His eyes flicked over your face like he was trying to find the trick in what you had said. There wasn't one. That seemed to be what unsettled him. "I'm fine," he said.
You sighed. "Of course you are." "I am." "You know, when you say that, it has started to sound less like a status update and more like a legal defence." Jack turned fully toward you.
"You keep notes?" "Mentally." "On me?" The question was dry. The look was not. You should have had an answer ready. Something sharp. Something easy. Something that would put the conversation safely back where it belonged.
Instead, you said, "Sometimes." Jack went still. The room held its breath around you. The heater clicked on with a low rush of air, warm and dry, but you felt cold suddenly in the centre of your chest.
Sometimes. What a stupid thing to admit. Except it was true. You kept notes on him.
The way he preferred bitter coffee but drank bad hospital coffee without complaint if it was hot enough. The way he always stood between you and agitated family members without making a show of it. The way he hated fussing but tolerated directness. The way his patience with interns was better when no one was watching. The way grief seemed to live near him but not always in him, like a room he knew how to pass without opening the door every time.
The way he noticed when everyone else missed something. The way he noticed you. Jack looked away first. "I'll take the floor," he said. "Oh my God." "What?" "You are impossible."
"It's carpeted." "That is not an argument." "It's a fact." "You are not sleeping on hotel carpet." "I've slept on worse floors." "Stop saying that like it helps." "It's true."
"It's depressing." His mouth twitched faintly. "You wanted honesty." "I wanted common sense." "You're asking a lot." "Apparently." You set your bag down by the dresser and slipped your coat off, mostly to have something to do with your hands. The room was too warm now after the cold of the lobby. Your skin felt prickly. Your mind was moving too fast.
One bed. Jack. Snowstorm. Professional courtesy. Very funny, universe. Tremendous work. No notes. Jack moved to the window and pulled the curtain back a few inches. Snow slammed across the glass in thick gusts. The city beyond was nearly gone, reduced to blurred lights and white movement. The roads below were barely visible. Cars crawled through slush with hazard lights flashing. At the corner, a traffic signal swung hard in the wind.
"That's bad," you said. "Yeah." His voice had changed. Less irritated. More serious. You stepped closer, stopping beside him with enough space between you to pretend you were being normal.
Outside, Philadelphia looked suspended. The usual movement of the city had slowed to something strange and fragile. Sirens flashed somewhere far off, red and blue diffused through snow. You thought of everyone stuck out in it — EMS crews, police, hospital staff trying to make shift change, patients trying to get home.
Your stomach tightened. Jack glanced at you. "Don't." You looked at him. "What?" "You're thinking about the ED." "You don't know that." "You get that look." "What look?" "The one where you start trying to personally take responsibility for weather patterns and systemic infrastructure failures."
You stared at him. "That is very specific." "You're very specific." The words landed quietly. No joke wrapped around them. You looked back out at the snow before your face could betray you.
"I just hate knowing people are stuck out there." "I know." That was the thing with Jack. Sometimes he could be blunt enough to bruise. And sometimes he said two words like they carried a hand under your elbow.
You folded your arms loosely, not because you were cold but because you needed to hold yourself together. "The Pitt will be slammed," you said. "Probably." "Dana's going to be running on spite and vending machine pretzels."
"Dana can run a hospital on spite and vending machine pretzels." That made you smile. "True." "Robby'll keep it moving." "Also true." "They don't need us tonight." You looked at him then.
Jack kept his eyes on the window. It occurred to you that maybe he had said it for both of you. "They don't," you agreed. A gust of wind hit the glass hard enough to rattle it.
The lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then steadied. You both looked up. "Comforting," you said. Jack let the curtain fall back into place. "Hotel'll have a generator." "Probably."
He gave you a look. You smiled faintly. "Sorry. I'll stop being reassuring." "That was you trying?" "Barely." He crossed to the desk and picked up the room service menu. "You eaten?"
The shift was so abrupt it took you a second to catch up. "What?" "Food," he said. "Have you had any since lunch?" "Yes." Jack looked at you. You looked back. "Define food," he said.
"That feels hostile." "It was a simple question." "I had half a muffin during the afternoon break." His eyes closed briefly. "Don't make that face." "I'm not making a face."
"You're making the doctor face." "I am a doctor." "You're making the disappointed attending face." "With cause." "It had blueberries." "It was conference food. It had the concept of blueberries."
You laughed, despite yourself. Jack picked up the phone. "Room service." "You don't have to—" "I'm ordering food." "I can order my own food." "Good. Then you can tell me what you want."
You opened your mouth. Closed it. He waited. You crossed your arms. "You are very bossy." "Yes." "No denial?" "I'm tired." That caught you off guard. It was small, the admission. Almost nothing.
But Jack did not give away small things without meaning to. Your expression softened before you could stop it. "Yeah," you said. "Me too." His eyes met yours. For a second, the argument fell away.
The bed was still there. The storm still existed. The whole strange shape of the night still waited around you. But so did the exhaustion. So did the fact that you had both been awake since before dawn, sitting through panels and making careful conversation and pretending, always pretending, that the invisible line between you was not getting thinner every day.
Jack looked away first, but gently this time. "What do you want?" he asked, lifting the phone. You glanced at the menu. "Grilled cheese." He paused. "What?" "Grilled cheese."
"They have salmon." "I don't trust conference hotel salmon during a weather emergency." "Sensible." "And fries." "Of course." "And whatever dessert looks least disappointing."
Jack's mouth tilted slightly. "There's chocolate cake." "Done." He nodded once and lifted the receiver. You watched him order with the same brusque efficiency he used when calling consults, except instead of demanding neurosurgery he was asking a very overwhelmed kitchen employee for grilled cheese, fries, black coffee, tea, and chocolate cake.
It should not have been attractive. It absolutely was. You turned away and busied yourself with your bag. You had packed badly. Not disastrously, but with the optimism of someone who thought she would be back in Pittsburgh by midnight. You had a spare blouse, a phone charger, toiletries, and a soft sleep shirt you had only thrown in because your last flight delay had taught you humility. No actual pyjama bottoms. No extra jumper. No thick socks.
Wonderful. Jack hung up the phone. "Forty-five minutes," he said. "Not bad." "Kitchen sounds like a war zone." "Poor them." He glanced toward your bag. "You need anything?"
You looked up too quickly. "What?" "Toiletries. Shirt. Charger." "Oh." You swallowed. "No. I'm okay." He watched you for half a beat. "You packed for one night." "So did you."
"I have clothes." "Congratulations." "You're doing the defensive thing." "You're doing the observant thing." "Occupational hazard," he said again. You looked down at your open bag.
It was not a big deal. That was what you told yourself. It was just clothes. Just a hotel room. Just a storm. Just Jack. You were so tired of the word just. "I have a shirt," you said. "No bottoms. I'll survive."
Jack did not react obviously. Which somehow made it more obvious that he was reacting. His gaze moved to the dresser. "I have sweats." "No." "They're clean." "That was not my concern."
"They have a drawstring." "Also not my concern." "You'd rather sleep in conference pants?" You looked down at your trousers. They were perfectly professional and deeply uncomfortable after a twelve-hour day.
"I hate that you're making sense." "Happens." "Rarely." Jack opened his suitcase and pulled out a neatly folded pair of dark sweatpants. He held them out without looking directly at you.
The gesture was so practical. So simple. So completely dangerous. You took them. Your fingers brushed his. Barely. Nothing. A nothing touch. Except Jack's hand stilled for a fraction of a second, and your pulse jumped like an idiot.
"Thank you," you said. His voice was rougher when he answered. "Professional courtesy." You glanced up. He was looking at you now. There was humour there, buried under exhaustion and restraint. But there was something else too. Something careful. Something that knew exactly how thin this joke was becoming.
You held the sweatpants against your chest. "Right," you said. "Professional courtesy." The bathroom was small and aggressively hotel-like, all marble counter, bright mirror, and towels folded into shapes no one needed. You changed quickly, keeping your sleep shirt on and tying the borrowed sweatpants as tightly as they would go.
They were too big. Of course they were. They sat low on your hips and pooled slightly at your ankles. They smelled faintly of laundry detergent and something cleaner underneath. Jack's suitcase, maybe. His soap. The same faint scent you sometimes caught when he leaned over a chart beside you.
You stared at yourself in the mirror. "Oh, this is bad," you whispered. Not bad because you looked bad. Bad because you looked comfortable. Bad because the pants were his.
Bad because you could already imagine walking out and seeing him notice. You pressed both hands to your face. "Get a grip." A knock came at the bathroom door. You jumped.
"You alive?" Jack asked from the other side. You opened the door too quickly. "Do not say it like that." He was standing a few feet back, one hand braced on the desk chair, his shoes off now, his sweater sleeves pushed to his forearms.
He looked at you. Then very pointedly looked away. It was possibly the least subtle thing he had ever done. Your stomach flipped. "They're too big," you said, because apparently you had chosen death.
"They have a drawstring," he said. "I used it." "Then they're functional." "Is everything functional to you?" "No." The answer came too quietly. You looked at him. He was still not looking at you.
The air changed. That was the only way you knew how to think of it. Changed like weather. You stood barefoot on hotel carpet in Jack Abbott's borrowed sweatpants, and he stood across from you in his shirtsleeves, and the room felt suddenly too small for the amount of not saying happening inside it.
Then someone knocked on the door. Both of you startled. Actually startled. Jack recovered first, because of course he did. "Room service," he said, like that was not obvious.
"Right." He crossed to the door. You sat on the edge of the bed without thinking, then immediately stood again because sitting on the bed felt insane. Jack opened the door and accepted the tray from a harried-looking employee who looked one room away from quitting the hospitality industry entirely. Jack thanked him, tipped him too much, and shut the door with his hip.
The smell of hot fries filled the room. You nearly groaned. Jack set the tray on the desk. "You look like you're about to propose to the food." "Don't judge me." "I'm not. It's the most enthusiasm you've shown all day."
"That's not true." "No?" You stepped closer to the tray and lifted the metal cover from the plate. Golden fries. Grilled cheese cut diagonally. A small bowl of tomato soup you had not ordered but immediately respected.
You looked at Jack. His expression was neutral. Too neutral. "You ordered soup." "It came with it." "Did it?" "Yes." "Jack." "What?" "You ordered soup." "It's cold out." You smiled.
He looked annoyed, but not enough. "Professional courtesy?" you asked. He pulled out the desk chair and sat down a little carefully. "Eat your sandwich." You did. You sat on the edge of the bed because there was nowhere else to sit, balancing the plate on your knees while Jack took the chair at the desk. It should have been awkward, but food helped. Food made it normal, or something adjacent to normal.
The storm raged outside. The room smelled like fries and coffee and radiator heat. Jack ate like a man who had forgotten hunger existed until food was placed in front of him. You pretended not to notice. He pretended not to notice you noticing.
The silence between you grew less sharp. You dipped a corner of grilled cheese into the soup and looked over at him. "So," you said, "besides Robby and department visibility, why did you really come?"
Jack did not answer immediately. He leaned back in the chair, coffee in hand, eyes on the window. "For the conference?" "No, Jack. For the ambience." His mouth twitched. "I was asked."
"You always do what you're asked?" "No." "Exactly." He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. "Bad?" "Hotel bad." "You ordered it." "I was desperate." "You could have had tea."
"I'm not eighty." "That is hurtful to tea." "Tea will recover." You smiled, but you did not let him off. "Why did you come?" Jack looked down into his coffee. For a moment, you thought he was going to dodge again.
Then he said, "Robby thought I should get out of Pittsburgh for two days." That was not what you expected. Your face softened. "Why?" Jack's thumb moved along the side of the paper cup.
"Because he's annoying." "Jack." He exhaled. Not quite a sigh. "He thinks I've been working too much." "You have." His eyes lifted. You held his gaze. "What?" you said. "You have."
"You're one to talk." "I didn't say I was innocent." "No. You just keep mental notes on me and forget to eat." You looked down, smiling despite yourself. "That sounded almost affectionate."
"Don't get excited." "Too late." Jack's eyes stayed on you. The smile thinned a little on your face, not because you stopped feeling it, but because suddenly feeling anything seemed dangerous again.
He looked away. "Robby wanted someone senior here," he said. "I had the time. You were already going." There. Quiet. Almost buried. But there. Your fingers tightened around your fork.
"You came because I was going?" Jack did not move. "I didn't say that." "You kind of did." "I said it was a factor." "A factor." "Yes." "In the logistical decision." He glanced at you, and there was that dry look again. The one that made your chest ache because it was almost easier than softness.
"You're enjoying this." "A little." "Dangerous habit." "Noted." You ate another fry to give yourself something to do. But your mind had snagged on it. You were already going.
Not a confession. Not even close. But with Jack, half the time the truth came wrapped in enough caution to survive impact. You wondered how many other almost-truths he had offered you over the months that you had been too careful to pick up.
Outside, thunder cracked. Not thunder, maybe. Something heavy and distant. A transformer. Ice shifting. A city noise made strange by snow. The lights flickered again. This time, they went out.
The room dropped into darkness. For one second, everything disappeared. You heard yourself inhale sharply. Then the emergency lighting kicked in, faint and amber from the hallway through the crack under the door. The city glow outside the window blurred through the curtains. The heater went silent.
"Jack?" "I'm here." His voice came immediately. Close enough that your panic had no time to grow teeth. Then your phone screen lit up where it sat on the bed beside you, buzzing with an alert.
WINTER STORM WARNING. SHELTER IN PLACE. You stared at it. "Well," you said, trying for lightness and not quite getting there. "That feels dramatic." Jack stood. You heard the chair shift, then the careful sound of his movement in the dark.
"Stay there." "I wasn't planning on sprinting." "Good." He moved across the room with a confidence that made something inside you ache. Even in near-dark, even in a strange hotel room, Jack was calm. Measured. One hand found the desk. Then the lamp. Then the wall.
A second later, his phone flashlight clicked on, casting sharp white light across the room. You blinked. He aimed it toward the floor, not your face. "Power's out," he said.
"Really? I thought they were setting the mood." His eyes flicked up. Even in the thin flashlight glow, you saw the look. "Joke response," you said. "Ignore me." "I usually try."
"No, you don't." "No," he said after a beat. "I don't." You looked at him. The darkness softened everything except the places it sharpened. His face was half-lit, half-shadowed, the lines of him drawn in silver and black. His sweater was gone now, you realised belatedly, leaving him in a dark T-shirt that made him look less like the attending who could silence a trauma bay and more like a man trapped in a room with you and all the things neither of you said.
He crossed to the dresser and opened a drawer. "What are you doing?" "Looking for extra blankets." "In the dark?" "I have a light." "You also have a habit of ignoring your own limits."
He stopped. Not for long. Just enough that you knew he had heard the thing beneath the words. Then he pulled open the lower drawer and found a folded blanket sealed in a plastic bag.
"Found one," he said. "Of course you did." He brought it over and handed it to you. You accepted it, fingers brushing his again. This time, neither of you moved away as quickly.
The room was colder without the heater already. Or maybe that was your imagination. Maybe you were just suddenly aware of every inch of space between you. Jack's hand was warm.
Steady. Scarred along the knuckles. You let go first. Barely. "We should call the front desk," you said. "They're aware." "Because of the power outage?" "Because half the hotel just started calling them."
"You're probably right." "I usually am." "Incredible how you say things like that and expect people to like you." His mouth moved. "Some people manage." Your breath caught.
Jack seemed to realise what he had said at the exact moment you did. His expression locked down. But not fast enough. You saw it. The flash of something unguarded. The room felt very quiet.
Too quiet. Then his phone buzzed in his hand, cutting through the moment with brutal efficiency. He looked down. "Generator's delayed," he read. "Hotel says emergency lights remain active, heat may be intermittent, guests advised to stay in rooms."
"Great." "Could be worse." "How?" "We could be in the lobby with orthopedic surgeons." You laughed. You really could not help it. The laugh came out tired and a little shaky, but it was real.
Jack looked at you for a second with that almost-soft expression again. Then he glanced at the bed. You followed his gaze. One bed. One extra blanket. No heat. Professional courtesy, your traitorous brain supplied.
You pulled the blanket against your chest. "So," you said carefully, "this got more complicated." Jack's jaw shifted. "Yeah." "We can still be adults." "Probably." "Probably?"
"I'm accounting for variables." "Such as?" He looked at you. In the phone light, his eyes were darker than usual. "You," he said. Your pulse jumped. Jack looked away almost immediately, like he had not meant it to come out like that.
But it had. And now it was in the room with you. You. Not the storm. Not the bed. Not the lack of heat. You. You swallowed. "I'm a variable?" "A persistent one." You should have laughed.
You almost did. But his voice had gone too quiet. Too honest. So you only said, "That sounds inconvenient." Jack's gaze returned to yours. "It is." The snow hit the window hard.
Neither of you moved. Then, somewhere down the hall, someone shouted, "Power's out on ten too!" and another voice yelled back something about flashlights, and the moment snapped before either of you could decide what to do with it.
Jack exhaled, low and controlled. "You should finish eating before the food gets cold." You blinked. Then laughed softly, because of course. Of course that was where he went.
Food. Practicality. A safe surface after stepping too close to the edge. "Right," you said. "Professional courtesy." He looked at you for one long second. Then he said, very dryly, "Don't make me regret naming it."
You sat back down on the edge of the bed with your plate and the extra blanket over your lap. Jack returned to the chair, phone flashlight propped against the lamp base so it lit the room in a strange upward glow.
You ate in semi-darkness while the storm pressed against the windows and the hotel groaned softly around you. And for a while, neither of you talked about the bed. Neither of you talked about variables.
Neither of you talked about the fact that the room was getting colder. But Jack took the blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it around your shoulders without asking.
And you let him. When his hand brushed the back of your neck, neither of you said anything at all. By the time you finished eating, the fries had gone soft, the grilled cheese had gone lukewarm, and the room had become noticeably colder.
Not freezing. Not dramatic. Just cold enough that the tips of your toes had started to curl against the hotel carpet. Cold enough that you had pulled the borrowed sweatpants lower over your ankles and tucked the extra blanket tighter around your shoulders. Cold enough that Jack had noticed, because Jack noticed everything, and was pretending he had not noticed in a way that meant he absolutely had.
The emergency light from the hallway bled under the door in a thin amber line. Jack's phone was still propped against the lamp base, flashlight angled at the ceiling so the whole room sat in a pale, strange glow. Shadows gathered in the corners. The window was a black mirror now, occasionally flashing white when the wind threw snow hard against the glass.
The hotel was quieter than it had been. Or maybe it only felt that way because the power outage had changed the sound of everything. No humming heater. No elevator chime. No faint television from the room next door. Just wind, the distant murmur of stranded guests in the hallway, and the occasional muffled thunk of something outside giving in to the storm.
Jack stacked the empty plates back on the room service tray with the kind of precision that suggested he could not quite tolerate mess when there were too many other things he could not control.
You watched him from the edge of the bed. "You know they have people for that." He did not look up. "For what?" "Stacking plates like you're preparing them for sterile processing."
"That would be a terrible use of sterile processing." "You understood my point." "Unfortunately." He set the cutlery on the plate, folded the napkin once, then stopped when he caught you watching.
"What?" "Nothing." "You keep saying that." "You keep asking." "You keep looking at me like you have commentary." "I always have commentary." "That's true." You smiled faintly.
The silence that followed was softer than the ones before. Less sharp, anyway. The food had helped. The ridiculousness had helped. The fact that you were both too tired to maintain full emotional defences had helped in a deeply inconvenient way.
Jack took the tray to the narrow table near the door, then checked his phone. "No update?" you asked. "Generator crew's working on it." "That sounds fake." "It does." "Do you think they're lying?"
"I think they're busy." "That was generous." "I have moments." "You hide them well." He glanced at you, dry. You tucked your feet under the blanket and tried not to shiver.
Failed. Jack saw it. Of course he did. His gaze dropped to the blanket around you, then to your bare feet, then back to your face. "You cold?" "No." "You're a bad liar." "I'm fine."
"That one's mine." "I'm borrowing it." "You use it worse." "You use it constantly." "With more conviction." "With more denial." His expression shifted. Not a flinch exactly. Jack was too practised for that. But something in him went still around the edges, like your words had touched a place you had not meant to press.
You regretted it immediately. "Sorry," you said, softer. "That wasn't—" "It's fine." "Jack." He turned toward the suitcase instead of looking at you. "You need socks." "I don't."
"You do." "I'm not taking your socks." "Why?" "Because there are lines." "There's a line at socks?" "Yes." "But not at sweatpants." You looked down at yourself. The borrowed sweatpants were still much too big, bunched slightly at your waist where you had tied the drawstring tight enough to survive a storm. You hated that they were comfortable. You hated more that you had stopped noticing they were not yours.
"That was an emergency." "So is hypothermia." "I am not hypothermic." "You're shivering." "I'm dramatically chilly." "Clinical distinction?" "Emotional distinction." Jack opened his suitcase.
You sighed. "Jack." He pulled out a pair of thick dark socks and held them out. You stared at them. He stared back. The socks hung between you like the dumbest possible symbol of intimacy.
"You're very bossy," you said again. "You're very cold." "I could put my shoes back on." "You're not wearing shoes in bed." The sentence landed. Both of you heard it. Both of you froze.
In bed. Not the bed. Not that bed. In bed. The words sat in the dim room, far too casual and far too specific. Jack's jaw tightened. You took the socks mostly so neither of you had to keep looking at each other across the space between you.
"Thank you," you said. His fingers brushed yours as you took them. A small touch. Accidental. Still, your hand warmed like his skin had left a mark. Jack stepped back too quickly and turned toward the window.
You pulled the socks on under the blanket, trying to do it with dignity. It was impossible. The blanket slipped off one shoulder. The sweatpants rode up. You nearly kicked the nightstand with your heel.
Jack did not turn around. Which meant he was very deliberately not turning around. Somehow that made it worse. "There," you said when you were done. "Feet saved. Crisis averted."
"Good." His voice was rougher than before. You looked at the back of him. He stood near the window with one hand braced against the frame, shoulders slightly bowed. The phone light made a dark outline of him against the curtains. Without the hotel noise, without the conference, without the ED, he seemed more human in a way that made your chest ache.
Still Jack. But less armoured. You wondered if anyone else at The Pitt had ever seen him like this — barefoot in a hotel room, tired around the edges, quietly trying to make sure another person was warm without making it a scene.
Probably not. The thought did something strange to you. "Are you cold?" you asked. "No." "Bad liar." He did not look over. "I'm fine." "Worse liar." His mouth moved, barely visible in profile.
"Probably." That answer felt too honest. You watched him for another moment, then looked away before he could catch you looking again. The hotel groaned softly around you.
Somewhere down the hall, a child laughed. A woman shushed him. A door opened, then closed. The storm kept pressing at the windows, steady and relentless. You reached for your phone on the bed and checked the time.
8:47 p.m. It felt much later. You had been awake since four-thirty that morning, because the first flight out of Pittsburgh had seemed like a good idea when you booked it. It had not seemed like a good idea when your alarm went off in the dark. It had seemed actively hostile by the time Jack appeared at the airport gate with black coffee, a conference folder, and the expression of a man who had already decided the day was guilty until proven otherwise.
You had laughed at him then too. He had handed you the coffee without comment. You had not asked how he knew your order. That was the thing with Jack. He gave things in ways that made asking feel impossible.
He would notice. Adjust. Provide. Protect. Then act like anyone would have done the same. Anyone would not have. That was the problem. You scrolled through your notifications. Dana had texted again.
DANA: You alive? You smiled. Jack, still near the window, said, "Dana?" You looked up. "How did you know?" "She asks that when she wants reassurance but refuses to phrase it emotionally."
"That is… uncomfortably accurate." "What'd she say?" "You alive?" Jack huffed softly. It was almost a laugh. "See?" You typed back. YOU: Alive. Snowed in. Power out. Abbott still hasn't killed anyone.
Dana's reply came fast. DANA: Yet. DANA: Where are you staying? Your thumb hovered over the keyboard. Ah. There it was. The simple question with the deeply complicated answer.
You glanced at Jack. He had turned from the window and was watching you now. Not suspicious. Aware. Always aware. "Dana asked where I'm staying," you said. Jack's expression went carefully blank.
"What are you going to tell her?" You looked down at the phone. That was an excellent question. The truth was simple. You were in his room because the hotel was full and the city was shut down and neither of you had any better options.
The truth was also impossible. Because Dana would understand the logistics. Dana understood emergencies. Dana understood bad weather and full hotels and professional adults making practical decisions.
Dana would also absolutely hear the silence between the words. Dana had eyes. Worse, she had instincts. Even worse, she liked you. You typed. YOU: Hotel. It's chaos here. Everyone stranded.
Not a lie. A strategic omission. Jack watched you send it. "She'll know," he said. "Probably." "You omitted relevant details." "I learned from doctors." "That's charting, not lying."
"Overlap, not causation." His eyes narrowed slightly, but there was something warm under it. "You're getting too much use out of my lines." "You should write better ones."
"I'll workshop it." Dana's next text buzzed through. DANA: You dodged that question so hard I felt the wind from Pittsburgh. You pressed your lips together. Jack saw your face.
"What?" "She knows." "I said that." You set the phone face down on the bed. "I'm ignoring her." "Sensible." "I can practically hear her eyebrows." "Dana has loud eyebrows."
"She really does." You both smiled. The room went quiet again. This silence was different. It was domestic in the strangest, most dangerous way. You were sitting on his bed in his sweatpants and socks, ignoring a text from Dana while Jack stood by the window in his T-shirt, and for one awful second you could imagine this without the storm. Without the conference. Without the emergency explanation.
A room. Food containers. Shared warmth. Jack looking at you like you were something he had learned the shape of without meaning to. The thought was so clear it startled you.
You stood abruptly. "I should brush my teeth." Jack blinked. Then gave one short nod. "Okay." "Then we should probably…" You gestured vaguely toward the bed, immediately regretted it, and turned the gesture into pointing at your bag. "Sleep. Eventually. Because we're exhausted. And adults. Professional adults."
His mouth twitched. "Professional adults brush their teeth?" "They do." "Good to know." You grabbed your toiletries and escaped into the bathroom. The mirror was bright only because of your phone flashlight propped against the soap dish. Without the overhead lights, your reflection looked softer and stranger. Tired eyes. Messy hair. Jack's sweatpants. Jack's socks.
You brushed your teeth with too much focus. Then you stood there for a moment with your hands braced on the sink. This was fine. Fine was a word doing heroic work tonight.
You had shared tighter spaces with coworkers before. Ambulance bays. Trauma rooms. Supply closets during disaster drills. Once, a hospital break room with six people, one working microwave, and a smell you all silently agreed not to identify.
This was not different because of square footage. It was different because of Jack. Because every quiet thing he did felt louder in the dark. Because he had remembered food. Socks. Blankets. The fact that you got anxious when you thought too long about the ED functioning without you.
Because he had said, You were already going. Because he had called you a variable. Because when the power went out, your first instinct had been to say his name, and his first instinct had been to answer before you could be scared.
You rinsed your mouth, dried your face, and stared at your reflection. "Normal," you whispered. "We are being normal." When you opened the bathroom door, Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Not in it. On it. His prosthetic was off. You stopped before you could stop yourself. It was not the first time you had seen him without it. Not exactly. The ED had a way of stealing privacy from everyone eventually, and Jack was not secretive in the way people assumed. He was matter-of-fact about the reality of his body when he had to be.
But this was different. This was not clinical. This was not a glance through a curtain gap or a practical adjustment after a brutal shift. This was Jack in the low light of a hotel room, one leg extended slightly, his liner set aside with careful precision, his hand resting near his thigh. His posture was composed, but there was something in the stillness of him that made you understand, immediately and painfully, that he had not expected you to come out just then.
His head lifted. His expression closed. Fast. Too fast. "Sorry," you said softly. You did not know what you were apologising for. Walking out. Seeing. Making him feel seen. All of it.
Jack looked away first. "It's fine." There it was again. The legal defence. You stayed where you were by the bathroom door, toiletries in hand. For once, you did not tease him.
You did not say he was a bad liar. You did not try to make the room easier by making a joke. Instead, you said, "I can give you a minute." His jaw shifted. He looked at you then, and there was something in his eyes you could not read.
Not embarrassment, exactly. Not shame, though something close enough to make your chest hurt. Wariness, maybe. A man used to people either looking too long or looking away too fast.
You did neither. At least, you tried not to. "You don't have to," he said. His voice was low. Rough. You nodded once and crossed to your bag, setting your toiletries inside with deliberate calm. Not ignoring him. Not staring. Just letting the moment exist without making it bigger.
Jack watched you for a second. You could feel it. Then he reached for the compression sleeve beside him and adjusted it with efficient, practised movements. You turned toward the window and gave him privacy without leaving.
The snow was still falling hard. The glass had frosted slightly at the corners, feathered white around the dark. The city lights outside looked blurred and far away. Behind you, fabric shifted. Jack moved carefully. The bed creaked once.
"You can turn around," he said. You did. He had pulled the blanket over his lap, sitting upright now, back against the headboard. The bedside lamp was useless without power, but his phone flashlight on the nightstand lit the lower half of the room. His face was half in shadow.
"You okay?" you asked. Then immediately wanted to kick yourself. Jack's eyebrows lifted. "I mean—" You stopped, exhaled. "Sorry. Stupid question." "Not stupid." "You hate that question."
"I hate most questions." "True." His mouth twitched faintly. The tension eased by a millimetre. You sat carefully on the opposite side of the bed, leaving as much space as possible between you. The mattress dipped under your weight, and both of you noticed.
How could you not? One bed. One room. No power. The space between you suddenly felt measured in inches and bad decisions. Jack reached for his own toiletries. "Bathroom's yours?"
"I'm done." He nodded and shifted to stand. You looked away before he could need you to. It was instinct. Respect. Maybe both. But before he moved, he paused. "You don't have to do that."
You looked back. "What?" "Look away like I'll break." The words were quiet. Flat, almost. But something under them hurt. You swallowed. "I'm not looking away because I think you'll break."
Jack held your gaze. "Then why?" You thought about lying. You were both good at it, in your own ways. Little lies. Necessary ones. The kind that kept rooms functioning. I'm fine.
It doesn't hurt. I don't care. This is professional courtesy. But the storm had narrowed the world to this room, and the lights were out, and Jack had given you socks like it meant nothing when it meant everything, and you were so tired of talking around the truth.
"Because I don't want to make something private feel less private," you said. He went still. You could hear the wind dragging snow across the window. Then Jack looked down.
For a long moment, he said nothing. When he spoke, his voice was quieter. "That's considerate." You tried to smile. "Don't sound so surprised." "I'm not." "You are a little."
"I'm used to people being curious." That landed hard. You kept your voice gentle. "I'm curious about you, Jack. Not about that." His eyes lifted. Oh. The room seemed to stop.
You realised what you had said a second too late. Not about that. About you. There was no good way to pull it back. No joke quick enough. No professional framing strong enough to cover it.
Jack looked at you like you had put a hand directly over a bruise. You opened your mouth. Nothing came out. Then he looked away, and the moment passed. Or he let it pass. You were not sure which.
"I'll be quick," he said. He stood, carefully, and you kept your gaze on your hands this time. Not because he had asked, not because you thought he needed saving from being seen, but because the room already had too much honesty in it and you were not sure either of you could survive another piece.
The bathroom door closed. You exhaled slowly. Your phone buzzed against the blanket. Dana again. You turned it over. DANA: You are absolutely not telling me something. DANA: Fine. Don't die. DANA: Also Abbott better not be pretending he doesn't need sleep. He does.
You smiled despite yourself. Dana was the human equivalent of a locked medication cabinet and a warning label. She saw more than people wanted her to see, kept what mattered safe, and made sure you knew when you were being stupid.
You typed back. YOU: He is being managed. You stared at it. Then deleted it. Absolutely not. You tried again. YOU: We're both going to sleep soon. Power's still out. Dana replied.
DANA: Both? You closed your eyes. Of course. Of course she caught that. Before you could decide how to answer, the bathroom door opened. You dropped your phone face down like a teenager hiding contraband.
Jack paused in the doorway. "That subtle?" "Shut up." "Dana?" "No." "Liar." "Fine. Yes." "What did she say?" "Nothing." He gave you a look. You sighed. "She noticed I said both."
Jack's expression did something complicated. "Ah." "Exactly." He moved back to his side of the bed with his toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, then set them on the nightstand. The room was colder now, enough that goosebumps had lifted along your arms where the blanket had slipped.
Jack noticed. He pulled the top blanket down on his side. The bed suddenly became a real object again. Not a prop. Not a joke. A place where both of you were expected to sleep.
You stood. Too quickly. "I can sleep on top of the covers." "No." "Jack." "It's cold." "I know." "So don't be stupid." You looked at him. "Did you just call me stupid?" "I told you not to be."
"Fine distinction." "Important one." You crossed your arms. He leaned back against the headboard and looked up at you with tired, unamused patience. "We are not doing this for another hour," he said.
"Doing what?" "Pretending either of us is sleeping anywhere but the bed." The bluntness of it sent heat straight up your neck. Jack noticed that too. His gaze flicked away, but his mouth tightened like he regretted nothing.
"You could phrase things less aggressively," you muttered. "I could." "You won't." "No." You stared at him. He stared back. Then, because exhaustion was apparently making you brave, or reckless, or possibly both, you said, "Fine. But the pillow stays in the middle."
Jack looked at the row of pillows stacked against the headboard. "One pillow?" "One pillow." "As a border?" "As a diplomatic boundary." "That's not what pillows are for."
"It is tonight." He considered this. Then reached for one of the pillows and placed it lengthwise down the centre of the bed with dead-serious precision. You watched him.
The absurdity hit first. Then the tenderness. Jack Abbott, attending physician, military veteran, professional misery enthusiast, was sitting in a powerless hotel room during a snowstorm creating a pillow wall because you had asked him to.
Your chest did that stupid, aching thing again. "There," he said. "You made it very official." "It's a terrible wall." "It's symbolic." "It's structurally unsound." "Most emotional boundaries are."
He looked at you. You looked back. For a moment, neither of you smiled. Then Jack's mouth twitched. You laughed quietly and climbed under the covers before you could think about it too much.
The sheets were cold at first, crisp against your legs. You slid carefully onto your side, keeping the pillow between you. Jack stayed sitting up for another moment, phone in hand, probably checking alerts. Or pretending to. You suspected he was giving you time to settle before he moved.
The thought made you ache in a way you did not know how to name. Finally, he set his phone on the nightstand with the flashlight still aimed upward and lowered himself under the blankets.
The mattress shifted. The world narrowed. You were lying in bed with Jack Abbott. There was a pillow between you. There were several inches of careful space. There were covers pulled up to your shoulders, socks on your feet, snow at the window, and a storm blocking every exit the two of you had spent months pretending you needed.
"This is normal," you said into the darkness. Jack turned his head slightly. "Is it?" "No." "Then why say it?" "Manifestation." "That doesn't work." "Evidence?" "This." A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
Jack's eyes were on the ceiling, but his expression had softened. The flashlight glow caught the line of his jaw, the tired slope of his mouth, the lashes casting faint shadows beneath his eyes. He looked exhausted now. Not just annoyed. Not just inconvenienced. Truly worn down.
Something in you quieted. "You should sleep," you said. "So should you." "I will." "Good." "You too." "That was implied." "Was it?" "Yes." You smiled into the dim. For a while, neither of you spoke.
The hotel settled around you. The storm battered the window. Somewhere distant, a door opened and closed. Your phone buzzed once more, but you ignored it. The cold made the bed feel smaller than it was. Or maybe awareness did that. You could feel the heat of him on the other side of the pillow. Not touching. Not even close enough, really.
Still, you knew exactly where he was. Every breath. Every subtle shift. Every careful movement made by a man trying not to make this harder for either of you. "You asleep?" Jack asked eventually.
"No." "Why?" "Because you asked me if I was asleep." He huffed softly. You smiled. A long pause. Then he said, "Your flight tomorrow. What time?" "Rebooked for two-thirty. Assuming the airport doesn't stay closed."
"Mine's three." "Good." "Good?" You stared at the pillow boundary between you, barely visible in the dark. "Means I'm not leaving you stranded here alone with all the orthopedic surgeons."
"You'd make that sacrifice?" "I'm heroic." "You forgot to eat today." "I contain multitudes." "Mostly bad decisions." "That's rich coming from you." He was quiet for a beat.
Then said, "Fair." The honesty of that made your smile fade. You turned onto your back carefully. "Can I ask you something?" Jack did not answer right away. His gaze stayed on the ceiling.
"That depends." "On what?" "Whether you're about to ask something I don't want to answer." "I don't know if you'll want to answer it." "Then probably no." "Jack." He sighed.
"Ask." You hesitated. The question had been sitting in you since dinner, since you were already going, maybe even before that. Since the airport coffee. Since the way he always turned up near you without making a thing of it.
"Why do you do that?" His head turned slightly. "Do what?" "Take care of people and pretend you're not." His face went unreadable. You rushed on before you could lose courage.
"The coffee. The food. The socks. The room. At work too. You act like it's all logistics, but it isn't always." Jack looked back at the ceiling. The silence stretched. You almost apologised.
Then he said, "It's easier if people don't make it a thing." Your chest softened. "Why?" His jaw moved once. "Because then they expect you to talk about it." The answer was so Jack that it almost hurt.
You turned your face toward him. In the low glow, he looked carved out of restraint. "You don't always have to talk about it." His eyes shifted to yours. "No?" "No." "What do I have to do?"
The question was quiet. Too quiet. You were not sure he meant it the way it sounded. You answered anyway. "Let someone notice." Jack did not move. Something passed over his face — guarded, tired, almost unbearably vulnerable before he buried it.
"I let people notice plenty." "Charting irregularities don't count." His mouth twitched, but it faded quickly. "People notice what they want," he said. "That's not true."
"It's often true." You studied him across the ridiculous pillow. "Then let me notice." The words came out before you could stop them. Soft. Plain. Terrifying. Jack looked at you.
Fully now. The room seemed to contract around his silence. You felt your heartbeat in your throat. Outside, the storm kept going. Snow against glass. Wind at the windows. The city hidden. The hotel powerless. Everything ordinary stripped away until there was only this: you and Jack, inches apart, pretending a pillow could hold back months of almosts.
Jack's voice, when it came, was rough. "You already do." You could not breathe for a second. He looked away first. But the damage was done. The truth was there between you, small and live and glowing.
You did not know what to do with it. So you did nothing. Maybe that was the only thing either of you could manage. You lay there in the dark, his words moving through you like warmth.
You already do. For a while, neither of you spoke again. Eventually, exhaustion began to pull at you. The edges of the room blurred. The storm became a dull, steady rush. Your body, traitorous and tired, stopped caring about awkwardness and started caring only about heat.
The bed was cold where you were not touching anything. Your feet were warm in Jack's socks, but your shoulders were not. You curled slightly on your side, facing the pillow wall, tugging the blanket higher.
Jack shifted on the other side. "You cold?" "No." He made a low sound. You did not even open your eyes. "I know. Bad liar." "Terrible." "I'm fine." "Mine." "I know." The mattress dipped as he adjusted, and the blanket shifted over you, tucked more securely near your shoulder. Not intrusive. Not too much.
Just enough. His hand brushed your upper arm through the fabric. You opened your eyes. Jack's hand withdrew immediately. "Sorry." "It's okay." "I was just—" "I know." His face was close now.
Closer than before because you had both shifted toward the middle without noticing. The pillow was still between you, crushed slightly under the weight of your shoulders.
The flashlight had dimmed as his phone battery dropped, turning the room softer. Jack's eyes were dark in the low light. You should have moved back. You did not. Neither did he.
"You should sleep," he said again. His voice had changed. Low. Careful. Like he was speaking near a wound. "So should you." "I'm trying." "Are you?" "No." The honesty made something in your chest go still.
Jack closed his eyes briefly, like he regretted it. You watched him. Then, because you were too tired to be wise, you whispered, "Me neither." He opened his eyes. There it was again.
The pause. The dangerous pause. His gaze moved over your face, not quickly this time. Not hidden. He looked at you like he was memorising the cost of wanting something. Your fingers rested near the pillow between you.
His hand lay on the blanket on the other side. Not touching. Almost. Almost had become a language between you. Jack swallowed. "We shouldn't," he said. You had not asked what.
You both knew. "No," you whispered. But you did not move. The room held very still. Then the hallway erupted with noise. A door slammed somewhere. Someone laughed too loudly. A man cursed about the emergency lights. The spell shattered so abruptly you almost flinched.
Jack looked away. You let out a breath you had not realised you were holding. The pillow wall suddenly looked absurd again. Useful, maybe. Merciful. You turned onto your back, staring at the dark ceiling.
"Orthopedic surgeons," you murmured. Jack was quiet for half a second. Then he huffed a laugh. A real one. Small. Exhausted. But real. It loosened something in the room. You smiled.
The two of you lay there in the dark while the hotel settled again and the storm carried on, pretending nothing had almost happened. Eventually, your eyes grew heavy. Your body warmed under the blankets. The borrowed socks were soft against your feet. The bed no longer felt quite as cold. Jack's breathing evened out beside you, slow and controlled, though not quite sleep.
You drifted in and out. At some point, the pillow between you shifted. You were too tired to know who moved first. Maybe you curled toward the warmth. Maybe Jack turned in his sleep.
Maybe the bed dipped and the pillow slid down between your knees and neither of you woke enough to correct it. The room had grown colder. The blankets had tangled. The storm was loud.
You came halfway awake to the feeling of warmth against your forehead. A steady body near yours. An arm, heavy but careful, resting around your waist. For one hazy second, your mind did not understand.
Then you felt Jack's breath against your hair. You should have startled. You should have pulled away. Instead, half-asleep and freezing, you made a small sound and shifted closer.
The arm around you tightened. Not much. Just enough. Jack murmured something you could not make out. His hand settled flat against your back, warm through the borrowed shirt. His body curved around yours with a kind of unconscious care that made no room for embarrassment because neither of you was awake enough to choose it.
The pillow boundary was gone. The diplomatic border had failed. You tucked your face against his chest. He was warm. So warm. The storm battered the window, but under the blankets, in the dark, the world narrowed to the steady rise and fall of him.
Jack's chin brushed your hair. His hand rested between your shoulder blades. You fell asleep like that. Not deciding. Not confessing. Not crossing any line either of you could name while conscious.
Just cold and exhausted and drawn, somehow, to the safest heat in the room. Outside, snow buried the city. Inside, Jack held you like he had been doing it for years. Jack woke before the power came back on.
For a few seconds, he did not move. That was habit. Old habit. Useful habit. The kind of stillness that came before assessment. Before pain caught up. Before memory sorted itself into place. Before the body told the truth the mind had not agreed to yet.
Dark room. Hotel. Storm. Philadelphia. Conference. You. That last one arrived slower. Not because he had forgotten. Because his mind seemed determined to give him one merciful second before handing over the evidence.
Warmth against his chest. Soft breath through the fabric of his T-shirt. A hand curled loosely near his ribs. Your knee tucked between his. His arm around you. Jack stared at the ceiling.
The phone flashlight had died sometime during the night. The only light came from the window now, weak and blue-grey through the curtains, the city beyond still blurred by snow. The power was still out, or the room would have been humming. Instead, the silence was deep and cold around the edges, broken only by wind and the steady sound of your breathing.
You were asleep. Against him. Not beside him. Not near him. Against him. Your cheek rested over his heart like you had chosen the exact place designed to ruin him. Jack did not move.
He should have. That was the first reasonable thought. The second reasonable thought was that if he moved, you would wake up embarrassed, and then he would have to watch you apologise for something that had been as much his fault as yours.
The third reasonable thought was that he had no idea how the hell the pillow had ended up near the bottom of the bed. He looked down slowly. The diplomatic boundary, as you had called it, had collapsed sometime in the night. One end of the pillow was wedged between the blankets near his shin, completely useless. The other had vanished under the duvet.
Structurally unsound, he thought. And then, despite himself, almost smiled. Almost. His hand was spread against your back. He became aware of that next. Not gripping. Not possessive. Just there. Warm through the cotton of your sleep shirt. His thumb had found the small space beneath your shoulder blade and rested there like it belonged.
It did not belong there. That was the problem. Or one of them. Jack should have moved his hand. Instead, he let himself feel the weight of it for one more second. One more second, he told himself, was not a crime.
You shifted in your sleep. Jack went completely still. Your fingers tightened faintly against his shirt, and your face turned a little closer into his chest. A small sound left you, half breath and half protest against the cold room.
His arm responded before he could stop it. It tightened by a fraction. Your body settled. Jack closed his eyes. Idiot. The word had no force behind it. He had been called worse by better men and disagreed less.
Because this was stupid. Not the storm. Not the hotel room. Not even the bed, in itself. Those had been logistics. Bad logistics, but logistics. This was something else. This was waking up with you tucked against him and feeling, for one unguarded awful moment, not alarmed but relieved.
Relieved. Like some part of him had been waiting for the world to arrange itself like this. Like he had slept better with your breath against his shirt than he had any right to.
That was the dangerous thing. Not desire. Desire was simple enough to recognise and avoid. Jack had been avoiding wanting you for months with the grim discipline of a man disarming a device he refused to admit was live.
But this— This quiet. This ease. This body-deep reluctance to leave. That was what frightened him. Your breathing changed. He heard it before you moved. A slight catch. A deeper inhale. The soft, muddled shift of someone beginning to surface.
Jack opened his eyes. He still did not move. There was no good version of this. If he pulled away now, you would wake to rejection. If he stayed, you would wake to everything.
You stirred again. Your hand slid a little against his shirt. Then stopped. Your body went still. Jack held his breath. He felt the exact moment you woke properly. Your fingers curled.
Your cheek lifted a fraction. For a second, neither of you did anything. Then your eyes opened against the dim grey of his chest. You blinked. Once. Twice. Jack watched your face change.
Sleep-soft confusion. Recognition. Horror. Not horror of him, he thought. Not that. Horror of the situation. Of your hand on him. Of your leg tangled with his. Of his arm around you like he had made some claim in his sleep that he had not had the courage to make awake.
You lifted your head very slowly. Your eyes met his. Your hair was mussed on one side. Your face was warm from sleep. There was a faint line from his shirt pressed into your cheek.
Jack's chest tightened with such abrupt force that it bordered on pain. "Morning," he said. It came out low. Too rough. Your mouth parted. Nothing came out for a second. Then, because apparently you were both determined to survive by saying the least helpful things possible, you whispered, "Hi."
Neither of you moved. His arm was still around you. Your hand was still on his chest. The room was still cold. The snow kept hitting the window in softer gusts now, less violent than the night before but steady. The world outside had gone pale and quiet, buried under white.
Your eyes dropped to where his arm lay across your back. Jack became very aware of his hand again. He loosened it at once. "Sorry." The word left him before he could stop it.
Your gaze snapped back to his face. "No," you said quickly. "No, I'm— I'm sorry. I must have—" "We both moved." You stopped. Jack watched that land. You looked down between you, where the blankets were tangled around your legs, where the pillow boundary had failed catastrophically, where all the evidence suggested neither of you had been an innocent bystander.
"Oh," you said. Jack's mouth twitched faintly. It was not exactly funny. Except it was a little funny. You saw the almost-smile and exhaled a small, embarrassed laugh. "The wall failed," you murmured.
"Poor construction." "I blame the contractor." "You approved the design." "I was under duress." "You were under a blanket." "That too." The tiny rhythm of banter returned like a match struck in the cold.
It did not fix the intimacy. It made it worse, actually. Because neither of you had moved away. Not properly. Jack's arm had loosened, but his hand had not left your back. Your hand had shifted lower against his ribs, but it had not disappeared. Your knee was still pressed against his thigh beneath the covers.
You both knew. You both pretended not to know for one more second. Then you said, softer, "Are you okay?" Jack looked at you. He could have answered the usual way. He almost did.
The word sat ready. Fine. A shield. A reflex. An old door that knew how to close itself. But your face was close to his, and your voice had none of the clinical edge people usually carried when they asked him that. You were not asking about pain only. You were not asking whether he needed help. You were not asking because you had seen something and wanted reassurance that it had not disturbed you.
You were asking because you had woken in his arms and still wanted to know if he was alright. Jack looked away. "Yeah." A beat. Then, because the room had apparently stripped him of common sense, he added, "Better than expected."
Your expression changed. Slowly. Carefully. Like you did not want to frighten the admission by looking at it too quickly. "Yeah?" you asked. Jack should have corrected course.
He did not. "Yeah." Your fingers relaxed against his shirt. The movement was tiny. He felt it everywhere. "I'm okay too," you said, though he had not asked aloud yet. He looked back at you.
"You sure?" You nodded. Your cheek was still marked from his shirt. It made you look younger somehow, more vulnerable, and he hated that the sight of it did something warm and unreasonable to him.
"I'm sure." The words settled. No one moved. The morning had made the room visible in pieces. The room service tray near the door. His suitcase open on the rack. Your bag on the floor with a sleeve hanging out. The dead phone on the nightstand. The useless lamp. The curtains breathing faintly whenever the wind found a seam at the window.
And the bed. The two of you in it. Too close to pretend it meant nothing. Not close enough, a terrible part of him thought. Jack shifted his gaze to the ceiling. "You're probably cold."
You blinked. Then laughed, the sound soft against him. "That's where we're going?" "It's relevant." "Is it?" "The power's still out." "Ah. Logistics." "Yes." "Professional courtesy?"
He looked down at you. The joke had been easier last night. Now it sounded like a challenge. His hand, still traitorous, rested against your back. Your body was warm where it touched his.
He could feel your heart beating. "No," he said. The word left quietly. Barely more than breath. But it changed everything. Your smile faded. Not in a bad way. In the way a person goes still when a door opens somewhere they thought was locked.
"No?" you asked. Jack swallowed. The smart thing would be to move. Sit up. Reach for his phone. Check the flight status. Talk about snowplows and airport delays and work schedules and the thousands of ordinary facts that could bury this one extraordinary one.
He was good at ordinary facts. He was good at burying things. But you were looking at him, and for once, the cost of silence seemed heavier than the cost of speech. "No," he said again.
You looked at him for a long moment. Then your hand flattened gently against his chest. Not pulling him closer. Not pushing away. Just there. "Okay," you whispered. Jack had no idea what that meant.
He had no idea if you meant okay, I understand or okay, stop or okay, me too. He had no idea how a single word could make him want to lean in and run at the same time. His voice came out rougher than he wanted.
"You should know better." Your eyebrows drew together. "Than what?" He looked at you. "Than to get involved with me." The words were blunt because bluntness was easier than fear.
There. Said. Ugly thing on the table. Except there was no table. Just a cold hotel room, a failed pillow wall, and your hand over the centre of his chest. Your expression shifted.
Not hurt. Not quite. Angry, maybe. Softly. The way you got angry with patients who apologised for needing help. "Jack." He looked away. "I'm serious." "I know you are." "You work with me."
"I noticed." His mouth tightened despite himself. "You know what I mean." "I do." Your voice stayed quiet. "But I also know I'm not a child, and I don't need you to make decisions for me because you've decided you're complicated."
His eyes came back to yours. That hit somewhere precise. You knew it too. He saw it in the way your face softened after the words landed, like you had not meant them to bruise but were not taking them back either.
"You are," you said. "Complicated. So am I. So is everyone who works where we work and keeps showing up anyway." "That's not the same." "No," you agreed. "It isn't." The honesty of that did more damage than reassurance would have.
You did not pretend he was easy. You did not pretend there was no grief in him, no damage, no history that stood in rooms before he did. You did not smooth him down into someone more convenient. You did not make him harmless.
You just stayed. "You deserve someone who—" he began. "No." Jack stopped. Your voice had sharpened. Not loud. Not harsh. Just firm enough to cut through the sentence before he could use it against both of you.
"No?" "No," you said. "You don't get to do that." His brows drew together. You pushed yourself up a little, enough that your faces were no longer so close, though your hand still rested lightly on him.
"You don't get to decide what I deserve if the only reason you're doing it is because you're scared I might choose you anyway." Jack went utterly still. Outside, the wind dragged snow across the glass in a long hiss.
Your own face changed then, as if you had surprised yourself. But you did not look away. Brave, Jack thought suddenly. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just there, under the borrowed sleep shirt and the oversized sweatpants and the line from his shirt on your cheek.
Braver than him, maybe. Often. His throat worked. "That's not—" he started. You waited. He stopped. Because it was. Of course it was. The room was quiet. You sighed softly, not with impatience. With tiredness. With tenderness. With something that made him feel more exposed than anger would have.
"I'm not asking you for everything right now," you said. "I'm not asking you to have some perfect answer in a hotel room with no power after six hours of sleep and terrible conference food."
"Good," he said, because he was still himself. "That would be unreasonable." A smile broke over your face before you could stop it. Small. Affectionate. Devastating. "There he is."
His chest tightened again. You said it like you had been waiting for him under all the fear. Like the deflection was not all of him, but it was a familiar enough piece to love.
Love. No. Not going there. Not yet. Jack looked at your hand on his chest. Your fingers shifted as if you had only just realised you were still touching him. You began to pull away.
He caught your wrist. Gently. Not enough to hold you if you wanted to go. Just enough to make you pause. You looked at him. Jack stared at the place where his fingers circled your wrist.
Your pulse tapped against his thumb. Fast. Not fear, he thought. Or not only fear. His voice was low when he spoke. "I'm not good at this." Your face softened again. "I know."
That might have offended someone else. For Jack, it felt like relief. "I mean it," he said. "I know." "I'll make it harder than it needs to be." "Probably." His eyes flicked up.
You shrugged a little. "What? You will." A faint laugh moved through him before he could stop it. You smiled, and the whole room changed around it. "But I'm not exactly known for choosing the easy thing," you said.
"No?" "No." "That seems like a character flaw." "You would know." His thumb moved once, unconsciously, over the inside of your wrist. You looked down at the movement. So did he.
The banter faded. The air shifted again. Jack let go of your wrist. But slowly. Very slowly. Your hand did not retreat this time. It lowered to the blanket between you, close to his.
The space from last night returned. Almost. A language, you had made it into. A habit. Jack was tired of almost. That was the problem. He had been tired of it for a while.
He had just called it professionalism. Timing. Caution. Decency. Self-preservation. He had dressed fear up in enough adult words that it could pass through most rooms unchallenged.
But here, in the low morning light, with your hair mussed and your body still warm from his and your eyes not letting him disappear inside his own excuses, it looked exactly like what it was.
Fear. And wanting. Both. Your phone buzzed. Neither of you moved. It buzzed again. You closed your eyes. "Dana," Jack said. "Probably." "Persistent." "You respect that." "I do."
The phone buzzed a third time. You groaned softly and reached toward the nightstand, nearly overbalancing because the blankets were tangled around your legs. Jack's hand moved to your waist automatically, steadying you.
You froze. So did he. His palm was warm through the shirt. Your eyes met. The phone stopped buzzing. Neither of you said anything. His hand stayed where it was. You were close again.
Not accidentally this time. Not entirely. Jack could see the hesitation in your face. Not doubt. Not regret. Just awareness. The same line both of you had been walking for months, suddenly under your bare feet.
He should have let go. He did not. Your gaze dropped to his mouth. It was so quick he might have missed it if he had not been looking for some reason not to be the only one losing the fight.
His breath changed. You noticed. Of course you did. "Jack," you whispered. He had heard his name in every possible context. Shouted across trauma bays. Snapped in frustration. Called over noise. Written on charts. Spoken by patients, colleagues, strangers, people dying, people grieving, people angry enough to spit.
He had never heard it like that. Soft. Terrified. Wanting. It reached somewhere he had not fortified well enough. He lifted his hand from your waist slowly, giving you time to stop him. Giving himself time to stop.
Neither of you did. His fingers brushed your jaw. Barely. A question more than a touch. Your eyes fluttered, then held his. He leaned in. Not all the way. Just enough. Enough that your breath warmed his mouth. Enough that the whole room seemed to vanish except for the inch between you. Enough that if either of you moved, there would be no pretending this was about weather or beds or professional courtesy.
Your phone rang. Loudly. You both jerked back. The sound tore through the room with the violence of an overhead page. Your phone skittered slightly on the nightstand as it vibrated.
Dana's name lit the screen. For one second, you and Jack stared at it. Then Jack closed his eyes. You made a sound that was half laugh, half despair. "I'm going to kill her," you whispered.
"No, you're not." "I might." "You like her." "That's the only thing saving her." The phone kept ringing. You grabbed it, cheeks flushed, and answered with the tone of someone clinging to the last scraps of dignity.
"Dana." Jack lay back against the pillows and looked at the ceiling like it had personally wronged him. You avoided looking at him. Mostly. "What? Yes, I'm alive. No, the power's still out." You paused. "No, I'm not in the lobby."
Jack's eyes closed harder. You sat up a little straighter, dragging the blanket with you. "No, I found somewhere safe." Another pause. "Dana." Jack turned his head slightly.
Even in the dim light, you could see the amusement beginning to break through his exasperation. Your face warmed further. "Because I'm an adult and I don't have to give you my full lodging itinerary." You listened, then looked briefly skyward. "Yes, I ate. Yes, actual food. No, not just coffee."
Jack mouthed, barely. You glared at him. He looked almost pleased with himself. "I am ignoring that," you said into the phone, though you were not entirely sure whether you meant Dana or Jack. "How's the ED?"
The shift was instant. Jack saw it. Felt it, almost. The way your face changed. The softness tucked away. The clinical focus returning. Concern sharpening your posture even though you were sitting in his bed in his clothes with your hair a mess.
You listened for nearly a minute. The room changed with you. Jack watched quietly. "They got extra staff in?" you asked. "Good. Is Robby there? Of course he is." You smiled faintly. "Tell him Abbott hasn't caused an interstate incident yet."
Jack gave you a look. You ignored it. "No, don't tell him the rest." A beat. "There is no rest." Jack's eyebrows rose. You covered your eyes with one hand. "Dana." Your voice dropped. "I'm hanging up now."
Whatever Dana said made your mouth fall open. Jack could not hear it, but he could guess the flavour. You pointed at the phone like she could see you. "That is harassment."
A pause. "Love you too." You hung up. The room went quiet. You set the phone down very carefully. Jack waited. You did not look at him. "She knows," he said. You nodded once. "She knows something."
"What did she say?" "No." "That bad?" "She said…" You stopped, pressing your lips together. Jack watched your restraint with growing interest. "She said?" You turned to him, face hot. "She said if I'm with you, she hopes you're being less emotionally constipated than usual."
Jack blinked. Once. Then looked away. You waited. His shoulders moved. Just slightly. Then again. "Oh my God," you said. "Are you laughing?" "No." "You are." "I'm not." "You absolutely are."
He pressed his fingers to his brow. It was contained. Barely audible. But it was there — a low, reluctant laugh that seemed dragged out of him against his will. The sight of it did something catastrophic to you.
Jack Abbott laughing in a dark hotel room under a snowstorm because Dana had called him emotionally constipated. Your heart did not stand a chance. "It's not funny," he said.
"It's very funny." "She's insubordinate." "She's charge." "That explains the confidence." You laughed then too, and the room warmed a little around the sound. It helped. It saved you, maybe.
Or delayed the inevitable. Jack's laughter faded first, but not completely. There was still something loose around his mouth when he looked back at you. For a second, it was easy to imagine waking up like this again. Not in a hotel. Not because of a storm. Just morning. His voice. Your phone. Someone from work interrupting with unnecessary accuracy. Jack pretending to be annoyed while secretly pleased you had people who checked on you.
The thought must have shown on your face because his expression softened. Not much. Enough. "ED's okay?" he asked. You nodded. "Busy. Not catastrophic. Roads are bad, but night shift got stuck, day shift came in early, everyone's annoyed but functioning."
"Normal disaster mode." "Pretty much." "Good." "Robby told Dana to tell you that if you're bored, you can review the conference notes and send him bullet points." Jack's expression went dead flat.
You grinned. "He did not." "No." "Good." "He did say, apparently, that you should not pick fights with anyone from cardiology while stranded." "Cardiology keeps coming up."
"You have a reputation." "I have standards." "Same system?" "Same system." The quiet settled again, gentler this time. You were sitting up now, blanket around your shoulders, and Jack was still half-reclined beside you. The accidental closeness had been disrupted, but not erased. If anything, the interruption had made the unfinished thing between you brighter.
You both knew what had almost happened before the phone rang. Neither of you could unknow it. Jack looked at your phone, then at the dead lamp. "We should check flights."
"Probably." Neither of you moved. A beat passed. Then another. You turned your head toward him. "Jack." He looked at you. There was caution in his face again, but not the closed kind. More like a man standing at the edge of a room he had avoided for years, listening for whether it was safe to step inside.
You swallowed. "We don't have to pretend nothing almost happened." His jaw flexed. "No." "No, we don't?" "No," he said. "We don't." The answer was steady. Your pulse was not.
"Okay." "Okay." It would have been easier if one of you had looked away. Neither of you did. Jack's hand rested on the blanket near your knee. Yours rested beside it, fingers curled in the fabric.
Close. Almost. Again. This time, you moved. Only a little. Your fingers brushed his. Jack looked down. You waited. His hand turned beneath yours. Slowly. Palm up. An offering.
Not dramatic. Not polished. Not the kind of gesture that belonged in speeches or films. Just Jack, quiet and tired and scared enough to be careful, letting you decide if you wanted to take what he could give right now.
You slid your hand into his. His fingers closed around yours. Warm. Firm. Real. Something in your chest unknotted so abruptly it almost hurt. Jack kept looking at your joined hands like he was studying an X-ray for a fracture line.
Then he said, "This is a bad idea." You squeezed his hand once. "Probably." His eyes lifted. You smiled faintly. "You're not the only one allowed to make bad decisions." "That's not reassuring."
"It wasn't meant to be." "You could try." "I could." "You won't." "No." A faint almost-smile tugged at his mouth. The shape of it was so familiar now it made you ache. "What happens when we get home?" you asked.
There. The real question. Not the storm. Not the bed. Not the almost-kiss. Home. The Pitt. The ED. Dana's loud eyebrows. Robby's knowing looks. Long shifts. Short breaks. Professional distance. Charts and traumas and grief and the kind of fatigue that made honest things hard to hold.
Jack's fingers tightened around yours. Not much. Enough. "I don't know," he said. The answer should have disappointed you. It did not. Because he did not pull away. Because he did not say nothing.
Because Jack Abbott admitting uncertainty while holding your hand felt more intimate than any clean promise would have. You nodded. "Okay." "That enough?" "For this minute?"
His eyes stayed on yours. "Yes." You looked down at your joined hands. "For this minute, yeah." Jack let out a slow breath. Then, after a long moment, he said, "When we get home, I'd like to take you to dinner."
You looked up so fast you nearly hurt your neck. "What?" His face shifted, some of the vulnerability closing under dry irritation. "You heard me." "I did. I'm just checking for carbon monoxide."
"The power's out, not the ventilation." "Could be subtle." "It's not carbon monoxide." "It might be concussion. Did you hit your head?" "You're making this difficult." "I'm panicking."
"That's obvious." You laughed, breathless and ridiculous and on the edge of something much softer. Jack's eyes warmed. There. No hiding it this time. Not entirely. "Dinner," he repeated.
Your smile settled. "Like a date?" His thumb moved once against yours. "Yes." One word. No flourish. No professional courtesy. Just yes. Your heart went very quiet. Then very loud.
"When we get home," you said. "When we get home." "And not at the hospital cafeteria." His eyebrows lifted. "You have standards." "I do." "Good." "Somewhere with actual food."
"Fine." "And no orthopedic surgeons." "That may be harder to guarantee." You smiled. He did too. Barely. Perfectly. The room hummed suddenly. You both looked up. The heater clicked.
The lamp beside the bed flickered once, then turned on, flooding the room with warm yellow light. The power was back. For some reason, neither of you moved for several seconds.
The return of normal things felt rude. The lamp. The heater. The faint buzz from the mini fridge. The hotel room snapping back into itself as if it had not spent the night holding you both outside of ordinary life.
Then your phone began charging again and immediately buzzed with a flood of notifications. Jack looked at it. "You're popular." "I'm monitored." "Accurate." The heat began to push through the room slowly. The window stayed pale and snow-blurred, but the worst of the storm seemed to have softened. Somewhere beyond the walls, the hotel came alive again — pipes shifting, voices rising, the distant chime of an elevator finding power.
The spell should have broken. Maybe it did. Maybe that was why you noticed, suddenly, that you were still holding Jack's hand. Maybe that was why Jack noticed too. Neither of you let go.
Not immediately. Then, carefully, like he did not want you to mistake the movement for regret, Jack released your hand and reached for his phone. "Flights," he said. "Right."
"Need to know if we're stuck another day." "Imagine." His eyes flicked to yours. You held his gaze. The joke did not quite land as a joke. A flush climbed your neck. Jack looked back at his phone.
His mouth twitched. "Airport's delayed," he said after a moment. "Cancelled?" "Not yet." You checked your own phone. It took a second to load, then the airline app opened with the kind of cheerful incompetence only travel software could manage.
"My flight's still showing delayed." "Mine too." "So we might get home." "Might." You sat there with him, both of you looking down at your screens and pretending the ordinary task was enough to steady the room.
It helped. A little. Then a notification from Dana appeared at the top of your phone. DANA: If he asks you to dinner, say yes. If he doesn't, tell him I'm disappointed but not surprised.
You stared at it. Jack glanced sideways. "What?" "Nothing." "Dana again?" "No." "Liar." You turned the phone screen down against the blanket. "She's invasive." "She's usually right."
You looked at him. Jack's eyes were on his phone, but his expression had gone deliberately neutral. A smile crept across your face. "She is, actually." He looked up then.
The warmth between you changed shape. Not less. Just steadier. A little less accidental. A little more chosen. You tucked the blanket around yourself and leaned back against the headboard, suddenly aware of how tired you still were. The night had not been restful, exactly, even if it had been something close. Your body felt warm now in the returning heat, heavy with interrupted sleep and emotional whiplash.
Jack noticed. Of course. "Sleep another hour," he said. You blinked. "What?" "Flights aren't going anywhere yet. Checkout's delayed because of the outage. Sleep." "You too?"
"I'm awake." "That is not an answer." "It was adjacent to one." You gave him a look. He sighed. "Fine." "Fine?" "I'll sleep." "Good." "But if you steal the blanket—" "I will."
His mouth twitched. "You admit it?" "I contain multitudes." "Mostly theft." "Mostly survival." He set his phone down and reached to turn off the lamp. Then he paused. The room was warm-lit now, no longer hidden in emergency glow. Morning had made everything more visible. More real.
He looked at the bed. Then at you. The pillow wall was still at the bottom of the mattress, defeated and crumpled beyond repair. You followed his gaze. A laugh threatened, but your throat felt too tight for it.
"Do we rebuild the border?" you asked. Jack looked at the pillow. Then at you. "No," he said. Soft. Certain. Your breath caught. He did not touch you. He did not make it bigger than that.
He just turned off the lamp, easing the room back into dim morning, and settled under the covers beside you. Not as far away as before. Not pressed close either. Just there.
Close enough that if either of you shifted in sleep, you might find each other again. Close enough that pretending would require more effort than honesty. You lay on your side facing him.
Jack lay on his back, eyes on the ceiling. For a minute, neither of you spoke. Then you said, very softly, "Dinner when we get home." His eyes closed. "Yes." "Not professional courtesy."
His mouth moved. "No." You smiled into the quiet. Outside, the snow kept falling. Inside, under the returning heat and the tired morning hush, Jack reached beneath the blanket and found your hand again.
Warnings: EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT. MDNI. Pussy sliding. Accidental Penetration. Agreement between adults.
Not proofread! I wrote it on my phone! I’m shameless
New kink formed. Pussy Sliding.
Smut under the cut
It was only ever supposed to be stress relief. There was never supposed to be that kind of breach. You get yours and he gets his, in the most non committal way. Clothes always stay on. Mouths stay as quiet as possible. No eye contact. No kissing. No talking about it after. And above all? No penetration.
When you first listed that as a rule, Robby looked at you like you had three heads. “How…the point of a hook up is to actually hook up?” He said, already feeling foolish for being 52 and using the term ‘hook up’.
“I know what a hookup is, Ernest Hemingway” you rolled your eyes in mock annoyance. “I don’t just let anyone inside me, ok? That’s a romantic commitment, for me.” You said matter of factly and shrugged.
“But I wanna get off, too. So…we could try pussy sliding?” You ask with a curious head quirk.
That’s how he found himself here, a year and a half later with you and your legs bent back to your shoulders, sliding his cock through your soaked labia. He’d laugh at the hot dog bun similarity if he wasn’t so fucking hard. Fuck…he always gets a tinged embarrassed at how much he loves this.
A year and a half of this…activity, with you and he still couldn’t get enough. There is something so fucking dirty about it. He wants your hole and he can’t have it. He stares at it clenching for him, even dribbles spit down onto it to make you messier, but he can’t have it.
Fuck. He wanted it so bad. He wanted you so bad, in every sense, but his therapist said that was a conversation for another day. Past baggage first, future progress later.
He would do whatever you allowed him to do. And right now? That was sliding his thick cock through your pussy lips. He reaches down and uses his thumbs to wrap your lips around his cock to create a tunnel.
You watch him bite his lip as he tries not to groan. Keep Quiet. That’s one of the rules. But today, you’re more wet than you’ve ever been. You watched Robby chew out an EMT that made a very aggressive play for you at Central and it made you untamed.
You drug him up here this time. You took his cock out of his zipper. You took your panties down to your calves and flipped your legs over your head, showcasing yourself for him.
Watching him get jealous like that? You’d never admit to it, but holy hell…you were teetering on every single rule you ever set for the two of you.
The head of his cock keeps massaging your clit with constant heat and pressure. The precum smearing around your folds is making you more and more wet and before you ever realize, you whimper.
Robby’s hips stutter and he shakes his head to regain control. He keeps his eyes directly on your pussy and his cock together. It’s almost impossible not to look in your eyes right now.
And that’s when it first happens. The head of his cock notches against your entrance. That’s NEVER happened before. In all this time, he has been so careful. Your gasp mixed with his grunt has you both staring at each other with wide eyes.
“Fuck…fuck sorry” he mumbles and moves himself back to the safe zone. “S’ok” you murmur and let your head fall back when the head of his cock hits your clit again.
Another 3 minutes of this and you’ve gone beyond soaked. It’s vulgar. You’re dripping onto the linoleum floor under the bed and your thighs are smeared with your wetness. Robby has never had to concentrate like this with you before. Never. He’s 54. He’s grown. Composure is the name of the game, but right now? He feels like he’s 16 again.
His hips pull back to slide forward and without warning, the amount of moisture you’ve collected slides him down slightly and right into you. Fully.
He lets out a yell. An actual yell. And his head drops forward. The gasp that drops from your mouth ends in a squeal and you bite down in his shoulder that’s now in your face.
“FUCK! fuck! Fuck sorry you’re so fucking wet. I…fuck. I tried” he pants sounding embarrassed? Mortified? Nervous?
And then, as if he was dreaming, you say the one thing he never expected. With your lips placed against his ear, you moan so soft. His skin erupts in goosebumps as you nuzzle against him. “Don’t stop”
