Pairing: Jack Abbot x Samira Mohan
Summary: If you need a Mohabbot longfic, I have nearly 100k to feed you. Canon-compliant S3 and beyond slow-burn. Jack POV with YOU as Samira. Takes the challenges of their relationship and through the power of SMUT heals them. Comes with Spotify playlist. Final chapter drops May 10.
Content: age gap, work relationship, vanilla kink, soft bondage, soft dom & switch, no use of y/n but uses You POV for Samira, angsty sweet and deep
Author’s note: I’ve been on AO3 awhile but never for an active show, so this is my first time circulating to an audience. I slow burn the smut but when it gets unleashed it doesn’t really ever stop
Warnings: Dead wife Mary as a Ghost, Trauma-informed, Angsty with healthy resolution, Ending involves non-fetishized pregnancy (planned pregnancy single mother with non-parent partner), 18+ explicit, DNI minors
Word count (total): 93k
Chapter WC: 3064, Read it all on AO3
Chapter 1 blurb: Waking Mary
Mary had a way to ease me past embarrassment or taboo. She had been the only one who helped me uncover what she called competency crushes on the men in my service. A crush was just a normal physical response, she had assured me. Mary and I could handle those together, play them out safely and find the ultimate conclusion that we were each others’ best fit. The passing interest never held up.
But I had still set up rules to the game.
“No residents,” I had said. “No power dynamics.”
Mohan had joined after Mary’s death. But I couldn’t help imagining the ghost’s questions and my own answers. What did you notice?
She has thick black curls barely held back in a knot. She is thin but you’d love her wrists. She’s too young for us. “Stop,” I said aloud. “She’s not part of the game.”
What makes her different?
She looked right through me when she found me patching myself up. She only saw the empty bed where her patient had run off.
“My husband? Just a wound to patch? Insulting.”
“She’s good at her job.”
“Better than you?” she teased. “Does she bring that attention to detail to the rest of her life?”
“Stop,” I said aloud again. Had I been speaking aloud before? “She’s a resident. And it’s not like that. She is the smartest one among them.”
“Among the day walkers,” she clarified, using a term of derision. “If she’s so smart, maybe she can hold her own against the attendings? Thirties isn’t too young for us, Jack. How old do you think she really is? The age you were when you lost your leg, maybe? Wouldn’t her thin wrists be easy to hold down? Is she for me or for you?”
Thanks go to @theariespov for tagging me in a literary tropes game. I won't be tagging others, but below is my body swap for The Pitt
Baran/Jack Bodyswap challenge (read or comment on AO3)
WC: 3,437
When Baran woke up in Jack’s bed her first thought was “Shit, how much did I drink?” She didn’t have a hangover (yet) but when she tried to slink out of bed her right leg gave out and she crashed immediately to the soft carpet of Jack’s dark bedroom. She glanced around from the floor, trying to get her bearings. Jack wasn’t in bed but if she was going to make a quick exit it wouldn’t be so quiet now.
As she flashed her eyes on the red lights of the clock radio she realized she could read the numbers easily. “Oh, fuck, I left my contacts in, too?” Asked Jack’s voice.
“What—” Baran looked down at the hands propping her up on the floor and they were masculine with thick, short fingers and a wedding band that she knew was for a ghost.
Across town, Jack was jumping up and down on Baran’s bed in her apartment, whooping and hollering. He hopped on his right leg. He did flying air kicks. He slipped out of bed, stood up, and stamped his feet wildly. An angry knock rapped twenty-three times on the door before he could answer it, sliding poorly across the wooden floors in Baran’s socks. The locks took him a moment but when he threw open the door he found the startled face of an older woman.
“Can I help you?” Jack asked sweetly in Baran’s mellifluous voice. He cracked himself up.
“Ms Harshimi, could you please—I mean—”the woman averted her eyes, covering her face. Jack realized with all the jumping around Baran’s shirt had flown open. He had quickly learned why women don’t usually jump on beds without bras, but it had been so good to have two—TWO!—legs again that he’d ignored the mild discomfort. He flushed at this, for the first time feeling a sense of responsibility for the body he had taken. He pulled the pajama shirt closed, apologizing.
“Do you have a circus in your apartment?” Asked the old woman, eyes still averted.
“It’s Doctor,” Jack said, “Doctor Al-Ha! Shi! Mi! Or Baran to my friends which means you will please address me as Doctor. And what I do in my apartment is none of your business, but I will ask the circus to take it down a notch.”
“It becomes my business when—” Jack closed the door, giving the neighbor just enough time to yank her nose out of the way. He danced and spun through the small apartment, but it didn’t feel quite the same. He should get Baran’s body dressed. Was Baran in his body? He slowed down from a flutter-kick, a moment of anxiety welling up in his chest. And then—suddenly, he felt as if his stomach dropped out on a roller coaster. Or no, that wasn’t quite it, because Jack had never been afraid of roller coasters. The deep irrational nightmare of PTSD fuzzed reality and for a moment Jack wasn’t sure if he was moving or frozen.
Then it passed and a terror gripped him, like he had only just escaped death and couldn’t remember any of it. “Shit,” he grabbed a table to stabilize himself, but Baran’s body was strong and steady. It was his terror gripping him. But this wasn’t his PTSD. It felt different in Baran’s body. “Baran,” he suddenly said, in her voice, realizing.
“Jack?” Baran asked, having finally found the crutch Jack kept by the bed and shrieking in an un-Jack-like voice when the phone lit up with her “unknown” number. “Why the fuck don’t you have Face ID? And why did you take my body?” She had been angrily staring at the phone for fifteen minutes, helplessly locking herself out with bad password attempts.
“I didn’t take your body, you took mine!” He said in her voice, “Listen—we don’t have time to argue about this. Something bad is happening to me. I just… I don’t know how to explain it, but—”
“You fell down a rollercoaster while standing in place and then woke up to deja vu of the worst nightmare you’ve ever had?” Baran asked. “Sorry,” she said in Jack’s voice, “I hadn’t disclosed yet. It’s a kind of epilepsy. You’ll be fine, but I have to talk you through my medication and you can’t drive.”
“And here I thought I was the asshole for taking your leg,” Jack said. Baran’s voice didn’t sound like her own. She was speaking in a clipped, higher tone with Jack’s body but he was so easy and relaxed in hers. For a moment she was jealous. “Can you come to me, then?” He asked. “Then maybe we can figure this out.”
“You want me to drive?” Baran asked, looking down at the missing leg. “Didn’t you have to take a certification course or something?”
“You’ll catch on quick,” Jack said, “Or just Uber. You can use my account. Oh… and uh… my password is 8675309. I’m changing it as soon as I get my body back, though.”
“Jack,” Baran said, inhaling deeply to take control of the situation, “I expect you will treat my body with the same respect I have seen you use toward all patients. And I will do the same for you. But if there is anything you need to tell me, or anything I should avoid—”
“You’re going to get a migraine if you don’t get coffee in me within the next hour,” Jack said, “I take it sweet, I don’t know if that will change or not. But then you need to get yourself to a bathroom within twenty minutes. The downstairs shower is best for that and already has a full set-up that is pretty intuitive. Don’t be a hero, crawl anytime you feel unstable. Enjoy how many push-ups I can do. I’ve been… dancing. And I might have jumped a little too vigorously on your bed.”
“Get a bra on me as soon as you can,” Baran said, “Please. Enjoy the dancing. I did ballet so the body might remember it. And I can sing, if you want to try that,” Baran wasn’t sure why she was telling him this, but she felt something familiar in her chest. Grief. A bittersweet, familiar kind of sadness. It wasn’t just familiar to Jack’s body, but to her own. “I also drink coffee, but I use an aero press. You should be able to YouTube it if you can’t figure it out. I’m on my period but I’m not going to ask you to use the menstrual cup. There are emergency pads for when my daughter visits under my sink. I hate them, but maybe you won’t mind them as much. I’ll text you my medication routine.”
“I’ll send mine,” Jack agreed. “And maybe I’ll see you in two hours? Give us both plenty of time to wake up. Shit—weren’t you scheduled to work today?”
“I’m already late. Damnit—”
“Baran,” Jack said with Baran’s voice, “I have an idea. I am going to call in as you, warn them that you aren’t coming in. But then I am going to say that Dr Abbot is aware of the situation and will be calling with more details—that’s how they really know it is an emergency, when you can’t even give your own excuse. You just have to tell them we were out last night for drinks when you got called out of town for an emergency and you’re still there.”
“I’ll keep it vague. We don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck like this,” Baran agreed.
“I mean,” Jack laughed, “you can do my job, Baran. Maybe not like the Nightcrawlers do it, but we could fill in for each other.”
“Please don’t jinx us,” Baran said. “Now call me in sick. I’ll wait two minutes and also call in.”
Baran hopped over to Jack’s walk-in closet and began looking through the women’s shirts and blouses when she realized she was looking at the wrong side. Then she remembered what Jack had told her of his dead wife last night. She paused, a hand on the black silk sleeve of a gothic blouse. Then she brought the fabric to Jack’s face and inhaled. His body responded with relief, and a deep sorrow that made Baran want to cry even as Jack’s eyes stayed dry.
“Oh, Jack,” she sighed. “You poor thing.”
She took Jack’s advice, throwing the clothes she had picked out for him down the steps and then slowly crawling down from the top floor to the bottom. He had explained that he left his leg downstairs the night before and sent a YouTube video for how to put it on later. She figured out how to make his coffee and while it was percolating decided to see just how many push-ups he could actually do.
“Holy shit,” she laughed after thirty, still feeling strong and stable. She began counting aloud after fifty and then in Arabic after seventy, panting with such exhilaration that she felt slightly ashamed of the sound she made with his voice when she reached one hundred. She closed her eyes, laying flat and laughing on his kitchen floor.
Without thinking, her arms straightened along her body and she curved her back into a bend that lifted her chest and legs off the ground, throat forward like a figurehead at the front of a ship. The counterpose felt delicious after all the work tightening his chest muscles, and she let out deep breaths that came from Jack’s lower back. “Are you good at yoga, Jack?” She asked finding herself getting onto hands and knees to shake out her spine with cat and cow poses. If she thought too hard she would lose balance or lose the thread of his body leading her to the next pose. But if she took her time breathing, counting in Arabic or humming in his not-so melodic voice, the poses came.
Jack put one foot on the lid of the toilet. “Don’t you fucking laugh,” he said to his wife’s ghost, who he assumed had something to do with this. He had laid out towels all over the bathroom floor just in case. As a doctor, Jack knew the uterus only sheds a mere five tablespoons of blood during the course of a period, but as a husband he also knew that those five tablespoons would feel like five cups and find their way to spilling on any white surface in a bathroom. Then, furrowing Baran’s brow like he was mid-procedure, he began feeling for the tampon string she had told him he had to find before he could have any coffee. Luckily the string was readily apparent, but the sensation of pulling out a tampon was not something he could have prepared himself for.
“Oh, yuck,” he said, “it’s like throwing up from holes I didn’t know I had.” The tampon itself was inconsequential. He wrapped it nicely in some toilet paper and threw it in the trash. Then he applied the sticky side of a pad to the “ugly” panties that Baran had explicitly told him to use and hiked up the underwear. “Nope,” he said immediately, “no we do not like this, Baran. Wow!” A surprising roil of anger welled in him and he had to brace himself against the bathroom sink. It was as if his skin was peeling off in slow, anxious, sloughs. “Oh wow, we really don’t like this. Sorry!” He yanked the underpants off and the anxious rage dissipated. “Fucking hell,” he sighed. “What the fuck?”
By the time Baran was knocking on her own door with Jack’s body, Jack had committed the following to Baran’s search history on her phone: everything I need to know about menstrual cups now that I have a uterus; sanitize menstrual cup; please how to aeropress coffee; coffee that delivers near me; promo code dunkin; can I do yoga on my period.
“What are you doing to my apartment?” Baran asked, holding two iced coffees and wearing Jack’s backpack over both shoulders.
“Wow, you don’t even look like me,” Jack said.
“You look like me,” Baran shrugged in Jack’s body. She handed him her favorite coffee. “If you haven’t noticed yet, the tastebuds belong to the body.”
“Oh,” Jack accepted the coffee gratefully, taking a long sip and raising his eyebrows in surprise, “I like this?”
“You have the tastebuds of a child,” Baran sighed, putting his backpack on her kitchen table. “What music is this? Have you been working out?”
“Uh, Sepultra,” Jack said, wiping sweat off Baran’s forehead. “You got really angry so I was helping.”
“I don’t get angry,” Baran laughed.
“Wow, I am so cute,” Jack admired. “I think I get it now. And yeah, you definitely have a lot of rage. I should know. Come on, sit over here so I can check the leg.” Baran sat down, swapping Jack’s phone for her own and immediately reading through the browsing history as the apartment door buzzed. “Oh! More coffee!” Jack jumped up and flew out the door, taking the stairs in leaps that made Baran squeak in panic. He came back and set two more iced coffees on the kitchen table. “Hey, did you know you could do this?” He asked before cutting a caper.
“Jack, I’m glad you’re having such a good time—”
“We got to make the best of it, right? Wow, you did pretty good here!” He was checking out the prosthetic sock and the fit. He’d asked Baran to dress him in shorts so he easily review her work. He popped the compression of the fit and did a slight readjustment that would have irritated Baran if she didn’t immediately feel a sudden relief as the prosthesis fit back into place.
“Oh,” she said, “thank you. That is much better.”
“I bet you are so grumpy,” he laughed, “you really got the shit end of the stick. Sorry, Baran.”
“It’s not so bad,” she lied, thinking about the way his body responded to the clothes in the closet. The way she had been slowly growing irritated and impatient when the prosthesis was slightly out of joint. The cloud that always seemed to be there, like he was forgetting something important—forgetting how to be alive. “I did one hundred pushups,” she said helpfully. “Or you did, I guess.”
“One hundred?” He straightened from where he had been attending to his leg. “Damn. I usually stop at forty because I get bored.”
“You’re good at yoga,” she offered. “You told me what to do most of the time, I just had to listen.”
“That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” He agreed, “We could publish a paper on body memory, if anyone ever believed us. I know how to dance, but not like you know how to dance. I was doing stuff with my hands I’d never thought of. It was really… pretty!”
“Jack, what happened to us?” Baran asked, leaning forward. It felt good to sit down. Jack couldn’t stop fidgeting in her body though. She realized he hadn’t showered and wasn’t sure if she was grateful or not.
“I don’t know. We went out for drinks, not too much, and then went home and body swapped, right?”
“Right,” Baran agreed, holding out Jack’s hands in front of her eyes and looking at them. “And now I’m you.”
“Well, you’re in my body. You are not Jack Abbot. Just like I’m not Baran Al-Hashimi. Oh—which reminds me, we might have to apologize to your nosey old neighbor.”
“Jack!” Baran shook her head, “No, never mind. It’s fine. We’ll figure this out.”
“I do have a theory, though,” Jack said. “Jesus, I didn’t realize how easy it could be to just breathe. It’s intoxicating! Okay—” he stopped pirouetting in the kitchen. “Okay, so my first thought was maybe this has to do with Mary, my wife. She’s a ghost, and mostly she is in my head. But what if she isn’t? If this is true, maybe she is, too. I could ask for her help?”
“Why do you make me look so young?” Baran asked, looking at the hopeful brown eyes staring out of her face.
“You make me look like a nerd,” Jack smiled. “I’m just happy to be alive. It’s easy in your body. You’re lucky I’m so vain or else I might not want my body back.”
“The seizures didn’t come back?” Baran asked. Jack shook his head. “Okay. Um… okay,” she took a deep breath as if hearing Jack for the first time, “Your wife? You think a ghost can help us?”
“Can’t hurt,” he shrugged.
“Jack,” Baran sighed, rubbing her forehead and then stopping suddenly at the alarm of feeling an unfamiliar face. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that,” he said. “Baran, I’m inside your body. Until today I didn’t know what a focal seizure felt like, or what period cramps felt like, or that you like disgusting coffee and that it tastes great with your mouth.”
Jack could read his own facial expressions and saw the discomfort and mild horror on his face from Baran’s reactions. “Sorry,” he apologized, “it’s all very intimate. It’s frightening. And it is supernatural.”
“That implies there is no natural resolution to this,” Baran said. “Which means, Jack, we’re fucked.”
“No, Baran,” Jack smiled with Baran’s face, “it just means you need to open your third eye. What is your history of drug use?”
“With epilepsy? The craziest I get is a couple drinks, maybe a pot gummy at a wedding. Jack, I didn’t take you for a hippie!”
“Well, good news, you don’t have epilepsy any more and I happen to know which drugs are likely to give my body a bad trip and which don’t. So how about we finish our coffees, I can put on a bathing suit, and you can wash my hair in the shower? I know you don’t want me trying it myself.”
“I mean, you have curly hair,” Baran began.
“Mary had curly hair. I have waves. I’m a 2-C on a humid day, you’ve got 3-B at least. She made me promise not to fuck with 3 hair and I keep my promises.”
“You’re making me like Mary,” Baran said.
“I hear that a lot. She was sort of hard to get to know, but once you knew her, she was glue. Oh wow—” Jack realized he had made Baran’s body start crying. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You’re upset, you’re just feeling it easier. It’s muffled in this body,” Baran said. “I can’t believe you said we should write a paper before I did.” Baran took a deep breath. “We can’t finish these coffees without giving ourselves a heart attack, but you’re otherwise right. I’ll clean you up and then we can try your method until… six P.M. Then we try whatever I’ve thought of by then that must be better.”
i am loving all these tag games! i feel bad for putting them off of so long but here we go, finally! thank you to @cassierins for tagging me ( and for being such a great editor - thank you for all that you do! )
here's a link to their rendition of this game!
if tagged, copy and paste the paragraph below and highlight whatever prompt that you prefer!
slowburn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbours or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or genderbent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane
see my navigation post for all the other ✉️ ゛ tag games .ᐟ ˎˊ˗ i've participated in!
Thanks you @theariespov because I will have a fic coming out shortly....
slowburn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbours or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or genderbent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane
Warnings: mild horror elements (ER scenario involves life and death)
Author's note: Chapter 2 of Nazely's regular evening on the PTMC Night Shift. The witching hour has struck, and Nazely finds herself quickly undone by an encounter with a beautiful young woman.
WC: 3,247 Read or comment on AO3
Chapter 2: Sophie & the Horsemen
Nazely knocked a kink out of her neck as she wove her way through chairs behind Shen. It was almost one in the morning and the witching hour was settling around the Emergency Department like an orange cat curling around its prey. But then the curiosity that first got her into medicine pulled her attention away from her attending. She peeled away from Shen’s lead, saying to herself, “Is that the Thinking Chair?” She walked toward a petite, young, blonde woman with pink and blue streaks in her hair sitting in an overstuffed low-slung red armchair amid the shit plastic and metal chairs in the waiting room.
“Doctor?” The young woman asked, sitting up with an expectant smile. She had that artistic look that spoke to someone with a confident and unusual style. Her pants were denim blue corduroy and she wore a felted white vest over bare skin. Nazely’s gaze brushed along the exposed skin–no visible injuries. She was missing her left incisor–possibly the presenting issue–but somehow the gap made her more charming. Nazely reached out to introduce herself with a handshake.
“Yes, I’m Dr Nazely Toomarian—did you bring this chair with you—? What the…”
“Oh! Shucks!” The young woman said, snatching her hand back, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry!”
“Woah,” Dr John Shen said from a few paces off, turning back to see Nazely. He put out hands, warning others in the waiting room to stay where they were. Then he took a brisk jog over to Nazely, looking her up and down in surprise, “You’re a muppet!”
“What?” Said Nazely Muppet, holding out felt hands in front of her that appeared to be attached to stiff guide wires. “I’m a Muppet?”
“A puppet,” the woman apologized, “Muppets™ are trademarked. Gosh, I didn’t think it would work on people.”
“We need a quarantine,” Shen said, snapping into action. He waved away the persistently curious onlookers, squaring himself between Nazely Muppet™ and the young woman. “Ma’am,” he addressed Sophie, standing just out of her reach, “if Dr Toomarian assists you will that further degrade her reality?’
“What?” Asked the woman.
“Will I become more puppety?” Nazely Puppet asked, adrenaline pushing away panic as she took in her new body. The ends of the guide wires were just out of focus and if she tried to follow them with her fingers they weren’t there at all—like an irritating loose hair tickling her rib. She only had four fingers, but had no apparent limitation in dexterity.
“Oh, no I don’t think so. Everything I touch turns to felt,” the young woman shrugged, speaking with a relaxed slur that Nazely took in as both a potential symptom or something else distressingly attractive. “I’m Sophie by the way. Real sorry about that.”
“Okay, Sophie,” Nazely took a deep breath, reaching her hand back out to help Sophie out of the low-slung chair, “you can follow me. Let’s find you a room.”
Nazely did not become more puppety after touching Sophie again, but she also didn’t turn back to her usual flesh and blood. She couldn’t see her own legs unless she concentrated, and then they moved underneath her in a goofy clip-clop of sneakers and scrubs. She lead Sophie to the psych hold as a temporary quarantine and Shen pulled Ellis onto the case.
“It does not appear to be contagious,” Nazely was explaining to Ellis, “see?” Dr Ellis leapt backward before Nazely could touch her, but instead Nazely just picked up a pen she had been experimenting with. She gave the pen a deft twirl before she handed it to Sophie but nothing happened.
“What—”
“Oh, only certain things turn into felt,” Sophie apologized, as if she had forgotten to go over the rules in the two minutes that they’d known each other. “I think it has to be over a certain size maybe? I turn most of my food into felt but it still tastes the same. It’s terrible when it becomes sentient, though.”
“That’s… none of this makes sense,” Dr Ellis said. “Sophie, have you tried wearing gloves?”
“Um, it turns them into these cute Minnie Mouse gloves, but I still turn everything into felt. I think it’s only in the hands though. Like, when I sat in the waiting chair nothing happened until my hands touched it.” She had a bad habit of gesturing with her hands and patted her hand for emphasis on the gurney as she spoke. Dr Ellis and Dr Nazely Puppet Toomarian watched as nothing happened to the gurney bed.
“Why didn’t the bed change?” Ellis asked.
“Um,” Guessed Sophie, “Because it’s not that cute? My bed at home is felt now. Some things aren’t worth the magic.”
Nazely felt a slight thrill that the magic in Sophie’s fingers considered her better than a hospital bed. But she cleared her throat to stay on task.
“Sophie,” she said, “if you promise not to leave the room we don’t have to lock the door, okay? But we will have individuals monitoring the situation and we need you to stay here. We prefer to not put patients on involuntary hold if we don’t have to.”
“I won’t go anywhere,” Sophie promised, green eyes locking with Nazely. She had dark eyebrows and the worry on her forehead smoothed when she smiled at her. “I came to you, remember? I want to be… safe. I don’t know if I even need a cure.”
The press of the witching hour closed around them and there were raised voices in the waiting room toward the front of the hospital. But Ellis, who had been night shift her entire post-grad, just shook her head, the golden hair cuffs in her locs clicking pleasantly. The moon was waning gibbous, Samhain was far away, it was likely just a typical shouting contest from the frustrated patients waiting to be seen. The doctors’ attention would remain on Sophie.
“How about Dr Toomarian brings some objects to better understand your condition,” Ellis continued to speak to Sophie in her easy low voice, “She is already… inoculated… against your particular… gift.” Nazely didn’t mind this assignment.
The sound of arguing got louder and there were hurried footsteps as nurses and doctors ran to the front. But no code was called.
“What’s going on?” Ellis finally asked with a raised eyebrow, leaning out the psych door to catch Marco as he jogged past them, curls bouncing.
“Abbot is staring down the four horsemen of the apocalypse,” he said with a broad grin.
“This is not Philadelphia!” They could hear Jack Abbot shouting from the front. “You’re five hours west!” Despite the rasp in his voice Nazely had never heard him yell more than an command for a crash cart in the ED. Shen had guessed Abbot either did scream therapy or was part of an underground death metal band to explain his hoarse voice. Both theories were sound, there was nothing quavering in Dr Abbot’s voice as he shouted now. “Go bother those knuckleheads! Or New Jersey! I hear Hoboken is great this time of year—!” A sound of trumpeting cut him off.
“Maybe we should check this out,” Ellis said to Nazely. “Um… you know what? Sophie, do you mind coming with us and just maybe, pocketing those things? Your talents might come in useful in a pinch with some apocalyptic beings.”
“Oh, sure! No problem, boss.” Sophie shoved her hands in her pockets, her wide eyes and curled shoulders making Nazely feel a throb of protectiveness. But she didn’t have time for foolish feelings.
Nazely Puppet made a harrumphing hop-walk to the crowd of people growing around the waiting room, muttering to herself in Armenian. Witching hour peaked just after three. This night was escalating too quickly.
She kept a felt hand on one of Sophie’s elbows, a hand up to make sure people stayed away from them as they split the crowd. Most of the waiting patients recognized Sophie and leapt out of her way as Nazely and she cut through the crowd, giving them quick access to the showdown.
Dr Abbot was standing, arms crossed, stance wide, having a heated discussion in a lowered voice with a much taller crowned skeleton that had to bend down to hear him. Three other skeletons, equally tall and naked save for the bone-and-thorn crowns sprouting from their heads, idled nearby. Nazely knew them all on sight.
“You don’t look too good,” Sophie said to Nazely Puppet. “You’re doing the thing where your face scrunches in like you got a fist for a mouth. Usually a bit of smoke starts happening next.”
“I do have a fist for a mouth,” Nazely said, untwisting the felt of her face. “Don’t worry about me, Sophie.”
“C’mon, man!” Dr Abbot was saying louder now, “You’re not even following your own cosmology.”
“The call has been made,” said the pale skeleton of imperialism, the leader who would be replaced by the antichrist, "we must make way for the one who will come after me."
“The antichrist can’t be born here,” Jack said with a laugh, “we’re a chronically under-funded taxpayer’s hospital! I didn’t think the antichrist dealt in humiliation.”
“𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊 𝕄𝔸ℕ 𝕀𝕊 𝔾𝕀𝕍𝕀ℕ𝔾 ℙℝ𝔼𝔽𝔼ℝ𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕀𝔸𝕃 𝕋ℝ𝔼𝔸𝕋𝕄𝔼ℕ𝕋 𝕋𝕆 𝕋ℍ𝕆𝕊𝔼 𝕎ℍ𝕆 ℂ𝔸ℕ ℙ𝔸𝕐 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℍ𝕀𝔾ℍ𝔼𝕊𝕋 𝕊𝕌𝕄,” announced one of the agitated crowned skeletons, straightening to its full height. There was a stain to his crown where the blood had not yet been bleached away.
Nazely guessed their horses must be in the parking lot, which was civil of them.
“𝕎ℍ𝕆 ℍ𝔼ℝ𝔼 ℍ𝔸𝕊 𝕎𝔸𝕀𝕋𝔼𝔻 𝕄𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔸ℕ 𝔽𝕆𝕌ℝ ℍ𝕆𝕌ℝ𝕊 𝕋𝕆 𝔹𝔼 𝕊𝔼𝔼ℕ?” Hands shot up in the waiting room.
“Hey! That is not how triage works,” Abbot turned his attention away from the imperial skeleton Conquest, “stop trying to start up nonsense, War.”
“Oh,” Ellis shook her head, leaning toward Nazely, “they have history. That’s the one who took his leg.” Then Ellis slid her eyes to the skeleton that had separated from the others and was bending down to listen to Lena, nodding gravely. “That one you probably already know, they are almost an honorary employee by now. But they took Abbot’s wife so they don’t talk much. Not since Lena became a death doula anyway. She’s our best negotiator.”
“I’ve met them,” Nazely said quietly to Ellis.
“H𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬, N𝔞𝔷𝔢𝔩𝔶 T𝔬𝔬𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔫,” grinned a third crowned skeleton, rising up from a hunched posture to fix its hollow sockets on the puppet doctor. “W𝔢 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔴𝔢𝔩𝔩 𝔦𝔫 𝔞𝔫𝔶 𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔪. I 𝔠𝔞𝔫 𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔰𝔱 𝔦𝔫 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔯... 𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔤𝔢,” The bones of this skeleton had black pitting. Sometimes known as Famine, sometimes as Pestilence, the horseman of Scarcity was turning its attention to Nazely upon hearing her voice.
“A𝔥, 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔪 𝔦𝔰 𝔫𝔢𝔴,” Scarcity inspected Nazely-puppet and made long, boney steps toward Sophie. The skeletons had esoteric crowns making it difficult to differentiate among them. Unless, like Jack and Nazely, you had already met all four horsemen before.
“Don’t worry, Sophie. They can’t hurt you,” Nazely said quietly pulling the girl away from Scarcity’s inspection to get closer to where Jack was talking to War and Conquest. “Do you trust me?”
Sophie was shivering but nodded bravely, her hand warm in Nazely’s. “Sure thing, boss,” she said shakily.
“War,” Nazely addressed the one trying to stir up the waiting crowd, “I’d like you to meet my dearest friend Sophie.” War hated friendship. Dr Nazely Toomarian extended Sophie’s hand out to shake hands with the grinning skeleton who leaned toward them greedily, eager for any chance to sow discord. But as soon as they touched, the six-foot skeletal horseman shrunk to a three-foot fat felt puppet.
“ᗯᕼᗩT!?” He shrieked in a higher-pitched voice. Upon seeing the transformation, Scarcity let out a horrible moaning keen of terror.
“Oh, that’s new,” Nazely said. He was adorable.
Scarcity and the dog-toy puppet of War recoiled behind Conquest. Dr Abbot held up conciliatory hands, asking Nazely to secure Sophie away from the frightened horsemen.
“Hey,” he turned his attention away and snapped his fingers at Death, who had been talking about a patient with Lena. Death was common enough in the ED that they could have had their own laminated badge, but the other three were the real trouble. “We don’t want to start a fight, right? You would all look pretty bad showing up to herald the endtimes as adorable plushies, right? But listen,” he leaned in to speak with Death and Conquest as if sharing a secret that the entire waiting room and gathered medical team were in on. “You just made a small tactical error. You picked the wrong hospital, guys. You want your antichrist born here? Among the rabble? The common people? All of us striving together with a common goal, spilling our blood and sweat and tears for what? For decency?” Scarcity moaned, clutching the soft plushie of War to its chest with a horrible squeak. “You want the bringer of the end of the world to be one of us? When there is a prestige Catholic hospital just six miles from here across the river? They delight in turning away our kind of folk. They can use rules and religion to deny lifesaving care. And the priests? C’mon,” he made a wanking off gesture.
“Oooh,” Conquest said in a low voice that made Nazely’s felt skin shiver. “We love priests. We go way back.”
“HOW DID YOU DO THIS TO WAR?” Death wanted to know. Until now, the skeleton had seemed the most disinterested of the group, preferring to catch-up with Lena while the other three got into trouble. But then the terrible grin of Death fixed itself on Jack Abbot. Nazely felt her shoulders cave into her little puppet body before reminding herself she was still strong, straightening up and lifting her chin. Death was fixated on Dr Abbot. “IS IT MORE OF YOUR LUCK, JACK?”
“Life is mysterious and full of wonder,” Nazely said flatly, inserting herself between the Senior Attending and the specter. “Do you want your antichrist to look like me?”
The skeletons gave a rattling shudder and War squeaked like a dog toy. This only alarmed the other horsemen more. Even Death grumbled in distaste.
“Direct your heralds elsewhere,” Jack said. “They won’t see you coming, and they will be ready to accept all your coins. PTMC won’t have you.”
“Not unless you squeak,” Sophie grinned. Nazely took her hand again, giving her a quick shake of the head not to interrupt.
“FINE,” Death decided, speaking as the true leader of the four. “BUT I AM TAKING ONE FOR THE ROAD.”
“Take Jasper, he’s been stuck here long enough,” Ellis offered. Death gave a long glance to a young man in chairs whose attention had turned to the ghost of Jasper floating in to see what the hubbub was about.
“I DON’T THINK I WILL,” Death said, stepping forward and reaching out to touch the young man who was breathing hard at seeing the translucent figure. He only understood the horsemen as a motorcycle gang and the eldritch horror had been an unwashed and unhoused figure. But he newly beheld the ghost. Nazely realized the IEIAIO song-spell had opened his third eye just a smidge, and he was panicking.
“No!” Jack reached forward but Sophie dove first, missing the skeletal finger of Death and wrapping her arms around the young man instead. He instantly turned into a puppet and began screaming.
Death gave a disgruntled sigh, recoiling.
“YUCK. COME ON, BOYS,” Death said. “TO THE HORSES.”
Nazely missed the awesome spectacle of the crowned skeletons mounting their flaming horses with lightening whips and thunderous cracks of hooves. She was trying to get the patient flat as he went into cardiac arrest. Sophie had almost been touched by Death to save this stranger.
“He’s crashing!” Abbot shouted and the team snapped back into action. It was faster to break into the AED kit on the wall than pull in a full crash cart, but when Nazely lined up the pads to the puppet-man’s chest and the machine beeped for clear, an eruption of rainbow pipe cleaners came out of the pads rather than electricity. The pipe cleaners rolled and scattered around the dirty floor of the waiting room and Nazely looked around herself in horror. Sophie had touched the AED—only for a moment, only to move it out of the way of the young man’s head, but enough to turn it into a felt-spitting machine rather than life-saving equipment.
“Fuck!” Nazely began to swear, but then the puppet-man shot up suddenly, his yarn-hair standing straight up and ping-pong eyeballs wide. He gasped, and looked around in wonder and threw up more rainbow pipe-cleaners and yarn. He was shivering and a little smoke came out of his hair.
“Sir? Hello? What is your name?” Nazely tried to ask, but he just coughed up more rainbow yarn.
Abbot and Ellis got him onto the gurney that had been wheeled in, rushing him back to one of the rooms. They held up a hand to signal that Nazely and Sophie should stay behind. Nazely was still kneeling on the linoleum floor, the crowded waiting room avoiding touching her or Sophie. The air seemed to have left the waiting room and the fluorescent lights hummed in the sudden silence.
“All right,” Chantanah clapped her hands, “back in line! Geraldo Diaz Rios?”
Nazely turned to Sophie, a roil of emotions churning through her from anger, to horror, to gratitude. Her stupid puppet face probably made every one of these emotions plain, and she wouldn’t be surprised if her own hair was standing on end, or smoke coming out of her ears. But she calmed herself. Mia would come in to clean up the AED kit and pipe cleaners soon. She stood up. She had to take care of her patient.
“With me. Now,” she said to Sophie, holding her hand out.
“I’m so sorry, boss,” Sophie said quietly, standing.
“I’m not your boss, I’m Dr Toomarian. Let’s get you somewhere safe, okay? We still haven’t figured all this out.”
“Is he going to be okay?” Sophie asked, wrapping her other hand around her midriff to clutch it close to her. Nazely’s felt hand dragged Sophie through the parted sea of the waiting room.
“He’s better now than he was a minute ago. But let’s not risk anything else.” When Nazely got Sophie to her cloistered cell she forcibly closed her puppet eyes and rubbed away the shock and anger that must be on her felt face. With a deep breath she reset. “Sophie, you were very brave just now. Thank you.”
“I only regret not turning one of their dumb stallions into a hobby horse,” Sophie said. “And also almost killing that guy, I regret that. Sorry again.”
“I’m going to get you something to eat from the cafeteria,” Nazely said, needing the walk to calm herself down after seeing the skeletal faces that had haunted her family and homeland. After almost losing a patient to the grinning face of Death. After feeling her heart wedge into her throat watching this strange, cursed young woman risk her life to save a stranger.
“Don’t get nothing bigger than a fist,” Sophie suggested, snapping her out of her momentary reverie. “This morning my apple and sandwich sang to me while I ate them. They were nice enough about it, but I don’t want to do that again if I don’t have to.”
ok i'm just going to address this already because i have more than a few messages in my inbox bringing this up and i fear ignoring them isn't really helping.
i DON'T want to talk about shawn's weight in any capacity. gaining. losing. i don't want to talk about it.
it is none of my business what he, or anyone, does with their body.
how many times over the years have fans focused on a celebrity's weight only for that celebrity to come out later and have to disclose they are dealing with a serious illness.
is that the case with shawn? i hope not but i don't want to speculate about his weight with anyone.
sorry to those in my inbox but i won't be answering any messages in regards to this.
Jack Abbot x IT!worker Reader
Pittling Tech Support: Fueled by Red Bull
Summary:
Navigating the bitter aftermath of a workplace layoff, you struggle to ignore the blurred lines between Jack’s protective care and his escalating possessiveness. A rain-soaked, emotionally charged encounter in the parking garage pushes the two of you dangerously close to crossing a point of no return. But when a sudden crisis at the hospital violently unearths a ghost from your hidden past, the fragile walls you’ve built shatter, forcing you to push Jack away just when he tries to hold you together.
Word counter: 11k
- Tags:
Mutual Pining,Heavy Angst,Protective Jack Abbot,Jealousy,Age Difference,Older Man/Younger Woman
- Content warning:
Grief/Mourning,Dissociation,Denial of Feelings,Touch-Starved,Unhealthy Coping,Mechanisms,Emotional Hurt/Comfort,Rejection of Comfort
-Editorial team and beta readers for this chapter:
@aubrazilla @kdcollinsauthor @theariespov @yulesinla @ktarima
Masterlist ALT Masterlist Subscribe to taglist!
After the night Jack spent at your place, you both came to an understanding.
You agreed it was time for therapy, admitting you hadn’t been taking your medication as prescribed. You promised you’d start taking your meds properly—both for Jack’s peace of mind, and so you could meet with your doctors and hear their thoughts. You also clipped an AirTag onto your belt loop with a carabiner so Jack could keep track of you, though he didn’t appreciate the “dog tag BARK BARK” label showing up on his phone.
“What should I name it? ‘Snoopy’ or something?” You joked after handing his phone back once everything was set up. You kept telling yourself that letting him track you—even when your phone wasn’t in your hand—was just practical. Thoughtful, even. A small, harmless gesture for the sake of convenience; proof you had nothing to hide. If something happened, he could find you. If you were late, he wouldn’t be left wondering. That’s the version you repeat. The reasonable one. The calm one.
He doesn’t pretend. He’s clear about wanting to know where you are, about needing that access, about how it makes him feel better. He doesn’t dress it up as anything else.
But you do.
You insist it’s about convenience, about transparency, about being considerate. You refuse to call it what it is. Because doing so means admitting this isn’t normal. That you’re shrinking yourself so you fit inside his fears. That you’re bending so he doesn’t snap. You tell yourself it’s easier this way—no tense pauses, no sharp questions, no heavy silence that makes you feel guilty for simply existing.
And when the doubt surfaces, you push it back down. What kind of friendship—or whatever this is—needs constant proof of loyalty? What kind of connection requires surveillance disguised as care? He doesn’t hide his expectations. He doesn’t deny wanting control over the uncertainty.
You’re the one pretending it doesn’t mean something.
You keep calling it trust-building. Calling it harmless.
But deep down, you know.
Stop lying to yourself.
You get called down to the nursing station at The Pitt just as the late-night rush is beginning to build. The overhead lights hum softly, phones are ringing off the hook, and a steady stream of staff weave in and out of the corridor with urgent expressions and half-finished conversations. At the center of it all, the wall-mounted monitors are flashing erratically—screens blinking to black, then bursting back to life in jittery bursts of color and static. A few of the nurses glance up at you with a mix of relief and impatience as you set down your toolkit and step behind the counter.
Dr. Crus is already there, arms folded, watching the chaos unfold on the screens. He gives you a quick rundown: patient charts flickering in and out, seconds before reappearing. You crouch down to inspect the cable connections, suggesting at first that it might just be a single HDMI issue—a loose connection or a frayed cord causing interference. It wouldn’t be the first time a simple fix solved a dramatic-looking problem.
But as you start tracing the cables and swapping ports, it becomes clear this isn’t just one bad line. Two of the monitors refuse to stabilize, their displays stuttering even after you reset the connections and test them with known-good cables. One screen fades to black entirely, emitting a faint electrical whine before going dark. The other flickers stubbornly, colors washing out as if the life is draining from it. You straighten up, sighing quietly as you realize that these monitors haven’t just glitched—they’ve chosen this exact moment, in the middle of a busy shift, to give up for good.
“No, like, I love being Chief,” you say, your voice dripping with irritation as you push your glasses up onto the crown of your head, giving yourself enough room to pinch the bridge of your nose. “But who’s supposed to tell me I now have to call maintenance, who never gets here on time? Or do I have to go up there and yank that thing off the wall myself?”
The fluorescent light above you flickers again, as if mocking you, buzzing with that faint electrical whine that has been drilling into your skull for the past twenty minutes.
Dr. Crus laughs, the sound low and warm, and pats your shoulder. “Occupational hazard,” he says, clearly amused by your slow descent into exasperation. He looks like he’s about to add something—probably a joke about leadership or budgeting—until the double doors burst open and a trauma case rolls in.
The energy in the hallway shifts instantly. Nurses move fast. Voices sharpen. The gurney rattles past.
“Coming,” Crus mutters, already stepping backward as he shrugs into motion, leaving you standing there alone beneath the rebellious light fixture.
You glance back up at the monitor. It flickers again. Once. Twice. A dramatic pause. You narrow your eyes at it like you’re in a standoff.
“Are you planning to kick it, or just stare at it until it falls off?” Jack calls out as he walks past you to join the trauma case, not even slowing down. He’s already tugging on a pair of gloves, snapping them against his wrists.
You don’t bother turning around; you just flip him off in his general direction, your arm raised lazily without breaking eye contact with the ceiling.
“Careful, kids around, Snoopy!” he yells back, grinning as he pushes through the doors into Trauma 1.
You sigh and let your hand drop. “I hate all of you,” you mutter, though there’s no real venom behind it.
As you wait for the maintenance team to arrive—after being transferred twice and assured someone is “on their way”—Dr. Toomerian swivels slightly in her chair. She’s charting at the computer next to you, but her attention is entirely focused on your profile. She tucks a stray, dark curl behind her ear, her gaze lingering on you just a second longer than necessary.
“Wait,” she says, her voice softening, her brows lifting in a way that makes her eyes look impossibly wide. “You’re the Chief?”
You nod, devoid of enthusiasm. “Unfortunately.”
She shifts closer, her knee brushing the fabric of your slacks before she quickly tucks her leg back with a small, apologetic smile. The touch is brief—barely there—but something about it lingers. You notice the way she doesn't quite pull all the way back, the way her chair still tilts toward you. You file it away and focus on the conversation.
“I thought you were kidding earlier.”
“I wish I was.”
She leans back in her chair, her eyes tracking the tired line of your jaw. “How long?”
“Two weeks,” you reply, glancing at your watch as if that alone explains your exhaustion. “Feels like three years.”
Her lips part into a small, encouraging smile. “Wow. Well, congratulations?”
You huff a humorless laugh, looking away from her bright expression to the empty hallway. “I don’t like the reason I was promoted. There was a massive layoff in the IT department. We went from fifteen people down to just five, including me.” You gesture vaguely upward toward the sixth floor. “I lost ten friends in one afternoon. And as a reward, they gave me a title and an office that feels far too big and way too quiet. It wasn’t exactly a merit-based fairy tale. It was more like, ‘You’re still here, you’re cheap, and you’re technically qualified, so congrats, you’re in charge.’”
Dr. Toomerian winces, her hand instinctively reaching out toward your arm. She catches herself halfway, pulling back and settling for nervously twisting her pen instead. The aborted gesture is small, but you notice it—the way she wanted to close that distance. It makes something in your chest tighten. You’re not used to people reaching for you like that.
“That’s… really rough. I’m so sorry.”
She’s just a really empathetic person, you think—though even as the thought forms, something about it feels incomplete. Like you’re translating something more complicated into a simpler language because the alternative is harder to sit with.
“Yeah. Now instead of fixing servers and actually helping people, I’m approving budgets, juggling on-call schedules, and apparently managing old device replacements.” You point upward again as the monitor gives another theatrical flicker.
As if summoned by your sarcasm, the screen sputters violently, flashes bright white—and goes out completely.
You stare up at the dead monitor in silence.
Nazely slowly turns back to you, biting back a smile. “Well,” she says softly, leaning into your space again, “good news. It fell off on its own.”
You let out a long, defeated breath. “Fantastic,” you murmur. “Now I get to file the incident report.”
A half-hour later, a maintenance worker finally arrives with two new monitors and a small portable workbench. As you’re signing off on the work orders on their iPad, Dr. Toomerian watches you type.
“Wow, new equipment,” she says, a teasing lilt in her voice. “Isn’t that something to celebrate?”
“I’d love to,” you reply, handing the iPad back. “But it doesn’t feel like I earned the pull to get this done. It’s more like the hospital thought, ‘We’ve had a huge layoff—let’s throw the remaining five a bone so they don’t quit too.’”
Before she can answer, the pager clipped to her waistband goes off. She checks it, her shoulders dropping slightly. “Ah. My patient in bed four is waking up. I’d better go check on him.” She gives you a soft, lingering smile—something warm and almost wistful in it—before slipping away into the chaos of the hallway.
You watch her go. A faint pulse of something you can’t quite name settles in your chest. Probably just gratitude. She’s kind. That’s all.
“Wait, you’re the Chief?”
Dr. Crus’s voice cuts in from behind you. He’s wandering back from Trauma 1, looking entirely too energized as he spots the shiny new hospital ID clipped to your belt. He reaches out and taps the plastic badge with one finger. You know HR is already hunting you down to give you an even flashier one since you haven’t been at your desk all night.
Before you can explain, one of the maintenance guys clears his throat, clearly impatient. You pivot, instructing the crew to remove the old monitors, send them down to the basement, and install the new mounts. You assure them you’ll handle the cabling yourself. Thankfully, they don’t ask any questions, getting straight to work—mostly because they clearly don’t want to put in any extra effort.
“Don’t call me Chief, please,” you sigh, turning back to Crus.
But Crus is already enjoying this way too much. “Come on. Captain, Chief—you’re collecting ranks like it’s a video game.” He grins, leaning against the counter with an ease that makes it look like he has nowhere else to be. “You practically live here. You married to the job or something?”
It’s a throwaway line. Casual banter. But something in your expression must shift—just a flicker, there and gone—because Crus’s grin softens. His head tilts.
“Wait.” He straightens slightly, eyes dropping with unsubtle curiosity to your left hand. “Seriously? You’re not—”
You follow his gaze to your bare ring finger. “No,” you say, simply. “I’m not.”
Crus blinks. For a moment, the playful edge in his expression gives way to something more genuine—something almost puzzled, like he’s trying to solve an equation that doesn’t add up.
“Huh.” He studies you, and there’s a warmth in it that you’re not sure what to do with. “You’re smart. You’re funny. You keep this entire department from collapsing into chaos on a nightly basis.” He says it simply, like he’s stating facts. Not flattery—just observation. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
Something warm blooms behind your ribs, unexpected and inconvenient. You open your mouth—probably to deflect with a joke—when Jack walks into the Hub from Trauma 2.
He arrives just in time to catch the tail end. You know this because his steps falter. Not dramatically—just a half-second hitch in his stride before he continues toward the nurses’ station. But his attention has already shifted. You can feel it like a change in air pressure.
Jack is still wearing his late wife’s ring. You’ve noticed it before—the thin band that has morphed from a vow into a quiet, permanent fixture on his left hand. You try not to look at it. You try not to think about what it means that you notice.
You turn back to Crus, aiming for casual. “Maybe I’m just too charming for my own good. Scare people off.”
Crus snorts softly, but his eyes flick past you—toward Jack—and something sharp and knowing surfaces in his expression before it’s gone. “Or maybe,” he says, his voice light, “you haven’t noticed who’s paying attention.”
The comment lands strangely. You glance at him, but he’s already looking down at his iPad, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s swallowing a secret.
You shake it off. “Okay, Dr. Henderson. Should I be taking notes?”
He grins but doesn’t elaborate, and you’re left with the odd sense that you’ve missed something important.
Now it's just you and the machines.
A small aluminum ladder stands between you and the mess of cables snaking down the wall. The ladder is too short—you can see that already. The monitors are mounted high, and even the top step won't quite get you there. You'll have to reach. You'll have to balance on the very top, the step labeled NOT A STEP in faded warning letters.
You slip off your cardigan and drape it neatly over the back of a chair. Then you roll up the sleeves of your white shirt, exposing your wrists, and let out a slow breath.
Climbing the ladder, you feel it wobble immediately—a cheap, lightweight thing that wasn't built for this. It creaks under your weight. You test it with a subtle shift of your hips and feel the whole frame shudder. Not ideal. Not something you'd bet your life on. But the cables need connecting, and you're the one here.
You reach behind the first monitor, rising onto your toes on the top step, fingers searching for the right ports by feel. The cables are stiff, new, reluctant to bend. You're stretching—too far—and the ladder bucks under the shift in your center of gravity.
For one lurching second, you feel it go. The world tilts. Your stomach drops. That awful, sickening lurch of gravity deciding it wants you on the floor—
A broad hand catches you at the small of your back, pressing you steady against the wall. Another grips the ladder frame, anchoring it.
"I've got you, Cap," Crus says calmly, right beside you now.
Your heart is hammering. You grip the monitor mount, knuckles white, waiting for the adrenaline to drain from your fingertips. When it does—slowly—you realize Crus hasn't moved. His hand is still firm against your back, his foot hooked around the lowest rung to pin the ladder in place. Grounding. Necessary.
"You okay?" he asks, and this time his voice is quieter, stripped of the usual ease. Just checking.
"Yeah," you manage. "Yeah. Ladder's shit."
"Agreed." He doesn't let go. "Want me to spot you for the rest?"
Part of you bristles at the offer. The other part—the part still vibrating with that half-second of freefall—knows he's right.
"Fine," you mutter.
He nods, settling into position. His attention shifts to his iPad, but his stance stays locked, his body angled to catch you if the ladder moves again. Professional. Reliable. The brush of his thumb against your shirt as you shift is incidental—you think—and you're not sure what to do with the fact that you notice it anyway.
"Thanks, Crus Control," you say, twisting the cable into place. It clicks. You tug twice to be sure. "You're very bossy for someone not technically my boss."
"Just part of the charm," he replies without looking up. But you catch the slight pull at the corner of his mouth—the quiet pleasure he takes in being here, doing this. It occurs to you, briefly, that he didn't have to stay.
You climb down, shift the ladder to the second monitor, and go up again. This one's mounted even higher. You have to stretch full-length, both hands off the ladder, balanced on that top step. The ER has gone even quieter, that strange suspended stillness that feels like the deep inhale before a scream.
Crus moves with you without comment, positioning himself at your right side again, one hand on the ladder frame, the other ready at your back.
Then—
"Crus."
The voice comes from across the nurses' station. Low. Flat. Jack is standing there, one hand on the IV cart, the other holding a chart he's clearly not reading. His jaw is tight. His eyes are on the ladder—on the way it shivers every time you shift your weight.
Crus glances over. Reads him in a second. Something flickers across his expression—not annoyance, not competition. Just recognition. Like he's been waiting for this.
"Cap," Crus says, looking up at you. "I need to finish charting on that pelvic fracture from earlier—attending's already riding me about it." He taps his iPad, already pulling up the file. "Give me a sec."
He doesn't wait for you to answer. He steps back from the ladder—and the absence of him is immediate, the frame wobbling without his weight to anchor it. You sway, and your hand shoots out to grip the monitor mount.
"Whoa—"
"I've got you."
Jack is already there. He moves fast—faster than you expected—crossing the distance between the IV cart and the ladder in three long strides. His foot hooks around the bottom rung, mirroring exactly what Crus was doing. One hand clamps onto the ladder frame. The other settles against your lower back, broad and steady.
The ladder goes still.
You look down at him, breath caught. He's not looking at your face. He's looking at the ladder, at the angle of your body, at the distance between your feet and the floor—calculating, assessing, like this is a trauma case and he's triaging the risk.
"You good?" he asks. His voice is clipped. Professional.
"I'm—yeah. I'm good."
He doesn't move. His hand stays flat against your back, warm through the thin cotton of your shirt, and you're suddenly, acutely aware of how much of your weight he's holding—not because you're falling, but because the ladder is that unreliable, and he's not taking any chances.
Across the room, Crus is leaning against the counter, iPad in hand, watching with an expression of calm, genuine interest. Like someone enjoying a play he's already read the ending of.
You turn back to the monitor. Focus. The cable is right there—you just need to thread it through the mount and click it home. Simple. You can do this.
But Jack's hand shifts against your back as you reach up—not creeping, not wandering, just adjusting his grip to follow your center of gravity as you stretch—and the awareness of it shorts out your brain for a half-second.
Your fingers fumble the cable.
"Sorry," Jack says quietly, like it's his fault. His hand steadies.
"It's not—you're fine," you manage. "Just—hold still."
"Waiting on you, Chief."
You reach up again. Left hand raised, fingers working against the stiff plastic. The HDMI cable resists, the angle awkward, and you have to lean further than you'd like—weight shifting, the ladder groaning beneath you.
Jack's grip tightens instantly. Not dramatic. Just certain. Like he's been doing this his whole life.
And he has, you realize. Steadying people. Keeping them from falling. That's the whole job.
You just never expected to be on the receiving end of it quite so literally.
What you don't expect is what happens next.
You reach up to thread the HDMI cable through the mount, left hand raised, fingers working against the stiff plastic—and Jack's gaze shifts. Not to the cable. Not to the monitor. To your hand. To the specific, bare expanse of your ring finger.
There's nothing subtle about the way his eyes track the movement. It isn't clinical. It isn't absentminded. It's searching. Like he's confirming something he overheard earlier—something that matters far more than he wants it to.
Your stomach flips despite yourself.
"Sorry," you say, tugging at the cable again, buying yourself a moment. "I swear this damn thing's too short. I just need to—okay—if I pull it like this and… we good?"
You glance at Crus, who checks his iPad and gives you a thumbs up.
"It's in," he confirms.
But you're not looking at the monitor anymore. You're looking down at Jack, who hasn't looked away from your hand.
You flex your fingers slightly—deliberately this time. Testing.
His eyes track the movement. Slow. Intent. Something flickers behind his expression—something soft and aching that he can't quite hide in time.
"See something interesting, Dr. Abbot?" you ask, keeping your voice light but letting the edge show.
Jack straightens too fast. His hand jerks back from your back like he's been burned. The IV cart rattles. His gaze snaps up to meet yours, and for a moment, he looks completely undone—like you've caught him somewhere he didn't mean to be.
"I—" He falters. His eyes flicker back to your hand once more before he forces himself to look at your face. "You should come down from there. The ladder's not stable."
It's not what he was going to say. You can tell. You can see it in the way his jaw works, in the faint flush crawling up his neck, in the way his hand twitches at his side like it wants to reach for you again.
From across the room, Crus watches this unfold with quiet, unhurried interest. He doesn't interject. Doesn't swoop back in. Just leans against the counter, iPad cradled against his chest, and waits.
"Come down," Jack says again, extending his hand toward you. "I don't want to see you in Trauma Two because you fell."
There's no room for argument in his voice.
You hesitate only a second before placing your hand in his. His grip tightens instantly, secure and unyielding. He braces the ladder with his other hand as you descend—first to the lower rung, then the floor. His hand doesn't let go until both your feet are on the ground. Even then, he lingers—a beat too long, his fingers wrapped around yours, his thumb pressed against the side of your wrist where your pulse is still racing from the ladder, from the height, from him.
Then he releases you. Steps back. Gives you space.
But the ghost of his grip stays, warm on your skin, and you can still feel the exact pressure of his palm against your back.
You're not sure what to do with that. So you do what you always do.
You brush your palms against your slacks and look between him and Crus, who's already wandering back over, iPad tucked under his arm.
"Don't you guys have better things to do?" you ask dryly. "Lives to save? Charts to sign? Brooding to accomplish?"
"Don't mind them."
The loud, obnoxious slurping sound of a drink echoes across the nurses' station. Shen is leaning back in his chair, iced coffee in hand, watching with open delight.
‘It’s a quiet evening and I am fully enjoying the show.’
"Jesus," Dr. Parker Ellis snaps, swatting at him like he's an overexcited child. "Shen, don't screw this up for us. Two hours before shift change and not a single major trauma. Do you know how rare that is?"
Shen grins unapologetically. "I'm just saying—"
The red phone rings.
The sound slices through the room like a blade.
Every head turns toward it.
No one moves at first. It rings again, shrill and demanding.
Several people mutter curses—some directed at Shen, some at fate.
Lena steps forward with Jack at her side. She answers on the second ring, her posture sharpening instantly. "PTMC, go ahead Medic Command."
The room seems to shrink as she listens. Her pen flies across a notepad, scribbling details in tight strokes. Her expression shifts—focused, alert, ready.
She hangs up.
"Trauma incoming," she announces, already moving. Then, with pointed clarity: "Assigned to Dr. Shen."
For half a heartbeat, silence.
Then chaos begins to bloom.
Shen straightens in his chair, nearly choking on the last of his drink. "You've got to be kidding me."
Jack is already moving toward the trauma bay. Crus grabs gloves. Lena starts issuing rapid instructions.
And you—still standing between the two newly lit monitors—feel the ER snap back to life around you, the calm shattered, the storm rolling in.
It’s 7 a.m. already, and both of your night shifts at the PTMC hospital dragged on far longer than they ever should have. You are waiting outside for Jack on the top level of the hospital's three-story parking garage. The weather has violently shifted from the sunny, warm days of earlier this week to a rough, relentless summer downpour, turning the rooftop asphalt into a sea of dark glass. In the distance, the wailing sirens of an ambulance and a fire truck cut through the noise of the rain; the city is beginning to breathe and live again, even in this chaotic weather.
His pickup truck and your car are parked right next to each other, but you’re currently leaning against the side of his truck, a cigarette already lit between your fingers, waiting like you’ve got nowhere else to be. The wind keeps trying to steal the flame, but you cup your hand around it, feeding it. Each time you inhale, the red ember glows brightly through the wet, gray air, anchoring you to the moment.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Jack jokes as he walks toward you. The sound of his voice is the only dry thing in the world right now. He cuts through the downpour—shoulders squared against the wind—walking like he simply doesn’t believe in weather.
He’s wearing a grey sweater, completely soaked through, and he clearly doesn’t care about the cold dampness clinging to him. But as he closes the distance, his eyes narrow, taking in your shivering form. He clearly doesn't like that you are getting soaked in this shitty weather.
“You've been standing out here alone long enough,” he says, his teasing tone dropping into something far more grounded and protective.
You don’t answer right away. Instead, you shift your weight, digging your free hand into your coat pocket. You pull out a spare brass key with a metallic clink, holding it out by the ring. A little Woodstock keychain dangles from the metal, swaying between you. The bright yellow plush bird looks entirely ridiculous against the bleak, stormy sky, but somehow it makes the moment feel softer—a reminder that you’re still holding onto something bright.
Jack stops. He notices it immediately, even through the driving rain. He steps closer into your personal space, ignoring the downpour soaking his shoulders. Without asking, he reaches out, but instead of taking the key right away, his cold knuckle gently nudges the plush bird, making Woodstock swing.
"This is kind of cute," he murmurs, a faint, lopsided smile catching the corner of his mouth as he studies the plushie. "Though if we're being honest, you're definitely the Snoopy to my Woodstock."
You let out a huff of smoke into the rain, trying to formulate a proper insult. "Woodstock is a terrible pilot who speaks entirely in chicken scratch. Are you saying you're—" You stumble over the comparison, the mockery falling completely flat as a small, betraying smile tugs at your own lips.
Jack laughs, the sound warm and low against the freezing wind. He reaches out and catches the keychain, tilting the little plush bird up so it's facing you. "Don't even try. I know you only remember this thing as 'the yellow bird.' I'm still butthurt about it."
You roll your eyes, but the tightness in your chest finally eases. You don’t pull your hand back. Instead, you hold the ring out a fraction further, pressing the issue. "It's to my front door."
Jack goes perfectly still. His gaze drops from the absurd little yellow bird to the cut of the brass key, and then finally lifts to meet your eyes. The last traces of his smile fade, settling into something brutally honest. He closes his hand over the key, his damp, freezing fingers deliberately brushing yours as he takes it.
“Are you bringing me good fortune out here,” he asks, his voice dropping lower, cutting right through the noise of the storm, “or just offering me something to keep you from focusing?”
His thumb drags over the jagged edge of the key, slipping it into his own pocket before stepping even closer. “Because I'll take it. I'll take whatever you give me. But how are you really holding up after what happened today?”
You take a drag, but the wind shifts, and the smoke drifts directly toward him before you can stop it. The rain hammers the world around you, cold and constant, but the thought of him standing in your secondhand smoke bothers you more than the storm. Without overthinking it, you reach out and grab his forearm, guiding him to switch places with you so the massive frame of the truck blocks the worst of the wind. You step in close. Close enough to feel the solid warmth radiating off him through his damp sweater.
It frustrates you sometimes—the fact that you’re the kind of person who turns even small things into a burden he has to accommodate. Still, he doesn’t pull away. He stays exactly where you placed him, standing tall in the cold, like your boundaries are always negotiable and he’s more than willing to meet you halfway.
"You don’t have to look for me. I’m already wherever you are," Jack murmurs gently.
Jack holds your gaze. He’s patient, but clearly affected by how exhausted you look. “Talk to me,” he says, his voice cutting clearly through the sound of the rain. “I’m right here.”
You exhale again, watching the smoke mingle with the rain before vanishing into the dark. Your fingers tighten around the cigarette like it’s a lifeline.
Jack takes your silence not as a rejection, but as a plea. In that slow, deliberate way he does everything when he wants you to feel completely safe, he raises his hand. Palm up. Waiting.
When you finally pull the cigarette from your lips, the wind catches the edge of your damp hair, blowing it across your cheek. You are suddenly, intensely aware of how close your faces are. The burning ember hovers in the space between you, fragile and romantic in the worst possible way—like a spark that could ignite something neither of you will be able to undo.
“You smoke?” you ask, your voice rougher than you intended.
“Rarely,” he replies. When he takes the cigarette from your fingers, his touch is gentle. Reverent, almost. Taking it feels less like borrowing nicotine and more like an unspoken permission to close the distance between you.
He inhales, slow and controlled, his eyes never leaving yours. As the smoke curls out between his lips, threading through the wet air, you notice it. Your lipstick—dark cherry—has left a faint smudge on the white filter. Jack turns his head slightly, and his eyes catch the mark too. Just a touch. A trace. A proof that your lips were just there.
You kind of hope it doesn’t look like you meant for him to wear you. But as your pulse spikes, you also can’t pretend you don’t secretly love the idea.
Jack’s eyes flick from the filter down to your mouth, and the heavy gaze lands like a physical touch. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just stands there in the freezing rain, close enough that your shoulders would brush if you just leaned an inch forward. The way he watches you is enough to make your chest tight.
“Do you even realize how you’re looking at me right now?” he asks, his voice dangerously low. “You want it back?”
You swallow hard, your eyes dropping to the cigarette he’s offering, then lifting back to his face. You legitimately can’t decide what you want more: the nicotine, or the excuse to lean in until the entire parking lot disappears.
Before you can answer, the summer storm intensifies, taking a sudden turn for the worse. Thicker, heavier sheets of water slam against the asphalt. In the nearby hospital building, blurred silhouettes of staff members move past the lit windows, distant and completely irrelevant.
“You should tell me what happened,” he prompts gently. But the way he says it makes it obvious he knows you aren’t just upset about an office restructuring. He’s watching you like he wants to catch you before you shatter.
You finally reach for the cigarette, but you don’t snatch it back. You take it slowly, letting your freezing fingers drag along his warm, damp skin. The contact is brief, but it feels heavy. It feels like a promise.
“You’re staring,” Jack murmurs. He sounds like he can’t help himself—like he’s teasing you purely to force you to admit that you want this as much as he does.
“I’m not,” you lie, but the breathy softness of your voice completely betrays you.
Jack leans a fraction closer. Tiny beads of rain cling to his dark eyelashes. “You are,” he whispers. “And you like it.”
You don’t have a defense for that. You just lift the cigarette back to your mouth—then pause, hovering a millimeter from the filter instead of taking the drag. Your breaths mingle, warm against the freezing air.
Jack’s hand comes up. Careful, certain, and completely unapologetic, his palm rests lightly against your waist. He doesn’t pull you flush against him; he just anchors you there in the storm.
“Tell me,” he says again. And this time, it isn’t about the hospital, or the layoffs, or the promotion. It’s about you. “I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
The rain drums harder against the metal of the truck, like the sky is demanding honesty from both of you.
You finally exhale a shaky breath, pulling the words out like they’ve been lodged behind your ribs all day. “Something happened today,” you say, your voice trembling but determined. “And I didn’t know how to tell you without… I don’t know. Without making it a bigger deal than it is.”
Jack’s sharp eyes soften entirely. “Then make it smaller,” he says softly. “Make it mine for a second. Let me hold it with you.”
Your chest aches. The yearning burns through your veins—hot, helpless, and unmistakably mutual. You tilt your chin up, just a fraction, and suddenly the tiny distance between your mouths shifts from an accident to a deliberate choice.
Jack’s gaze drops from your eyes to your lips again. He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Can I—” he starts, his restraint slipping.
You reach up. Your fingertip lightly brushes the smudged cherry lipstick on the cigarette filter, and then traces a path down to rest over his hand at your waist. “I want you to,” you whisper.
Jack’s smile is barely there, tight with restraint, like he’s terrified of ruining the moment by moving too fast. But instead of kissing you, he brings the cigarette back up between you and shares it one last time—taking a deep inhale, like the storm might steal all the warmth from his lungs if he doesn’t hold onto it.
When he lowers his hand, his forehead comes down to rest gently against yours. The air is thick with smoke, petrichor, and a desperate yearning. It’s tender, deep, and far more intimate than a kiss in the rain would have been.
After a long, quiet moment, you step back. You flick the dying cigarette butt into a nearby puddle, watching it skid across the glassy surface before it dies with a soft hiss. The rough weather is only getting worse, the street turning into a moving mirror of headlights and red brake lamps.
You look toward your car, parked right beside his truck, and wave a hand toward it. "Let's take my car," you suggest, raising your voice over the downpour. "We can sit there, get out of this shitty weather, and get dried off."
Jack hesitates for only a second before jogging through the rain beside you. When he reaches the passenger side of your car, you pop the lock and push the door open for him.
You slide into the driver's seat, shivering violently, and immediately reach for the climate control dial. You crank the heat to maximum. The engine turns over, and the heater kicks in with a low, familiar rumble. Hot air blasts through the vents, aggressively pushing against the bone-deep chill soaking through both of your clothes. The windshield wipers swipe rhythmically—thwack, thwack—clearing the blurred glass, while the radio automatically picks up a quiet, familiar indie song. As the cabin warms, the harshness of the outside world softens until all that exists is the drum of the rain, the hum of the engine, and the sound of Jack breathing next to you.
For a few minutes, the silence is heavy. Jack stares down at his lap, gripping his knees like he expects his hands to stop shaking now that he’s out of the wind. You can see him actively trying to project normalcy, acting like the raw intensity of what just happened outside hasn't completely knocked the wind out of him.
Finally, you break the silence. You shift in your seat and nod toward the center console. Folded neatly inside the cup holder is the HR layoff notice. The creases are worn soft from how many times you’ve nervously unfolded and refolded it today.
“I’m still just… really bitter about it,” you say, your voice sounding small in the enclosed space. “Administration is acting like this bloodbath is justified because we’re getting ‘structural upgrades.’ Like software makes it fair. Like the people they just fired are supposed to clap because some VP changed the logo on our email signatures.”
Jack’s jaw clenches. He turns to look at the folded paper. “Yeah. And that new Chief title they’re rolling out for you—what exactly was their pitch? Like slapping a new title on your door fixes the fact that your team is gone?”
“It’s a sick joke,” you say, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “They put the word ‘strategy’ in every sentence, and suddenly it’s all about growth and synergy, but it’s just rebranding failure. They didn’t stop for one second to consider what this costs the people actually doing the bleeding work.”
Jack turns his head toward you. He searches your face, as if anticipating that you might backtrack or apologize for venting. “Even with all the corporate bullshit, I still think you earned that promotion,” he says firmly. Then he grimaces, as if the words leave a bad taste in his mouth. “It’s just… it came at the absolute worst time. I hate that you’re caught in the middle of this.”
You snort. Not because he's funny, but because you’re so incredibly tired. “No, Jack. It’s not like they handed me the promotion because I’m some prodigy who deserved it. It’s like—” You search for the right phrasing, finally settling on a hollow imitation of a cheerful HR rep. “‘Please don’t quit on us. We really need warm bodies to cover the gaps.’”
The blast from the heater warms your freezing palms where they rest on your thighs. The radio hums, a low baseline filling the quiet, while the wipers continue their relentless sweeping—pushing away a problem that just keeps washing right back over the glass.
You sigh, turning in your seat to glance into the back. Hidden behind a folded fleece blanket and a disorganized stack of mail is your gym bag. It’s been sitting there for three days, waiting for a burst of motivation that never came. But the thought of what’s inside pulls your mind away from the corporate anger, grounding you in something much simpler.
“You know what?” you say softly, talking more to yourself than to him. “Hold on.”
You twist around, grabbing the straps of the duffel and hauling it over the center console. You unzip the main compartment and pull out a clean, plush cotton towel.
You glance at Jack. You weigh whether you should just toss it in his lap. He’s currently rubbing his hands vigorously up and down his forearms, trying to generate friction. He’s shivering, and he looks vaguely embarrassed about how the rain has plastered his graying hair flat against his forehead.
You hold the towel out toward him. When he dutifully reaches out to take it, you pull it back just an inch—a gentle, playful denial. It’s enough to cut the heavy tension in the car without ruining the mood.
“Relax,” you say, a genuine smile finally breaking through your exhaustion. “I’ve got you.”
Jack blinks, his hands dropping. He looks caught halfway between total confusion and a deep, melting softness. “You’re… sure?”
“I’m sure,” you tell him. You unbuckle your seatbelt to give yourself room and lean closer over the center console. “Come here.”
He hesitates for a fraction of a second, shifting his weight toward you carefully, as if expecting you to pull away and say just kidding. But you don’t. You reach up, wrapping the soft towel over his damp hair. Your fingers are incredibly gentle as you begin to massage the towel into his scalp, blotting the freezing water away from his roots. You move slowly. Deliberately.
Jack’s breath catches in his throat. “You’re really doing this?”
“Yeah,” you murmur. You pull the towel back slightly to smooth his damp hair away from his face. “Because you looked completely miserable back there.”
“I wasn’t miserable—”
“You were,” you cut in, your voice warm with a grin you don’t even try to hide. The heater hums against your legs as you press the dry cotton against the ends of his hair. “And because…” You pause, letting the silence stretch just long enough to make the next words feel heavy. “Because I like taking care of you.”
Jack goes entirely still. His dark eyes flick up to yours, searching your face like he can’t decide whether to laugh to break the tension, or just give up and lean all the way into your touch. “You don't know how much this means to me,” he says softly.
“It’s dangerously effective,” you shoot back. You keep your hands moving—dabbing his forehead, drying behind his ears, ensuring the chill is completely gone.
When his hair is mostly dry, you don’t pull your hands away immediately. You drape the towel over your lap and look pointedly down at his soaked grey sweater. You raise an eyebrow, treating the next step like it's the most obvious thing in the world. “Alright. I’m confiscating that.”
Jack’s brows shoot up. “You’re taking my sweater off for me now?”
“For you,” you correct smoothly, your eyes bright with amusement. “Unless you’d rather sit there in a wet puddle and ruin my upholstery.”
He swallows hard. Then, moving at a glacial pace, he pulls the heavy, wet knit over his broad shoulders. He hands the soaked garment over to you with a careful, reluctant politeness that only makes you want to push his buttons more.
“There,” he says. He sounds a little breathless. You pretend it’s just the cold getting to him.
You take the heavy sweater, tossing it into the back seat, and then turn back to face him. “Look at that,” you say, your voice dropping an octave. “No more wet clothes. No more freezing. And no more pretending you don’t absolutely love it when I fuss over you.”
Jack’s mouth curves into an asymmetrical smile, edged with a sudden, nervous energy. “I don’t pretend.”
“No?” You lean in, resting your arm on the console. You are close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from your skin, blending with the blast of the car’s heater. “Then tell me what you do like.”
His eyes drop straight to your mouth. The stare lasts for half a second—just long enough to be an absolute, undeniable answer—before he drags his gaze back up to meet yours. “I like…” He exhales a long breath, clearly steadying his racing heart. “I like that you don’t stop.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” you say quietly. You lift your hand, your fingers gently catching his chin. You don’t force him; you just guide his face so he has nowhere else to look but at you. “Relax, Jack. I’ve got you.”
He lets out a low, rough laugh. It sounds like pure relief. It sounds like trust. It sounds like a man who is entirely fully falling for it. “Okay,” he whispers, leaning his cheek just slightly into your palm. “But you’re definitely going to owe me for this.”
“Oh?” you murmur. Your thumb brushes against his jawline, lingering at the collar of his dry shirt. “What’s the payment?”
Jack’s voice drops to a gravelly whisper, incredibly bold beneath the softness. “You start first.”
Outside, the rain continues its steady, drumming rhythm against the roof of the car. Somewhere in the distance, a heavy truck passes on the wet road, the sound rolling through the lot like distant thunder. But inside the cabin, surrounded by the hum of the heater, the radio fades into a slow, rhythmic acoustic track—a quiet, perfect soundtrack for the electric space between you.
Here’s something you didn’t account for when you engineered your own disappearance.
When you cut contact with everyone after your past violently unraveled—after you packed whatever fragments of a life you could carry and fled to Pittsburgh—you convinced yourself it was a clean, surgical break. You built a fortress out of a quieter city. You secured a job tucked deep within the labyrinthine IT department, a windowless sanctuary where the servers endlessly blink, the overhead fluorescent lights hum a steady lullaby, and absolutely no one asks personal questions. Here, your desk is just yours.
You legally changed your name. You scrubbed every digital footprint. You made an entire life out of absence.
But the past possesses a cruel, stubborn way of surviving erasure. It lingers in the quiet spaces, patient as settling dust.
You are halfway through a monotonous, highly technical discussion with a colleague about cascading system failures when your desk phone vibrates. The sharp sound cuts through the sterile air, far too intrusive against the muted hum of cooling fans. You almost let it go to voicemail. Your hand hovers over the receiver, a phantom instinct warning you not to answer.
Her voice is remarkably careful when you finally pick up. She states, with practiced professional neutrality, that you are listed as someone’s emergency contact.
At first, a wave of cognitive dissonance washes over you; you think she simply has the wrong file. It isn't because you don’t have the kind of life that paperwork can reach into, but because you have spent years systematically training yourself not to let people close enough to tether you. You do not belong on anyone’s “in case of emergency” line.
Then, she says his name.
Nico.
The conditioned air leaves your lungs as if you’ve been physically struck. It’s him—the man you loved with a desperate, all-consuming intensity before everything unraveled. Before the agonizing night that forced you to walk away from your career at the FBI, and from him, in the exact same breath. You disappeared so the toxic fallout of your fractured life would never spill into his.
It has been years of absolute, agonizing silence. Wouldn’t he have changed that damn form by now? Who keeps a ghost listed as their lifeline after all this time?
You don’t answer that question out loud. You begin to pace the gleaming hallway of the IT department while the charge nurse, Lena, explains in a measured tone that his condition isn’t good.
Not stable. Severe highway crash.
The edges of your vision begin to warp and blur. You frantically repeat a silent, desperate spell in your head: You’re not obligated. You built your entire life around not being obligated. But empathy and unresolved grief possess a quiet, immovable weight. Beneath the screaming animal instinct to run lies the memory of how he used to reach for your hand without thinking.
When your erratic breathing finally evens out, you push off the cold wall and step into the elevator. The descent to the Emergency Room stretches out into a localized eternity. When the metal doors slide open, you tell yourself you are only here for logistics. Just information.
But your traitorous feet turn toward Trauma One before your conscious mind can stop them.
The heavy privacy curtains haven’t been fully drawn. Through the narrow gap, you see a blur of frantic, highly coordinated movement—Shen, Nazely, and Jack working with the violent, bloody precision of medical professionals who refuse to let their minds wander. The scene is a terrifying paradox of chaos and calm.
Then, Jack glances up from the table.
He is masked, his eyes framed by his thick, black-rimmed protective glasses. Initially, his expression registers pure confusion at seeing you standing paralyzed in the doorway. But as he looks back down at the shattered, bleeding body of the man on the table, and then back up to your ashen, horrified face, the pieces violently snap together. He realizes exactly who this patient is, and exactly why you are standing there.
Simultaneously, the patient codes. The monitor unleashes a shrill, unbroken, agonizing alarm.
Panic and a fiercely protective instinct flash across Jack’s rugged features.
“Pull that curtain!” Jack barks, his voice erupting with a jagged, deafening authority you have never heard from him before. “Mateo, pull the damn curtain, right now!”
A startled nurse lunges forward, violently yanking the heavy fabric shut. The metal rings scrape harshly against the rod, instantly severing your line of sight. Jack disappears back into the desperate, failing procedure, leaving you staring at the swaying, opaque fabric.
And then—somewhere between the frantic shouts calling for another round of epinephrine and the endless, piercing drone of the flatline—the shouting abruptly stops.
The ensuing silence is infinitely heavier than the alarm. You don’t need to hear a doctor call the time of death to understand that Jack has just decided what you are not allowed to see.
Your mind instantly unmoors itself. The sharp edges of the ER soften into a thick, dissociative fog. The fluorescent lights hum at a frequency that makes your teeth ache. You drift back toward the main nurses' station, entirely disconnected from the feeling of your own shoes hitting the linoleum.
Lena is just lowering the receiver of the desk phone as you approach. She takes a slow breath, her expression shifting into that horrible, practiced gentleness reserved for the worst moments of people's lives. She opens her mouth to deliver the official words you just watched happen.
"I saw," you interrupt. Your voice sounds flat, hollow, as if it belongs to someone standing across the room. You can't let her say the actual words. "Can someone just... grab his belongings for me?"
Lena blinks, momentarily thrown by your eerie, vacant calm. "I... yes, of course," she murmurs. She looks down, scanning the top page of the file. Her brow visibly furrows as her eyes dart between the birthdates on the paper and your remarkably young face.
She stares at you, her professional filter slipping slightly. "Wait... you're the emergency contact. Are you family? His daughter, maybe? Niece?"
"No."
The single syllable lands between you. Lena's confusion only deepens—the easy explanation evaporating, leaving behind something far stranger. She glances down at the file again, as if the paperwork might offer some other logical answer.
"I'm sorry, I just—you were twenty, and he was forty-two," she says, her voice careful now, treading uncertain ground. "What does a twenty-year-old even have in common with someone that much older?"
You open your mouth, but the hospital noises buzz, rushing in your ears like water filling a sinking room. An image of Nico flashes behind your eyes—not the broken man on the table, but the exhausted, deep-set brown puppy-dog eyes you used to love.
"He was a widower," you manage, the words tasting like dry ash. "He knew what it was like to survive catastrophic loss. We—"
Your voice dies in your throat. The exhaustion of grief hits you all at once. How can you possibly explain the crushing gravity of a past life to a stranger? You focus entirely on a generic blue flu-season flyer pinned to the corkboard behind her head, obsessively tracking a small smudge of ink on the corner, letting the colors bleed into static. It takes far too much energy to make her understand.
Jack steps up beside you, having emerged from the trauma bay. His jaw is locked tight beneath the silver-grey stubble covering his jawline. He doesn't say a single word to excuse the intrusion; he merely meets Lena's questioning eye and gives a sharp, definitive shake of his head. No. Careful not to startle your fragile, dissociated state, Jack gently places a warm hand on the center of your back, much like a herding dog guiding you back to safety. His touch is light, utterly human, but it makes your skin burn. He steers you away from the desk, toward the family room, and you allow it, letting the steady current of his direction carry you when you have none of your own.
Inside, the family room feels claustrophobic. Jack guides you to a sofa and pulls a stiff chair directly in front of you. He doesn’t settle back into it; he leans far forward, elbows resting heavily on his knees, his large hands clasped tightly together.
“Mr. Solance was involved in a highway accident while driving home from work,” he says softly, his usually booming voice dialed back to a gentle rumble.
You stare intensely at a small crack near the baseboard. You blink, the dissociative fog parting just enough for the deafening silence of reality to rush in. “Can I see him?”
He shakes his head, just a fraction. He already commanded the nurses to clean Nico up a little, to wash away the worst of it, but clean is not the same as whole.
You wipe your leaking tears brutally into the rough denim of your jeans and reach out—a small, blind, helpless gesture. Jack does not hesitate for a microsecond. He takes your hand instantly, his warm, calloused palms wrapping securely around your freezing, trembling knuckles to ground you.
“Nico was my first real relationship,” you say, your voice cracking pathetically on the word first. “I was a late bloomer. We met at such a wrong time in my life, but he just... he kept showing up. He used to hold me and say, 'The past already took what it wanted, doll. Our job is to make sure tomorrow doesn't do the same.'”
Jack sits very still, his thumb moving rhythmically over the back of your hand. He listens intently, processing the shattered fragments of your past.
(She dated a widower? He was that much older? Has she ever actually been in a normal, age-appropriate relationship?) Jack keeps the barrage of internal questions locked firmly behind his teeth. He isn't judging you; beneath his composed, professional mask, there is a searching, profound sadness in his intense gaze. He just looks at your blank, tear-stained face, piecing together the trauma you've been hiding from him, genuinely wondering why you had been carrying the massive weight of an older man's grief when you were barely out of childhood yourself.
He watches your eyes glaze over completely as another wave of clinical shock pulls you under the surface. He lets the heavy silence stretch, giving you the space to just breathe, refusing to push for complex answers you are currently incapable of giving.
A careful, hesitant knock breaks the vacuum. Mateo steps inside carrying a clear plastic patient belongings bag.
“This is all I could get from the bay,” Mateo says gently.
You slowly take the bag. The abrasive crinkle of the cold plastic is violently jarring in the quiet room. Inside, folded haphazardly, is a dark blue long-sleeve shirt, stiff and ruined with dried blood. Beneath it sits a battered leather wallet. A small, worn flip notebook. An old, scuffed flip phone.
These mundane objects are undeniable proof that time did not ask for permission before it brutally took him. You pull the plastic bag into your lap. The sheer, physical weight of his ruined belongings finally anchors your floating consciousness back to reality, the grief settling over you in one agonizing breath.
“My shift ends in an hour,” Jack says, watching the ER lobby finally settle into that exhausted kind of quiet. “After I hand over everything to the day shift, I could take you home.”
The two of you walk slowly toward the elevator banks. You stand with your posture rigid, built like armor—your eyes fixed blankly on the reflective metal doors. You hold Nico’s plastic bag tight against your chest, obsessively adjusting your grip. The plastic creaks loudly. It’s an automatic, anchoring tick, giving your violently shaking hands something to hold onto so they don't fly apart.
“No need for that,” you reply, your voice stripped of all inflection.
As you stand there in the suffocating quiet, the doors of the adjacent hallway slide open with a soft swoosh. Cassie steps into the corridor, balancing a stack of patient charts against her hip. Her eyes casually scan the lobby until they land on you. She takes a quick, sharp breath, her expression lifting in recognition, and steps forward, her mouth opening to call out your name.
Jack catches the movement in his periphery. Without breaking his stride, shifting his stance, or letting you out of his protective orbit, he turns his head. He meets Cassie’s eyes and gives her a sharp, severe, incredibly dark shake of his head. He raises his free hand—a subtle but fiercely commanding gesture. Not now. Do not approach. Cassie freezes mid-step. She reads the violently protective, tense line of Jack's broad shoulders, looks at the bloody plastic bag clutched desperately to your chest, and her expression immediately drops into a mask of quiet understanding. She steps backward, melting into the hallway.
“YN…” Jack says your name, his deep voice pulling your fractured attention back before you even realized Cassie had been standing there.
“I appreciate what you and your crew did for Nico, Dr. Abbot,” you say. The formal title lands between you like a reinforced concrete wall—a shield of polite gratitude placed carefully on top of a volatile body of grief.
Right now, you know you need to travel down to the morgue. You need to gather every piece of clinical information that matters. You need to speak exclusively to people who will give you answers in sanitized phrases, because absolutely nobody in this hospital can give you what you actually want.
“I have to call his family and let them know,” you continue, each word perfectly measured. “After that, I have to report to my boss that I’m taking an unspecified leave of absence. If you'll excuse me.”
The elevator chimes and opens. You step inside the empty car, immediately turning and pressing the button for the morgue level in the basement.
The moment the doors begin to slide shut, Jack’s hand shoots out, his palm catching the heavy metal. The elevator shudders in protest and reverses. He steps fully inside the small, enclosed space just as the doors finally slide shut, sealing you both in.
As the elevator begins its slow descent, he effectively corners you—not with physical force, but with an inescapable, overwhelming proximity.
“I don’t want you to be alone tonight,” he says, his usually steady voice cracking slightly, betraying him on the word alone.
“You have work.”
“I can delay it.”
“It’s not your problem,” you reply, staring straight ahead at the mirrored walls, refusing to look at his reflection.
He sees the intense tightness in your jaw, the violent, rhythmic trembling in your hands that you are desperately trying to hide beneath the crinkling plastic of Nico's bag. “You’re shaking,” he whispers.
Taking a massive risk, throwing his professional distance entirely out the window, Jack steps completely into your space and pulls you into a firm, enveloping hug.
For a second, your shoulders lock into stone. His grip is careful at first, testing the waters, then it turns desperate, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm directly against your ribs. He clings to you as if he is terrified that if he lets go, you will simply vanish into the sterile hospital walls and never return.
And then the realization hits you, sharp, sudden, and deeply humiliating.
Nico used to hug you exactly like this. Nico’s deep, crushing hugs meant absolute safety after a brutal, traumatic case at the bureau; Jack’s hug, in this horrible context, feels like profound pity after a death. Nico was your past—messy, heavily traumatized, tragically flawed, but so deeply, genuinely loved. Jack is the present. He is safe. But accepting Jack's warmth right now feels like a sickening betrayal to the man whose blood is drying on the shirt in your hands. Worse, the heat of Jack's body makes you realize how utterly terrifying it is to risk caring about someone new, someone who could just disappear on a highway on a random Tuesday, leaving you shattered all over again.
The warmth is a violent, emotional trigger. It doesn't feel like comfort; it feels like drowning. If you lean into his solid chest, you know with absolute certainty that you will dissolve into a wailing chaos you will not survive.
Your breath hitches painfully in your throat. Gently, but with absolute, upsetting finality, you free your hands and place your palms flat against Jack’s chest, pushing him back just as the elevator car jolts to a halt.
He stumbles a half-step, looking startled, as if he just crashed headlong into a physical brick wall.
The heavy doors slide open with a dull chime, letting in the freezing, sterile air of the morgue level.
You step backward, out of the car and into the quiet, dimly lit basement corridor.
“You still have work,” you say, your voice taking on a clean, distant, icy edge. “I’ve got this. I’ll call you later.”
His intense eyes flicker with a helpless, puppy-eyed despair that he cannot hide beneath his competence. He knows *later* is a lie. He moves to step out after you, his hand reaching into the charged space between you.
But you reach right past him into the car. Your finger jabs the 'ER' floor button, then immediately presses the 'Close Door' button. You step back into the hall, severing the connection.
The heavy metal doors slide shut, cutting off his silhouette and his extended, pleading hand with a soft, mechanical finality, forcibly sending him back up to the world of the living.
As the mechanical hum of the elevator fades upward, you adjust Nico’s bloody bag against your chest. Standing completely alone in the freezing basement hallway, you successfully lock your feelings behind a towering wall that will not be breached until the paperwork is signed and the calls are made.
My boy @snoopy-abbot-archives is posting this super fun reader x Jack fic with a very interesting OC behind the reader! IT worker with a past that entangles them with Daredevil’s Matt Murdoch—it is an ambitious crossover I have really been enjoying! And the romance gets *good*!
Supernatural Nightshift: a Nazely Toomarian horror-comedy-romance adventure
Warnings: mild horror elements (implied sounds of violence)
Author's note: Welcome to Pitt Night Shift! This is just supposed to be a bit of fun and written episodically by case. I appreciate ideas, feedback, and sharing far and wide! Please forgive all medical ignorance, both in terms of hospital care and how hospitals even work. It's all magic to me.
WC: 1,819 Read or comment on AO3
Chapter 1: Barbara and the Box
Nazely Toomarian lowered herself down to be eye level with the frog in Room 3. She was six hours into her twelve-hour shift. Midnight had come and gone, striking the precise time that the board would turn over from typical nightshift excitement to… atypical. The frog’s sister was alarmingly pretty with a delicate ballerina body and gentle freckles around her well-defined lips that Nazely had to look away from. She wept sweetly in the corner and appeared significantly more distraught than the placid green amphibian chilling on the surgical tray.
“Hi there,” Nazely checked her chart, “Barbara. Seems you’ve been turned into a frog?”
The creature blinked once. Nazely was well into the witching hours at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, but this case was a softball. She needed something easy tonight.
“Or maybe a toad?” Nazely used a pen to try and see the underside of the frog, but Barbara curled tighter, blinking twice before making the birdlike chirp of a midnight peeping frog. Dr Abbot appeared suddenly, his physicality belied by the gentle laugh wrinkles at his eyes and disarming voice that swayed between a warm rasp or a playful quip. His eyebrows were raised, sending his gray and silver curling hair back in an animated expression of surprise.
“Oh, an Eastern green tree frog,” he diagnosed.
“Dr Abbot. Barbara—that’s our frog here—um, her sister Natalie says that she was turned into this form by a witch?”
Dr Abbot put his hands behind his back, leaning in to inspect the frog. His shoulders were militarily square, emphasizing his muscular and compact frame. Senior attending Doctor Abbot was not a tall man, but he was intimidating and Nazely both wanted to impress him and to be one of the few to make him crack a smile.
“Barbara?” He asked, switching from the friendly voice to something warmer, something between just him and the frog.
The frog blinked once.
“Is today Tuesday?”
The frog blinked twice.
“Are you communicating in binary, Barbara?”
Again, the frog blinked.
“Once for yes, twice for no,” Dr Abbot said to Dr Toomarian, straightening up with an easy wiggle to his neck. He had a birdlike ability to swivel and bob his head, catching the details of the room in a single sweep. “We see this every so often what with the increased access to witches on Etsy. You feeling confident in handling this on your own, Dr Toomarian?”
“Uh, yeah, I’ve got it covered,” Nazely stammered, eyes darting to sister Natalie who was still crying prettily. Nazely Toomarian had a perpetually tired face, deep circles under her eyes since she was a child, and haunted brown eyes that had the habit of trapping her audience into a gentle hypnosis. She was used to the double-takes. The first was usually pity, the second intrigue. She blew hair out of her eyes—she needed to cut her bangs again—and turned back to the sister.
“Nice singing, by the way,” Abbot said to Barbara Frog as he departed the room. The frog sang again, and Nazely began to dig into Barbara’s Etsy purchase history with Natalie. By the time she had confirmed that Barbara was not in extremis but quite happy with the successful polymorph, Nazely knew she needed another case.
“Excuse me, Doctor?” A pale and translucent old man tried to stop Nazely on her way back to the board to process Barbara’s discharge.
“Yes, Mr Reed?”
“It appears I am dead.”
“Yes, Mr Reed. You died on July fourth, just over there,” Nazely pointed toward chairs just in time to see a man sneeze a small bunch of yellow ragweed flowers out of his nose and then groan in disappointment. “You’ve been a ghost with PTMC for fifteen months now.”
“Oh, have I?”
“Please excuse me,” Nazely crossed to the central desk to start the write-up for Barbara’s discharge. The charge nurse, Lena Handzo was watching her with a steady, unblinking gaze. When Nazely was first inducted to the nightshift Dr Shen had told her Lena had been raised by a detective and a gargoyle who had been in an illicit relationship. It explained Lena’s capacity for stillness and knowing everything that was happening to everyone, but after almost a month Nazely realized he had been describing a 90’s kids’ show.
Nazely had annoying older brothers who would stare at her with their similarly engaging brown eyes, but she was pretty good at ignoring this kind of behavior. Except… she also desperately wanted to befriend Lena. Without looking up from her chart she said, “Jasper sure has been hanging around for awhile, huh?”
“Probably another five or six months before he passes on. But it takes three years before it’s worth it to call the exorcist. You heard about the eldritch horror in chairs?’
Nazely sighed. Yes, she had heard about the eldritch horror in chairs. It was some kind of unfathomable nightmare with black tentacles and too many mouths or eyes that popped out of the too many mouths—the story changed each time one of the Doctors approached it. The prognosis so far was dayshift problem.
“Who is on the case now?” She asked Lena. They hadn’t even been able to triage the horror, it just kept hanging around in chairs chanting in a deep speech and making the patient’s ears bleed.
“Shen got it inside one of those big cardboard boxes for refrigerators, which is actually doing wonders for the nosebleeds.”
“I thought the ears were bleeding?” Nazely looked up.
“Both. Hey,” Lena brightened, having made eye contact. “You haven’t given it a shot yet, huh?”
Nazely leaned her head back with a groan. Ever since she had diagnosed that demonic possession last week she’d become the new horrors doc. Why couldn’t she get the sneezing flowers guy?
“Sure,” Nazely said, handing off the discharge papers for Barbara. “Send out our frog patient through the back? I’m pretty sure the guy with the straw hat in chairs is either a heron or a swan trickster god. Either way, can’t have them eating a patient.”
“I’m coming, Dr Shen!” Nazely called, entering the waiting room known as chairs. Attending Doctor John Shen was trying to convince the ward nurse to hand him a blanket to cover the cardboard box, which was rattling wildly. Chantanah, the Ward Clerk, was blocking the corner of her vision and keeping her attention on someone presenting with an ice pack on their wrist.
“Do we know why our Eldritch Horror has visited us?” Nazely asked, trying to see if anything was peeking out of the box.
“Do you speak deep speech?” Dr Shen asked, slapping the top of the cardboard box as the creature tried to lift a flap open. He managed to keep a large plastic cup that was always a third full of milky iced coffee balanced in one hand while wrestling the boxed horror. As co-attending to Dr Abbot, Dr Shen was the next most senior doctor in the Pitt, but he had a habit of disarming anyone around him. Nazely could see how maybe someone as laid back as Shen might pass some of that calm onto a screeching horror, but it did not appear to have worked.
“A little,” Nazely shrugged. She knocked politely on the box. “Ẇ̴͜h̶̙͑ă̸̳ṯ̶̀ ̶̙̕b̵͉͋r̸̝̉i̴͈̍ṋ̷́g̸̙͒s̸̩̉ ̵̠͝y̸̺̽o̶̫̊u̵̦͗ ̸͈̒h̵̘̊ȇ̸͙r̵̗͂e̴͓͑?̷̱͊”
There was a howling and the box rattled strongly enough that Shen had to put down his iced coffee.
“I picked it up in Armenia,” Nazely answered the apparent question. The box made a screech and then a sound like wet bone crunching on stone with chip-chip-chipping sounds, “Yes, like System of a Down,” Nazely sighed. Half her patients brought this up. The box began to sing I-E-A-I-A-I-O and the entire room phased temporarily into double-reality. “Thank you, thank you,” she interrupted the popular song-spell to open a third eye, and then she cleared her throat, “D̴̬̓o̴͎͋ ̸͙̀ȳ̸͙ö̶͙́u̴͎̔ ̵̼̊u̴̫͛n̷͖̈d̶̄ͅê̸͕r̴͎͑ṩ̴t̴͍͗à̷̞ń̶͓d̴̜̈́ ̷̯̈m̵̱̂ȳ̶̹ ̴̪͐E̴͈͐ň̵͇g̸̪͠l̸̖̽i̵̞͑s̴̝̊ȟ̵̯?”
A single knock came from the cardboard, but it echoed loudly as if it were the sound of rapping on a heavy mahogany door. A chill ran through Nazely and for a moment she felt the bouncing tensile strength of time stretch out ahead of her with a definite springing end where her mortal coil ran out.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said with a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll ask again, What brings you here?” Nazely listened to the screeching, clicking, muffled sounds coming from inside the box. After awhile, a low bass-note rumble was growing louder and more persistent until Dr Shen had to knock on the box to interrupt the horror’s speech.
“I think it was approaching the brown note,” Dr Shen apologized.
“Well, I caught most of it anyway I think,” Nazely said. “Okay. Can you show us your human pet, please?”
Shen stepped away from the box and took a drink of his perpetual coffee. Dr Ellis had insisted it was not magical, but Nazely was unconvinced. He and Nazely watched as a blue-and-white ribbon of jellyfish stingers erupted from the top of the cardboard box, slowly revealing something black and iridescent trapped among the fluttery, beautiful, poison ribbons.
“That appears to be a chicken,” Nazely concluded. “With three heads.” The horror was shaking the three-headed black and iridescent chicken, which promptly gargled and then threw up an egg from one of its heads. Shen dove forward and made a grab.
“Nice catch, Dr Shen!”
“I’m good at everything,” he said in disgust. Then he regarded the egg and frowned, “Ugh. My grandma would bring these home for congee.” He pocketed the ashy egg and looked to Nazely, “So his chicken keeps throwing up eggs?”
“No, that’s normal. It’s molting—see?” Black feathers were falling to the ground and leaving little scorch marks as they dissipated into ash. The box was shaking again and more screeching and guttural sounds like chopping flesh and snapping bones were spoken. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t care what he told you. I am a human doctor and I treat humans for ailments, and I can tell you that is not a human. That is a chicken. Uh huh… yes, well, you’re going to have to trust me on this one.”
Dr Shen was already waving down ward nurse Chantanah who had made the mistake of peering at the black three-headed chicken from behind the glass. “Hey! I’m gonna need you to call in the nightshift Veterinary hospital on south side for a pickup. Tell them we have an abyssal molting chicken and—” he glanced to Nazely who pointed to a man in a straw hat, “Some kind of avian trickster god.”
Nazely encouraged the chicken to be pulled back into the box and excused herself from the horror who had begun to have some kind of squawking conversation inside the box with the unlucky lying pet.
Thank you to @theariespov for tagging me the game with this post.
I am the final resting place for games. I am where chain letters are stopped, bundled in ribbon, and silently put away in a drawer. I am not a killjoy, but a keeper. I have filled my bag with teeth and words and coins. Now I will fill the drawers of my tumblr desk with trinkets and doodles and stars. You have been warned.
