Omg fluffy drabble about making pizzas at home with Andrew for the first time where you keep distracting him and he gets flustered 🫶🏻
"no, no, no," you giggle, watching as andrew tries to smooth out his little ball of dough to no avail. you had insisted that he come over to make homemade pizza after he told you he had never done it growing up. we have to fix that ASAP, you'd said to him. you had been so excited by the idea what could he do but say yes? he is currently feeling a little twinge of regret as you pour a small amount of olive oil in your hand, smoothing it over your palms.
the expression on his face isn't lost on you. you check him with your hip, "hey," he turns to you trying to hide his worry, "you can skip this part if it skeeves you out too much," you say sweetly. "no," he huffs with determination, picking up the glass bottle pour a little handful for himself. "ok," he holds his oily hands out at a distance, "now what,"
"now you press your fingers in the middle first," you say, demonstrating by pressing down in the center of your dough, making little rippling motions with your fingers, "and then you kind of..." you brow furrows in concentration, your tongue poking out of the corner of your mouth. andrew can't help but smile as he watches you, "push it out... like this," your little ball is flattening, starting to take the vague shape of a pizza. you turn to him with an adorable little smile on your face, looking so pleased with yourself it makes his heart ache.
"ok," he says softly, digging his fingers into his dough, pressing it out in little circles like you'd shown him. "there ya go!" you beam at him, leaning up to press a little kiss on his cheek, "knew you'd be good at this," you hum contentedly, returning your focus on your own little pizza dough. "oh yeah?" he says, raising an eyebrow. "mhm," you hum, turning towards him again, standing on your toes to whisper in his ear, "you're really good with your fingers," andrew chokes on the air in his throat, cheeks flushing as red as the sauce that sits to the side on the countertop.
a/n: this is nothing but i’m just gonna post it rather than delete it or keep it in my drafts forever. andrew would be obsessed with how you smell send post.
“what’re you wearing?”
you pull away from the—albeit pretty stiff—hug you wrapped pope in upon arrival to glance down at yourself in confusion.
“uh, clothes?” you say like it’s obvious. it’s a pretty basic outfit, one you’re sure you’ve worn a hundred times around him.
“no, i mean,” his fingers twitch at his sides, brows slightly pinched together, “you smell different.”
“oh! it’s a new perfume i got, do you like it?”
he pulls a strange face. like he’s trying hard to think of the right thing to say, which confuses you even more.
“i like your perfume,” is all he says, a frown now clear on his face.
“i don’t know, i kinda like this one,” you say, smelling your wrist before extending your arm out for him to smell again, “it’s a little more sweet.”
he’s shaking his head, nose scrunched up, “don’t like it,” he mumbles out.
it’s your turn to frown now, shoulders deflating a little with insecurity, “oh..”
“it’s not—“ he starts gruffly, upset with himself for making you feel bad, “it smells nice, it’s just different. it’s not how you smell. i like how you smell,” he explains.
you nod, beginning to understand now. he’s used to your usual perfume, it’s what he’s grown to associate with you since you’ve worn the scent for years—probably as long a you’ve known him—and he doesn’t like the change.
you smile at him coyly, “i like how you smell too, andy.”
you savor the flush that burns up his neck and tinges his ears a delicious pink as he looks away from your knowing gaze.
Summary: She needs blaring music to create her masterpiece. He needs complete silence after a twelve-hour trauma shift. Between a missing painting, unpaid rent, and the haunting aftermath of Pittfest, two exhausted neighbors realize that sometimes the only person who understands your worst night is the one living right downstairs.
Warnings: Jack Abbot x fem! reader, Mentions of ER trauma/mass shooting aftermath (off-screen, canonical to The Pitt S1 finale), academic burnout, financial stress, public humiliation/anxiety, and mild profanity. 18+, Explicit sexual content, detailed descriptions of anatomy/sexual acts, age gap, vaginal intercourse (P-in-V), oral sex (fellatio and cunnilingus), fingering, orgasm denial, ass slapping/spanking, praise kink ("good girl"), mild dominance, overstimulation, and external ejaculation.
Notes: I just binged watch the pitt and I can't stop thinking about this man. Let me know if I should continue this thanks 💜 Shoutout to @uzmacchiato for the dividers.
The morning sun filtered through the dust motes of your top floor apartment, painting warm golden streaks across the worn hardwood. Beside your head, a soft, rhythmic purring vibrated against the pillow.
"Salem, move your fat head," you mumbled, nudging the solid mass of black fur draping over your neck.
Salem opened one yellow eye, gave an indignant twitch of his tail, and slowly stretched, digging his claws into your duvet with total disregard for your property. You groaned, swinging your legs out of bed. Being a senior art student meant sleep was already an absolute luxury, especially with two massive thesis deadlines hanging over your head. To make matters worse, Professor Harrison seemed to have a personal vendetta against you this semester, tearing apart your critiques with petty, hyper-critical feedback that was driving you up the wall. The constant stress was exhausting. You had maintained a flawless GPA for three years, and you were damned if you were going to let one bitter academic ruin your perfect record right at the finish line. But no matter how late you stayed up agonizing over color theory or Harrison's ridiculous notes, Salem’s 6:00 AM breakfast alarm was a hard, non-negotiable rule.
You padded barefoot into the bathroom, stripping off your oversized sleep shirt and stepping into the shower. The hot water cascaded over your shoulders, melting away the lingering knot of tension in your neck. You washed off the haze of sleep, stepped out into the steam-filled room, and wrapped a plush towel around yourself. Turning to the vanity, you moved through your meticulously practiced skincare routine patting on toner, smoothing in a hydrating serum, and working a cool moisturizer into your skin until your complexion was glowing. Once your skin felt fresh, you walked back to your bedroom and threw on some clothes. Heading back into the bathroom, you wiped a clear circle into the fogged mirror and caught your own reflection. Sharp eyes, tired beneath the surface, but unmistakably sharp. You knew your work was good better than half the snobs in your senior thesis cohort. You just needed one real break to prove it to the rest of the world.
Then your phone buzzed violently on the porcelain counter, the rattle echoing off the bathroom tiles.
You picked it up, shielding your eyes from the bright screen, and slid the bar to answer.
"Tell me you're awake," Marcus’s voice blasted through the speaker before you could even bring the phone to your ear. He was speaking at a breakneck speed, his tone practically vibrating with hyper-caffeinated, frantic energy. Marcus was your gallery manager at the downtown studio where you interned a chaotic, overly ambitious advocate for your art who always seemed to manage to turn crisis into opportunity.
"Barely," you replied, your voice still thick with sleep as you squinted into the mirror. "What's wrong, Marcus?"
"Nothing is wrong! Everything is incredible!" Marcus practically shouted, letting out a wild, breathless laugh that cracked slightly through the receiver. "Listen to me: Arthur Vance is coming to the gallery tonight for the summer showcase. A prime slot just opened up Donny pulled his pieces at the last second over some stupid contract dispute. I pushed your name forward hard, and Vance wants a large-scale piece on the main wall. Tonight."
Your heart hit your ribs like a bass drum. Vance wasn't just a buyer; he was one of the most influential collectors in the city, capable of making or breaking a young artist's career with a single purchase. A sale to him wouldn't just crush Professor Harrison’s endless doubts it could pay off your remaining tuition and put your name on the map before you even walked across the graduation stage.
"Are you serious?" you breathed, your grip tightening on the phone as shock gave way to an instant, rushing surge of adrenaline.
"Dead serious," Marcus confirmed, his tone suddenly dropping into an urgent, dead-pan seriousness. "I need the canvas fully dried, framed, and delivered to the front gallery floor by 6:00 PM sharp. Can you pull it off, or do I give it to someone else?"
"Consider it done," you said, your voice ringing with absolute, unwavering confidence as all fatigue evaporated in a single second.
The moment the call dropped, adrenaline hit your bloodstream like an electric shock. You ran into the living room, grabbing a massive, half-finished 4x5 canvas you’d been agonizing over for weeks. You dragged it to the center of the room, throwing drop cloths across the floor and scattering tubes of oil paint around your ankles.
To get in the zone, you needed noise. Energy. Momentum.
You walked over to your vintage stereo, wired to a pair of surprisingly heavy duty speakers you’d dragged up three flights of stairs freshman year. You turned the volume knob well past the halfway mark, hitting play on a gritty, bass-heavy alt-rock track that practically rattled the floorboards.
Within minutes, you were in motion, palette knife in hand, lost in the rhythm of the music and the sweeping strokes of cobalt and crimson.
Three floors down, the world was a very different kind of quiet.
Jack Abbot walked into his apartment, the heavy wooden door clicking shut behind him. He let out a long, slow breath through his nose, his shoulders dropping two inches the second he was out of the public eye.
It had been a brutal twelve-hour shift in the ER. Two gunshot wounds, a three-vehicle collision on the highway, and an intern who nearly blew an IV line before Jack stepped in to take over. On top of that, his prosthetic leg was aching with a dull, throbbing friction that only hours of standing in trauma bays could cause.
He unbuttoned his work shirt, tossing it onto the back of a chair, and unbuckled his leg, letting out a faint grunt as he leaned his weight against the bed frame. All he wanted all he cared about in the entire universe right now was six hours of uninterrupted, dead-to-the-world sleep.
He pulled the blackout shades down, peeled off his socks, and sank into the mattress. He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing down into a steady rhythm.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Jack’s eyes opened.
At first, he thought it was just the residual tinnitus from his army days. But then the heavy, vibrating bass shook the light fixture hanging from his ceiling. Dust literally danced in the air. An electric guitar riff pierced through the floorboards above him with pristine, aggressive clarity.
He laid there for a full minute, staring at the ceiling, waiting for whoever it was to realize their mistake and turn it down.
The music only got louder. The bass hit a crescendo, vibrating right down into his mattress.
Jack rubbed a hand over his face, dragging his palm down his jaw with a raspy sound of stubble. He closed his eyes, trying to force his mind past it. Just ignore it, Abbot. Fall asleep.
Ten minutes passed. The singer on the track above hit a high-pitched scream.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Jack muttered softly to the empty room.
Sighing, he swung himself to the edge of the bed, reattached his prosthetic with practiced mechanical efficiency, and pulled a soft charcoal hoodie over his t-shirt. He didn't want a confrontation. He just wanted quiet.
He walked out of his apartment, took the stairs up to the top floor, and stopped in front of apartment 4B. The door was practically vibrating off its hinges.
Jack raised his hand and knocked. Three firm, heavy thuds.
Nothing. The music drowned it out entirely.
He waited five seconds, took a breath, and knocked harder a sharp, authoritative rhythm that usually made rowdy SWAT trainees instantly shut their mouths.
Inside, you paused, a paintbrush hovering inches from the canvas. You blinked, hearing a faint, persistent bang against the wood. Annoyed at the interruption to your workflow, you wiped a streak of yellow paint off your cheek with the back of your hand, marched over to the entrance, and pulled the door open.
Standing in your doorway was a man who looked like he had personally survived a small war within the last hour.
He was leaning slightly against the doorframe, hands shoved deep into his hoodie pockets. He had a strong, square jaw covered in dark stubble, tired eyes framed by subtle lines, and a calm, immovable posture that practically screamed 'authority.'
He didn't look angry, exactly. He just looked thoroughly, deeply exhausted and entirely unamused.
You leaned against your side of the doorway, crossing your arms, matching his gaze without flinching.
"Can I help you, neighbor?" you asked, leaning in closer so he could hear you over the roaring bass behind you.
Jack stared at you for a beat. His voice, when he finally spoke, was a low, gravelly drawl—unhurried, measured, and completely devoid of panic or anger, despite the noise level.
"Yeah. Hi," Jack said, his vocal cadence slow and drawn out, pulling at the vowels in that dry, deadpan way of his. "It's... four in the morning for me, even if the sun's up for you. Mind turning the concert down a notch?"
You raised an eyebrow, taking in his relaxed posture. "It's 9:30 AM on a Friday. Normal people are awake working."
"Normal people didn't just spend twelve hours pulling shattered glass out of a guy's chest," Jack replied smoothly, his tone light, almost conversational, yet carrying a heavy weight behind it. "I’m on the night shift down at the hospital. I just want to sleep."
"Look, I sympathize, really," you said, offering him a sharp, brilliant smile that was pure bravado. "I honor the medical profession. Truly. But I have an art gallery owner picking up a canvas in nine hours that could literally make my entire career. I need the energy. Loud music is non-negotiable for the creative process."
Jack let out a small, quiet puff of air a half-laugh that barely made a sound. He shifted his weight, his dark eyes scanning the paint-splattered shirt you were wearing, the streak of yellow on your face, and the massive canvas visible over your shoulder.
"Right. The creative process," Jack repeated softly, drawing out the words like he was examining a mildly interesting artifact. "Well... your creative process is currently shaking the plaster off my bathroom ceiling."
"Then consider it free home renovations," you shot back smoothly, resting your head against the door frame. "Look, doc—or whatever you are—I'm in the zone. I turn the music down, the momentum dies, the painting suffers, I go broke, and I end up living on the street with my cat. Do you really want that on your conscience?"
Jack stared at you, completely unbothered by your rapid-fire bratty logic. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't get flustered. He just stood there, grounded as an oak tree, his eyes tracking yours with a quiet, amused patience.
"I think your cat would survive," Jack said dryly, his low voice cutting right through your snappy attitude. "And I'm pretty sure your genius isn't reliant on a bassline that's actively giving me a migraine."
"You don't know my genius," you countered, popping your hip out. "Maybe my brushwork is directly tied to the decibel level."
"Is that right?" Jack murmured, a faint, barely perceptible smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He took one hand out of his pocket and pointed a finger down toward his floor. "Here's the deal. I’ve got about seven hours before I have to go back into that ER and make sure people keep breathing. I'd really prefer not to do that on zero sleep because my upstairs neighbor had a sudden burst of artistic divine inspiration."
He didn't sound mean. That was the most infuriating part—his cadence was so calm, so steady, so casually authoritative that you couldn't even properly fight with him.
You narrowed your eyes, staring at him. He stared right back, completely unfazed, waiting you out with the endurance of a man who dealt with screaming trauma patients for a living.
Finally, you let out a dramatic, exaggerated sigh.
"Fine," you huffed, spinning on your heel. You walked over to the stereo and turned the volume knob down until the music settled into a low, respectable hum in the background.
You walked back to the door, leaning against the frame again, crossing your arms. "There. Happy? Your fragile ears are saved."
Jack looked down at you, his eyes softening just a fraction, a quiet flick of approval passing over his face.
"Appreciate it," he said softly, his gravelly voice dropping an octave into something quiet and measured. "Good luck with the painting."
"Yeah, yeah. Go to bed, old man," you said, giving him a witty smirk.
Before he could offer a deadpan retort, you grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut right in his face.
Outside in the hallway, Jack stood in front of the closed wooden door for a second. The sudden silence of the corridor settled over him like a heavy blanket.
He shook his head, a low, silent chuckle escaping his chest as he turned around and began his slow, steady walk back down the stairs to get some damn sleep.
By 5:30 PM, the chaos of the day had finally coalesced into something brilliant. The massive 4x5 canvas sat in the center of your living room, dry, framed, and looking every bit like the masterpiece you knew it was.
You had dressed up for the occasion, slipping into an elegant dress that made you feel like the confident, artist you were, sweeping your hair back and touching up your makeup. But beneath the polished exterior, your nerves were strung tight as a guitar string.
Your phone was pressed against your ear as you paced around the canvas.
"Marcus, I'm telling you, I could have just carried it down to a cab myself," you said, your voice laced with anxious energy. "Handing it off to some courier service makes me sick to my stomach."
"For the hundredth time, relax!" Marcus’s frantic voice crackled through the receiver, though he was clearly trying to sound soothing. "It's standard protocol for high-profile showcases. The gallery handles logistics and white-glove transport so nothing gets damaged in transit. The driver is insured, certified, and probably already outside your building. Just take a deep breath, hand it over, and get your gorgeous self down here. You're going to kill it tonight."
You let out a long breath, forcing your shoulders to drop. "Okay. Okay, fine. I'm leaving now."
Just as you ended the call, a sharp ding echoed from your phone. You glanced down at the screen. An automated notification from your landlord popped up: Reminder: Monthly Rent Due in 3 Days.
You swallowed down a deep, nervous lump in your throat. Everything rode on tonight. If Vance bought the piece, you were set. If he didn't... you were in serious trouble.
The gallery was bathed in soft, warm lighting, bustling with the city's elite. Glasses of champagne clinked, low conversations hummed, and expensive perfume hung heavy in the air.
Stepping inside, you felt an instant wave of imposter syndrome wash over you, but you held your head high. You began weaving through the curated rooms, searching for the featured wall where your piece was supposed to hang.
Room one—abstract portraiture. Room two—sculptural installations. Room three—the main wall.
You stopped dead in your tracks.
Hanging on the central, illuminated display wall was a massive, minimalist canvas by an artist you didn't recognize. Your painting was nowhere to be seen.
Confusion morphed into cold panic. You walked through the entire floor twice, your heart pounding against your ribs. Nothing. Feeling entirely out of your element and desperately needing something to ground you, you slipped toward the back of the gallery and ordered a glass of red wine at the bar, nursing it with trembling hands.
An hour passed. Then two.
"There you are!"
Marcus suddenly appeared out of the crowd, grabbing your arm and steering you toward a tall, sharply dressed man with silvering hair and an icy, discerning gaze. Arthur Vance.
"Mr. Vance, this is the young talent I was telling you about," Marcus said, gesturing to you with an eager, almost desperate smile.
Vance didn't smile back. He looked down his nose at you, his tone cold and unimpressed. "A pleasure. Though I must admit, I'm confused as to why I was brought here to view a showcase piece that doesn't exist."
Your blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, young lady, that your wall is occupied by a back-up installation because your canvas never arrived," Vance said dryly, crossing his arms. "If this is how you handle high-stakes opportunities, I question your professionalism."
"No wait, that's impossible!" you stammered, your sharp wit completely failing you under the weight of the moment. "I handed it directly to the transport driver Marcus dispatched! There must have been a mix-up with the courier service—"
"I don't care for excuses," Vance cut in smoothly, turning on his heel to walk away. "My time is valuable."
Panic flared through you. "Mr. Vance, please, just wait—!"
You reached out frantically to touch his arm to keep him from leaving, forgetting the full glass of cabernet resting in your other hand. Your elbow collided with his chest, and deep, dark red wine sloshed out, soaking straight through his pristine white dress shirt and custom blazer.
Gasps echoed from the nearby patrons. Vance froze, looking down at the massive, dripping stain with absolute disgust.
Within ten seconds, two large security guards were at your sides. "Ma'am, we're going to need you to step outside."
"It was an accident! I'm so sorry—"
They didn't listen. You were firmly escorted out the glass doors, the heavy whisper of gallery patrons dying out behind you as the cool night air hit your face.
You arrived back at your apartment feeling completely destroyed. The rent notification, the missing painting, the public humiliation it was all too much. Stripping out of your fancy dress and pulling on an oversized hoodie, and some joggers, you sank onto your living room floor, pulling Salem into your lap.
To drown out the suffocating silence and the overwhelming urge to cry, you reached over and turned on your stereo, playing a soft, somber track just loud enough to fill the empty room.
Three floors down, the street was still ringing with the ghost of sirens.
Jack Abbot walked into the apartment building, his gait heavier than usual. It had been a nightmare shift the horrific aftermath of the Pittfest mass shooting. The ER had been flooded with victims, blood, and chaos, pushing every doctor and medic to their absolute breaking point. Jack’s mind was heavy with the weight of the lives lost, his ears still ringing with the echo of monitors screaming and trauma calls.
He took the stairs slowly, his body aching, his prosthetic dragging slightly as exhaustion pulled at his bones. All he needed was quiet. Just quiet.
As he reached his floor, a low, persistent bass filtered down through the ceiling above.
Jack stopped. He closed his eyes, letting out a long, weary breath. On any other day, he might have tried to ignore it. But tonight? Tonight, the noise felt like a physical weight pressing against his battered skull.
He turned, heading straight up the stairs to Apartment 4B.
He didn't knock with his usual sharp rhythm; he just rapped his knuckles against the wood, waiting.
The door swung open.
You stood there, eyes red-rimmed, looking small and defeated. But the moment you saw him, you instinctively turned around, walked over to the stereo, and clicked it off completely. Silence fell over the apartment.
You walked back to the door, leaning against the frame, trying to muster a weak version of your usual sharp demeanor. "I turned it off. You don't have to give me the speech, Doc."
Jack stood there, his hands shoved deep into his hoodie pockets. He looked at your pale face, the lingering sadness in your eyes, and his own irritation evaporated, replaced by a quiet, observing silence. His voice was lower than usual, gravelly and subdued.
"Appreciate it," Jack said softly, his drawl slow and measured. He paused, scanning your tired expression. "You... look like you've had a rough night."
"You could say that," you murmured, letting out a dry, humorless laugh. You leaned your head back against the doorframe, your eyes trailing down to his unzipped hoodie catching the dark navy scrub top underneath and the bold white lettering of the hospital emblem stitched across his chest.
"What about you?" you continued quietly, looking back up with genuine concern. "I heard the news on the radio coming home in a cab. Pittfest. Your hospital is the closest trauma center to the festival grounds... you guys must have taken the brunt of it."
Jack stayed quiet for a beat, his dark eyes fixed on the floor before lifting to meet yours. He gave a single, somber nod of his head.
"Yeah. We did," he said quietly, keeping his answer brief, stripped of any graphic detail, yet carrying a heavy, undeniable truth. "It was... a long night."
The silence stretched between you, but for the first time, it wasn't tense. It was shared. Two exhausted people, grounded in the quiet hallway.
You looked at his worn face, noticing the deep lines of fatigue around his eyes and the subtle way he was shifting his weight off his prosthetic leg.
"Look..." you started, your voice softening, the bratty edge completely gone. "I was just about to make some breakfast. Coffee, eggs, toast. I know it's late—or early, depending on how you look at it—but... do you want to come in? Have a plate?"
Jack stared at you, genuinely caught off guard. He looked into your apartment, then back at your face, seeing the sincere offer in your eyes.
A small, almost invisible softness appeared around his mouth.
"Yeah," Jack murmured softly, taking his hands out of his pockets as he stepped across the threshold. "Yeah, I'd like that."
Jack crossed the threshold into your apartment, the heavy door clicking shut behind him with a quiet thunk. He stood near the entryway, his eyes slowly adjusting to the soft lamps scattered around the room.
"Sorry about the disaster zone," you said, gesturing vaguely to the center of the living room.
Drop cloths were still spread across the floorboards, surrounded by scattered tubes of oil paint, messy jars of turpentine, and an empty easel standing like a ghost where your massive canvas had been just hours ago.
Jack’s dark eyes lingered on the bare easel, then flicked over to the discarded paintbrushes sitting in jars.
"Thought you were working on a deadline," Jack said softly, his voice a low, gravelly drawl as he leaned slightly against the kitchen counter. "Where's the masterpiece?"
You let out a small, dry laugh, pulling two mugs from the cupboard. "It... didn't quite make it. The courier service they hired lost the canvas somewhere between here and the gallery. Showed up, got grilled by the biggest collector in the city for not having my work on the wall, and then—to top off the night—I accidentally dumped an entire glass of cabernet down his shirt." You paused, offering him a faint, self-deprecating smile. "Got thrown out by security before I could even explain."
Jack watched you closely, his expression quiet and unhurried. He didn't offer pity or empty platitudes—just that steady, grounded presence of his.
"Sounds like a hell of a night," Jack murmured, his drawl slow and rhythmic. "Sucks about the painting. But if a guy loses his temper over some ruined silk, he probably didn't deserve your art on his wall anyway."
A faint smile touched your lips at that, the tight knot in your chest loosening just a fraction.
"Coffee?" you asked, holding up the pot. "It's fresh."
"Yeah," Jack murmured. "Black's fine. Thanks."
You poured two cups, sliding one across the counter toward him. He took it, his long fingers wrapping around the warm ceramic, taking a slow sip.
"So," you started, leaning your elbows against the laminate counter and looking across at him, "what about you? How was the ER after Pittfest?"
Jack took another quiet sip, shifting his weight off his prosthetic leg with a practiced, subtle movement. He gave a casual, dismissive shrug. "Just another night. Trauma bays get chaotic, you pull the shift, you go home. Doesn't really get to me anymore."
"Right. Doesn't get to you at all," you murmured softly, tracing the rim of your mug with your index finger.
"Part of the job," Jack said, his voice completely level, like a man reading off a chart.
A small, knowing smirk tugged at the corner of your lips, though your eyes remained soft as you looked up to catch his gaze.
"Nice try, Doc," you said softly, your voice cutting right through his calm defense. "Sad knows sad. I’ve seen you coming up those stairs at 6:00 AM on my early mornings. You wear a pretty solid mask—quiet, cool, completely unbothered. But I see beyond it." You took a slow sip of your coffee, keeping your gaze locked with his. "Because I do the exact same thing."
Jack paused, his mug halfway to his lips. He lowered it back to the counter, a faint, amused glint touching his dark eyes.
"Is that right?" Jack murmured, pulling at his vowels in that dry, deadpan cadence of his. "You've got me all figured out from a few hallway passings?"
"I'm an artist, Abbot. I observe details for a living," you shot back smoothly, popping your hip out against the counter. "I know what it looks like when someone uses work and noise—or total silence—to drown out that hollow, empty feeling in their chest."
"Empty, huh?" Jack let out a small, quiet puff of air—a half-laugh that barely made a sound. He set his mug down completely, leaning forward against the counter, closing the distance between you by a few inches. His voice dropped an octave, smooth and resonant. "And how does an artist handle the emptiness? Blaring alt-rock at ungodly hours and throwing paint at a canvas?"
"Precisely," you said, matching his posture, leaning in just as close. "It keeps the walls from closing in. What's your excuse? SWAT duty and twelve-hour trauma shifts?"
"It works," Jack replied smoothly, his tone light, almost conversational, yet carrying a heavy depth underneath. "Occupies the mind. Stops you from overthinking."
He quieted down, his dark, observant eyes fixing on yours. He studied the tired lines around your eyes, and the quiet resilience holding you upright despite having your entire night destroyed.
"You know..." Jack said softly, his raspy voice dropping into something steady and intimately focused, a faint, dry smirk touching the corner of his mouth. "You say you observe details for a living. But you spend all your time looking outward just so nobody notices how hard you're trying to keep it all together. You pour your whole soul onto a canvas, watch it vanish, get humiliated by some pompous snob—and the second I show up at your door looking like death warmed over, you shut your music off and worry about feeding me instead."
His words lingered in the quiet air between you, heavy and strikingly soft. No one had ever bypassed your defensive wit to see the quiet, genuine tenderness beneath it. You felt exposed, completely seen in a way that made your pulse jump against your ribs.
Driven by a sudden, overwhelming wave of emotion, you leaned forward over the narrow counter, closing the last bit of distance, and pressed your lips against his.
It was a soft, sudden kiss—warm, lingering, and full of unspoken understanding.
The moment you pulled back, reality slammed into you. Your eyes widened slightly, and you took a step back, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. "God—I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"
Before you could finish the sentence, Jack moved.
In one smooth, deliberate motion, he reached across the counter, his broad hand coming around your waist with steady, unyielding strength. He pulled you flush against him, cutting off your apology as his mouth met yours in a deep, firm kiss.
His lips were warm, tasting faintly of black coffee, his touch possessive yet remarkably gentle. You let out a quiet sigh against his mouth, your hands instinctively rising to rest against his chest, feeling the solid, grounding beat of his heart through his scrub top.
He pulled back just an inch, his index finger hooking under your chin while his thumb swept slow and possessive across your jawline. "You are so beautiful," he breathed, his eyes scanning every inch of your face. "Absolutely breathtaking." He dragged his lip over yours in a tantalizing tease before initiating another kiss slower, more intentional. His hand slid up your jaw and down the nape of your neck, cupping the back of your head. "I've got you," he whispered against your lips, his tongue pushing past yours to claim you.
Jack pulled back slightly, his pupils blown wide. He stepped closer, pressing you against the kitchen counter. He placed a heavy hand on your bare shoulder, nudging your nose with his. "You're shaking," he noted with a dark, knowing smirk. "Is that because you're scared, or because you want me this bad?" He didn't wait for an answer before pulling you in by the waist for a kiss that felt like it was trying to consume you both.
Driven by a sudden, fierce hunger, you reached down, stroking the hard length of him through his trousers. Jack let out a sharp hiss, his breath hitching. "God, you have no idea what you're doing to me," he groaned. You peppered kisses along his jaw and neck, and he reacted instantly, pulling you back until you felt the cool, hard surface of the kitchen island against your spine.
"Get this shirt off," he commanded softly, his voice strained. You popped the top button of his shirt, undoing them one by one. You unbuckled his belt with a frantic energy, leaning in to press wet kisses to his chest and the dip of his navel. In one fluid motion, you pushed the shirt down his arms, trapping his wrists. You stepped back to admire him—the lean muscle and the sheer masculinity of him.
Jack nudged your nose again, a silent demand. "Stop looking and start touching," he teased. You leaned in, kissing him with a mixture of tongue and light, teasing bites. You reached for his zipper, sliding it down and pulling his trousers and boxer briefs down to his thighs. His erection sprang free, thick and demanding. Jack freed his wrists from his sleeves, his hands finding the back of your neck. "Yeah... just like that," he groaned as you wrapped your fingers around him.
You pushed his head back against the cabinet, the door handle rattling slightly as you lowered yourself to your knees. You teased him first, swirling your tongue around the head and licking along the shaft. Jack let out a guttural sound, his hips twitching.
Then, you took him fully into your mouth. You squeezed his hips and lower back, pulling him deeper. Jack’s head hit the cabinet with a soft thud as he let out a long, shaky moan. "Fuck... you're perfect."
Jack’s fingers tangled in your hair as he pulled you up abruptly to crash his lips against yours. He didn't stop there; he reached for your shirt pulling it over your head, to expose your breast. "So soft," he whispered, licking and kissing your nipple until you were shaking.
Before you could breathe, he hoisted you up, placing you on the kitchen island and laying you across the cold surface. He pulled you to the edge, sliding your pants off and stripping away your underwear. Jack descended, kissing his way down your inner thigh. "I'm going to taste every single inch of you," he murmured before burying his face between your legs. His tongue flicked expertly against your clitoris while two fingers slid inside you. Pulling his right hand away, he tipped his head back to draw a line over your sensitive folds with his long, slender fingers. Circling your entrance with his fingertips had you whining out, before he unhurriedly pushed his middle finger inside of you drawing your hips up toward him. Humming out, Jack wolfishly smiled when he started to thrust his finger inside of you finding the areas you seemed to like the most before adding another finger. Allowing you to get used to the motions, he set a sturdy tempo with his fingers once he found your g-spot. It had you bouncing up toward him, your breathless whimpers growing louder while he had his way with you. Wetting his lips once more, he went back to pleasuring you, his tongue circling your clitoris before slowly shaking his head from side to side. You arched your back, screaming his name as the first climax ripped through you.
Jack stood up fully pulling his trousers and boxer briefs off, positioning himself between your splayed legs. He aligned his cock at your entrance and pushed inside you slowly. He paused, his voice strained and thick. "You're so tight... tell me if it's too much. I don't want to hurt you."
"No," you gasped, clinging to him. "Please... just go slow."
"I've got you," he whispered, establishing a steady, grinding rhythm. The friction built until you couldn't take the slow pace anymore. "Faster, Jack... harder!"
The air in the kitchen was heavy, the friction between your bodies creating a heat that felt like it could ignite the room. Jack had established a steady, grinding rhythm, his eyes locked onto yours as he filled you completely. But just as you reached the tipping point just as the pleasure became an unbearable ache he stopped.
He froze inside you, his muscles locking, holding you in a state of agonizing suspension.
"Jack?" you gasped, your hips instinctively twitching, trying to find the movement again. "Why did you stop?"
He didn't move an inch. A slow, dark smirk spread across his face, and he leaned back slightly, watching the desperation bloom in your eyes. "I think we need to have a little conversation first," he murmured, his voice low and commanding.
"Please," you whimpered, your hands clutching his shoulders. "Please, Jack, don't stop. I need you... I need you to move."
"Do you now?" He let out a low chuckle, his expression shifting into something more stern. "You've been a little bit of a brat today, haven't you? All that wit, all that armor... and then there's the music. The way you blast those records in the middle of the day while I'm trying to wind down from a shift."
You tried to argue, but a small, needy moan escaped you instead. You arched your back, trying to force him to thrust, but he gripped your hips with a strength that pinned you firmly against the island.
"Ah, ah," he cautioned, his voice dropping an octave. "No more being difficult."
Suddenly, he shifted his weight and delivered a sharp, stinging smack to your ass. The sound echoed in the quiet kitchen, and you gasped, the shock of it sending a fresh jolt of electricity straight to your clitoris.
"That's for being a bad, bratty girl," he whispered, his breath hot against your ear. He delivered another smack, slightly harder this time, leaving your skin tingling and flushed. "You think you can just push me around and then get exactly what you want the moment you ask for it?"
You were trembling now, your vision blurring with need. "Please... Jack... I'll do anything. Just please, fuck me."
He paused, his grip tightening on your hips. "I'm not moving another inch until you promise me something. No more playing that loud music when I'm trying to sleep. You promise to be a good girl for me?"
"I promise!" you cried out, your voice desperate and raw. "I promise, I'll be good, just please—I can't take it—please!"
Jack let out a guttural groan, the sound of victory and lust mingling in his throat. "That's my girl."
He didn't go back to the slow rhythm. Instead, he slammed into you with a raw, punishing intensity, his depth maximizing with every thrust. The sudden release of tension was explosive. He drove into you over and over, his movements relentless and deep, pushing you past the point of no return until a second, crashing orgasm ripped through your entire body, leaving you sobbing and shaking against the cold surface of the island.
Breathless and needy, he gently slid you off the island. Jack smirked, delivering a sharp smack to your ass that made you gasp. Jack chuckled, pressing you forward, your hands flat against the island. He entered you from behind in one powerful thrust. He paused for a heartbeat, letting you adjust, while his hand reached around to find your clitoris again.
"You like this, don't you?" he whispered in your ear, his voice a low rumble. "Feeling me fill you up like this?" He resumed thrusting—holding your jaw and hips to keep you pinned—and the combined stimulation was too much. You shattered for a third time, your body vibrating against the counter.
The two of you collapsed against each other, panting in the sudden silence of the kitchen. You leaned back, glancing at the scene of your chaos. "I have to say... I really like the view from here," you breathed.
Jack snickered. "Is that so?" Without warning, he fully withdrew from you. You let out a pathetic whine at the sudden absence of him.
"Patience," he teased, a mischievous glint in his eye. He simply walked over to your couch and sat down, stretching his long legs out and resting an arm behind his neck. He looked completely relaxed, though his erection was still prominent against his abdomen. "Come here," he commanded softly.
"My legs... they feel like Jell-O," you whispered. You shakily crossed the room and climbed onto his lap, bracing your hands against his chest. Jack placed his hands on your hips, guiding you as you lowered yourself back onto him. "There we go," he sighed, leaning back into the cushions. "Welcome back."
You began to roll your hips in a slow, circular motion. Jack cupped your breasts, humming in approval. "That's it... just like that. You're driving me crazy."
Jack sat up slightly, trailing kisses up your neck and over your breasts before pulling you into a deep kiss. As your hips moved faster, he looked down at the sight of his cock sliding in and out of you.
"God, look at you," he groaned, his voice breaking. "I'm close... I'm going to come."
He gripped your hips and pulled out just in time, groaning loudly against your lips as he ejaculated across your stomach in hot, heavy bursts. As your movements finally slowed to a stop, Jack dropped his head onto your chest, completely spent. "I think... I'm finally relaxed," he whispered hoarsely. You smiled softly, stroking his damp hair as you both lay there on the couch, your breathing slowly settling into the quiet peace of the morning.
Summary: Your last group of the day happen to be doctors from a local hospital. When one gets too handsy, another stands up for you, wooing you in the process.
Contains: 18+ SMUT MDNI, unprotected p in v sex, semi-public (secluded) sex, reader faces sexual harrassment (ass slapping, crude comments, etc), lmk if i missed any!
A/N: divider from @thecutestgrotto ! im not even gonna lie i loved this idea but i kind of hate the way i executed it so if this sucks im sorry
The sun is hot, beating down on Jack's scalp, even through his golf cap. Sweat brews underneath, tickling his curls in a way that tells him he's going to have a rough day.
Dread bubbles in his stomach as he reluctantly shuts the door to his truck, taking in the greens before him. They're large, many acres over a large country club, one he's unsure he could pronounce the name of, let alone fit in at.
He spots the pro shop, so large and intimidating he feels like a cartoon character, cowering under an evil giant. An evil giant in white linens and golf gloves.
So to speak, this is not his crowd. All the same, he grabs his golf clubs, and begins his journey into this hellacious day.
As he approaches, he spots the reason he's here— some hospital higher up he's been sent to impress in order to garner some more PTO for his staff.
They're lucky he loves them.
"Dr. Abbot!" The big-wig croons, a plain man aptly named Dr. Alex Smith. Jack's face stretches in a tight smile as he extends his hand for a shake. "How are you? So happy you could join us."
"I'm alright," he replies, a nonchalant air in his tone. "It's a gorgeous day."
He's not typically one for niceties and small talk, but today? It's a bit of a different story.
As Dana so lovingly puts it, he's shit at hiding his feelings, and he needs to fix his fuckin' face. He's going to need all the luck he can get.
"Absolutely beautiful!" He booms, clapping him on the back.
The man's hand is large and aggressive, and Jack assumes the two adjectives will describe today quite well.
Soon, a golf cart rolls down the gravel. a blessing that spares him from more small talk. His relief is momentary, though, because what he sees behind the wheel nearly gives him a heart attack.
You're sitting there, the prettiest thing he's seen in years. Pink manicured nails perch atop the black leather as you slow down, shifting the gear.
His eyes drift from your sweet face, down to the white tennis dress clinging to your curves. It's enough to make him dizzy, and he wills himself to look at something, anything else.
He regrets this, because of course he does, as he takes in the rest of your cart. It's bigger than your average golf cart, and, in his defense, what you've done with it makes it seem a lot bigger.
Jack takes it in, a bright pink explosion assaulting his vision. A pink disco ball swings from the rearview mirror, reflecting off your pretty face in shiny glass shards.
A baby pink tarp protects you from the sun, and the protective urge in him yearns to put a cap on your head. He's seen enough scalp damage in the ED to last him a lifetime.
Jutting out of the side is a little cabinet, filled to the brim with snacks. The counter below has little handles on the side, and he can only imagine the different types of alcohol in there.
In the haze of you, he thinks he hears a low whistle coming from his left, coincidentally where Dr. Smith posts up beside him. Anger burns through him, and he extends his neck, twisting his head from side to side, desperate to shake it off.
You pop up, breaking his bubble with a sweet, 'hi!', and a wiggle of your fingers. Your manicure flashes in the sun at your greeting, and he wills himself to think of dead puppies, his grandma, anything to rid his brain of your beauty.
Smith is first to approach, holding out a hand for you to shake. Ever so polite, you accept, greeting each member of their group with the same level of enthusiasm.
"Last, but not least!" You chirp, holding your hand out to Jack.
He freezes, forgetting he's actually there, and not an invisible passerby. Eyes darting to your hand, it feels robotic, the way he extends his own, letting you lead the shake.
God, what kind of man is he?
Looking past you, Smith has already planted himself in the front seat of the cart, and nothing about that sits right with Jack. The rest of the group is relegated to another, normal golf cart, trailing behind yours to the first hole.
His eyes can't help but burn into the back of you, keeping an eye on Smith, as well. Jack doesn't know much, but he knows damn well that if he touched you, he'd simply see red.
This passion, this fire, scares him. He just learned your name all of five minutes ago, didn't even know you existed when he opened his eyes this morning.
Yet, you've captivated him. Your kind smile, your bubbly personality, it's enough to make a man go weak in the knees.
Though, he supposes that's why you were hired. He can't be the only man who's felt this way in your presence, in fact, he's probably far from it.
The thought makes his stomach twist, and he pushes it down as the cart comes to a stop. He averts his gaze as you swing out of your own vehicle, though you make it difficult, you're so pretty.
With a snap of your sweet fingers, you gather the attention of the men in record time. It's impressive, the way the group flocks to you, and Jack's no exception.
Guilt roils through him as you meet his gaze, a smile spreading your lips in a way that makes his heart pound. You deserve better than his leering, though the way your eyes linger for a moment gives him a sliver of hope.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he snaps his head away from you. Your voice floods his ears, soft enough to lull him to sleep if he really tried hard enough.
"Okay," you start, clapping your hands together. "So, here is how my cart works- any time you're hungry, or thirsty, let me know, and I'll get you taken care of."
I'll get you taken care of. Fuck, Jack, you pervert.
"All of your orders will be put on the tab of an…" rummaging for a small receipt tucked in one of the cabinets. "Alex Smith?"
Jack's heart lurches, stomach turning at his name.
"Doctor, sweetheart," he clarifies, and Jack can't help his eye roll. "Dr. Alex Smith."
Fix your fuckin' face, Abbot, Dana's voice plays in his head.
He sees you tense at the nickname, and his fingers clench in a fist. Desperate to ease your discomfort, he butts in.
"Thank you," he huffs, and your gaze snaps to his. "For- y'know-" he clears his throat, regretting opening his mouth. "Being there for us today."
His breath hitches at the eye contact, the first time he's been brave enough to give your face a proper look. You're so stunning, his heart hurts. You give him a small smile, and somehow his chest puffs on its own.
"Of course! Are you a doctor too?" Your smile widens with your question, and Jack nearly trips just standing there.
"Uh-yeah, yeah, I am," he coughs into a closed fist, holding out his free one for you to shake. "Dr. Abbot."
The regret is instant, once your hand touches his. It's electric, sending shockwaves through his veins. Smooth fingers wrapping around his calloused ones, your firm shake a pleasant surprise.
He can feel his hand clamming up, a small voice in the back of his head chanting, wrong, wrong, this is wrong. Clearing his throat, he brings his hand back like he's been shocked. In a way, he has.
Your smile falters, and he's unsure if he's seeing properly as you return your attention back to the rest of the group.
"Our drink options range from water, to soda, to some beers and hard seltzers. We don't sell hard liquor, just to be clear," you hold up a stern finger, a coy smile on your pretty face.
Your instructions were met with nods and grumbles of approval, and Jack is entranced by how easily you've captivated this group of grown men.
"Okay!" You chirp, clapping your hands together. "Let me know if you guys need anything, have so much fun!"
His heart patters at your squeal, and he tampers it down as best he can. He'll never see you again after today, and it has to stay that way.
The doctors within his group saddle up to the first hole, Jack hanging towards the back. Jack has golfed before, but it's definitely not his preferred activity, especially after losing his leg.
Peeking out of his peripheral, you make it all the more enticing, much to his everlasting dismay. Perched on the bench of your cart, you give a peppy clap, maybe a 'woo-hoo!', if they swing really well.
It makes Jack's stomach hurt, knowing he won't get that from you. Walking up to the hole, his first hit is instantly out of bounds.
"Woah! Bad morning, Abbot?" Smith asks, dripping with condescension.
His heart rate spikes, flitting his gaze over to the man, but he's not looking at him. He's got a thumb pointed toward Jack, wagging it as if to say, 'get a load of this guy.'
This would irritate Jack on any normal day, but with Smith's gaze on you, the way it lingers, like it's a joke he's not in on, it's enough to make him disintegrate.
The rest of the morning, his swing is just as terrible. Silly distractions flit through his mind, the wind rustling through your skirt, the tap of your pretty nails on the beer bottles you keep popping for Smith.
Smith. Jack has half a mind to report him to the board after today. The way he leers at you, flirts with you the drunker he gets, it's enough to make him vomit all over the pristine greens.
You take it all with a smile, friendly enough to keep him at bay, but not too overindulgent, as if to suggest reciprocated interest. The amount of times you've probably had to deal with this is something Jack would rather not think about.
"Woah! You see that, pretty girl?" Smith croons, pointing toward the birdie he just hit. "Not the only stroke I'm good at."
Jack's head snaps up, white hot rage simmering deep in his belly. His mouth moves before his brain can catch up.
"I'm sorry, what did you just say to her?" He asks, and the entire group snaps their heads in is direction.
His ears turn pink, but he refuses to back down.
Smith rears his head back, as if he's never been called out for his predatory behavior. He probably hasn't.
"Uhm-" he chuckles, scrambling for words. "Why do you care so much, Abbot? You wanna find out?"
Jack rolls his eyes, teeing up to his own ball.
"Just want to make sure you're keepin' it professional, Smith," he says, hitting the ball without making eye contact. "This is a work function, you know."
"Yeah, well if you care that much about being a professional, maybe you'd swing better," he condescends, clapping a hand on Jack's shoulder.
He flinches at the contact, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Boys, boys!" Your sweet voice flutters. "Please keep it kosher, or I'm going to have to end our game early."
You approach Jack as you speak, and his heart thumps louder in his chest.
"Thank you, Dr. Abbot," you coo, and his cheeks burn. "But I can take care of myself, I'm a big girl."
He rolls his eyes, desperate to tamper down his desire at the name you've bestowed upon yourself.
"Sorry, 'f course you are," he shakes his head, looking down. "'s just not right. He shouldn't speak to you that way."
Then, you do the unexpected. A delicate hand perches on his forearm, forcing his gaze back to you.
"You're sweet," you whisper, so quiet he can barely even hear it. "I'm okay, promise," you squeeze his muscle, and he expects you to walk away, for that to be the end of it.
But you don't. You stay, saddling up next to him to watch the rest of the group take their turn. The lingering smell of your sweet perfume fills his nose, and he nearly passes out.
He nods, not really wanting to believe you. The instinct to protect you looms large over his head, a solar eclipse of possession that threatens to choke him.
He shifts on his leg, a dull ache starting to settle in where the bone meets prosthetic. He leans on his golf club like it's a cane— the juxtaposition of you next to him, hands on your hips, left one jutting out, clutches his heart.
He's desperate to be as subtle as possible, not wanting to put any more attention on himself, but you notice. Of course you do, your pretty head flitting towards his stance.
"Oh! Do you need to sit? I'm so sorry, where are my manners!" You chastise, and he attempts a self-deprecating wave.
"No, no, gosh, I'm okay, you've been perfectly pleasant," he replies, training his eyes on the ground beneath him.
"Well, let me continue to do so and offer you a seat," you hold an arm out, and he accepts, grateful through the fog of his embarrassment.
Escorting him to your cart, he takes a seat, a long groan escaping his lips at the relief. Maneuvering his bad knee, his pant leg rides up, exposing the carbon fiber of his prosthetic.
A small gasp escapes your lips at the sight, and his heart sinks. The last thing he needed was your pity.
"I'm fine, please, don't," he waves a hand around, avoiding eye contact as embarrassment creeps up his spine.
"Oh! I'm sorry, I wasn't-" you shake your head, and he instantly feels guilty for opening his mouth in the first place. "I just= I should've mentioned this at first, but we have chairs for accessibility! Here-"
He watches as you reach towards the top of the cart, a pull out drawer nestled above the snack cabinet. Your waist stretches as you reach, and he nearly has to palm himself to keep his cool. In it, you reach and pull out a folding lawn chair, wiggling it in the air in offering.
He can't help but smile, despite the guilt relentless in his veins. He nods, the apples of his cheeks pink and pert.
"This will be much more comfortable, Dr. Abbot," you coo, placing your hands on his shoulders as he settles in.
A long sigh leaves him as he sits, his breath hitching at the contact. He's near a blissful state, the bubble of your attention closing in around him.
That is, until, he remembers who he's with.
"Hey!" Smith yells from across the greens. "If I knew losing my leg would get me special treatment, I would've gone with ya to Afghanistan, buddy!"
He cackles, high fiving the men surrounding him. Jack's stomach burns with shame, embarrassment, rage.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Smith," you call, and his heart stops. "That's incredibly inappropriate. It's not special treatment, I'm just making sure he's as comfortable as you guys are, please refrain from making comments like that again."
His heart sings, a symphony conducted by your sweet words. He looks down, tears pricking the back of his eyes. He can't remember the last time someone spoke up for him like that, and God, did he ache.
"Ohhh, c'mon, baby," Smith croons, his unsteady gait bringing him closer to you. "I'm just bein' funny. What? You don't like funny guys?"
Your face pinches as he comes closer, standing proud and strong nonetheless. God, he admires you so much.
"I like it when guys make jokes that don't poke fun at someone's trauma," the pep in your voice is gone, and a chill runs down Jack's spine.
"Pssh, please," Smith rolls his eyes, saddling up beside you. "You can't pretend you haven't been giving me eyes all morning."
Jack watches the scene unfold, tensing up as he wraps his arm around your waist.
"Smith-" Jack warns, but it's too late.
His hand goes lower, until it's reached your backside, a pinch followed by a swat. You jump, your hands instinctively reaching back to protect you. Jack sees red.
He's up, the ache in his leg now next to nothing, nothing compared to the rage he feels on your behalf. Rearing his fist back, he socks Smith in the face before he can think otherwise.
"Oh my God!" You squeal, and he darts his gaze over to you.
Your eyes are wide, scared and glossy. His heart hurts.
"What the fuck Abbot!" Smith seethes, gritting through his teeth and writhing on the ground.
"Smith I-" Jack starts, but he bites his apology back. He's not fucking sorry, so why should he try to save face now?
"You can kiss your position fucking goodbye," he spits up at him
"Uhm- I have to=let me call my manager," you croak, shaky fingers fumbling for your cell phone.
You lift the device to your ear as you run behind the cart. Jack's heart clutches, he swears he can see you wipe away a tear before you fully disappeared.
Jack's heart pounds in his chest the longer he can't see you, adrenaline pumping through his veins as his hands start to shake.
He itches to chase you, to follow you and wipe your tears and ask if you're okay. His heart drops, though, knowing that it's not possible, that he's absolutely fucked it.
You're soon replaced by a man, approaching the group with his own golf cart. You don't take off until he's there, but when you do, you nearly kick up dust with your speed.
Guilt is acid in his stomach, bubbling and popping like witch's stew. His adrenaline is relentless, moving his feet for him as he runs to the spare golf cart.
He thanks whatever powers that be that the keys rest in the ignition. Wasting no time, he turns it, moving the gear into drive and pressing his foot on the pedal.
He finds you in the main hall, nursing a fruity drink at the bar. His heart sinks looking at you, slumped over, head down, quiet shakes rocking your shoulders.
It's only now that the adrenaline eventually subsides, deep breaths heaving his chest. Regret swoops over him, that live long guilt he's wrestled with all day rearing its ugly head.
He doesn't back down, though. He's just slower, wiping his sweaty palms on his pants as he nears your bar stool.
"Hey," he says.
It's slow, careful. His heart hurts when you look up, your glossy eyes meeting his. He watches you snap back into your professionalism, wiping your tears and offering him a watery smile.
"Hi, Dr. Abbot," you croak. "I'm so sorry I took off on you guys, I just- that's never happened to me before."
"No," he waves a gentle hand. "No apologies, if anything, it's me who should be apologizing. I feel like I made it worse. You told me you could handle yourself, and I should have listened."
He hovers by the neighboring stool, not wanting to push your boundaries unless offered.
"No, no, it's okay," you say, sitting up a bit straighter. "You can sit, I won't break."
Your smile lights him up from the inside out, and he slides onto the brown leather. His heart picks up in speed as he settles into the new proximity, his thigh brushing against yours.
"Hey! Josh!" You call to the bartender, a young man who immediately responds. "Can I get a…" you trail off, eyeing Jack up and down before deciding, "a jack and coke. Thanks!"
"My name's actually Jack. How'd you know?" He asks, and your mouth drops in sweet surprise.
"What! No way!" You swat his bicep, and the brief contact gives him enough energy to run to the moon. "Dr. Jack Abbot. I like it!"
He flushes a deep red, one that spreads from his cheeks all the way down his neck. Bringing a hand to his nape, he scruffs once, twice, three times to quell his rapid heart rate.
It's then that Josh brings his drink, and he gratefully accepts. Taking a big swig, he feels your eyes burning into him.
"Hey, Jack?" You ask, your voice tender and sweet. "Wanna go for a drive?"
Your question intrigues him, and he winds up in your passenger's seat, down the back roads of a country club you intimately know.
"This is where my dad would take me when I was little," you tell him, pulling into a cove of willow trees along the path.
"Yeah? You've been coming here for a while?" He asks as you park, the wind rustling the beautiful view in front of you two.
"My dad is now president of the board," you admit with an eye roll. "This job was just to keep me out of his hair."
"Wow," he blinks. "So that's why you didn't care about running off in the middle of your group?"
It's a risky tease, he knows that, but it's so worth it when he sees you smile. He flushes, can't help himself when he says,
"You're so pretty."
Your breath hitches at the compliment, and he'd regret it if your eyes hadn't sparkled. It's so easy for him to get lost in your eyes, to almost forget how you got to this point, but then he does, and his face falls.
"Listen, I'm sorry, I don't want to put myself on you, especially if you don't want it. Not after today," he shakes his head, eyes trained in his lap. "But I think you're incredibly beautiful, and way out of my league. I'm thankful you even looked at me today, let alone-"
He's cut off by your lips on his, a gentle, soft hand scraping his cheek. It pushes a light 'oomph!' from his lips, though he doesn't hesitate to kiss you back.
There's a string of spit connecting you when you pull away, and Jack breathes out a long, heavy sigh.
"I actually couldn't stop looking at you, Jack," you confess, and his heart swells. "Even when you missed every single hole."
He throws his head back in a sweet laugh, grasping your arm as you lean into your own giggles.
"I only missed because I couldn't stop thinking about the prettiest girl in the world only feet away," he confesses, rubbing the fabric of your dress between his fingertips.
"You're too nice to me," you mutter, resting your hands on his shoulders. "I want you, Jack. Is that okay?"
He shoots his gaze up, his mouth slightly parted.
"You do?" He asks, not quite believing his own ears.
His belly burns as you nod your head, leaning your face closer to his.
"And I don't want this to be just sex, how do you feel about that?" You whisper, your lips against his, taunting him.
He nods, his hand finding your waist.
"Yeah, I feel good about that," he chokes out, a Cheshire smile spreading your lips.
"Good," you quip, swinging your legs over his hips. "But we're gonna start with sex. That okay?"
He nods, eager like a school boy, but he doesn't have time to be embarrassed when your mouth meets his.
It's intense this time, deep and passionate, your tongue running over his bottom lip. His hands settle on your waist, a light squeeze encouraging you to put your full weight on him.
It's electrifying, the way you connect. your weight coating him with desire. He feels himself twitch in his pants, a muffled groan escaping him as you roll your hips.
"Feel good, Doctor?" You ask, eliciting a gasp from the deepest parts of his chest.
"So good, you're a dream," he mumbles, grazing his nose against yours.
You kiss him again, rolling your tongue over his at your newfound access. Rolling your hips once more, he plants his feet on the ground, thrusting up into your clothed center.
"Ah!" You whine, throwing your head back. He peppers kisses along your neck, surprised when you press down on his hips with yours, wiggling a little. "You're not doing any of the work, handsome," a coy smile spreads your lips. "Let me, your poor leg's been through enough."
He swears he could cum right then and there. Fully hard now, you continue your motions, now slipping your arms through your sleeves.
The top of your dress falls, exposing your pretty tits to the late afternoon sun. His head darts around, looking for any stragglers. There's no one, and a wave of relief floods through him.
"You're sweet," you coo, fingertips returning his gaze to you. "But nobody comes back here, trust me."
"Oh, so you take all your golf guys here, huh?" He asks. It's playful, but the possibility of your answer makes him seethe.
"Only the important ones, the ones I really need," you mutter, nipping his lobe before sitting up on your knees.
You wiggle the rest of your dress off, sliding it down your knees and flinging it off your ankles. His eyes widen as you mount him again, now in nothing but your panties.
His finger traces the waistband, and your breath hitches in his ear.
"You're so fucking beautiful, Jesus Christ," he whispers, smashing his lips against yours once more.
You fiddle with his belt buckle, moving to his zipper, pulling him out with an eagerness that strokes his ego. He's heavy, his cock flopping against his polo shirt.
Your eyes go wide, and his heart pounds against his ribcage. He can't believe you, sweet, beautiful, stunning you, is interested in him. He feels like a million bucks.
"God, how's this gonna fit in me, Jackie?" You ask, giving him a few strokes.
A shiver unzips his spine, and he throws his head back against the seat. Chest heaving, his stomach burns with desire for you. The curve of your waist under his fingers, the delicate touch on his cock, it's enough to make him insane. You make him insane.
Swinging your legs off of him, you kneel along the bench, ass up in the air. He pouts at the loss of your warmth, and you smile. You pinch his cheek, placing a chaste kiss there after.
"You're cute," you dote, and he blushes. "I'm gonna put your cock in my mouth now, 'kay?"
He nods, still in disbelief this is even happening. Your lips wrap around him, and his vision goes white. Jaw going slack, he lets a strangled groan pass through him.
"Wow, wow, oh God, sweetheart, that's so good," he whispers, hand in your hair as you take more and more of him. "Holy shit."
You wiggle your ass at the compliment, hollowing your cheeks as you reach his base. Your nose tickles the curls that pepper his skin, and he has to hold himself back from bucking up into you.
"Fuck!" He shouts, squeezing his eyes shut as he free hand finds your ass.
It slips into your panties, palming your bare ass in his big hand. You shake into him again, and he nearly blows his load then.
He feels the front of your panties move, then, and he looks to find your hand slipping in them.
"Ah, ah!" He swats your hand away, taking over. "Let me, gorgeous."
Your folds are so slick, his stomach burns. They're silky, smooth with your desire, and if all he does for the rest of his life is make you cum. he'd be happy with that.
He finds your clit, reveling in your little jump, little squeal around his dick. The vibrations rattle through him, and his stomach burns with hot desire.
Pulling off of him with a gasp, you rest your head on his thigh, stroking his cock as he continues to touch you.
"I'm gonna cum, Jackie, feels too good," you squeeze your eyes shut, pressing a sweet kiss to the thick skin.
"Yeah, go ahead, baby, that's such a good idea, hm?" He asks, picking up his pace a little. "Gonna get you nice and relaxed so you can take this cock, 'kay sweetie?"
You nod, squeezing your eyes shut, a few loose moans escaping your lips. It's like a dream, the pleasure etching itself across your face. Fire blooms in his veins, his desire for you almost palpable.
"Oh, Jackie!" You squeal, body tensing as you soak his fingers.
"Thaaat's it," he coos, rubbing you through your release. "That's my girl, good job, good job."
You gasp, clinging to his forearm as you come down.
"Oh my gosh, that was incredible, thank you Jackie," you smile up at him, slowly sitting up.
His hands stabilize you, settling your shaking body back over his. Your tits dangle in his face, and he can't help but pepper kisses along the plush skin.
"You ready, angel?" He looks up at you, and your eager nod is his final cue before he pushes your hips down.
You swallow his tip, your walls tight and slick, his eyes rolling back into his head. It's dizzying, how tight you are around him.
"Oh! Jackie it's already so big, how am I gonna take all of you?" You ask, and his heart pounds.
"God, you can't say that to me, gonna blow my load before you can even do that," he breathes out a laugh, finding your eyes.
Your eyes glaze over as you sink further down onto him, his stomach burning. He grips your hips, pushing you further down onto him.
Once you're seated, he nearly blacks out. He gives you a swift slap to your ass, encouraging you to find your rhythm.
You listen, the good girl you are, bouncing up and down, up and down. It's slow at first, intoxicating and tantalizing as you drag his length through your walls.
"Fuck," he breaths, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Good?" You ask, lips pressed to his temple.
The warm air of your words absorb in his skin, if he could eat them, he would.
"So good, fuckin' perfect," he whispers, hands gripping your ass as you speed up.
Blood roars in his ears, his eyes blazing as they follow your breasts, bouncing with each thrust.
It's overwhelming, almost, the jiggle of your plush skin against his.
"Oh Jackie, 'm gonna cum again," you whimper, planting your hands on his shoulders and speeding up.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he breathes. "Me too, gonna cum. Cum with me?"
You nod, pressing a sweet kiss to his lips. Embarrassingly enough, this is what does it for him. The intimacy pushes him over the edge, fire pooling low in his abdomen with his release.
He dissolves into the pleasure, helping you rock against him. Your sweet cries echo through the empty space, mixing with his grunts and groans.
"Jackie, fuck, that's so good, fuck, fuck," you whine, and he presses a quick slap to your ass as he twitches, coming down from his high.
You settle on him with a shiver, relaxing into his chest and wrapping your arms around his shoulders.
Breathing together, he rubs his hand up and down your back, adding a light scratch and invoking goosebumps.
You press kisses all along his shoulder, on each freckle, his tummy burning with something sweeter, brighter than before.
"Hey," you whisper, biting the shell of his ear. "I know this is totally backwards, but hear me out."
Before you get any further, he lifts up your head, boring his eyes into yours.
"What, sweet girl?" He asks, pressing a quick kiss to your smile.
"I say," you start, "we get cleaned up, and you come join me in the Great Hall for dinner. I memorized Smith's tab, we can put it on there," you finish with a wink.
He throws his head back with a laugh, bringing you in for another kiss.
"That sounds amazing," he coos, cradling the nape of your neck in his hand.
"And theennnn," you drawl, slipping off him and reaching for your dress. "We can go back to mine, and I can show you something that no other customer has seen," you wiggle your eyebrows, and his heart skips.
"Abbot is very much into eye contact; he loves it, he can't get enough of it."
there are a few instances where jack makes sure his eyes always lock onto yours and they always happen in two places: the pitt and in bed.
in the er, its meeting his approval shining through those rings of hazel after catching a tricky diagnosis, his lips forming that cocky little smirk he does, like he's saying yes, this is my resident who's doing such a good job under my tutelage and care. it never fails to bring the slightest heat to your cheeks before you can tear your eyes away from his. he lets you be the one to break eye contact every time, knowing that once he gets you home, he'll make sure that you do exactly what he wants.
in bed, though, he's different, he expects different. if your eyes even threaten to shift away as he pounds his cock deep into your pussy, the lewd wet sounds squelching and tangling with your high-pitched moans when his ruddy tips kisses your cervix, his large hand engulfs your jaw to shift your face while the other continues its circular ministrations around your puffy, throbbing clit.
that's when it becomes impossible to look away from his sweat-sheened freckled face that pinches in dedication not to cum when your walls clench around him, their want to suck him deeper than biologically possible. his glossed over hazels, swimming with a pleasure only you can bring them, stay trained on your eyes.
"eyes—on—me," he grunts, hips pistoning into yours with emphasis. "you know better than that, sweetheart. you look away one more time, i stop, and you won't cum until morning. be a good girl for me like I know you can."
“dream of you from like 1:00 to 4:00
positively and truly sure
nobody's wanted somebody more”
jack abbot x fem! reader
summary: dana has watched you and jack circle each other for too long and devises a secret plan to make sure you end up on a date together without either of you expecting it
tags/warning/tropes: this is pure fluff, the pitt but it’s somewhere between a sitcom and a rom-com, speaking of there are SO many references of rom-coms, jack abbot is down bad, idiots in love, don’t ask why dana robby and jack are all there at once, reader gets wine drunk a few times, jack abbot being down bad pt 2 because it’s honestly embarrassing, reader is also down bad but way cooler about it, no use of y/n, reader has no established race, brief aesthetic description of reader but it’s vague, swf as per usual
wc: 8.3k
a/n: hi bffs!!! back again with a jack abbot fic! i’m currently posting this from my phone because a storm took my power out so if anything’s weird, that’s why :( i wrote this very fluffy fic so of course, now i have to write a very emotional robby fic that’s coming soon. okay please enjoy - i love your reading your comments! thank you all who’ve been reading my fics so far! hugs and kisses!!!!!!
masterlist
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"What would you say to a date?"
You turn to find none other than Dana Evans being the one with the absurd question. You're not even entirely sure where she came from. Suddenly she's propped up, hip against the desk, crashing your peace with that certain gleam in her eye that means trouble.
This wasn't the first time Dana's complained about your singleness. The way your life consisted of the commute to work, the commute home, a cheesy romance movie, and bed. On the occasional wild day maybe you'd take a trip to a coffee shop, or an in-person trip to the grocery store instead of DoorDash. That is if you were feeling really adventurous. Somehow in those times though you've never managed to have some rom-com meet-cute like in all the movies you watched.
"As flattered as I am, I was under the impression you were married!" You dodge not only the question but also her. Turning on your heels, you walk to the leftmost side of the desk, keeping your eyes down.
Sure, a date sounds nice in theory. The same way a leading man chasing you through an airport seems nice in theory. But, if it actually happened you'd most likely pepper spray him.
"Not me." She says dryly. "Maybe in my younger days though."
You give her a sideways glance, which she's already giving you. The thought intrigues you more than you care to say. What you would give to know more about Dana's college days!
"I've got a guy for you."
"Dana, really I'm good. I don't have time to even fantasize about a date right now."
To you, a date was never a fantasy. They just never turned out right. Men would speak over you, or you'd intimidate them and it's a night full of awkward silences and bad company.
However, you find the occasional times to fantasize about Jack Abbot.
Your crush on Abbot started slow and accidental really. A night off work for the first time in months. Which of course you spent doing the one thing you love most: turning off the lights, drinking wine in your pajamas, and watching whatever rom-com popped up first in your recommended tab. This night just happened to be Two Weeks' Notice. You'd seen it a thousand times and could probably quote half of Sandra Bullock's monologues.
But, there was something different about it this time. Something about the way she was falling in love with her charmingly sarcastic boss. It seemed less like something you'd laugh at and instead it started making perfect sense to you.
I mean Sandra Bullock is falling in love with her boss. Why can't you?
Somehow by the second glass of red, Hugh Grant's face somehow started to morph into Jack Abbott's.
But, most of all it was the mistake of falling asleep during the fourth glass and the dreams that followed, guest starring a sexy doctor.
As quick as this crush started, it was anything but quick to leave. No matter how much you willed it away.
Sandra Bullock-esque rom-coms don't happen to people like you. Hot boss or not.
"It won't kill you." Dana's arms thud against the counter as she lays them down with purpose.
"It might." A voice that belongs to Shen interjects into the conversation you already wish you weren't having. "Have you seen how awkward she gets when hot dads bring their kids in?"
"I do not!" You half-yell. "I'm a professional. I don't think about things like that at work."
"Yeah, and that's why you eye fuck Abb-"
"OKAY!" You yell. Prying eyes are on you immediately as your voice cuts through the ED. You give an awkward thin-lipped smile and apologetic wave to the strangers. "Okay. Point received."
Now the only fantasy you're having at work is ripping the Dunkin cup from Shen's hand and drenching him in it.
"Ignore him." Dana shoos Shen away. He slinks off slurping what's left of his melted iced coffee.
You can't miss the small glint in Dana's eye as she bites back a laugh at Shen's accusation. Which is totally false!
"Dinner. That's all I'm asking." Dana pries once again. You shake your head, not even bothering to verbally answer anymore. "An hour, two max."
"Dana when I'm not here I'm sleeping or trying to get all my shit done before I have to be back here. I don't have time."
"You have time." She responds insistently.
It's almost impressive how she hasn't budged.
"Fine. I don't want to make the time then."
"You don't want to go out and just have a free dinner with a handsome guy?" Dana's eyebrows shoot up.
Unfortunately, the idea intrigues you somewhere deep down. That same part of you that smiles and rewinds when the movie finally crescendos with a dramatic declaration of love. But, in reality, the movie would end differently for you. A terrible date with a guy who went to a doctor a few times and now feels confident in his ability to mansplain medicine. No love at first sight for you.
"Sounds like hell."
You can't even remember the last time you looked at a man that wasn't on your TV. Well, I mean besides the ones you're forced to see every day. Abbot… Who apparently you REALLY look at.
Your mind trails off as he moves from room to room in front of you. That quiet confidence radiating off of him like it always does. UGH, and he's wearing those camo pants tonight. OH. You totally are eye-fucking him aren't you?!
You snap your eyes from him back to Dana immediately. "Tell me about this guy."
No part of you really wants this, but you've got to get your mind off Abbott. Fully. You one hundred percent, unequivocally, cannot be crushing on Jack Abbot.
"It's a guy I know. He's been single for too long. Like you." She says pointedly. "I think you'll like him. He's good people."
"You sure you wanna do this?" It's a genuine question, not a threat. Introducing you to someone could be a bad move on her part. You're not exactly revered as a charmer. "Because, if I don't like him, I'll leave."
You we're strong willed and didn't enjoy wasting your time. There was nothing wrong with it, but some men would disagree. Apparently you could be a quote, "a real ball buster" as your college boyfriend so eloquently wrote in the very text message he dumped you with.
As time went on, you came to realize you liked love more in theory or in dreams. You were not cut out to be a rom-com star.
"I know." Dana draws out her words, rolling her eyes at you. "But, I have a good feeling."
"What's his name?" You give a defeated sigh.
Dana's face lights up with that cocky closed-lip smile she gets when she's won something. She's beaten you down enough and she knows it. Success!
"No names." Leaving no room for rebuttal, she claps her hand flat against the counter to make her point. "I don't want you looking him up."
"Come on-"
"No. You and Santos do that cyber stalking thing and you'll try and find him." She's already turned on her heels before you can get another word out.
"It's not stalking!" You yell after her. "It's the way the world works. Get with the times Dana!"
Well, looks like you just got yourself a date you didn't really want to go on in the first place. But if all goes well you'll fall in love and never think of Jack Abbot as anything more than a boss ever again.
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"Jack, c'mere I gotta talk to you."
Dana surveys the floor, making sure you're nowhere in sight. Luckily for her, you're tied up in a trauma room with a very chatty guest who, based on their facial expression is not very happy with you.
His face turns confused for a second, the wrinkles on his forehead deepening before he falls in step.
"You need a date." She says simply.
For once in his whole life he's actually speechless. He opens his mouth, but the only thing that comes out is an offended scoff.
"When's the last time you've been on a date?" She asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
The offended sound comes out once again as he blunders for a second. "I don't know. A year…?"
He tried once, maybe twice after his wife passed. Someone who asked him out both times. He'd never actually pursued anything himself. It wasn't exactly that he was resisting, there was just never anyone who caught his attention first.
Then came you. But to him, that was forbidden.
"That's sad."
"I'm doing just fine for myself-"
She holds up her hand for him to stop before he says anything further. "I didn't ask about that. And, I don't believe I want to know that."
Robby laughs from somewhere behind her. Of course, listening in on the conversation. Somehow his ears seem to be everywhere at once. There's no conversation he misses in this hospital.
"What?" Jack asks him. The tone of his voice would almost sound offended if he wasn't chuckling.
"No, nothing." Robby shakes his head. He clasps a friendly hand on Dana's shoudler. "He's doing fine Dana. Just this morning Myrna offered to flash him."
Alright, now they're just being mean.
"Tell him he needs a date." Dana elbows Robby. Before Jack can interject, Robby's response is immediate.
"Ohhh, you need a date brother."
Jack's outnumbered and somehow they're also beating him at his own game. He has no defenses left. No sarcastic comments that'll stop them
"You know what? Fine." Jack tosses his hands up. "I'll start looking for someone."
His eyes rake across the hospital floor like he's looking for someone and before he's even made any conscious effort, they land on you.
One day you were a thorn in Jack's side, a new resident he had to get acclimated to. But, very, very quickly you became something else. The worst part was it wasn't even because you were attractive - which you absolutely were. No, it was the first time you yelled at him during trauma. You, a resident, yelling across the table at your attending.
He was gone.
Robby and Dana side-eye each other at Jack's obvious stare. He was never a subtle man and even less so when it came to matters of the heart. The number of times Dana's caught him acting like a giddy school boy around you was absurd.
That time you complimented his technique for a chest tube and he walked around like a God for the rest of the night.
Or, even worse, that time he let his beard grow and asked you, Dana, and Ellis for your opinions. They both agreed it was fine. - not that they cared much either way. - But, you weren't a fan. The next day he was shaved.
It was just something about you. Something he had never seen in someone else. You had no angle, you didn't play games or hospital politics. You came in to work every day, yelled at whoever needed yelling at, and fixed whoever needed fixing. No ass-kissing or pride involved.You had no ego; it was refreshing. If you thought he was acting like a dick you'd tell him. If you thought he was right you'd tell him. Though maybe a little awkwardly because nice feelings weren't really your thing.
"No need!" Dana says with a satisfied grin. "I've got someone for you."
Robby howls a laugh at how perfectly Dana manipulated Jack into this.
"Who?" He asks.
"Someone I've been wanting to set you up with."
"Set me up with? Like a date?" He says emphatically. "Like I'm twenty?"
"It'll be fine. You'll like her."
"Well, who is it?"
"You don't know her." Her face gives nothing away but for a fleeting second Jack would almost swear that seemed like a lie.
"She's smart and beautiful, you'll like her."
"Well, I can't say I don't like those two things." A small smirk creeps up his face. Smart and beautiful was great but he knew someone who fit that description already. Doesn't much matter though, Jack can't remember a time he's seen you show interest in him. And, he was the furthest thing from a pushy man.
Plus, if you wanted him surely you would've said something by now.
"She's a little young," Dana trails off. "That okay with you?"
Jack finds himself calculating in his head how old you were. Would that be weird? Wait. First, why would he care? Second, why would it matter?
"I mean how-"
"Okay, great." Dana claps her hands with a loud boom, ending his sentence for him.
She's already exited the conversation before he can ask more of the many pressing questions he has. "What's her name?" He calls out, Robby still beside him, happy to be a non-involved third party to this shitshow.
"Secrets." She hollers back not turning around, her hands doing most of the talking.
"Looks like you just bought yourself an appearance on the Dating Game." Robby claps Jack's shoulder with an overjoyed smile that crinkles the skin around his eyes.
Hopefully she isn't that young because God, they really are old. I mean the Dating Game, really?
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"What are you up to?" Robby asks, narrowing his eyes onto Dana once he's managed to find her alone.
"Just think he needs someone." She shrugs sounding a little tender, strangely.
"Uh huh." Robby clicks his tongue. "And I'd swear I heard you giving that same advice to one of our residents earlier.
Dana gives nothing away, just a shrug.
"Not saying it's a bad idea. Jacks clearly got it bad. It's just ballsy."
"So you'll help me?" Dana asks.
"Whoa, no." Robby lets out a deep chuckle, shaking his head. "I didn't say that."
"All I'm asking is that you keep them away from each other tonight so they don't find us out."
"There's no us here Dana." He tosses his hands up in surrender. Always the dramatic. "I've got a hospital to run and this is your master plan."
She gives him a look over the rim of his glasses. He knows he's too grown to be scared into submission by Dana but damn if it doesn't always work.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Hey, why don't you ever set me up on dates?" He can't help but ask as he's already halfway leaving.
"Because I've seen you in relationships."
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Somehow as if by miracle, the ER was the Q word you'd never dare utter. So, for now you'll just say slow. It seemed brighter without so many people clogging the place up, not such a terrorizing place to spend your nights. But, on the other side of quiet and peaceful meant all you could think about was this stupid date with some (probably) stupid guy you don't even want to meet.
Even if it was a leisurely night, there was no such thing for Dana. She paced around the giant hospital centerpiece that was the nurses' desk, doing a million jobs that somehow all belonged to her.
You came out of nowhere, suddenly popping up on the other side of the desk. "I don't like mansplainers."
"Okay, and I don't like the Ravens. What're you telling me for?" It always seemed like her accent had a way of getting thicker when she was stressed or angry.
"For the date." You tap your finger to your temple in a duh fashion. "If they start mansplaining anything to me, I'll leave."
Dana doesn't give you a response, just a curt nod. Because she was definitely going around the city looking for the perfect asshole mansplainer to force you into a date with.
"And they need to be politically sound. I can't deal with someone who doesn't care about the issues I do."
As much as you loved Maid in Manhattan, you always found yourself disliking the leading man just a little too much. That was not a rom-com you wanted to star in, alongside a right-leaning politician.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Dana snaps her head up, shutting you up immediately. It's terrifying when she starts cursing in catholic. "He's a non-mansplaining registered democrat. Does that satisfy you?"
"Yes." You answer quietly tucking your lips into a thin line apologetically.
She reaches over the desk, gripping your arm and guiding you somewhat forcefully until you're standing under the track board.
"Work."
Looking down at the iPad in your hand, you said your patient's name to yourself over and over again. You had this terrible habit of knowing everything you needed to know about someone and then coming face to face and forgetting everything, even down to their name. You've done this with friends and patients alike your whole life.
"Janet Lawson." You mutter on a loop, scrolling through to see what the nurses had already done for her.
"Janet Law— Ow."
Your forehead is suddenly rebounding off a black T-shirt; underneath it is a weirdly muscular back that's actually managed to rattle your brain around. Of course. Who else wears a black T-shirt and camo pants to work and has this muscular of a build?
"Doctor Abbot! Sorry." You laugh to mostly yourself, running a few fingers over your forehead. Why'd that come out like a giggle? You laugh. You don't giggle.
"My fault. I should've known better than to stand here when you're running around." He grins.
He's so charming.
You drop your eyes back down to the iPad, looking at him made your chest pinch. Why does it feel like you're cheating on him by going on this date tonight? He's your boss! People don't usually feel like they need to divulge their dating life to their bosses right?
"You off this weekend?" He asks, tilting his head to be able to better to see your downcast eyes.
"Yep. Played my cards right and got two whole days."
"Got any plans?" He crosses his arms over his chest casually. He always asks about your life. This isn't weird, this is just the only time you've thought about keeping it secret.
"Not much." The lie comes out before you can stop it.
"Me neither."
"Cool."
Jack Abbot could befriend a brick wall and somehow you've just managed to have an awkward interaction with him.
"Jack!" Dana's voice echoes between you too. It's so loud and desperate-sounding that he whips his head around immediately.
"Yeah?"
"I need you in room 3."
He looks to the whiteboard, eyes scanning over it twice. The hospital's calm tonight, what could possibly be this critical?
"No one's in room 3…"
She doesn't even turn to the whiteboard herself to double-check. "Room 4 then."
"Okay…" He agrees. "Catch you later?" He turns back to you with a sympathetic frown, waiting for your confirmation. Once you nod at him, he pulls himself and his lingering eyes away.
Like clockwork, Abbot finds himself in your orbit once again. He's nearly convinced you have some kind of magnetic force he's not aware of because there's no rational reasoning for him to be trailing after you all the time.
Your shift is officially over and if you're not going to fall asleep behind the wheel you're desperately going to need a cup of coffee. As your hand rests flat against the break room door, you feel a much bigger and stronger hand just inches above yours.
"Together again." He laughs. He's so close behind you, you swear you feel the vibrations in your own chest. He pushes the door open, just enough that you have to duck under his arm to step over the threshold.
"How was everything with that patient?" You ask, hoping your voice is even and trying your best to keep your face away from him until the heat in your cheeks die down.
"Fine. Just cut and dry stress hives. Not sure what the big emergency was."
You plop down in the chair around the small table, the one leg that's off kilter shakes it back and forth for a second. "Weird." You stretch your legs up onto the second chair in front of you, resting until he's done making his coffee.
As the coffee maker percolates in the background he considers mentioning the fact that Dana is setting him up on a date. Do attendings and residents ever share that much personal information with each other? Probably not.
What was he even hoping to achieve? That you'd imagine him out with some (probably) hot nurse friend of Dana's and lose your mind with jealousy that he's never once seen you have.
It felt weirdly offensive to share his weekend plans with you. He's wanted to ask you out since the second week you worked at this hospital and never has. He couldn't, as the superior here and the man twice your age he wouldn't even let himself think about you too long if he thought it would be disrespectful. It'd be too weird to sit here and talk about his dating life like this. So, he opts for silence.
You push your chair out once Abbott's done using the coffee maker, groaning from the pain that's popped up in your spine from standing all day.
"Here ya go." He extends a full cup to you just as your feet hit the ground.
You stare at the drink for a second. He made you coffee? Coffee you didn't even ask for. He pushes the cup towards you once more, urging you to take it instead of staring at it.
You wrap both hands around the thin cup, feeling the warmth seep through to your palms. "You know how I take my coffee?" You ask, noting the color difference in your cup compared to his.
"Yeah, milk and two sugars. I've seen you make it enough times." Wow, the world really was never going to let this crush ease up was it? "I didn't give you any vanilla though. Keep taking it like that and you'll end up in a coma." You laugh, noticing the wide smile on your face in the reflection of your coffee.
"Thanks." Your voice loses the harsh edges it usually has.
He shrugs as if this was a small gesture and not something that made your entire body feel like it was on fire. He sips the coffee but never takes his eyes off yours. They have a darker look to them as the cup puts a shadow over his face.
"Heading out?"
"Yep." You toss your bag over your shoulder. "I'm caught up on all my charts from tonight."
"Yeah, I trust you." His words come out smooth.
You know you're so far gone when these upcoming two days off start to feel like punishment more than a much-needed break. Two days without seeing him might be bordering on eternal torture.
This is the last time you'll see him until your date with some stranger. You're being so dramatic but it literally feels like you're some Wild West movie heroine seeing her one true love for the last time before heading to her arranged marriage.
Maybe it's just because your fantasy had to end now. You had to live your life, date (annoyingly so), and you could keep falling asleep at night and having Jack Abbot's face pop up in your dreams. It was a fantasy, that's all it was.
Abbot likes people, not you. He liked to be friendly, wink at nurses, and flirt with the old ladies who were frequent fliers. Even if you weren't his resident, people like you didn't end up with people like him.
Plus, if he wanted you surely he would've said something by now.
"Want me to walk you out?" He asks, always the gentleman.
"Sure."
He reaches over and slides the bag from your arm, throwing it over his own shoulder. His arm stays on the small of your back as you pass through the crowded triage area, only dropping when you make it to your car. A small, beat-up Civic you're embarrassed to tell people the year of.
"Have a nice vacation." He grins, setting your backpack in your backseat for you.
"Yeah, two days is one crazy vacation."
"Well, either way don't miss me too much."
You laugh, your head lulling backwards as the sound reverberates outside in the quiet parking lot. "Might be too hard. Living in a cold, cruel Doctor Abbot-less world."
He leans over, enough that you can tell he's not wearing any cologne as the smell of antiseptic wafts off him. And the worst part is, somehow it works. The click of your car door opening is the only thing that draws your eyes away.
"Be safe." He says, carefully shutting the car door once you're solidly inside. "Come by if you start missing me too much." He speaks a little louder so you hear him through the sealed window.
You give him a thumbs down as your reverse lights come on.
He watches you pull out of the parking lot and imagines what that sight would be like more often. Your taillights pulling out of the driveway of his house every day, waving you away while drinking his morning coffee, knowing you'd be back that night.
Oh yeah He's going on a date with another woman tomorrow.
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This is horrible
You stand in front of the mirror in the third outfit of the night. You pull at the fabric, like a toddler. It clings to everywhere you don't want it to. You've got to have help for this.
Where's your quirky best friend sidekick that everyone in the movies has?
To: Santos
From: You
what do you wear on a date?
To: You
From: Santos
show up naked power move
Unhelpful.
A dress feels like too much, but dress pants make you feel like a politician. The place is way too nice for jeans. As Dana specifically told you. You don't even own anything you'd consider a blouse. And to make matters worse, you're beginning to notice you have very little color in your wardrobe.
This is agonizing.
The outfit you have on will have to suffice, if only because you're running out of room on your floor for discarded clothese.
The long skirt feels less dramatic than a dress but less stiff than pants. This is the nicest shirt you own and the closest thing you'd associate with fancy. All in all, you clean up pretty well. Everything is black like all the other items in your wardrobe. But, Dana requested you wear black since she told your date that's how he'd recognize you. Your mystery man will be in white tonight
Your body collides with your bed as you toss yourself onto it like an angsty teenager. You haven't been on a date in months and the last one you went on lasted an hour before you faked and emergency and left.
Katherine Heigl's voice blares through your apartment as 27 Dresses begins auto-playing after whatever you threw on to begin with.
What the hell is with these movies and falling in love with your boss?
Rolling onto your back, you're fingers start typing Jack Abbot into the Instagram search bar before you even know what you're doing. It only takes the letter J for his account to come up. You've for sure done this too many time. Maybe Dana's right. This is totally stalking.
He has three posts and none of them are his face. He's got a picture of Robby and Dana at some fancy hospital event and two pictures of some scenic locations he visited. He's such an old man. The only thing you can see him in is his profile picture. Much to your dismay, you screenshot and zoom in.
He's so handsome and this is such weirdo behavior.
The more you zoom in, the blurrier the photo gets. Right now, you're essentially looking at pixels that vaguely resemble Jack Abbot and even then he's otherworldly handsome. Some selfie from a terrible angle that he no doubt took the moment Instagram prompted him for a profile picture.
You scream as the name pops up on the top of your screen, tossing the phone on your bed like it burned you. For a second you actually believe he somehow knows your cyber stalking him right now, but there's no way. On your feet now from the scare, you timidly reach over and in one quick motion flip the phone face up.
Abbot:
Have fun on your vacation while the rest of us are working our asses off.
You've got to stop reacting to everything he does like some school girl experiencing their first crush. You're more giddy from this stupid text than you are about this date. This is what you're actively trying to avoid!
You click the side button stuffing the phone into your skirt pocket. Yeah, the skirt has pockets. You give yourself one more look in the mirror, closing your eyes and taking three deep breaths to clear your mind.
No more Jack Abbot tonight.
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This place is nice just like Dana described. An Italian restaurant that you had to take a taxi to reach. The outside has a deep maroon awning where people waiting on tables are congregating. It's not crowded but there's way more people here than you want to experience a first date in front of.
The inside is even nicer. Dark walls and romantic lighting. There's even a band playing from somewhere you cant see, but you recognize the sound of live instruments. The tables are all covered in white cloths. This is far from the restaurants you usually eat at where children color on those paper table runners.
"Hi," You approach the hostess more timid than usual, clearing your throat. "I'm meeting someone…"
Your eyes scan over the many people in the room. Theres way more people seated than you'd hoped. Great, all these people may witness your biggest humiliation tonight. Theres a small, even fancier dining room that's walled in and you wonder if your mystery man is in there.
The maitre d responds but your ears are suddenly filled with nothing but the sound of your own heart beat. Your eye's zero in on someone, someone sitting in front of the giant burgundy curtains that drape from floor to ceiling.
A very familiar face.
No. Fucking. Way.
"Doctor Abbot?" You say standing beside the empty chair at this table for two.
His eyes shoot up so fast you're afraid he's going to hurt himself. He looks like he wants to say something, but nothing comes out of his barely parted lips. You're mirroring the same expression back to him. Shock and horror.
He stands up from his chair so fast, the table rocks and sends ripples through the expensive water glasses. "What are you doing here?" He asks, hands flat on the table like he needs to prop himself up.
"Me?" You say back, clutching the purse strap over your shoulder. "What are you doing here?" You want to dissolve into dust in the huge fancy restaurant that suddenly feels much smaller. This can't be happening.
"Oh fuck."
You both speak at the same time. Your sentiment is much more verbal than Abbot who had the decency to whisper under his breath.
You two go back to staring at each other for another moment. Completely still except for the twitch around Abbots eye. You know your eyes are wider than usual and probably frighteningly so, but you can't make them close. To make matters worse the trumpet crescendos into something romantic from wherever they're playing from. You're a little too busy to look right now.
How could this happen?
"I think Dana uh—" The words die in your throat as soon as they start. You gesture vaguely hoping to fill in the blanks.
"Yeah." He speaks gruffly.
"Yeah." You parrot the same word back, unsure of what else there even is to say. "I could go." You gesture back to the grand entrance of the restaurant.
That's all it took to shake Jack from the shell shocked state he was in. He reaches out before he even thinks much about it. Not a pull, just his palm flat against your forearm making sure you don't bolt.
"No. Were already here." He shrugs like it's simple. "Plus, I need you to stay and help me plan on how to get Dana fired."
You laugh, your shoulders easing finally, dropping from where they were pulled up so tight. The immediate horror of this situation is beginning to dissipate between the two of you. Despite the knot in your stomach, you actually feel a little giddy. I mean, you've dreamed about this for a long, long time. Maybe it wouldn't be awful of you to at least try and enjoy yourself.
"We might as well stay and eat." He picks up his menu and gestures to the chair that's meant to be yours.
"Might as well?" You repeat back with a sarcastically sensual tone. "Well, with an offer that romantic how could I refuse?"
He walks around the table, eyes on you the entire time. He pulls out your chair without even looking at it. When he puts his arm on the small of your back to guide you onto the seat, your actually worried your knees might buckle.
"You know what I meant." The breath from his nose tickles your ear as leans in close to tuck your chair in.
"Can I get you two started with anything?" The waiter appears from the kitchen, dressed just as nicely as half the patrons in here. Jack gives him a polite just a second gesture. You've both been far too distracted to look at the menu.
"You want wine?" He asks, flicking his eyes from the menu to you. "I mean… we are on a date." Theres a small smile in the corner of his mouth when he says it, almost humorous like he's enjoying saying that in the presence of the server.
A date. Officially a date.
"Yeah, I'll do a glass."
"A bottle of the house red." Jack speaks to the waiter. A bottle? Big spender!
The wine the waiter returns with is in expensive glassware. The stems are crystal thin and make you feel like you're back in the OR holding a delicate medical instrument.
Jack makes a polite declining gesture as the waiter goes to fill his glass. "None for me, thanks."
"You're not having any?" You ask, lowering the glass from your lips, suddenly feeling embarrassed of the large sip you've already taken.
"I've got work tonight. Not everyone has the weekend off like you." He laughs. Oh yeah. It was only 5:30 of course he'd be heading to work after this. Always saving lives.
"You didn't need to order all that then." You gesture to the still mostly full bottle the server left behind. "I'm not gonna drink a whole bottle myself." Not in front of him at least!
"Take it home then." He shrugs. Damn that's sexier than it needed to be. He orders one of the nicest bottles of wine, doesn't have any for himself, and then tells you to keep it. "I know how much you like your wine.
"You look nice." He crosses his arms on top of the menu resting on the table so there's nothing that could possibly distract him from you. His words are genuine but a little stiff. He hasn't complimented someone on anything outside of a medical context in a while.
"Thanks " You actually smile. looking down at the fancy outfit you were so hyper critical of in the mirror. "I wouldn't get used to it though."
"You clean up nice yourself." You force out. Not because it wasn't true, it very much was. But, it's always felt awkward to you to compliment someone.
"Feels weird." He tugs at the black tie resting on top of his white dress shirt. It was quite the site. Under the warm lights of the dining room, at certain angles the muscles under his shirt were highlighted perfectly, especially his arms.
Jack however is more caught of guard by your new look than you are of his. Your hair is fixed and resting on your shoulders in waves instead of pulled back and frizzy from a scrub cap. I mean, you looked beautiful the other way, but he didn't know this was an option. And your clothes. It was few and far between that he saw you in anything but scrubs and certainly never anything fancy like this. Your scrubs were loose and unflattering. These clothes were tight and highlighted all your features well. You'd been hiding all this? But, maybe that's for the better because he wouldn't be able to survive this look day to day.
"Would you judge me if I had another glass?" You have a small smile just on the corner of your mouth. Your stemware was getting emptier and emptier as the conversation went on.
"I'm not your boss tonight." He chuckles, filling up the glass for you. He holds your eyes when he says it, like it's important to him that you remember that.
"Alright. Let's be honest with ourselves." You finally laugh out, shaking your head. "This is weird." The wine coursing through you is making it a lot easier to say whatever you're feeling. Plus the small drink you had back home to pre game that you're not going to bring up.
Thankfully, he laughs too. "Yeah. I didn't imagine I'd be sitting in front of you tonight."
"Yeah. I certainly wasn't expecting Doctor Abbot." You gesture widely towards him. "… I should probably drop the "Doctor" on a date right."
"Yeah probably." He nods. "Just Jack is fine."
You're stomach flips. It's silly, something as simple as a name change getting you this worked up.
"Jack." You test it out, turning the name over in your head a few times. It just felt so intimate for some reason. You've known him as Doctor Abbot for so long, now you get to learn Jack.
"So, Jack" You laugh, using the name one more time now that you've been awarded the permission. "I was expecting Dana to set me up with an Orthopedic surgeon I'd hate or something." You laugh. If your relationships with the Ortho team at work was anything to go on, that date certainly wouldn't have gone well.
He laughs loudly in the dining room full of people talking softly below the music. "Yeah, God help us all if she did that. I was expecting a nurse or a lawyer or something. Not my resident."
"But, I'm glad she didn't." He says at a lower register.
"Wait!" You completely skip over the romantic thing he said, your brain already locked onto a minute detail you just thought of. "You texted me before I left the house."
"Yeah? So?"
"So?!" You scoff at him, but you're laughing too much for it to be perceived as upset. "So, you texted me before you thought you we're going on a date with some woman."
He just shrugs. "I was thinking about you."
Your cheeks burn hot and you have to roll your eyes to try and get some of your cool demeanor back. "That's crazy."
"Well, it doesn't matter now does it."
Being on a date with Jack is even nicer than you imagined it could be. You've barely lifted a finger tonight. He pulled out your chair for you, he refills your glass for you.
Yes, you're now a quarter through your third.
From anyone else, you'd probably get a little annoyed with this, but there's something romantic about the way Jack does it. He's not smothering or chauvinistic about it, just someone who wants to care for you.
He really is like a man from a movie.
By the time they drop your food off at the table, you're enjoying yourself more than you ever have on a date. He cuts into the steak while telling you the story of the first patient he ever had, which actually makes you snort.
"My first patient at PTMC bit me." You laugh, nodding emphatically as you do. The third glass of wine has definitelyloosened you up. Enough to even reach across the table and put your hand on his arm when you laugh.
"Oh yeah! The one with the suppository." He points the end of his fork in your direction as he remembers.
You make a sound of dissatisfaction between your teeth, scrunching up your face. "Let's avoid saying suppository on a date."
"Fair enough." He laughs, covering his mouth with his napkin. "Man, I thought you were gonna kill that guy."
"I remember telling Robby when you first started, you we're gonna drop the night crews patient satisfaction scores by half." He shakes his head fondly.
"What?!" You laugh, dropping your mouth open with a jokingly offended expression.
"You have a real mean streak to you." He shrugs truthfully, but he smiles when he does. He loves that about you.
"I do not." You roll your eyes, the mean streak showing through clearly. "And, I could say you're not as charming as you think you are."
He doesn't miss a beat. "Yeah I am."
Yeah he is.
You pretend to care about his accusations some more, but he can see the smile you can't wipe off your face. "I can't believe you talked shit about me to Robby." You shake your head. "And to think I actually liked you when I first started. You were my favorite Attending."
"Yeah?" He quirks his eyebrow up, somehow looking even more handsome with that smug sideways smile.
"Yeah I did."
"Did it wear off?" He asks, leaning back, tilting his head as he looks at you.
"Nope."
The words hangs there a moment too long. You expect him to make a joke, tell you that you have good taste, or that he was the obvious choice, but he doesn't. Instead he just looks at you, his smug grin changing into something much softer.
"Good to know." His voice is maybe as tender as you've ever heard it. Like your statement meant more to him than he's letting on.
Jack's already reaching into his pocket for his wallet before the check hits the table cloth. In fact, he doesn't even let it sit there. He takes it from the waiters hand so there's no argument about who's paying.
"I can cover my half." You offer anyways, hand digging around in your purse under the table. This would not be the first date a man expected you to go dutch on.
"No you can't." He rolls his eyes. He knew you'd offer no matter how obvious he made it that you weren't paying this bill. It was just in your nature to be fiercely independent. But, he was here now. "I don't make a habit of asking women out and making them cover the bill."
"Technically you didn't ask me out… Dana did." You raise your eyebrows in a challenge.
He makes a sound somewhere between a huff and a laugh. "Either way, you're not paying."
Jack opts for cash, pulling out a few bills that you try and count up so you total how much he's spent on you tonight. You can't make out if a few pieces are twenties or fifties, but based on the wad alone it must be a lot.
"Fine. I'll get the next one." You're eyes widen a little as you catch what you said, your words coming way too freely with your tipsy-ness. "I mean… not, or, If- you know." You flubb, your hands moving quickly in front of you.
"No you won't. But, you can offer, again."
He stands first, extending his arm to you like the gentleman he's been all night. The sleeve of your jacket catches the chair as you stand making you wobble on your already slightly uneven footing. "Alright, let's get you out of here before you hurt yourself." He laughs. His reassuring hand stays flat against the small of your back, guiding you through the beautiful dining room and into the cool night air.
Jack stands under the awning with you, shoulder to shoulder as he waits for your ride to arrive. Before he has to drag himself back to work and away from you. Through the window, you can still hear the bands instruments playing, on the high notes it rattles the glass just barely.
"I love this song." You gasp, leaning against the wall and physically feeling the song course through you. Jack listens intently for a second, making out what you're hearing. He jogs his memory and remembers having heard the songs a few times. Something by Louie Armstrong; there was no mistaking that voice. La vie en rose that was it!
Jack stays silent, listening to the song alongside you. He doesn't close his eyes like you do. To be honest, he's far more interested in you than the song. This was what he's thought about so many times. Not this exact scenario, but things like it. You in domestic situations, calm, happy. With your eyes still shut, he roams his eyes over every part of your face without fear of being caught.
The slope of your nose, down to the curve of your lips. You had a prominent cupids bow that made your lips look sharp in a way he could never stop thinking about. Your eyelashes that now fluttered along your under eye. He wasn't sure in this moment if you've ever looked more beautiful.
"You know," He says quietly, making sure you we're still able to hear your song over this words. "all thing's considered I think this was a pretty good date."
You peek one eye open, flickering it over to him with a smile. "So we are calling it a date?"
"Yeah." He grins back at your silly looking one-eyed expression."I mean that's what it was wasn't it?"
"Just making sure." You relax again, back to closing your eyes. You can hide the gleam in your eyes by shutting them, but you can't hide the smile on your face.
"But," Jack starts his sentence quietly, devoid of that usual sarcasm he carries through every word. "I was always under the impression good dates usually end with a kiss."
Both your eyes open now, quickly. You stay leaned against the wall, putting a few fingers over your mouth to try and cover the stupidly giddy grin. You coyly nod, eyes looking back and forth like you're thinking hard. He crosses his arms over his chest as he waits for whatever response this could possibly lead to.
"That does check out." You laugh, one finger tapping on the side of your mouth in fake thought. "That's usually how all the movies end."
"Yeah?" He mutters close to your mouth, settling his hands on either side of your face. You floss your lip in between your teeth, not even that hiding the grin. "Yeah."
La vie en rose crescendos in the background as Jacks lips finally connect with yours. It's perfect. It's like a movie. Like a really perfect rom-com. He's not careful, but he's not aggressive. You can feel how long he's wanted to do this in the way he swallows every breath that leaves your mouth. Your hands trail up his arms, finally feeling how toned they actually are after wondering what they'd feel like under your fingers every time they flexed in the OR.
You're sure you're getting stares from a few concerned citizens along the sidewalk but you couldn't care less. You feel that same smile grow on his lips as you press a hand to his chest. You're reminded of the scene in The Princess Diaries and swear your leg almost kicks up just the same.
He pulls back for no other reason than breathing which he's almost sure he could live without if he could do that a few more times. But, before he can go too far you chase him for one more peck which he reciprocates with just as much enthusiasm. Your hand is still on his chest and now white knuckle gripped against his tie.
"Yeah pretty good date." You repeat the sentiment, any ability to form new thoughts left your head the moment he kissed you. You smooth down his tie with one hand, straightening out the wrinkles your fist caused. He stops you, enveloping your one hand with both of his, pressing his lips along your knuckles. "I'm glad it was with you."
Once your taxi pulls up, you feel like lying and claiming you never called for it. But you have no choice, Jack's got work and you're under strict doctors orders (Doctor Jack Abbot) to rest and enjoy your one weekend off.
"Text me when you get home." He says, shutting the taxi door with you on the other side, painfully. "And, swing by the hospital if you have any more wine. We may need to get you on a saline drip." You laugh way too loudly in the enclosed space of the cab. You hold the wine bottle by the neck, showing it off.
"Goodnight Jack." You say elbow resting on the sill of the rolled down window, smiling up at him. Jack. Not Doctor, just Jack.
You're phone vibrates in your pocket a few minutes down the road into the silent cab ride. The notification disrupts your staring out the window with a smile that was starting to hurt your cheeks. You figure it must be Jack, way too worried about you commuting home alone and already checking in, but it's not.
summary: after five years, you thought that loving jack meant being able to deal with the times he put you aside. and every time he says those three little words, they keep feeling a little bit emptier until they loose meaning completely. after he ditches you and your anniversary trip, it all goes downhill from there.
tags: jack abbot x reader, angst, jack is high key an asshole this time, ooc jack, no use of y/n (you're welcome), hurt/no comfort, reader gets left behind a lot, age gap (not specified), arguing, breakup, inspired by less by olivia rodrigo, get your tissues
notes: well, this one wasn't on my wip list, but I've been sitting on this idea for a long while. unlike my other angst fic, this one does not have a happy ending where reader gets with someone else (but in my mind she does and ends up with brett somehow), also this is my 6k special so thank you for all the love to my other fics, MY TAG LIST IS CLOSED I'M SO SORRY BUT MY REQUESTS ARE OPEN! enjoy!
word count: 4k
Your bed pressed into you wrongly. The sheets were fresh, the duvet smelt like a mix of you and Jack, and the pillow under your head cooled your cheek no matter which way you turned. And yet, your spine slotted against a lump, your legs restlessly twitched, and your mind refused to rid itself of the night’s events that happened mere hours before: a small argument that had turned into another fight between you and your partner of five years.
You hadn’t meant for your voice to rise above a conversational tone, and you winced every time the loudness of Jack’s tone crossed through your ears. It’d been about him taking extra hours at work—the argument—when Shen had it more than covered. And because he’d picked up another shit, your dinner for two had gone down the garbage disposal well before Jack stepped through the front door. Your stomach clenched.
He had meant well. Him being a doctor showed you that social sacrifices had to be made, but you were slowly growing tired of being the sacrifice every single damn time.
If it had been a mass casualty or some other event that caused the figurative trauma flood gates to open, you would have understood in a heartbeat. But when Jack hadn’t shown up around forty minutes after 7, you’d called the Pitt’s line just in case, and your heart flipped when Lena—bless her heart—assured you that nothing wrong had happened.
Well, at least nothing wrong happened at the hospital. But something clearly wrong was happening the longer Jack stayed behind to help set a broken nose or clean out a simple wound.
“All I ask is for you to come home for once at the correct time,” you hissed, hands gripping the kitchen counter with white knuckles.
The array of dirty dishes and pans spread along the stove and adjoining countertops, all signs that you’d cooked something up for dinner even though a meal was nowhere to be found.
Jack huffed. “I said I was sorry, okay? They needed me there—”
“Don’t lie,” you interrupted with a strangled sob. “Don’t stand there and lie to my face. I called, Jack, and you know what Lena said? She said that tonight had been the quietest at handoff than it ever had been!”
His head cocked as his eyebrows furrowed. “You called? Why the fuck would you call my work?”
You threw your hands up. “Is it so hard to think that I’d be nervous and scared when you didn’t fucking show up for dinner. God forbid I think another grand emergency happened and you’d be stuck for a while. For fuck’s sake, Jack, it’s like I don’t even cross your mind anymore.”
“You do cross my mind.”
“Then why?” You tore your eyes from his frame and down into the sink where the dinner had gone down. “Why would you pick up a shift when they didn’t need you in the first place, and you knew we had dinner plans.”
You watched his jaw drop, close, drop again. He didn’t know. And now, the two of you were standing at the edge of the grave that belonged to your relationship. If you kept going, you had no clue what would happen, so you stepped back and started walking towards your bedroom.
Jack started to follow. “Where are you going?”
“To shower,” you called over your shoulder. “There’s stuff in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
With that, you flung the door closed, not carrying how loud the slam echoed through the house.
Behind you, the mattress dipped, and you pinched your eyes shut when Jack’s body heat radiated through your thin sleep shirt. He didn’t even try to roll over and press his body into yours.
Smart choice you thought as you shifted deeper into the covers, wrapping the edges around your front as a shield.
The room went quiet around the soft sound of the overhead fan.
Jack sighed loudly into the air. “Can we talk?”
Your throat constricted around a thick swallow. “We already talked,” you murmured, “there’s nothing left to say.”
“You’re still upset though,” he pointed out, and your chest tightened further. He was right; you were still upset, but any fight had been left and drained in the shower along with endless tears. He rolled over, the duvet pulling tight under his body. “And I can’t make you not upset if we don’t talk.”
You resist the urge to roll your eyes. “I don’t want to talk, Jack. I’m tired, and I just want to go to bed.”
“You said that last night too.”
Another wash of memories flooded the front of your mind. Last night had also ended in an argument. And the night before that. And the night before that: an endless cycle of going to bed with simmering anger only to wake up and hope that the morning would make everything better, that you and Jack could agree and talk without growing into something that was too big to keep emotions in.
More shifts. More SWAT missions. More rooftop talks that Robby kept you updated on. More, more, more, yet, Jack never wanted more with you. His more was somewhere outside your home, the one you’d been building for years, the one that used to be the place he couldn’t get away from.
Now, it seemed as though it was the one place he didn’t want to be.
You pushed harder into the pillow when he didn’t say anything else and sniffed loudly. A single tear traced the swell of your cheekbone and fell all the way down your neck, disappearing into your shirt. Jack scooted a bit closer, and the blankets, once comforting, felt like a vice around you.
“I don’t like when you cry,” he whispered, still not touching you at all.
“And I like it when you’re here for dinner,” you snarked softly.
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do, Jack.” You yanked until the duvet gave way a bit under him. “But I’m done talking about this tonight; I’m too tired to keep going.”
“Okay,” he said, and by his tone, you knew he was giving up too. “Okay.” The blankets tightened again as he rolled over, back turned towards you, almost like he couldn’t stand to even look at you and the way your breath shuddered into your shoulders anymore. “Sleep well.” He paused before adding, “I love you.”
I love you, but you didn’t feel it, hadn’t felt it in a while. He said the phrase after every argument to the point where it had lost all its meaning to you. Thrown around like a Bandaid on a gaping wound, it did little to pacify the hurt that encompassed your entire being.
You chewed on your bottom lip, mind waring within if you should say it back. It would ache, because you knew by morning, he’d be back in the Pitt, and you’d be left with the echo of everything he didn’t say.
“Love you too,” you whispered, the words barely audible even to you to the point you wondered if you imagined saying it.
Before long, sleep dragged you far down until sunlight reached through the blind slots and caressed your eyelids. Even though you knew the spot next to you would be empty, you turned over anyways, hand reaching for a ghost.
On the bedside table, you quickly read the small sticky note stuck to the lamp.
“Good luck today! Love you - J”
If loving me means letting go and wishing me the best. Well then, I guess, I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less
The restaurant around you flickered with warm light and clapped with soft laughter and chatter from each table. Soft tablecloth pinched under your fingertips in one hand while the others wrapped around the stem of a red-filled glass to bring it to your lipstick-stained lips.
Across from you, Jack’s phone artificially illuminated his face in a way that stood out like a sore thumb. Your own phone had been stashed inside your clutch at the beginning of the evening, a way for you to be present during the date Jack had planned by himself. It wasn’t your anniversary, but the restaurant held fond memories that you kept close to your heart.
“So, did anything interesting come through today?” you asked after setting your glass back down.
Jack nodded absentmindedly as his fingers tapped rhythmically on the screen. “Yeah, today was good, honey.”
You pursed your lips. “Jack?”
“One second.”
You looked around the room, eyes scanning the way every couple present seemed to be having the best of times all while you were two bland comments away from crying. The food hadn’t even come out, but that didn’t stop you from glancing toward the exit.
But Jack had planned the date, so that must have meant he had good intentions, right?
A grumble fell from his lips. “Fucking—”
“Do you remember the first time we came here?” you began, still not looking back at him. “And-and we must have gotten a first-day waiter because he kept forgetting what we asked for.”
“Uh-huh.”
You gripped the tablecloth a bit more. “Then, when we asked for dessert—” You snorted softly at the memory. “He brought us another entree instead. You swore if you even smelled one more whiff of pasta, you’d burst,” you giggled, but the sound drifted.
He hadn’t even looked up once. “Got it.”
“Jack.”
His hazel eyes lifted from his phone, and he slowly placed the device down. You noted how he left it face up.
“Yeah?” he asked. “Sorry, the guys are blowing up my phone with a recap of today. Cannot believe I missed a bank heist.”
A twitch in your eye had you blinking rapidly. “Oh.”
His lip curled slightly: the first smidge of a smile you’d seen on his face in hours. Your wine-tinged saliva soured around your teeth. You looked back down when his screen lit up, and Jack reached for it instantly and barked out a laugh.
“Jack.”
“One second,” he muttered, completely oblivious to the tears glossing your eyes the longer he paid attention to his phone instead of you.
An ugly feeling surged in the pit of your belly, and it roared viciously, chomping for you to bite back. A simple swallow wouldn’t make it go away.
“Are we still taking the trip to California next week,” you asked bored, reaching for your glass once again.
That finally seemed to get Jack’s attention. “What?”
Your brows pinched. “Califorina? For our anniversary next week. You said we’d go this year since we weren’t able to last year.”
His tongue ran across his bottom lip. “Oh, yeah, we’re still going.”
“And you’ve made sure to get the time off, yes?” you pressed. “I already bought the tickets, and they’re non-refundable.”
In some attempt to convince you, he reached over and took your empty hand into his. “Already got the time off approved, sweetheart. John’s glad to get me out so he can start a mutiny and take over the night shift.”
You gently squeezed his fingers. “Okay.”
His mouth stretched into a wide smile, and for a second, you felt whole, like you could be a part of those happy couples who only needed the other to fill their time, until his phone lit up once again, his hand ripping out of yours to grab it.
“Can we,” you started, but you knew you’d already lost him.
You thought of trying again, but the waiter suddenly approaching had you clamping your mouth closed. A small thank you flew from your lips when he placed the pasta dish in front of you, but not even the savory smell of alfredo and chicken could fill the growing pit in your stomach.
For the rest of the evening, Jack barely made any small talk, just edging the line of being attentive and checking out every time you tried to bring something up just for his phone to take all his attention away.
You tried not to focus on it. The restaurant gave you enough things to look at. However, you couldn’t help but shrink into yourself every time Jack laughed loudly at whatever message came through, bringing unwanted eyes and attention to your table. Your chest rose and fell staggeredly as a panic licked at your nerves, mind immediately going to how they might be perceiving you and Jack.
Look at that couple you could imagine hearing them whisper over the candle centerpieces. Poor girl; date hasn’t even looked at her once since they got here. I wouldn’t want to be her.
“Could you maybe put your phone away?” you asked softly, leaning forward so your voice wouldn’t carry far.
“Yeah, gimme a second,” Jack answered. “Just need to reply to this real fast.”
A giggle to your right had you looking in that direction only to lock eyes with a woman whose mouth was hidden behind her hand. She probably wasn’t even laughing at you, but your stomach flipped backwards down to your toes at the thought that her amusement was coming from Jack ignoring you.
“Jack,” you said a bit louder.
He huffed loudly and placed his phone back down with a loud clunk. “What?”
For some reason, you now felt bad. This was his first break in weeks, and you were nagging. You tried to smile, but even that felt awkward across your face.
“Just wanting to talk about our trip,” you stated. “I’m excited to spend two whole weeks with you.”
As if your stomach couldn’t drop any lower, Jack blanched and coughed into his hand. “Two weeks?”
Your head dipped in a slow nod. “That’s what we agreed on when we first started discussing our anniversary trip, yes.”
He ran a hand across his jaw. “I thought it was more of a weekend getaway.”
“A weekend—Jack . . .” you trailed in full disbelief. “Are you going to tell me that you don’t have the two weeks off from work?”
“I got Thursday through Sunday.” He sighed into his hand. “Monday is my first day back on nights ‘cause Robby’s back Tuesday morning.”
Your lower lip trembled. “So, because your husband is coming back, we have to cut our trip—not even early—but by a full ten days?” A scoff fell from your lips. “Unbelievable.”
Jack’s nose twisted. “That’s not fair. I got off what I could.”
“No, you probably didn’t even ask for two weeks, because you didn’t even remember what we had agreed on before I just told you.”
“Please, let’s not argue here,” he begged with big eyes.
“You just want to argue at home like we always do?” you shot back. “Tell me the truth, Jack, will you even show up to the airport next week, or will you just call me to say you got called in on another SWAT mission?”
“I promise I will be at the airport,” he said.
And for a week, you believed him. You believed that, as you packed your suitcase and carry-on, the next four days would be what you two needed. Sure, it wasn’t the full two weeks, but any time spent with Jack alone would be enough. By the time your Uber arrived at the airport, you were basically vibrating with excitement.
You stepped out onto the curb just as your phone started to ring. Once glance at the contact showed Jack’s picture, and you swiped the answer button without a second thought.
“Jack!” you cheerfully yelled. “I just got here, but we still have two hours before the flight. Are you already at the gate, or do I need to wait for you—”
“Honey,” his voice sighed into the speaker, and you froze. “I’m not . . .”
You gripped your phone tightly. “No. No, no, no, no—”
“Their medic called out. I was the only option. I can’t—” He inhaled sharply. “I’m not going to make it.”
Tears pooled at your lashline. “Th-that’s just it then? You’re throwing away our anniversary trip because your buddies need you? Are you sure there’s no one else, or were you looking for an excuse to leave me here alone?”
For a moment, he didn’t speak.
The hustle and bustle of the airport didn’t even reach through the ringing in your ears as you waited for his response. You shifted your weight, and behind you, someone honked a horn at a pedestrian.
“Jack?” you prompted. “Say something. Tell me this is all a joke, and that you’re still coming.” You wiped uselessly at your nose. “Please.”
“I have to go,” he stated. “Still go on the trip; I’ll see you and pick you up when you get home. I love you.”
On instinct, you started to reply, “I love you too—”
He had already hung up before you could respond.
Still in your hand, your phone swung limply at your side. It buzzed periodically, but you ignored it. Part of you wanted to get another Uber and go home to cry into your bed, and the other part of you wanted to do what he said: go to California by yourself and enjoy the trip.
You chose the second option.
For two weeks, you relaxed under the western sun, swam in the Pacific waves, and drank too many fruity drinks by the pool of your hotel. It was almost perfect, and being so close to that word had you crying each night into the too soft pillows where each side swallowed your face, muffling your sobs. You tried your damn hardest to not think about Jack. He didn’t deserve even a moment of your thoughts, but your body ached for his warmth, for his love.
At the end of the two weeks, you found yourself at the airport, phone back to your ear as it rang under Jack’s contact. Within five rings, he picked up.
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s California?” he asked.
You hummed. “It’s been good. Hey, since you said you’d pick me up, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be flying in around 5 tonight. We can get Zio’s and pig out on pizza for dinner?”
“Well . . . here’s the thing. Gloria’s sending Robby and I to a medical conference in Washington today.”
Deja vu from two weeks ago hit you right in the chest. “Oh.”
“I’m really sorry, honey. If I could have stayed I would.” In the background, you heard someone yell his name. “Stay safe. Maybe call Santos to pick you up? Love you!”
You hung up without saying it back, because how could you? How could you stand there at LAX, crying because your boyfriend, who canceled on the trip you were sure he was going to propose to, only to once again throw you to the side, and still say I love you to him. Even in the depths of your heart, you couldn’t find those words anywhere.
And that terrified you.
If loving me means crying on the curb at LAX. Well then, I guess, I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less
You stared blankly at the wave of the dining room table’s grain as the clock ticked down. Jack was late . . . again, but this time, you hadn’t wasted your evening on cooking a meal. No, you’d been packing. Every memory, every laugh, every moment spent with him was pushed into your two suitcases that were already seated in the back of your car.
You thought you could make it work.
The dinners, the dates, the stolen smiles that made staying feel worth it. But then California happened, and you didn’t think you could take another second of it: being with someone who acted like they didn’t even want you. Six years, and you wanted to cry more than you ever had in that timeframe.
Across the hall, the front door creaked open.
“I’m home!” Jack called out, his voice joining the familiar sound of his uneven gate. “Here’s what I’m thinking: you and me down at The Craft tonight for dinner.”
If only he knew what was waiting for him once he walked through the threshold. His eyes were downcast at his phone when he finally did.
“How does that sound?” He glanced once, looked back down before fully looking back up when he realized that you were just sitting there. “Sweetheart?”
“Jack,” you stated back, your voice staying steady with a strong cadence. “We’re not going to have dinner at The Craft.”
“Oh.” He pocketed his phone and walked over to the table, sitting in the seat he normally did so he could get on your eye level. “Do you want to go somewhere different then? I think I can get a seat for us at—”
“Jack,” you repeated and finally met his hazel eyes. “We’re not going to dinner . . . period. I—” You sighed and looked up to the ceiling. “I’m leaving.”
His brows pinched tightly, almost meeting in the middle of his forehead. “You’re-you’re leaving? For a vacation, or is this another one of your work trips?”
Your face morphed into one of grief and sorrow. “Jack,” your voice broke around his name. “I’m leaving you.”
He jerked in the seat, and his nose flared as he sucked in a breath. “Is-is this because of California?” he croaked.
“It’s because of all of it. I’m tired of feeling like I’m going to forever be on the backburner of your life.”
“That’s not true—”
“But it is,” you insisted softly. “I’m constantly battling for your attention with the hospital, your phone, your friends. You decide to pick up extra shifts, you decide to come home late, you decide that you can reschedule with me later while you go out doing God knows what. And I’m stuck on the sidelines, and I’m so tired.”
"I-I didn’t know." Jack frowned. “Please, I-I can’t lose you too.” He stuck out a hand, palm upwards, for you to take.
Against everything inside you that told you not to, you placed your hand into his. “That’s the thing, Jack. You lost me a long time ago.”
“No,” he stated, more to himself than to you. “No, I—” With his free hand, he dug around in his pocket before pulling out a small box that took your breath away. “I was going to . . . at dinner.” He popped it open, and your eyes watered at the ring in the middle. “Let me make this right. Let me fix this, please.”
You gently took your hand out of his and placed it over the box, closing it shut with the softest snap. “There’s nothing to fix. Can’t you see? You’re already thinking of other ways—outside ways—to make me stay when I’m right here in front of you.”
A sob bubbled from deep in his chest, and he shook his head. “I love you.”
You pushed up from your seat and stood in front of him, hands settling on both sides of his face. He instantly dug his forehead into your stomach and wrapped his arms around your thighs. Your fingers ran through his salt-and-peppered curls.
“If you truly love me, you need to let me go, Jack,” you whispered.
Another sob hiccuped through his body at your words spoken so sweetly to him as if you weren’t breaking his heart into two. “I’m sorry,” he openly wept. “I’m so so so sorry.”
You stepped back enough to make him look up at you. The smile that plastered itself on your face was watery and crooked, and Jack hated that he was the one to put it there. He should have been making you genuinely smile as he pushed the ring onto your finger under the night sky.
But here he was, having to watch you drift away from him like sand through open fingers. Jack sat back against the chair as tears slid down his face and flinched when the front door clicked closed. This was it; you weren’t coming back.
And it was all his fault.
If loving me means saying, “Babe, I think this is the end.” Well, I guess, I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less.
jack abbot x reader, gn!reader, resident!reader, angst-ish, fluff (after the break room pic), mutual feelings, no description of reader, no y/n, author has no medical knowledge, 2k words
ah yes, another take on *that* scene, a rite of passage for abbot writers. :3
"did you do this intubation?"
"under active fire, yeah."
your eyes automatically snap to jack, catching him glancing over his shoulder.
"are you serious?" santos asks.
you turn your attention back to the patient, but make a mental note to check on jack later.
jack, however, stays to chat with robby and the new day shift attending once his SWAT colleague is stabilised, and you busy yourself with charting until he comes out of trauma 1.
"dr. abbot?" you catch up to him as he makes his way to the lockers, "were you hit, too?" you scan his shoulder for blood. "if you need help, I can..." you offer without finishing the sentence.
jack gives you a look you can't quite decipher. "it's nothing," he says after a beat, "bullet grazed my vest. don't worry about it."
you nod and let him walk away.
yet, only a few minutes later, when you move between patients, you see samira stand behind a shirtless jack, presumably taking care of the injury you were told not to worry about.
jack's eyes meet yours across the central hub and, like an idiot, you look away as if you were the one caught in a lie.
why would he have samira do it when you've already offered, you wonder. why lie and say he doesn't need help instead of telling you he'd rather someone else do it? although the latter would've hurt to hear, too, you admit.
'don't worry about it' resounds in your head.
your double shift feels even longer than usual. going offline was frustrating in itself. subsequently having to digitise all documents meant you got to take your half-time nap at the worst possible point in your circadian and failed to fall asleep at all. none of which is helping the low mood you've been in since jack snubbed you.
you're counting down the minutes until handover as you're finishing up on the last few charts for the day, when jack takes the chair next to you.
now what? you inadvertently tense up.
jack rests his arms on the desk and leans in closer to you to keep his voice low. "care to give me a hand changing my dressing?"
you're pretty sure jack is just throwing you a bone because he noticed your weird reaction to seeing him with samira. a grazed vest shouldn't require a new dressing so soon. unless that was a lie, too.
you don't want the bone. you don't need his pity.
"uh, dr. mohan is already in," you try to sound casual.
"i saw. i'm asking you," jack says with an intensity that threatens to make you flustered.
"what happened to continuity of care?" you fake lightheartedness, "really should have her do it." you turn back to your screen, putting an end to the conversation.
jack doesn't move a little too long for your liking, so you look back at him with what you hope is an oblivious 'anything else?' look on your face.
"...okay," jack then finally relents and pushes himself off the desk.
you immediately feel like shit. jack goes out of his way to make you feel better and what do you do? passive aggressively blow him off. not to mention the audacity to think you were somehow more deserving of helping him than samira, somehow special, like you're entitled to jack's... what? attention? favouritism? what were you even thinking asking him whether he was hit in the first place? it's none of your business. jack is none of your business.
just finish the charting, you tell yourself. make it through handover. get some sleep. act like all is good when you come back tomorrow and hope jack forgot about it by then.
a day and a half later, you're hanging back in central 10, watching nazely go through the initial evaluation of a 21 year old with alcohol poisoning.
you're a little more rested now and significantly less cranky, and jack acting like his usual self has you hoping that he's not holding the dressing change thing against you. if you're extremely lucky he didn't even think anything of it.
what you did realise after catching up on sleep though, is that you've missed out on your one chance of getting to see him shirtless up close. touch him, even. in a medically necessary and not at all inappropriate way. you wonder if samira was wearing gloves. wonder what it might feel like to let your fingers roam over his skin. what it might taste like if you kissed his shoulder better.
next to you, the door swings open and pulls you back into reality.
speak of the devil. "got a sec?" jack beckons for you to come out.
nazely seems to have the drunk man and his marginally less drunk brother handled, so you leave her to it.
outside the patient room, jack crosses his arms and leans a shoulder onto the wall, drawing you into a secretive huddle.
"i didn't ask her for help," he says and you instinctively look back toward the door you just walked through. "nazely?" you ask confused.
"mohan," jack clarifies. "my shoulder."
a wave of mortification crashes over you and you struggle not to show any reaction.
"she came in looking for a patient," jack continues, "saw i couldn't reach, offered her help."
time for damage control.
"okay...?" you say, hoping this one word sufficiently conveys 'i don't know why you're telling me, i wasn't being weird about this in the slightest.'
jack stares at you in silence until you get uncomfortable and break the eye contact.
"you get dibs on my next workplace injury," he offers.
you scoff. "i'm good, thanks." you need to get out of this conversation. "was there anything else?" you ask.
"no," he admits, "you're free to go."
you return to the alcohol poisoning, resisting the urge to bang your head against the door as you close it.
"i need you," jack taps on your shoulder as he walks past you while you're charting outside of central 8. you abandon the chart and hurry after him, hoping for a case more interesting than the kidney stone you were wrapping up.
except, instead of taking you to a patient, jack leads you to the staff break room. you watch him with curiosity as the door swings shut behind you and jack goes for the first aid locker.
"time to shine," he says and shows you his hand, sporting a barely there cut.
you don't catch on fast enough and jack has to prompt you again. "come on," he tells you as he carries the supplies to the table.
"wait, is this about the dibs thing?" you say in disbelief, still unmoving.
'you get dibs on my next workplace injury,' he told you six weeks ago.
"you were serious about that?"
"oh absolutely. just didn't think it'd take that long." he sits down by the table and nods for you to take a seat as well. "was on the verge of riling up my patients to trigger a code hula hoop."
you glance over at the door and watch the bustle of the ED on the other side of the glass pane. how would you explain this to anyone who happened to look inside, or even worse, came in? tell them you really needed to brush up on minor cuts?
"considered shooting myself in the foot," jack continues while you make up your mind, "but what if i got the wrong one, you know?"
that finally earns him an exasperated look. best get it over with, you figure. and quickly.
thankfully, jack is seated with his back to the door. you position your chair opposite him, counting on the angle to protect you from view of the walkers-by.
jack holds out his hand to you, a far too content smile on his face.
you scoot closer, having to slot one of your knees between his to reach his hand comfortably at the unnatural angle required to examine the cut on his fifth metacarpal.
"what happened?" you ask as you turn his hand this way and that, assessing the small cut.
jack doesn't reply and when you look up at him, his brows are furrowed and his gaze fixed on his hand in yours.
does he not trust you to treat a tiny nick? you look back down, wondering if there is something he sees that you don't.
"oh shit," you drop his hand, "i forgot the gloves!" you're immediately on the move, but jack's grabs your hand again, holds you in place.
"it's fine," he says, pulling you back down into your seat.
"it's not a problem, i can get some," you say.
"it's fine," he insists. "sit."
you oblige.
jack lets go of your hand so you can ready the antiseptic. the small spray bottle is unopened, the cap still sealed in plastic.
"what happened?" you ask again.
this time, the answer comes promptly. "thrashing patient met unsteady intern hands," jack says calmly.
"scalpel?" your eyes snap up to his.
"hadn't made the cut yet."
you nod. sterile blade, good.
"clean it?"
"yes."
why is jack suddenly so quiet, you wonder as you struggle with the plastic, where did all the wisecracking go?
"feel like you could've handled this one yourself," you try.
"hm."
you manage to unwrap the plastic and are about to remove to cap when you feel jack's hand on your knee.
you turn to him, but he just gives you a faint smile.
oh. your gaze drops to your lap. all he did was position his hand for your convenience. fifth metacarpal up, the other fingers holding onto you for stability. makes sense.
still, you feel the points of contact burn through the thin fabric of you scrubs. his hand lies heavy in a comforting way, its warmth seeps into your skin.
...as does the warmth of his leg. which you have practically squeezed in between your thighs.
all your blood seems to rush up your neck at once. when did this happen? have the two of you been sitting like this from the start? wouldn't you have noticed? did jack notice?
"sting," you warn jack out of habit before you spray the antiseptic onto the wound.
"ouch," he jokes, but you're too flustered to react or let him see your face.
you dress the wound more thoroughly than strictly necessary, but you figure a doctor's hands are at heightened risk of infection. "intern's gonna think he cut down to the bone," jack comments.
"you don't like it, you do it yourself."
"this how you talk to your patients? do we need to work on your bedside manner?"
you feel his eyes on you. you know the damn smile is stll there, too.
you pack the supplies back up and stand to return them to the first aid ocker.
"no care instructions?" jack complains. "how are you keeping your scores up?"
you sigh in exasperation, but before you can fire back john walks into the break room.
"what happened to you?" he immediately asks upon seeing jack's hand.
you don't stay to hear the story.
you only make it a few steps out before jack catches up to you.
"thank you," he says softly with a hand on your back and overtakes you.
"remember that time i came in with the SWAT guys? with a GSW to my shoulder?" jack asks on a random friday two years later, sitting in a bathtub between your legs.
you stop running your fingers over his back. in between the blotches of foam covering his skin, you can still see the tiny scar the incident left behind.
"yes...?" you ask cautiously.
"and you were sulking because i didn't let you treat it?"
"i– was not sulking!" you insist.
"right. must have imagined that." you can hear the grin in his voice.
"i did want to, you know" he says sincerely and turns his head even though he still can't see your face. "wanted it too much."
you're grateful you're sitting behind him and he can't see you tearing up over such a trivial thing.
you swipe the foam off his shoulder and kiss it better like you wanted to two years ago.
it tastes of soap.
pics: The Pitt, X-Men '97, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier
summary: you and jack have always been flirty and unfortunately that really doesn’t help the huge crush you have on him. seeing him with his girlfriend also really doesn’t help your huge crush.
contents: reader has a nickname (spooky), flirting, talk of mortuary sciences (death, bodies, etc), slight angst, miscommunication, reader is oblivious, only physical description is reader’s boobs, oral (f receiving), nipple/breast play, p in v sex, unprotected sex, fluff, inspired by olivia rodrigo’s maggots for brains
a/n: this is my first time trying to write anything remotely fluffy and i kind of wanted it to feel like a rom com! the medicine in this is probably not accurate at all but i needed it to conform to the plot for storytelling purposes so please forgive any mistakes!! also my first time properly writing smut in…a while so go easy on me i am RUSTY
Mondays are for psychopaths you think, not for the first time, as you watch the hour hand inch past 3 on the clock above your desk.
3AM, that is.
3AM on a Monday morning and you're sat surrounded by the dead.
At this point, the stack of paperwork beneath your hand is meaningless. To you at least, of course. Obviously. Super important for the poor guy who's name is printed in block letters across the top. And his family. Of course.
Truthfully, though, you've just been sat staring at the clock for the last 45 minutes, glazed over eyes and face smushed against your fist, willing your head not to drop forward in a sleepy trance. The graveyard of red bull cans in front of you have unfortunately not worked their magic, and you point blank refuse to even touch the hot tar in the breakroom some heathen has labelled as coffee.
In order to actually finish the custody forms and crosschecking them with sampling logs, you reason that you need to force your brain into gear. Surely stretching your legs will suffice. And if that leg stretch concludes with a lap around the ER which may or may not coincide with a certain nocturnal chief attending's rounds then that will simply be the world's largest coincidence.
A certain nocturnal chief attending who you may or not be working up the courage to ask out for dinner. Eventually.
You've been given enough encouragement by your friends, the usual "What's the worst he could say? No?".
Yes, the worst he could say is no, actually.
Well, not technically. He could turn around and spew off insults and declarations of total disgust and hatred for you. But you figure that reaction would go against the months and months of cheeky smiles and winks brandished in your direction, the inside jokes and flirty comments he greets you with, the smiley faces (and the one-time scribbled out heart!!!) he leaves on the sticky notes littered on the forms he sends downstairs.
So, really, a no would be the worst thing. A no would confirm that you'd done it again- read too far into things, saw signs that were more like mirages- an oasis granting affection in the touch-starved desert that is your love life.
A no would mean having to look into the eyes of a man you have admired for longer than you'd care to admit and watch him reject you. Which he is more than entitled to, of course! You'd take it on the chin and respect his no.
Then lock yourself in your office and sob loud enough to wake the bodies housed on the other side of your office door.
Dr Abbot wouldn't be your first rejection, of course. Far from it. To be human is to be rejected, and you'd learned long ago that picking yourself back up is the only response you can have if you want to remain human.
It would be the first to stop you in your tracks, though, you think. Your professional lives are so entwined- you're the one he calls every time he needs a deceased patient moving, or a DOA evaluated, or legal forms need both of your approval. Even the of his residents who show interest in mortuary rotations have to speak to the both of you, and you always manage to cross paths at hospital galas and fundraisers.
Quite frankly, you would survive the fallout. You would move on, tell yourself that you're a grown woman who has before and will again face rejection. Your professional lives would be just the same.
Your heart is another matter entirely.
It doesn't care that you're a woman with nearly three decades of earthly experiences. Or that your career is logically more important than a silly infatuation with the silver haired grump upstairs.
A muscle so intent on latching onto said silver haired grump cannot possibly care about logic.
Apparently, neither does your brain- the logic machine- as your calf muscles burn through the stretch of the seemingly endless stairs up to the ER.
The floor is almost awkwardly quiet tonight, your trainers squeaking against the linoleum and the sound of your heavy-ish breathing making you wince slightly with every movement. Box breathing is all you can do to tamp it down as you make your way through half empty corridors, every couple of rooms housing a patient but otherwise unusually inactive. The witching hour usually brings a whole host of crazy energy whirlwinding through the ER doors.
Perfect conditions for the native species of nightcrawler who infest this floor.
"Spooky. Over here."
Your head snaps to the right at the familiar cadence of your favourite night shift attending. (Only marginally more favoured than Ellis, if only for the fact that Jack doesn't raid your super secret stash of cookies.)
You've gone by that nickname now for longer than your own name. Spooky- bestowed upon you by Jack himself after he spotted the poster in your office. The UFO and 'I WANT TO BELIEVE' matching with that of Agent Fox Mulder's from The X-Files.
You suppose there are worse things to be called.
And, admittedly, you probably do come across as marginally spooky what with being cooped up with the dead four days a week.
"Hi."
"Hi."
That lopsided smile. It reminds you of the angle of Orion's bow in your favourite constellation. And the spray of freckles across his face reminds you of the Milky Way. You're almost certain you can trace a path between them, make up your own constellation.
"How are things downstairs?" Jack prompts the conversation at the sight of your slightly glazed eyes. He doesn't want to go so far as to assume it's because of him, so he'll chalk it up to the hour and the steadily growing army of empty red bull cans he's sure are encroaching on your desk.
You rock back and forth on your heels, hands fumbling to do something- anything- in front of you, "Oh, you know. Peachy. Lively as always."
The smile returns, this time more of a purse of his lips, as if biting back a chuckle. At you or with you: you're not sure you want to know.
"As always." Reaching for the tablet in front of him, he starts off in the direction of the triage bays, "Fancy joining me on my rounds tonight, Spooky?"
"Oh, yeah! Can't promise I'll be much help- my expertise is more use for those patients who don't really need fixing anymore."
He looks over his shoulder at you, smirking as you stumble on your feet to rush after him. Like a puffin, he thinks, not for the first time. A very cute puffin.
"Mmm, I'm sure we'll find a use for you yet, Spooky. What're you doing up here in the land of the living anyway?" He looks back down to his screen as he walks, content with the knowledge that you're by his side.
You look around the ER with wide eyes like you're seeing it for the first time (even though this probably marks the thousandth time).
"Hm? Oh, um, I…needed to stretch my legs. Thought I'd come up and grace you all with my presence." A hollow chuckle betrays you slightly and from the amused look Jack throws your way, he believes you even less.
Thankfully he lets you get away with the obvious lie, swiping through the charts to find the one he's searching for. He stops in front of a curtain and briefly announces his presence to the patient on the other side, giving them an additional second before gently pulling the curtain aside with a practiced smile. One you've been on the receiving end of countless times, the one you're sure is laced with calming properties. You've seen many a patient be talked down from ledges just with that smile; the one that says I'm here, I understand, I've got you, we'll do this together.
Jack brings himself down to the patient's level, seating himself on the rolling stool, "Mr Romano, I'm Dr Abbot- this is another of our doctors here at PTMC, do you mind if she observes our chat for a minute?"
The patient looks nervously towards you so you take that as a sign to introduce yourself, telling him your name, "I'm normally downstairs in the mortuary, it's nice to meet you up here!"
The facepalm Jack makes immediately after you finish speaking makes your heart jump. Mr Romano's head shoots towards Jack, eyes wide like dinner plates, "Mortuary?! What? I am dying?" His thick Italian accent reverbs off the walls as you wince and rush to placate him.
"No- no,"
"Mr Romano, everything is fine. My colleague is just brushing up on her bedside manner," Jack pointedly looks towards you though you can see the amusement in his eyes from here, "You came in with laceration to your thumb, that is all. Once it's stitched you'll be free to go. No one is dying any time soon."
His words seem to calm the man if only momentarily, so Jack uses the sliver of calm to inform him that a nurse will be in to stitch him up shortly before ushering you out of the bay and shutting the curtain behind him.
You walk to the nurses station with your hands covering your face, refusing to even look at Jack.
"How bad was it?" Your voice comes out mumbled from behind your palms.
Instead of the reprimand you were expecting, you hear a throaty chuckle which quickly dissolves into uncontrollable giggles. A warm hand comes up to grip your fingers, gently removing them from your face. The sight of Jack's laughing face sets off your own, his out of amusement and yours out of embarassment.
"God, Spooky. 'I'm from the mortuary'? Really?" His imitation of your voice only worsens both of your giggling.
"I didn't know what to say! I haven't had to speak to a living patient in years! God he must've thought I was the grim reaper or something." At this point, your quickly warming forehead is pressed to the cool surface of the nurses station.
Jack rounds the desk, still chuckling, to sit in a chair, "You say anything but that, sweetheart. Anything. Did you see his face? Poor guy."
You bring your head up to glower at him still laughing at your expense, "Yeah, keep it up, giggleshits."
That only makes him laugh harder. You can still hear him when you turn and start back down the corridor. The sooner you get back to your safe space with no talking and moving patients, the better.
"Aw, Spooky, don't run off! We were just getting started!"
A backwards middle finger is all he receives in reponse.
His chuckling it still audible when you reach the stairs.
A week later, you're back in a very familiar position, only this time during normal people hours.
The dayshift proves a stark opposite to that of the night shift; you're sure you've almost run into at least four separate people in the two minutes you've been on the ER floor. You watch with darting eyes as patients and staff alike flit and scurry between rooms, codes are called, and an incessant hum seems to hover above everything.
There is significantly too much life and noise happening up here for your taste.
Robby had called you a few minutes ago saying he needed your assistance with moving a patient and you find him outside of the family viewing room, a somber smile on his face. Whilst you enjoy each other's company, you'd both much prefer if your professional meetings were kept to a minimum.
Over your years working with him, you've come to find Robby views death as sadness completely. You suppose it makes sense; his job is to help these people, to do everything he possibly can to nurse them back to health- or at least stability before another specialist can swoop in. He is the frontlines for any and all emergencies and so death to him is a failing. Personal and professional.
From your perspective, death is a process. All of us die, some of us at the very hospital you work at. It's your job to treat all of your patients with dignity and respect, making sure they each receive the best possible standard of care. You see death as a ritual, and you have a sacred purpose to take care of their physical body and appreciate the life they lived. If you stopped to grieve for every person you performed on, you'd be stuck in one place infinitely.
If anything, you now have a deep appreciation for your own life. The job just comes with the added bonuses of developing a strong stomach and dark humour.
"Hey, Spooky, thanks for coming up. Sorry for the craziness around here, you know how it is." His accompanying laugh is more of a mirthless breath through his nose.
"Dr Robby, no problem, haha..yeah."
No, actually, you don't know. The speed up here is miles ahead of the one you're used to.
To his credit, Robby doesn't allow the awkwardness to linger for too long, instead sweeping you into the room with a palm hovering over your mid-back.
Transport support is already waiting inside the viewing room as you set to work on the usual identification and verification processes, checking over the death notification paperwork and ID tag, removing the little remaining medical apparatus from the patient's body, and securing a chin strap to ensure both dignity and practicality. After you give the go ahead to the transport staff member, they help you move the patient into a bag and then with securing the body with the concealment gurney. You give Anton, the transport staff, a murmur of thanks before asking him to move the body downstairs using the back elevator and noting that you'll be down in a moment once Robby and you finalise paperwork.
You find Robby waiting outside the room, his chin titled towards his shoes in thought.
"Hey, all finished in there, I'll be heading down to process them in a minute."
His eyes meet yours, some of the heaviness from before replaced with the professionality all doctors have to master- especially when they are the Chief Attending of an city's emergency department, "Thanks, Spooky. You're an angel."
The toothy, too-wide grin you give back makes him smile even more. You never could take a compliment.
At the nurses station, Robby turns to you with both the paperwork you need to complete and an expression you recognise all too well. You've worked with him for too long not to know when Michael Robinavitch is scheming.
"…What? Do I have something on my face?" Your hand haphazardly sweeps at your mouth, praying the pesto pasta salad you brought for lunch isn't smeared across your chin.
"No, no. You look great. Just…a question, if you will."
Your eyes narrow in suspicion, "Hmm, why do I not like where this is going already?"
Robby chuckles, "God, Spooky, at least hear me out before you start accusing me of something."
"You have that look, Robinavitch. I know that look."
His eyes roll good-naturedly before they meet Dana's over the other side of the desk, her own spying on the two of you from above the glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
"I just wanted to ask if you'd put any more thought into that gala. Gloria's been on my ass about numbers and representing the hospital properly, putting on a united front, yada yada. 'S all bureaucratic bullshit, but someone's gotta do it."
Robby watches in thinly veiled amusement as your head tips back on a groan, "Fuck. I completely forgot." You look over at Dana, still watching curiously, for moral support, "Do I have to?"
She raises both hands in surrender, one holding a patient chart and the other the bright red hospital landline, "Hey, don't look at me, Spooks. I got nothin' to do with those bigwigs upstairs."
Unfortunately for you, your puppy dog eyes do not have the same effect on Robby as they do on Jack, "Put those eyes away, missy. Someone from your department has to go or Gloria will ride your ass so hard you'll be drowning in paperwork for the next year."
Robby's words make your whole face screw up in a cringe, "Please, don't ever put that image in my brain ever again."
He simply laughs out loud before fatherly patting you on the back, "You'd best send Gloria confirmation of your attendance." Handing you the final sheet of paperwork, he pauses as if remembering something important, "Oh, actually, you know who else is going? Jack. Huh, at least you won't be alone."
With that, he picks up a chart and heads towards a triage bay. His words make you pause: if Jack is attending then maybe the night won't be so bad, his presence might just make up for the painful amount of schmoozing with potential donors you're going to have to do. Seeing him in a suit will also make the brain melting act of socialising easier to stomach. Maybe you can even dress up nice to feel confident enough to ask him for dinner sometime. You wonder absentmindedly if your sister still has that formal dress from her friend's cousin's wedding sat in the back of her wardrobe.
When you look up, you realise how in your own head you were when you spot Dana smirking knowingly at you, "Don't. Even."
Both eyebrows raise in faux innocence, "My lips are sealed."
After three back to back shifts the last place you want to be right now is in a crowded, overly decorated banquet hall surrounded by the best doctors in the tri-state area, the wealthiest Pennsylvania has to offer, and staff who look like they also want to be anywhere but serving comically tiny hors d'oeuvres to stuffy old white men.
It'd taken your sister over an hour to convince you to leave the house in the dress you're wearing and, despite how good you felt when you first tried it on, you suddenly feel ridiculously out of place considering your day to day attire is usually frumpy scrubs, a hair net, and your comfiest shoes.
A small part of you- well, perhaps a large majority- is hoping you'll find Jack tonight and he'll be starstruck by your dress. That same part of you that has existed since you were a pre-teen and your love of rom coms was kickstarted, watching scenes of undercover princesses swaying down palace steps in a gorgeous dress and captivating the eyes and hearts of Chad Michael Murray and Heath Ledger.
It's a satin fabric in a rich plum colour, an asymmetrical neckline showcasing the oiled skin of one shoulder, boning across the mid-section to accentuate your waist and hips, and the rest falling in smooth pleats around your calves. The silver heels on your feet started hurting before you even got in the Uber here and you're almost 100% positive you lost bloodflow to your pinky toe around seven minutes ago. Grinning and bearing it seems the only option.
You've already made the rounds a couple of times, your schmoozing power running on empty to match the empty champagne glass you've been clutching like a lifeline instead of awkwardly fiddling with your hands as usual.
You're still yet to spot Jack amongst the crowd you think to yourself, and, as if by magic, there he appears. You spy him chatting with a group of donors you're yet to try and work some of your unusual charm with, their faces all alight with rapt fascination as he no doubt captivates them with his otherworldly charisma. He'll be regaling them with some story of his time overseas, or managing to spin a patient story into a subtle yet effective appeal for donations.
He looks as dashing as ever, even if you are only glimpsing him from behind; his deep slate suit stretches taut over broad shoulders, pants tailored to perfection, and his more salt than pepper curls perfectly coiffed. You hope he's missed a day or two of shaving. You love the stubble that grows in after only a short amount of time and have spent more time than is probably healthy imagining how the scruff would feel between your thighs.
Setting out to cross the bustling room to reach his side, the crowd he was previously entertaining seem to fall away with wide grins and pats to his back, leaving him stood alone with possibly the most gorgeous woman you have ever seen.
Your steps fumble slightly, not wanting to make a fool of yourself by marching over there when he's in conversation with someone else.
Especially not when he's smiling like that at her.
She's in a long sleek dress to match her long sleek hair and she looks so elegant you're unsure if she's even real. Of course he'd be smiling like that at her.
Her elegance doesn't bother you nearly as much, though, as the hand on his arm does. Her fingers are wrapped around the crook of his elbow in such a way that looks natural, familiar. And he's not rejecting it. Jack is standing there letting her paw at him, smiling at her in that way that says I'm listening, I'll always listen to you that you foolishly believed might just have been exclusive to you.
For just a minute- though it feels like an eon- you stand and watch them; how good they look together, how naturally they seem to fit together, how she throws her head back on a laugh and he watches the clean line of her throat. It feels like a car crash you can't look away from, though you know the only car crash is the nosedive your potential relationship with Jack just took off the Fort Pitt Bridge.
In the years you've worked with Jack, you've never once heard him mention a partner- you knew he was divorced, everyone at the Pitt knew that, but you had no idea he was seeing anyone. And, from the way they're stood together, they can't be anything but a couple. It makes you feel sick thinking about how many hours you must've accumulated flirting with Jack over the years. How he'd never shut it down- had played along, even. Once again, you feel like that same silly teenage girl again; awkward and a hopeless romantic, only to find out that the cute flirty guy next to you in biology class had been dating your friend since the beginning of junior year.
You feel stupid and small and really fucking uncomfortable in this dress that you wore for him.
Behind you, you hear someone call your name and, deciding you've seen enough, you turn from the smoldering remains that was your crush on Dr Abbot.
In turning away, you miss the way Jack's ears perk up completely at the distant sound of your name, swinging his head around the room in an attempt to find you and the sting he feels in his chest when he can't.
The pile of papers on your desk has officially reached critical mass.
You're at the point where one strong shove of your office door may result in bureaucratic disaster, however sorting and filing them properly would require a trip to the ER. The same ER in which you have been completely avoiding for the last two weeks due to the residence of a certain silver haired grump.
You'd received exactly one message from him at the end of last week (when you figure he finally caught on to the fact that you were quite obviously avoiding him);
Jack's Abs: Hey Spooky, everything okay? Didn't see you at the fundraiser dinner, must've missed each other. Let me know if you want to come up and help with rounds again at any point. I'll make sure you don't frighten any patients half to death this time. - Jack
You'd only deigned to reply with a thumbs up emoji, to which you figure he must've guessed he'd done something wrong as he hasn't contacted you since.
In all honesty, you miss him. You miss the chats you would sneak together in the break room between lulls, you miss the way he would make any excuse to come downstairs to visit you, you miss the way he'd always have an energy drink chilling in the fridge for you- hidden behind the leftovers that have gone untouched for so long he's sure no one will bother to look behind them. You miss him when you see something funny on Instagram and you can't show him it, when normally you'd send it to him and watch him furrow his brows in old man confusion.
You've moped around so much for the past two weeks that even your assisstant, Sylvie, has been giving you shit for it.
"Girl, you've been slouching around here like a zombie for too long. Go talk to him!" She's sat in the chair on the other side of your packed desk, her feet propped precariously on one of the smaller piles of paper teetering on the edge of the cherrywood. You're slouched in your reclined office chair, head in your hands as you massage an incoming migraine from your temples.
"You should've seen them, Sylv- there was no way that wasn't his girlfriend. I feel so embarassed."
The whine in your voice makes Sylvie's eyes soften in sympathy, "Hun, there is no way that a man who looks at you like Dr Abbot looks at you has eyes for any other woman. Did you ask him if they were together?"
Shuffling your fingers apart, you peek up at her nervously, "…No?"
The eye roll you receive is expected, the tinfoil ball from her sandwich being thrown at your head, is not.
"Okay, well, if you're not going to take these up, I will." Sylvie begins precariously stacking papers in her arms and heads for your office door, "I'll be sure to tell Dr Abbot you asked after him."
All you can do is cover your face again and groan, slouching down even further into your chair.
It's your day off and you're still moping. Only now, you can mope from the comfort of your own home.
You've not even left the house today, even though you know definitely should've when you open the fridge door and all that's in there is a half-drunk carton of orange juice and a moldy punnet of cherries. The weather is another reason you haven't left the house today, the thunder and lightning and lashing rain mirroring the emotional deluge happening inside your head.
A tiny, insane, part of you thinks maybe you should risk a grocery run today. Should risk driving in the torrential rain if only for the fact that the grocery store is in PTMC's catchment area and any accident that may've happened to you on those rain-slick roads would've resulted in the potential for Jack to be the one taking care of you. You dismiss the thought as soon as it pops into your head, immediately apalled at yourself, and decide to just rot the rest of the night away on your couch. You're sure you have some stovetop popcorn hidden in a cupboard somewhere.
You're almost through Four Weddings and a Funeral, just about to reach Hugh Grant's famous love confession to Carrie in the torrential rain when you hear a pounding on your front door.
Immediately, you check your phone to make sure you didn't accidentally order a pizza in you zombie-like state and make some poor delivery driver make the trek to your house in the storm, only for another, much longer, knock to sound through your living room.
You hop up from the couch, fastening the belt of your robe around you tighter as you swing open the front door to be met with a very wet Jack Abbot.
"What the hell are you doing here?", You shout to be heard over the thunder rolling behind him, brows furrowing in desparate confusion.
Jack brings a hand up to swipe his dripping curls from his face, slicking them back only for the shortest at the front to stick to his temples, "You've been avoiding me for weeks!"
"So you show up at my house?! In a storm?!"
"I had no other choice!"
Looking at him dripping wet on your doorstep makes your defences wither faster than you'd like, "God, Jack, just- just come in. Come in. I'll get you some towels and something to wear." He lets out a breath of relief, making sure to keep his feet on your doormat as he removes his soaked shoes and jacket, trying to minimise the mess he is guaranteed to make. When you return from the towel cupboard, you find him standing sheepishly still in your doorway now with the door closed at least, "Come on, you can sit on the couch- I'll put towels down."
Whilst he busies himself with drying off, you go in search of the biggest sweatpants and hoodies you can find, hoping you have something buried in the back of your wardrobe, and when you get back your heart bursts out of your chest at the sight of Jack's wet t-shirt halfway off of his body, arms stretching backwards to rip it off. When his head is free of the soaked fabric, he catches your widened eyes, curls still damp and now ruffled, the skin of his chest and arms reddened from the cold.
"He-here," you have to clear your throat to speak a coherent sentence, "take these- they should fit. Hopefully." You all but toss the clothes at him and make an escape to the kitchen in a plan to bring him a warm drink and to put his own clothes in the dryer.
Jack takes the time to scan your living room, a space he's never been privy to before but always wondered about- wondered whether you like to keep things neat and minimalist or go all out with bright colours and clutter. From what he can see, it's very you. He loves it. Although he's not sure his opinions on interior design have any weight considering his own house has looked the exact same (if he had to pick a word to describe its aesthetic, he would choose showhouse, Robby would choose sad) since his divorce years ago.
"Black, one sugar." You place a coffee down in front of him, settling in opposite him with your own mug of no doubt something teeth-rottingly sweet that most likely no longer classifies as coffee.
"Thanks, Spooky."
For the first time in all of the years you've known each other, the silence between you is awkward. It feels like there's an impenetrable barrier between the two of you, something tangible, something you can reach out and crush betwene your fingers. For the first time ever, you don't know how to talk to each other.
So, Jack takes the leap of faith.
"We need to talk, sweetheart."
The eyes you look at him with make his chest tighten immeasurably, there's hurt and guilt and longing and want burned into your pupils, so clear he can read them like his favourite book.
"You've been avoiding me, for a while now. Too long, really. And I just want to know what I did." Jack puts his coffee down and scoots forward on the couch, eyes wide in desperation, "Did I fuck up? I want to make it right, but I'm at a loss here, Spooky. I miss us. I miss you."
"I don't know if you should be saying that, Jack. It's…inappropriate."
If it was possible, he's somehow leaning even farther forward, trying to get as close to you as he can whilst still respecting the clear space you've put between the two of you, "To who? We've always done this. It's been you and me since day one, Spooky."
"God, your girlfriend, Jack. Or partner- wife- whatever she is to you. I'm not coming between that, okay?"
Jack's eyes narrow in confusion, "Girlfriend? I don't have a girlfriend, or-or a partner or a wife."
The pit in your stomach widens, "You…don't?"
"Of course I don't. How could I when I have you? If you aren't filling any of those roles I don't want it." Out of all the expressions you've seen Jack Abbot wear, this one is a first. It's desperate, pleading, pure want.
"What about the woman in the black dress- from the fundraiser dinner? You two seemed…friendly." You can't even look at him as you say it, embarassment swirling in your chest.
"You mean Val? My sister's wife? She's on the board for the woman's clinic outside Presby. Spooky, she's family. I promise you. I'll get out the fucking family albums if you want me too, sweetheart." And god help you, you know Jack would never lie to you. Not about something like this.
"Oh."
The smile he gives you is one of hope and sympathy, "Yeah."
"Well…now I feel stupid."
Jack laugh is full of pity and amused exasperation, "Me too, Spooky."
There's one thing still left to clarify, though, "Did you mean what you said before? About…me. Being your…girlfriend or whatever."
Jack's smile is megawatt now, "Oh, my silly girl, get over here."
In an instant, you're rounding the coffee table, and straddling Jack's lap. His hands reach to cup your face automatically, bringing it to down to meet his awaiting mouth. The kiss is desperate and searching, your tongues sweeping each other's mouths, dying to memorise the feel of each other.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-" you pant between kisses, "I'm sorry I avoided you i just-"
"Shh, shh. 'S Okay, sweets. You're okay, I'm here now, hm?" Jack's hands are placating as they smooth over your body, gripping your curves, memorising the feel of your hips, "Now, I love this robe but I wanna see what's under it, yeah? That sound good?"
You nod frantically, aching to have his big hands touch your heated skin. He gently unties the knot, pushing the satin fabric from around your shoulders to pool at your feet. Instantly, his hands are going to your nipples poking from under thin material of your tank top, pinching and rolling and pulling. His mouth drops to envelop one through the fabric, teeth just and so nibbling at it before his tongue sweeps out to soothe. When he pulls away his eyes are heavy lidded at the sight of the wet spot on your tank and the outline of your swollen nipple even more prominent.
He looks up at you, your neck thrown back and whimpers pouring from you, "These tits, sweetheart. The things I've imagined doing to them."
You meet his eyes with your own hooded ones, "Yeah?"
"They're fucking perfect. Perfect for me." His fingers reach to pull the fabric of your tank down under your heavy tits, nipples jutting out proudly. Jack groans uncontrollably, mouth attatching to your tits once again like a man starved. Your hips works against his own, little shorts bunching up against the sweatpants you leant him, though you can feel the unmistakable bulge he's sporting.
"Where's your bedroom sweetheart?", Jack mumbles around a mouthful of your breast, his bite marks and spit leaving a trail across the delicate skin.
You point with a shaking hand in the direction of your room and, within ten seconds, he's pulling you up to stand so he can yank you down the corridor. Once he locates your bed, he shoves you down, standing between your parted legs as you prop yourself into your elbows. Jack takes you in, tits pressed together above the fabric of your top, tiny shorts hiding next to nothing, the outline of your perfect soaked cunt on display for him, your face already sweat slick and looking freshly fucked. He thinks you're the most gorgeous thing he's ever seen.
You watch with unconcealed lust as his rips the sweatshirt from over his head, pushes his sweatpants down, and reaches to remove his prosthetic leg. You watch that part with more interest- next time you want to be the one to do it for him. Once he's done, he leans against the bed, one of your ankles in each of his hands as he begins planting kiss after kiss up the side of your leg. Some are small pecks, others open mouthed, all whilst looking directly at you. Your jaw is touching your heaving chest at this point.
He finally gets to the apex of your thighs, the fat dimpling under his fingers as he places kiss after kiss over the fabric of your shorts, tongue coming out to poke at your clit, nose taking deep lungfuls of you. Your gasps and whimpers spur him on as he looks up at you, "Sweet girl, I want you to take these off for me."
You're nodding and hooking your fingers beneath the waistband instantly, hips lifting from the bed in what should feel an awkward move but doesn't as Jack keeps his eyes on yours- reassuring, guiding, loving. When the shorts are eventually hooked over one ankle, he slips them off and returns to face your cunt, weeping and leaking for him. Once he reaches what he's after he envelops your clit, nose smushing against the thatch of hair above your pussy, tongue sweeping across you, "God, Jack, oh my god-". For what feels like hours he suckles, kisses, licks, fucks you with his tongue. When he comes up for air, his face is glistening, the scruff you love so much completely doused in you.
Your hands grab at his curls, guiding him to where you need him most. His own hands come up to play with your tits, rolling and pinching, sometimes just grabbing handfuls of the plush flesh as if he needs something to ground him. You see his own hips working at the bed beneath him, unable to keep still at the sensation of completely devouring your cunt.
When he feels you beginning to reach the edge of your orgasm, he brings one hand down, rolling your clit beneath the pad of his thumb, his fingers dipping shallowly into your pussy, "Come on, sweet girl, come for me. You can do it, I've got you." Your hips are uncontrollable, writhing and rolling against him, your thighs clamping down on his ears as your first orgasm collides into you. It's less of a plunge and more of a tidal wave, one big wave and lots of slightly smaller jolts that pull you just as far under.
"Yeah, that's it. You're so pretty when you come, baby."
Jack unwinds his hands from your thighs when you release him, moving to his knees to crawl over you. His mouth brushes your stomach as he moves, the skin instantly tightening making him glance up at you as he leans down and presses a firmer kiss to the skin still covered by your tank top.
"You're beautiful. Don't hide from me. I know what you look like, Spooky." He tenderly thumbs at your temple as he says it, looking between your eyes. The kiss he plants on the bridge of your nose brings a prickle to your eyes. Before any tears can fall, though, Jack is lining his hips up with yours, the tip of his cock just and so pressing at your hole, "You want me baby? Hm?"
"Yes, yes- please, please. Need it, Jack-" His lips cut you off from anymore begging.
"Okay, sweet girl, you're okay. You'll get it. You'll get it all."
With a deep groan, Jack pushes in in one fell swoop, and it feels like fireworks explode behind your eyes. Like finding the missing puzzle piece. Like you've finally found your person. He's still for a moment, his face buried in your neck and hands gripping your waist, whilst he gives the both of you a second to acclimate.
"Please, Jack."
At your words, he begins a rhythm that feels like your favourite song and the beat of both your hearts, and, listening to Jack's heartbeat now they might just be the same thing.
His hips meet the backs of your thighs, the very tip of his cock reaching the very deepest parts of you. The neatly trimmed hair above his cock catches deliciously on your clit. He's so thick you can feel him everywhere.
"Oh sweetheart. you're perfect. You feel so good. So wet- oh my god-" Jack murmurs into your ear, not holding back from moaning and whimpering right against it. He blanketing you with his full body and you've never felt so secure. Your hands are in his curls once again, nails blindly scratching at the base of his skull and travelling down to his freckled shoulders. You rake lines down his back just slightly, not enough to draw blood but enough to know you were there, "Yeah, baby- like that. Feels s'good," His pistoning hips continue to meet yours filthily, echoing through the room in a delicious symphony.
"Gonna cum with me this time, sweets. Come on, you're nearly there- can feel it.", With his thumb back on your clit, he continues fucking you towards your orgasms. You can once again feel that tidal wave approaching though your ears are muffled now, as if underwater, your head fuzzy and fucked out. Your brain whites out completely as you cum, leaking onto the matress below you, "Come on, baby, now. Cum for me. Yeah- yes. Ohh my god-", Jack's whimpers mix with your own until you're creating a perfect harmony, his hips still fucking you through both of your orgasms, and, though they're slowing, they're no less intense.
Your ears are ringing by the time you come back down to Earth, Jack's heavy breathing the first thing you tune back into, "Oh, you're so perfect. My perfect girl. I love you." His tiny kisses are pressed to the skin of your cheeks, nose, lips, forehead- anywhere he can reach.
You giggle up at him, still spacey and fucked out and exhausted. But happy, so so happy, "I love you, too."
When he chuckles back at you through a kiss, his teeth pressing to your lips, you can't help but feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
A couple of hours later, with the storm still raging outside, you're huddled with Jack under fresh bedding and the TV playing some random true crime documentary. You're propped against your headboard with Jack nestled into your bare chest, and your nails scratching at the skin of his freckled back.
"Do you not see enough of this shit at work, Spooky?", Jack asks as an autopsy is described on screen.
"Hm, yeah. But I don't get to do all the cool forensics stuff normally, so."
He seems to take the answer, turning his head back towards the television. Leaving you to once again trace the constellations between his freckles.
You think from here you can just make out Orion and his bow.
Description: Recently broken up, you end up drunkenly crying from watching teenage girls doing karaoke to sad Olivia Rodrigo songs. Cue your hot attending comforting you, who only hates two things: 1. Incompetence 2. His favorite nurse looking sad
Tags/warnings: idk why i included santos, drinking, r is drunk, age gap (r is in 20’s, abbot is 50), very much flirting, tons of teasing, jack refers to himself as daddy at one point (non sexual context), this man is a sweetie pie, and also as protective as a guard dog, slightly suggestive themes, many OR references, no allusions to r’s gender, petnames: sweetheart
Note: Not my best, but it’s pretty cute. Like you all. My cuties fr.
“I wish I was 13 again,” Santos murmurs, wistfully eyeing the pack of teenage girls who are currently moving in flashes of glitter, dancing uncoordinated steps on the karaoke floor.
You lean back in your seat, watching your friend with curiosity. “Really? Thought you had a dark past,” you playfully whisper the last part, so as to not accidentally trigger a serious conversation. That is not the mood you are in. You are in a floaty wonderland: surrounding loud, chirpy, noises kept at bay — thanks to the long island iced tea you're sipping on.
Trinity finally tears her gaze away, though it's impossible to ignore the delighted, uninhibited singing coming from the other side.
GUESS YOU DIDN'T MEAN WHAT YOU WROTE IN THAT SONG ABOUT MEEEEE….
Before she can expertly dodge your question, everyone — Shen, Walsh, and Mateo — come back with their drinks. You slowly rise to your feet and take a sidestep, so Mateo and Walsh can slip into the booth. Having already been squished enough, you're willing to take only the corner this time.
You settle in again, next to Walsh, the leather under you creaking with every drag of your thighs.
“Are you both always so fun at parties?” Emery sips through a straw, eyes darting between you and Santos.
“This one —” Shen points a thumb at you “— is already uptight as it is. And Santos is just a poor influence. Don't think I've ever seen her smile, actually.”
“Yeah, she only smiles on her day shift when huckle– Dennis gets pissed on. Or, something of the same sorts,” you join in, ignoring the dig at you.
However, everyone's attention is quickly stolen away by the lives of the party again.
‘CAUSE I STILL FUCKING LOVE YOU, BABE OOoooOohhhOOO
You cannot stifle your laughter anymore when Mateo cheers them on, hooting with his palms cupped around his mouth. The best part is that he looks genuine and sincere, rooting for them no hint of mockingness.
Yeah, you wish you could be 13 again.
It's your turn to miserably and longingly watch the teenager birthday party taking its full swing, completely drowning out the overlapping conversations — and petty arguing — of your colleagues.
You smile at one of the young girls on stage, giving her a lazy wave. Suddenly, she's flushing and whispering in her friend's ear, presumably about a “cool adult” that interacted with her. You wish you could tell her that even though you might look the part — the sitcom adult who sits in a booth with a friend group and drinks — your life couldn't be less boring.
You work at the PTMC, go home, watch TV, fall asleep in front of the said TV, and daydream of a certain honey-eyed doctor. Maybe he's your rebound crush after your recent breakup. Not to mention, a deeply inappropriate one, both work and age wise.
Speak of the devil.
Your face snaps up when you hear your name in that low, raspy, voice. You register his face, tired under the dim lights, and his perfect salt & pepper curls frazzled from the ride over. He's in a white t-shirt stretched taut across his pecs, and a simple pair of black jeans. Though, nothing about how he looks is ‘simple.’
“Doctor…” you speak slowly, narrowing your eyes, and making a show of thinking very, very deeply. You snap your fingers in front of your chin, Before pointing your index at him, “aha! Doctor Abbot, attending of the nightcrawlers. What will you drink?”
The corner of his lips quirk up, amused by your liquor-induced playfulness. “Two of whatever you're having,” he replies, smoothly stealing the glass right out of your hands, holding it in front of his eyes to examine the brown liquid.
“Long island?”
“Yep. L-I-I-T, it's pretty L-I-T. Lit. It means cool.”
“I know what lit means.” He takes in your sluggish blinks, the drop in your usually tight shoulders, and the almost giddy smile on your lips. “How many have you had?”
You hold up one digit, wiggling it back and forth for emphasis.
Jack tuts, “L-I-G-H-T-W-E-I-G-H-T”
“F-U-K-C-Y-O-U,” you proudly smile at your mature retort, mind completely unbothered that your mouth just sweared at your boss.
He shakes his head, contemplating if he should tell you that you spelled your insult wrong.
“Jesus…” he watches you carefully for a second, before handing your cocktail back to you. His thick fingers brush against yours, sending a jolt up your arm.
“Jack! Man, we thought you abandoned your children,” Shen exclaims, realising along with everyone the presence of the new arrival, and bringing you out of your head.
“Well, Shen, daddy's gotta come home.”
Daddy.
Well, technically, he is the attending, so he is the daddy. Daddy of the department, daddy of the floor, daddy of your–
Getting a little off-track there.
You clear your throat, trying to push the sinful thoughts away, putting them back in the compartment that only opens itself in sleepless, late, horny, nights.
“Do you wanna sit orrrr…?” Trinity trails off, jutting her chin towards the karaoke stage.
You bring your glass to your lips again, savouring the citrusy taste on your tongue. You expect to hear the scrape of a chair's legs dragged along the floor — Jack, as always, hauling an extra seat to sit at the head of the table. You always thought it was a way to maintain boundaries even outside the workplace, to make sure there's a tangible difference to avoid misuse of power dynamics. Your attending was quite easygoing, as far as bosses went, but that never deterred his ability to be responsible.
Instead, “Yeah, there's some space here.”
You don't realise you're being spoken to, until you look and everyone is staring expectantly at you. “Wha– oh.”
You try to visibly measure the space next to you, barely larger than your hand. You look back up at the towering man, raising his grey brows in impatience.
You move your ass.
As soon as he's shifting next to you, your senses are overwhelmed by his dominating presence. Your entire side is pressed against his. And he must've showered before coming here, because you can smell the soap he must use — cedarwood. You're thankful for the alcohol in your system, calming your nerves enough to not send a body-wide emergency signal.
“So…” you begin, taking in his face, which is so, so close to you. The disco lights of the place dance on his features, and you try not to chase the shine with your fingers.
“Sorry for crashing. Must be a bummer to have your boss here,” he speaks louder than usual, voice trying to carry over the singing, though his attention is on waving over a server.
You wait until Jack orders a whiskey for himself, continuing after the waiter leaves, “oh, you're not a regular boss. You're a cool boss.”
“Yeah? Is it because I yell a lot less than Robby?”
“No.” You lean forward to catch the view of the little pop-stars again. It seems they've moved on from Olivia Rodrigo to…more Olivia Rodrigo. It's a song you've only recently heard — something about higher standards and expectations.
THEY SEEM SO DESPERATE FOR LOVIN’, BUT BABY, I'M NOT…
The loud singing must have called for his attention too, because now he’s focusing intently on the concert since the first time he came here.
NOW I TAKE CAREFUL CONSIDERATIONS
I'M NOT KISSING ANY BOY THAT IS PASSIVE…
His eyebrows draw together in concern, and almost to himself, he murmurs, “they shouldn't be kissing any boys right now.”
“They're 13, grandpa,” your voice snaps his gaze to you again, “kissing at that age is normal.”
“I'm 50. Anyone under 25 is a kid to me. They—” he gestures to the pack, “—are practically toddlers to me.”
“To remind you, you also have staff in their 20’s working for you. We, very much, aren't kids.”
That makes him pause. If you would've blinked, you would've failed to notice how his gaze dropped to your lips for just a second, before flicking up.
The server brings his order, and Jack is quick to take a swig. “That's what I try to remind myself, too.”
“Do you think Stacy would mind if I join them?” you whisper in Jack's ear with the eager expression of a dog waiting for its owner. You're practically vibrating in your seat, knee bouncing from the third drink you definitely should've refused.
But it's not like you're the only one stupidly drunk. Santos and Mateo are at the pool table, losing to strangers. Shen is in a corner on a facetime with his wife — like, just go back home — and Walsh is nowhere to be seen. So, it’s a thing to wonder why you and your senior are still sitting glued together. You are drunk. What reason does the most rational man you know have?
“Who is Stacy?” He shifts, trying to maintain some semblance of a physical distance between you both, but you just end up closing the space again.
“The birthday girl, Dr. Abbot!”
“The 13 year-old on the karaoke with her friends?”
“Yes!”
Jack sighs, “you don't have to exclaim everything, you know.”
“YES, I DO!”
He physically recoils at your sudden raise in pitch. He takes in your erratic energy: the restless leg, the speedy talking, eyes blown wide. His palm slowly reaches out, firmly cupping your knee, bringing the bouncing to a halt. “Okay, exclaim away. But–”
“But?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, taking the deep breath of a man who wasn't expecting to babysit his drunk colleague today.
“Okay, this time, we let me finish talking. Yeah?” You immediately nod your head. In reality, you have no idea what he just said. You only heard the “yeah?” in his authoritative voice, and agreed.
“I'm very concerned you know her name.”
“Who? Stacy's?”
“Exactly. You're referring to a random teenage girl as if she's a close, personal, friend,” he explains carefully, like he's talking to a child.
“Nooo! She's not a friend, doc.”
“Of course, that would be creep–”
“But I want to be her friend sooo bad,” you whine, staring adoringly at Stacy and friends like they hung the moon. “Just look at them! They did Olivia, moved to Glee's soundtrack, and are now doing Olivia again. They're sooo cool.”
Jack shoots them a quick look and lets out a small huff of laughter when he sees the deep longing in your eyes, a pure look of awe.
He says your name, and your gaze darts straight from the stage, and into his eyes again. It always steals your breath when he calls you by your first name, anchoring you completely to him with just one word. One person should never have so much power.
“I'm cutting you off.”
“What?” Your mouth hangs open, words blurting out from shock, “like, from your life?”
“What? No–” he uses his free hand to pry the drink out of your hand. He lifts the glass, swinging it in front of your eyes, before setting it far on the table. Out of your reach. “From drinking. No more alcohol for you.”
A huge sigh of relief leaves you, and you dramatically clutch your palm to your chest. “That's nice. It would've been hard to work together with beef between us.”
“It's already hard to work with you, sweetheart,” he says under his breath, scanning your face for any signs of distress.
Your brows draw tight in confusion. Huh, what does that mean?
OH BECAUSE MY HEAD IS FULL OF POISON
AND MY HEART IS FULL OF DOUBTS…
The sound of collective cries panics you before you realise sad girl hours have started. You look from Stacy to her other two friends, fortunately not knowing their names. They're clutching the mics tightly enough that you're sure one of them ought to break the device. The singing is a little uneasy on the ears, but you find yourself softly smiling.
Then frowning.
And next you know, your eyes are welling up with tears when the song comes to an end.
IT'LL NEVER BE THE CURE
IT'LL NEVER BE…
Poor girls. They're crying thinking about their eighth grade crush, but they have no idea what's coming for them. One day, they'll be in their 20's and a stupid man with a stupid name will tell them he loves them, and they will believe him, even though he does nothing to prove it. Poor, poor, girls.
You're not sure if it's them you're upset about, since you feel like the only poor, poor person in this entire room.
“Are they okay?” Jack has forgotten his drink, attention fixated on the young girls. His hand unknowingly slides off your knee, hovering near the edge of the table, as if he's about to get up any second. “Why is the girl in the green dress crying? She can't possibly relate to this. Where are their parents?”
“I'm gonna go make sure–” He turns to look at you for assurance, but he sees a fat tear rolling down your flushed cheek. Suddenly, the concern in his eyes is replaced by panic. “Woah, hey, what's wrong? Do you feel dizzy? Overstimulated?”
His head tips down to map your face. You were fine just a few minutes ago. Now, you're tearing up, and your breath is hitching, and his hands are hovering unsurely near your face.
“It's just,” you sniffle, “it's just so…”
“Sad…?” He prompts.
“Yes!” Your eyes flash like he just invented a new word. “Exactly! See, you have the heart of a teenage girl.”
He shakes his head, “I'm 50, but thank you.”
“Why do you tell me you're 50, like 50 times a day? We get it, grandpa.” You sniffle again, trying to look at the stage. But Jack effectively blocks your view with his sturdy frame, instead offering you his handkerchief like some sort of a gentleman from a 60's rom-com.
You wipe your nose in what you hope is in a dignified fashion, barely hiccuping a thank-you to him. “Is it that you forget it too? And you have to keep reminding me so you don't forget it yourself?”
He sighs, finally swiping his thumb under your eye to brush the wetness away.
“Believe me, I try to forget it.”
As if catching up to what he just did, his hands rush towards the safe territory of your upper arms.
You nod thoughtfully, “that makes sense.”
“Yeah?” You watch as hope flickers in his eyes. He worries his lower lip between his teeth, as if contemplating if he should say something. “You understand why?”
“Mhm,” you nod again. “If I was 50, I'd be trying to forget my age too,” you say completely sincerely, eyes swimming with sympathy.
His head falls forward, and his shoulders shake. For a second, your drunk mind makes you believe you made him cry. But when he looks up at you again, he's flashing an amused grin, shaking his head at you.
“Real funny.”
“I wasn't trying to be funny.”
WENT TO THE DOCTOR AND SHE SAID I WAS FINE
BUT EVERY MOVIE THAT I SEE MAKES ME CRYYYyyYY…
Oh, no. When did they start singing this one? It's that song. The one you've had on replay since your breakup, the one you've been singing in showers, in cars, and in the kitchen.
You feel a fresh wave of tears clawing their way up again. Your lower lip juts out in a pout, and you flush in embarrassment when Jack's laugh dies. “I'm fine.”
He gently squeezes your arm, “up.”
Before you have any mind to be confused, your world tilts when you're suddenly hauled off your seat. You sway on your feet for a moment, before Jack steadies you, firmly planting his hands on your elbows.
“Are we finally going to join Stacy?”
“No. Not while you're doing your best impression of a kicked puppy.”
I CAN'T SLEEEEEP
I CAN'T EAAAATTTT
I THINK YOU'RE WHAT'S WRONG WITH MEEEE…
A soft sob escapes your throat. What is wrong with you?
“Nothing. Three-drink-you is just not as fun as two-drink-you,” Jack assures you, his fingers twitching at your elbows without his permission, stuck between staying noble and wiping away the hot tears that are rushing from your ducts again.
Oh. You hadn't realised you'd said that out loud. You can't believe you're breaking down in front of your attending. Because of a breakup song. Because you're drunk. That's, like, top 3 tell-tale signs you need some help. Or, another drink. But you're quite sure that four-drink-you is a horny you, so, maybe not.
The surrounding noises get muffled when Jack spins you around, and starts walking you towards a hushed corner. He swiftly steers you away from any table, chair, or a group of people that comes in your way, before you even register it.
You're disappointed when his hands drop to his own sides, when you're both tucked away in a corner. You look around, and the lights are even dimmer in here, painting everything a dull shade of yellow. There's a door behind you, presumably leading to a bathroom, because you can see the universal signage for a male. Before you can ask Jack to move from here, you notice a lock on the door.
“No one's gonna come here. Talk.”
You clear your throat, managing to speak through your watery throat, “It was just really–”
“Sad? Yes, we covered that,” he catches the sharp edge in his tone, and quickly smoothes it over, gentling himself for you, “but as sensitive as you are, I know that you're not really sobbing because some little girls are crying along to a sad Taylor Swift song.”
“It's Olivia, not Taylor.”
“They're all the same.”
You immediately gasp, narrowing your eyes at his disgusting comment, “I take my words back. You have the heart of a cold, unfeeling, man.”
Jack bites the inside of his cheek to not burst out laughing. “I'm sorry. Will you please tell me why you're worrying yourself over an Olive song?”
“OLIVIA!”
He raises his palms in surrender, but instead of giving up like you'd expect anyone to, he apologises again. Now he's looking at you expectantly, as patient as a saint, and you feel your sob story tumbling out of your mouth.
“I had a break-up recently. And it's,” you click your tongue in frustration, “I don't even miss him. He was a mistake. A big one. But…”
“But?”
You sigh, “I don't know. It's humiliating. Can we go back?”
“What's humiliating?”
You scramble for words but all that comes out is, “this! You! Here!”
“I'm humiliating?”
“Gosh, no. You're– you're not. You're anything but. You're sweet and patient and kind–” you immediately lock your lips when you realise you're verbally fawning over the man in front of you. “That's not what I mean.”
“So, I'm not sweet and patient and kind?” His eyes are crinkling with amusement, and you would want to wipe that smile from his face if it wasn't so goddamn beautiful.
You take a deep breath, “what I am trying to say is, It's humiliating because we work together. You're my senior. Like, super, super senior.”
“And that makes me unempathetic towards one of my staff having a meltdown in a public place?”
“Okay, I think we're throwing the word ‘meltdown’ a little too easy here.”
Jack pretends to ponder for a moment, observant brown eyes scanning your face slow enough to make you squirm. “I think not. Look at yourself.”
You immediately straighten up. “Huh, do I look like a mess?” Your hands rush to your face, trying to harshly rub the messy tears away.
His eyes immediately soften. “No, hey, that's not…You just look so upset is all. Otherwise, you look fine. Good. As always.” He says it like it's obvious, like it's a rule he learned in medical school.
Almost hesitantly, he pries your wrists away from your face, leaving them in his grip, hanging between you both. You have no option but to look straight at him.
“I'm sorry. You've just caught me on a bad day.”
“What do you mean? I'm having a really good time.”
You let out a watery laugh. “You don't have to make me feel better.”
“Gloria is always on my ass about keeping staff happy. Consider this a part of my duty.”
You have a good couple of inches between you, but the distance seems really, really little right now. You're not sure if it's him or you who takes a step closer. Probably you, since his thumb is stroking the side of your wrist, and you're feeling floaty again.
“I'm not sure this is what duty looks like, Jack,” your voice comes out barely more than whisper.
He tuts in disapproval when you use his first time, voice dropping an octave lower. “No, it doesn't. You should be thankful. Robby just yells at people and tells them to pack it up.”
“Don't joke.”
“If I stop joking, I'll have to tell you that you have no reason to cry for a fuckin’ idiot who owned forty different colors of the same polo t-shirt.”
For a second, you're taken back enough to not speak. “How…how do you know that?”
“Used to see him everyday when he would pick you up, remember?” He reminds you as you watch irritation flare up in his eyes, “and he was 20 minutes late. Every single day.”
“20 minutes is not a lot. He was, after all, picking me up.”
“If you're gonna do something, do it right. I wouldn't even be 2 minutes late for someone who spent the entire night working their ass off.”
You downcast your gaze to avoid his sharp eyes. “Shame you're not the one picking me up, then.” You try to play it off as a joke, but it only comes out as wistful.
“Shame,” he murmurs. “So, you don't miss him?”
You shake your head. “No, but it gets lonely.” You sigh before continuing, admitting with a hint of shame, “I like the whole routine — the dates, the places, the high while it lasts.”
“So? Go on a date again.”
“Right,” You laugh in self-deprecation, “It's not like I've queues outside my door, people waiting to take me out.”
“Impossible. Look at you,” he replies, without missing a beat. You examine his face, trying to gauge the intent behind his words. Mindless affirmation or meaningful compliment?
“You're just saying that,” you whisper.
“What reason do I have to lie?”
“Getting me off your hands, and back to your whiskey again.”
His breath mingles with yours when he tips his face forward, gaze locking in on your soft lips. “I'm not so eager to get my hands on whiskey. I've got better things going on for me,” he speaks, voice dropping low and intimate.
“Like me having a meltdown?”
“Like you allowing me to be here for it.”
“Of course. You're sweet and patient and kind.”
“Pray tell. Don't let me stop you from singing my praise.”
“And…calm and funny and…” you pause, trying to even out your shallow breaths, “incredibly, stupidly, frustrating.”
“Careful. Still your attending.” Irony is that right as he's saying it, he's letting go of your wrists to cup your hips instead — long fingers curling around the fabric of your shirt, settling heavy and firm, grounding you in place.
“You're not acting like it.”
He playfully squeezes your hips, “why am i frustrating?”
“Because…sometimes, I come to the shift, and I get to hear from Santos that somebody decided to play the hero and got shot. And I'm obviously never there, because it all happens during the day shift.”
“You worry?”
“You're not a man with ill styling choices. I can worry.”
“As long as you don't cry.”
“Are you one of those people who don't like people crying? You get all awkward and uncomfortable?”
His hand drags up your arm to swipe across your cheekbone, brushing over the dried tears. “I don't like when you cry. It makes me frustrated and insistent.”
“Insistent to do what?”
“To fix whatever caused it. Or whoever.”
Your throat dries up, your tongue darting out to wet your lips. “It's not recommended to go causing trouble in the name of nurses.”
“What if it's a pretty nurse?”
Red rushes to your cheeks, and you feel yourself warming up. You urge the alcohol in your system to deliver you courage, but all you feel is like wet noodles in front of him.
“That's not a valid reason,” you murmur.
“My floor, my rules.”
“Careful. Next thing you know, it's 20 missed calls from HR.”
“Shit,” he says, not sounding concerned in the slightest.
You clear your throat, “now that I'm not actively sobbing, we should head back. Somebody will notice we're gone.”
“They're all too busy being idiots. Besides, there's nothing to notice. I'll just tell them–” your eyelids flutter when he lightly blows air into your right eye, “–there was something in your eye.”
“And you were helping me while using your bedroom voice?”
Jack sputters a small laugh, “oh, this is not my bedroom voice.” His hand on your hip moves, leaving a trail of fire up your side, settling high on your waist. “Or my bedroom hands. Or my bedroom acts.”
Your eyes flutter close, and heat melts low in your belly, leaving an ache between your thighs. Your thoughts wander, trying to imagine his ‘bedroom acts.’
You snap your eyes open before your body can take control from you, and start acting on its own accord.
“HR. 20 missed calls,” you breathily say, not sure if it’s him or you you’re trying to remind.
He sighs as he backs away from you, and you feel sharp dissatisfaction at the loss of his burning, comforting touch. He holds his arm out towards the small hallway from where you both entered. “Pretty nurses first.”
I KNOW THAT THE BAR CLOSES AT ELEVENNN
I HOPE YOU NEVER FINISH THAT BEEEERRR…
What do you know? Your colleagues were indeed too busy being idiots to notice any change. You sit in the booth again, next to Jack, watching the girls be happy and bright again.
You on the other hand feel disappointment settling deep in your chest. You're suddenly wishing that you hadn't urged Jack to come back out here. Something could've happened. Something you had been wishing and hoping for. And now you have let the moment pass.
OOOO, ONE NIGHT, I WAS BORED IN BED
AND STALKED YOU ON THE INTERNET…
“So, I'm gonna leave.”
You turn to look at him, trying very hard not to let your dismay show, instead sweetly smiling at him and nodding your head a little too quickly.
A pause.
“You can leave 10 minutes later. I'll be in my truck.”
Your brows snap together in confusion, lips parting to say something, but Jack is already getting up, grabbing his leather jacket from where he kept it in the booth.
“They're idiots, yes, but it's better if they don't see us leaving together.”
You scramble for words but nothing comes out.
‘CUZ I ALWAYS HAD A VISION OF US STANDING LIKE THIS
ALL PRESSED UP IN THE BATHROOM LINE…
“Where will we go?” you dumbly ask.
Jack shrugs, “dates, places, chasing the high while it lasts.”
Your heart leaps out of your ribcage, body unable to do anything but watch his back as he walks towards the door. Your lips open. And close again.
What.
Deep breaths. It’s chill. All good. Just a normal hangout with Dr. Abbot. Surely, nothing will happen.
Fuck.
You give a final glance towards the cheerful trio of girls, a luminous grin finally breaking out on your face.
They'll be okay. So will you.
You take out your phone and tap the screen awake. One minute passed, nine more to go.
KISS MEEE AND I MIIIGHTT
KISS ME AND I MIGHT DROP DEAD.
Sigh…i missed my husband. Now everyone say, “thank you, stacy” and then everyone who liked this, please glaze all over me. Likes, comments especially, and reblogs increase one minute of my lifespan.
jack feels guilty for moving on from his late wife and it takes a GSW for him to realise he doesn't want to lose you too.
jack abbot x reader, angst, gn!reader, resident!reader, no description of reader, mutual feelings, gunshot wound, minor character death mentioned, suicidal ideation (jack), 2k words
jack would never miss an anniversary. his wife's birthday, their first date, their wedding day. the date of her passing. those numerals are seared into his memory.
this one isn't an anniversary per se, but it is an annual tradition nevertheless and it slipped his mind. ever since jack and his then-girlfriend accidentally walked into the first iteration of the pittsburgh little italy days while out on a date, they'd made it a habit to attend every year. and even after her passing, jack upheld the tradition.
this year however he's caught up at work and his TEMS side gig and his one day off for the duration of the festival he spends at the bar with his coworkers.
because you're there.
it's only a few days later that he overhears a patient mentioning the festival and realises he missed it.
it scares him. it's only been two and a half years and already he's starting to forget his wife? because he got distracted by a little crush? he won't let it happen again.
so jack distances himself from you. it's subtle and most people don't notice anything different. he guides you as your attending, stays professional where professionalism is required, jokes when the situation allows for it. same as he does with everyone else.
but that's just it. with you it used to be... more. a little too much warmth, a pat on the shoulder for a job well done that lingered a little too long, flirty remarks that seemed a little too real. the remarks are never flirty anymore. and he avoids going out for drinks now if he knows you're coming.
you notice. of course you do. you used to savour every trivial exchange, every accidental touch. looking forward to jack's quips kept you motivated to come into work when you felt like you could sleep for days.
you can't think of anything you've done wrong and you sure as hell can't ask him why he's stopped his subtle displays of favouritism. you start to doubt there ever was any to begin with. maybe it was all in your head and you were subconsciously forcing these interactions. maybe jack just finally caught on to your inappropriate feelings for him.
so you step away. you don't jump at the opportunity to work on a case with him anymore. report to shen more often. just enough to give him space. not enough to make him notice. you make a conscious effort to smile. trinity even comments that you seem more upbeat lately. in reality getting out of bed is becoming a chore. you could probably use a distraction, but when mateo asks if you're joining for drinks, you decline, because you'd heard jack say he'd think about it. with time, the forced smile begins to fade.
robby and dana notice that something is up with jack. that he seems to be getting worse again after all the progress he'd made in therapy. eventually robby finds him on the roof top again. that's when he finally gets jack to confess he missed the little italy festival. robby tries telling him that maybe this is not a bad thing, that maybe it means jack is moving on. but moving on is not what jack wants.
it's not like jack sought it out. he was just trying to help his buddy hiro. yes, he hadn't cared all that much for his own life in the situation. but it's only natural for a field medic to risk their life to save another. he's done it before. he knows the bullet didn't hit his carotid, otherwise he wouldn't still be here, on a gurney, on the way to PTMC. hiro, on the other hand, is in a body bag.
the first face jack sees once the ambulance doors swing open is robby, who clearly didn't expect his GSW patient to be jack, judging by the flurry of curse words and admonishments.
the second face is yours. wide-eyed and scared. terrified, even. jack wishes he had been more careful after all, if that had kept you from looking like that. you two aren't even that close, so why are you making that face? have you never had to treat someone you were close with before?
he loses sight of you as he's being rolled in, he thinks he hears robby yell at you. he'll need to tell him to tone it down with his outbursts at staff once he's out of surgery.
huh.
he does want to make it out of surgery, doesn't he? not a sentiment one should be surprised by.
inside trauma 1 everyone huddles around him, it all becomes a blur of noise and white and red. robby has switched from being pissed to reassuring jack. "we got you, brother," jack faintly hears among the other voices. he tries to make out the faces above him. it's hard to look around with three sets of hands working on your neck. jesse, santos, mckay, donnie. even langdon appears to be back. half the ED is working on him, but where did you go? jack feels like he hasn't seen you in days. he must have. he knows you were scheduled together. you just never interacted anymore.
"BP dropping!" someone calls out to his left.
jack should count himself lucky. he survived two gunshot wounds – he hadn't even registered the one to his shoulder – and figured out he wasn't ready to go. to a large part because he wanted to see you again.
but here he was, second day in recovery, and he hadn't seen you since the ambulance bay. everyone jack considered to be on friendly terms with had come to visit, some in a larger group when he first woke up from surgery, others dropped by throughout the day for more personal visits. you were never one of them.
robby is a frequent visitor, of course. even now he's leaning back in a chair by jack's bed, telling a story about someone getting impaled by the american flag that jack only listens to halfheartedly.
"listen," robby leans forward and jack's absentminded fidgeting with his wedding ring ceases. "i gotta ask you..."
jack raises an eyebrow, giving robby his full attention.
robby still hesitates.
"as the chief attending... i have to..." he rubs his face in frustration.
"wow, this gotta be serious," jack comments on his friends odd behaviour.
robby just stares at him for a moment.
"jack... are you fucking your senior resident?"
jack's eyebrows shoot up. "excuse me?"
robby leans back again. "you heard me, man, don't make it more difficult than it needs to be."
"let me get this straight," jack says, "you're accusing me of sleeping with one of my residents? you?"
"i'm painfully aware of the hypocrisy, i am. but as the chief atten–"
"yeah, right, chief attending, got it," jack dismisses him. "how do you even... why would you think that?" jack asks.
robby rubs his forehead, thinking.
"when you were brought in..." robby laughs in distress, "the shmuck dipped out of the case, man." he gives jack a pained look. "disappeared into fucking thin air," he spreads his arms, "poof, gone," he shrugs. robby seems close to hysteric. jack should've realised this would remind him of adamson. "got mckay to jump in," robby continues. "claimed compromised objectivity when i asked." he leans his elbows onto his knees. "so i need to know, jack. i need to know whether... whether this was a case of job abandonment or incompetence or what."
when robby remains silent, jack turns away and stares at the ceiling.
"i'll have to get back to you on that one," he finally says.
"jack... don't do this, man. just... do i need to tell gloria we have an opening for a senior attending?"
"fuck, robby, no," jack turns to face him again. "don't... don't blow this out of proportion."
"you could have died, jack," robby says, getting agitated. "and if this... if the two minutes until mckay got to us..."
jack can't be certain of your reasons, but he saw your face. and he trusts your judgement. you knew you couldn't do it and you did the next best thing.
downstairs you're swallowing the last piece of a granola bar as you walk out of the break room, tossing the wrapper into the bin as you walk past it. your phone dings and you take a quick look.
Dr. Jack Abbot: 'Just a heads up, I told Robby you couldn't work on my case because of our affair.'
you stop dead in your tracks. are you having a stroke? you read the message again. a third time. still the same words. does affair have a secondary meaning, you wonder. then, a horrible thought hits you: was this meant for someone else? is jack having–
your phone buzzes in your hand, making you jump and drop and it.
"fuck," you hurry to pick it up.
lena is eyeing you over her glasses, "you okay there?"
"yeah all good," you assure her and glance at the new message.
Dr. Jack Abbot: 'Should probably bring this to HR.'
it's almost 10pm when you finally manage to sneak out for a minute. jack might already be asleep, recovery wards don't exactly cater to a night shift circadian, but this is driving you insane, you need to at least check.
a faint shimmer of light is seeping out from underneath the door to jack's room. the tv maybe, or a table lamp. so you hope you don't wake him when you knock.
"yes?" comes back almost immediately.
you poke in your head first. "dr. abbot?" the small lamp on his bedside table is indeed on and the tablet in jacks hands casts additional light onto his face. "could i come in for a minute?"
"better late than never."
"oh i'm sorry," you say, stepping in but still holding on to the door handle, "i can come back in the morning," you suggest.
"not what i meant," jack says, "come in," he turns off the tablet and sets it onto the bedside table.
you stand a little ways away to the side. "i uhm, got a weird text message," you begin.
"first you refuse to work on me, "jack interrupts, "and now i don't even get a 'how are you'?"
a moment passes as you digest what he just said. yet another mention of you not working on his case.
"how... are you?" you finally ask, sounding robotic.
"never been better."
wow, you think, that's a lot of sarcasm even for jack abbot.
"were..." you rephrase, "did you... missend those messages?"
"missend?"
"sent them to the wrong person," you clarify.
jack looks somewhat dumbfounded. "how many people do you think there are that noped out of my case due to 'compromised objectivity'?"
"i... wouldn't know, i wasn't there," you joke meekly.
jack smiles half a smile.
"robby was on the verge of getting you fired," jack explains and you start to panic. "he's not going to," jack immediately assuages, "not now that he's not doubting your reasons.
"oh." jack lied to save your job. "thank you. i'm sorry i put you into this position."
"it wasn't a lie, was it?" he asks, "the compromised objectivity?"
blood rushes to your head. you can only admit to the unprofessional feelings that may or may not have made jack uncomfortable enough to avoid you or you can leave him to believe he unwittingly lied to his friend.
"no." you want to add 'i'm sorry.'
"can i ask you out on a date, then?"
a flutter of butterflies erupts in your stomach.
you suffocate them immediately. jack doesn't mean that. maybe he's joking. maybe he hit his head during the incident.
"to keep up appearances with dr. robby?" you ask.
"no," jack says, "i'm serious."
he sounds serious.
ah.
"you just had a near-death experience," you remind the both of you. "maybe give it a week or two for the–"
"it's not that," jack interrupts, sounding serious again.
don't fall for it.
you give him a smile that is supposed to be sympathetic, but even you feel must look condescending. "i should go back to work," you tell jack, "thank you again for saving my job."
you turn to the door and pretend not to hear him calling out for you to wait.
part 2 (time jump)
notes: pittsburgh little italy days are a real thing, first created in 2002, and are held in mid august over the course of four days.
also, i really hope i used shmuck correctly, english is not my first language and yiddish even less so, but i really needed a gender neutral term and couldn't think of anything better. corrections are welcome!
⊹ pairing: jack abbot x fem!reader
⊹ summary: you have a mean jealousy streak, and jack’s favorite hobby is to set it off. when he mentions an ex, he figures he’s in for a good morning. for the first time, he takes it too far.
⊹ warnings: [ wc: 15k ] angst – Lots of it im sorry but it gets resolved! hurt/comfort but it’s very obvious (i hope!) that they love each other. established relationship, age gap. insecurity spiral (age gap related), jack’s got a made-up ex named diane but she never appears on page, reader’s having a Sucky morning; she’s also a little spiral-y, very self-deprecating thoughts (jealousy, comparison, fear of not being enough in relationship), she isolates, cries in the shower, jack messes up and Immediately Knows and is making up for it, mutual fears, they are very healthy communicators eventually, jack and reader are really really obsessed with each other, jack grovels + Hey did you know this was going to be a short fic
⊹ notes: writing this felt like giving birth!!! spent hours and hours and hours on it bc i couldn’t stop writing them thank you SO much for this request! a LOT longer than i intended buut it was so much fun to write + i’ve never been in an age-gap relationship but i imagine This exact thing would fix me !! i literally have a big fat crush on this - also probs one of the last longfics i’ll be able to write in such a short time bc i’m going back to school soon :/
Last month, Jack had ran himself into the ground trying to make sure you understood that there was no mystery woman on his phone. It’d lit up with a text from an unknown number – a scammer, really, trying to paint the picture of a generous human, taking advantage of his old age ‘Hello! It has been forever! Do you still have this number, Jack Abbot? – and Jack had spent one beautiful, incandescent hour being investigated. It’d felt like being back in the military, if he was being honest. He’d last been interrogated like this at a desert, and the girl was clearly better at it, because he’d happily surrendered his phone, his passcode, his call log, and his theory of the crime.
( “It’s a scam, baby. They take advantage of the old guys. But check for any women. You’re only gonna find yourself in there.” )
He’d watched you bite down on a smile as you tried to keep the act going, and Jack had fed you all truths ( that he’d picked up once, stupidly, and someone asked him for his SSN; they didn’t know what a smart man he was; that he loved you, and only you; that the scammers may have the number, but only you got the man; that his passcode was your birthday, which you’d known, which you’d set ) and you’d recieved each one, nodding, refusing to let the corners of your mouth win.
( “You’re being charming,” you said to him, sternly. “It won’t work.” / “No, ma’am.” / “It’s working a little.” / “I know, ma’am,” he said, grinning. )
Then, you’d finally decided with reluctance that he was, in fact, “Free to go,” after making note of how scammers are becoming immensely mean, using buzzwords for people Jack’s age. “Forever,” you’d repeated, now disgusted on his behalf. “Who sends that to a veteran? That’s a targeted word. I should report the number.”
If he was honest, the least your jealousy had shown that week. Jack had never considered himself to be a ‘get an inch, take a mile’ sort of man. Decades your senior, he’d figured himself past the age where he took liberties. He asked before he took; he gave more than he got; he was, by every account, a reasonable man. You’d made a liar of him. He’d become crazy, had started finding childlike joy in small trouble; the sort a boy makes by poking a hive with a stick, except the hive was you and the stings brought him immense satisfaction. Each one, after all, was proof that somebody in this world considered him worth protecting and keeping tucked to themselves.
And you were crazier. Not about him – well. Also about him. But crazier as a baseline condition, a factory setting. You’d woken him at three in the morning by sliding one of his eyelids open with your thumb because you’d dreamt that he was texting another woman and needed to check his phone while the wound was still fresh. He’d handed his phone over, half-blind, and you’d scrolled through it sitting on his stomach. When you found nothing, you’d flopped down onto his chest and gone straight back to sleep.
It was, frankly, a lot of crazy to be on the receiving end of, and Jack – who’d spent much too long being the most even-keeled, unbothered man in most situations – had taken one look at your little feral devotion pointed square at him and thought that yes, he wants in on all of that.
He would gladly take that your whole storm wrapped up in a package, had done just that, and was not planning on letting go.
Being loved by you was full-contact, hands-on, and all consuming. You bit and you climbed him on the kitchen while he was holding hot pans; you pulled his face around by the jaw when you decided his attention wandered. He let you, always, going soft-eyed and pliant the second your hands landed on him, and had long ago stopped pretending otherwise.
That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t had his moments, especially when it came to his girlfriend. He was, in all senses of the word, protective over you.
He’d known enough men – had been a different man through each decade – to know that you in the wrong hands would have ruined someone, like you had him.
He’d considered himself lucky to have your devotion – a thing so pure, presented with such ferocity – pointed at him. The thought of it being pointed at someone else made him sick simply because he knew how difficult it was to not fall in love with your claws. He knew how it felt to have you scruff him by the collar and inspect him for another woman’s perfume that even you knew did not exist, how it felt to be counted and guarded and kept, and he knew there was no single man alive who could feel that and walk away sane.
He’d take a bullet before he let anything happen to you and consider it a fair trade.
Jack was nothing less than smugly, bone-deep, sure of you. And a man that sure, holding a jealousy that pretty, developed habits. He’d learned (through research he’d conducted, very selfishly, for his own benefit) exactly which levers produced the show.
A waitress lingering around him for a second too long; a squeeze of your hand going tight in his, and him spending the next thirty minutes in the parking lot outside the restaurant making up for another woman’s slow legs.
Mentioning, idly, that a pharmacutical rep had been ‘friendly today’; good for a whole evening of you cross-examining everything about him, her, her tone, his response.
He knew the difference between small provocations and the premium ones, and he deployed them the same way he planned date nights. He would’ve gone as far as to say they were date nights, impromptu, functionally; every match he struck brought him an evening of you staking your claim with both hands, and then the long, sweet business of being claimed.
He’d never once found the bottom of it. He’d never once thought to even look for one, where the jealousy cut off and turned inward. It had never once pointed that direction. Your claws faced outward, out at the world, never once you, carrying them.
He didn’t know there was a depth where that happened. It was why he poked the proverbial bear.
When he’d gotten off his shift at seven in the morning, tugging his bag over his shoulder, he’d leaned his hip against the driver’s door and opened your texts. Some people had a cigarette after a shift. Jack had you, delivered in installments, and he stood there in the cold biting down his smile as he scrolled through the night’s yield.
( a photo of a cat that lived outside the bar; a voice memo at 1:30 he already knew was you narrating something you’d decided was urgent; a link to a lamp with no explanation, which meant ‘buy me this lamp’ (he did, immediately, Apple Pay and its joys of quick payment); a text at 2:47 that just said that your feet were cold; and finally, a goodnight! i love you! sent at 3:15 am )
He’d thought, not for the first time, that he was genuinely a lucky bastard.
After years of pagers and reports and envelopes, somewhere his correspondence had started to include a nightly paper trail proving that somewhere in Pittsburgh, you moved through your night with him present in it. They were simply dispatches you sent because things weren’t fully real to you until he’d been notified.
A man could be told he was loved a hundred ways, but there was no proof on earth like being your first call about nothing.
If he were a better man, he would have told you about the name that had popped up on his message thread under yours the second he’d unlocked the phone – right there, sandwiched between your goodnight and a spam text about his car’s warranty, a name he hadn’t seen light up his screen in the better part of a decade.
Diane: Hey stranger. In town next week for a conference - would be good to catch up if you’re around. Coffee? It’s been too long. Hope life’s treating you well.
It was a strange sort of vertigo of a past life reaching out to tap him on the arm. Diane – Jesus. He hadn’t thought about her in years; it’d been long enough that the name landed without a hook. It was a faint mothball smell of a version of himself he’d long since folded up and put away. No, he had felt near to nothing for her name for the only one that popped up in his head was yours.
Jack had spent months getting fat and happy on your jealousy; he’d learned there was no sweeter sound than you getting worked up over nothing.
Jack had, right there in the parking lot, a plan because Diane was – he’d assumed, for you – not nothing. No, Diane had history, and it was a real, verifiable history. If a stranger’s coffee order could get you draped over him like a bodyguard, then this – Jack immediately thought – was going to be a show.
Before he’d got in the shower to start his ritual of getting in bed with you – the shower, the hygiene of it all – he found you sprawled across the entire acreage of the bed with the blanket cycloned around your legs. He crossed over and crouched at the edge of you, heart beating gratefully at the sight, because this part couldn’t wait for hygiene.
He settled for tucking the hair off your face – two featherlight fingers, hooking it back behind your ear – and your nose scrunched in your sleep before it turned into his hand.
“Hey,” he whispered, not to wake you (secretly hoping you would, anyway), and leaned in to press his mouth to your temple that made you make a tiny sound at the back of your throat.
Your fist unclenched from under the pillow and groped out blindly to his forearm, fingers curling around it without opening your eyes.
Jack stayed crouched there a moment longer than his knee approved of, grinning down at you.
“I know,” he murmured, working your fingers off his forearm one at a time and folding them back against your palm, pressing them there with a squeeze. “Ten minutes.”
When he tucked himself into bed beside you, arms instinctively falling over your waist to pull you flush against him, you were half-turning to him before you’d even surfaced. You made a tiny sound, unintelligible words – something about the temperature of his hands – and burrowed closer, one leg sliding under his waist and over the mattress, your cold feet immediately seeking out the warmest available part of him.
“You’re cold,” you mumbled, not opening your eyes, wounded.
“I know, right,” he murmured, pulling you in closer to his chest. “You, though, are warm.”
You wrapped yourself tighter around him, hand finding its way under his shirt to flatten against his ribs. “You can borrow me.”
His hand moved up your spine, thumb catching each notch, and he pressed his cold nose to your temple just to feel you flinch and swat at him, which you did, gorgeously, with a wounded utterance of his name that made his entire body feel like it’d gone under the sun. “Missed you.”
You smiled, tipping your face up, eyes still shut as your mouth searched. He met you there, pressing a slow, morning-soft kiss that just stayed. When you finally pulled back and sighed, boneless, he cradled you to him.
“Hey, so,” he murmured, thumb still stroking your back, “old friend of mine’s in town next week. Reached out this morning.”
“All your friends are old.” You hummed into his chest, still processing the words, and he felt your body still in his arms. “What old friend?”
“Just an old friend, baby.”
You lifted your head off his chest at that, one eye cracking open then the other, the sleep burning off you so quickly. He exhaled a sigh as he watched that beautiful, familiar spark catching behind your face. You propped your chin on his sternum and narrowed your eyes at him.
“This old friend doesn’t have a name?”
“Mhm. Does.” He kept his face maddeningly neutral, thumb still sweeping your spine, savoring the little furrow in your brows and the way your hand had started gripping the side of his waist, staking a claim. He loved you. “Diane.”
Your lips pursed as you processed the name, as if checking everything you know about Jack in real time. Then you shook your head a little, lips curving up into what he could only consider your angry-smile. “Who the hell’s Diane?”
“We go back a ways.” He shrugged easily, that confidence of having done this a hundred times and always getting sweet, sweet you packing up in him. “Dated, for a bit. Long time ago.”
You took in a sharp inhale, snorting softly as your hands left him completely. He tried to bite down his frown from showing.
“Dated,” you said, through a small breath with wide eyes. “You dated and she texted you?”
“She did.” Jack laced his hands behind his head and settled back into the pillow. “Wants to grab a coffee. Catch up.”
“Well, are you going?” You were up on your elbow now, the blanket pooling at your chest, as your brows went up to your hairline in thorough dissatisfaction.
No, he wasn’t. The possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d read the text, and moved on to the far more interesting business of what it could do for this morning. The coffee itself was nothing; he had no interest in sitting across a woman who hadn’t crossed his mind at all to trade summaries of decades.
You existed. There was, now, no hour anyone could offer that beat an hour of you doing anything at all.
He had sat through watching you decide whether or not you’d return a sweater for forty minutes; trying it on over and over again, the same sweater, then tucking it into parts of your existing clothes to test it (into jeans, out of jeans, under the jacket, sleeves shoved up, sleeves shoved down, “should i just cut the sleeves off?” with the scissors already located, and he’d told you “do the crime and you can’t return it,” and watched you reconsider, setting the scissors down). You’d kept it and worn it while sitting on the couch for the rest of the day, then never again.
“Thinkin’ about it,” Jack said, hooking a lazy finger into the strap sliding off your shoulder and tugging it back up, a tending gesture entirely at odds with the trouble he was stirring. “Just coffee, angel. She’s only in town a few days.”
“Well, your girlfriend is in town all days,” you said, swatting his hand away. “You can’t just get little catch-up coffees with women you fucking dated, Jack. That’s not – it’s not a thing people in relationships do.”
“No? But it was so long ago.”
You’d pulled yourself upright now, cross-legged in the sheets, the blanket in your lap and the one strap already sliding down again. “Doesn’t matter, Jack.” You jabbed a finger at his neck. “You’ve got a girlfriend. A very good one –”
“Best one I’ve ever had,” Jack agreed, catching your finger and kissing the tip of it, entirely pleased. “I like her. Love her, even.”
“Then why think about it at all?” you asked as he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear, thumb grazing your cheek.
“Just surprised, baby,” he said, shrugging. “We go way back. Before your time. It was – a real thing, for a while.”
Your eyes quickly flickered down to his chest, mouth opening, then closing again. “How long were you together?”
He clicked his tongue, brows furrowing as he genuinely tried to reel back the memory. It was funny the way time did that.
“Couple years,” he murmured. “Give or take, three. Yeah. Around three.”
Your eyes had gone slightly wide as you looked at a spot on the blanket with your bottom lip tugged between your teeth.
“Three years,” you murmured, more to yourself than him, huffing slightly through your nose.
Your eyes flicked up to him, and Jack’s hand went still against your spine. They eyes were wide, glassed, and lost, blinking up at him with some unguarded confusion. You looked at him the way you did when a word went missing on you mid-sentence (your fingers snapping restlessly at the air like you could catch it, ‘you know the one, Jack, the word – the – the thing,’ while he supplied guesses just to watch you swat them away), except there was no word being hunted now.
“That’s – a long time, right?” you asked him then, tilting your head to the side, looking at Jack like he had some sort of conversion chart on what three years were ought to weigh.
Jack’s eyes landed on your fingers tugging closer to him on the blanket, not landing on him. They stopped an inch short of his ribs, curling back into themselves.
His eyes went from your fingers, to your face, which was still waiting for his answer. He sucked in a small exhale, buying a second, though he couldn’t have said for what.
There was some low-grade, humming static on his skin, and he forced himself to override it, because you’d asked him so gently, and he always answered your questions. You asked him things at all hours, in all states, with your mouth full, from the other room, half-asleep on his shoulder blade.
( What’s the worst thing you ever ate? You’d help me hide it, right? What’s your favorite planet? If we were both dogs, who’d be walking who? Am I the funniest person you know? Would you still love me if I couldn’t talk, only hum? Who taught you how to drive? )
He’d answer every single one thoroughly, treating them all like he would’ve a question for boards, because early on he’d discovered your asking was an act of love; you collected his answers, kept them somewhere in that beautiful head, stored him. Nobody had ever wanted his mind so thoroughly before.
So when you asked, he answered.
It was who Jack was to you. It was maybe his favorite thing to be, just Jack. Jack and all the little things he thought about all the little things he’d given little to no thought to.
“Felt both long and short, if that makes sense,” Jack mused, wandering back into it, because you’d asked and the memory was a harmless thing to ignite. It was cold hearth, ash-dead, nothing in it did a single thing to a single fold of his brain.
“We took some trips – did two weeks through Italy one summer.” He shook his head slightly, blowing out a short breath at that fact of his life. “And her sister’s wedding in Maine.”
“Italy,” you said, lips curving around the little word. Your eyes flicked down to his chest, then his torso. “You went to Italy?” You breathed in softly, and your head tilted again. Jack wondered if this was where the claws came out – Italy. “I didn’t know that.”
“Lots you don’t know about my misspent youth,” he said, lips curling in a casual smile. His fingers reached out then to catch yours and folded them in his palm, bringing them up to his mouth to press a kiss to the knuckles.
“What was it like?” you asked, brows rising slightly. “I’ve never – I don’t really know what it’s like there.”
“Rented this Fiat, did the coast. Amalfi, Positano – she had the Italian, so she handled the talking. I just drove and pointed.” A huff moved through his chest where he’d trapped your forearm. “She’d order. I’d eat whatever showed up.”
He waited for the strike. She ordered for you? Then your fingers would go to his throat. Nobody orders for you. What did she order? Was it good?
Your lips had made this small shape of an ‘o’ as your eyes had snagged on him as he spoke, criss-cross and those small inches away from him on the bed.
“What’d she – where’d you even find the time?” you said through a short laugh, shoulders coming up slightly.
“We’d come out of residency and the schedules just –” He’d left your fingers for a second to lace his own loosely over his chest in the air, two combs of a zipper missing. “Lined up.” He retrieved your hand automatically, repocketing it to him. “Traded calendars at the start of the month, find the overlap. Italy was a big overlap we got lucky with. Had a little cash for once, and somebody said to go now or never go.”
The word ‘residency’ had barely left his mouth when he heard you take in a small inhale, your lips jutting out slightly.
Now? Jack wondered dumbly. Now you’d get mad, say something territorial, something pretty and unhinged about schedules. I’ll make your schedule. He readied his face for it, schooling the grin down in advance so you wouldn’t catch him enjoying it. He also would have let you make his schedule, had you asked, even though he wasn’t sure how that would’ve worked. He’d have found some compromise between his job and you. He’d have nodded along solemnly, and asked you when it was effective.
“I didn’t know you’ve been to Italy,” you murmured, almost musing, as your eyes went to the desk beside the bed, past his shoulder. He followed your gaze to the little basket where you kept your folder of documents he’d made you organize last spring.
“Long time ago,” Jack said, because it was. It was a very long time ago, and he felt the need to clarify that. He didn’t know why he was elaborating like he’d been accused. He hadn’t. You hadn’t accused him. “Very long time ago.”
His palm tightened over your fingers – a small, reflexive press – and got no answering flex back.
Your fingers lay there in his hand, warm, accounted for – like Jack always needed them to be – but absent. Jack found himself pressing again, interrogatively this time, you in there?
“That’s –” you started.
Jack’s eyes snapped back you again, like a dog hearing it’s name. Your mouth twisted, working like you were deciding on a seed and what to do with it.
You gave a small shrug – one shoulder, half-mast – and reached over with your other hand to roll a little lint of fluff off the blanket around your finger.
“That’s really far to go with someone,” you said, softer. “Italy. That’s like – a whole thing to do.”
“It was,” he said, absentmindedly, though, as he watched you.
There was something about the set of you he didn’t quite like, though he couldn’t have said what. The way your shoulders had come in a little? The way you seemed all gentle and docile now, when a minute ago you’d been jabbing him in the throat?
Jack prided himself on knowing you; he’d taken it up as a personal study. Your spine, usually all insolence, all sprawl, had gone considerate. Even your knees, criss-crossed under the sheets, had tucked in closer.
“You okay, baby?” he asked, feeling that need to poke at it directly.
“Mhm.” You nodded quickly and looked up at him with a smile.
His fingers immediately reached up to settle under the hinge of your jaw, as if to hold your smile there, thumb laid along your cheek.
“Yeah, I just didn’t know it was – so serious. That’s all. I thought it’d be, like, some girl you dated a few months.” You let out a little breath of a laugh. “Not an – Italy person.”
Jack’s brows furrowed. He didn’t really know what an ‘Italy person’ entailed, but he didn’t like how it sounded in your voice.
You sometimes said things that made him want to burrow into your mind. They were little nothings, coinages, a whole private mint going on up there.
( It feels like a July day, when it was very clearly December and you were snowed in; he’s looks like a Tuesday guy, about a stranger at the DMV on a Friday; my feet are homesick, which turned out to mean you wanted to go to the beach, and also somewhere deserted sometimes, and a hike. )
He never asked you to translate. Half the time, it was impossible for you to do so, anyway; the words just arrived to you whole, and he’d learned to hold them up in the light until they made sense.
They always made sense, for there was always a ‘you’ inside of them. And he’d found that whatever came from you, it was worth keeping to dig into.
( Sometimes, it made sense days later. Like when you’d said, one night in the car, engine off, “I like you when you park.”
He’d laughed and asked, “As opposed to what?”
You’d had no answer, but he understood, days later, that you liked Jack in-between things. You liked him with the engine off, day done, night not started, with nowhere to be just yet.
He supposed it meant you liked the little pockets of nothing that every life has and nobody claims; idling, as opposed to mid-shift, the one where there was no overarching function making him do something. He’d found he liked those little pockets of nothing, too. )
He supposed that ‘Italy person’ would turn out to mean something exact, too.
He waited, again, for the claws. What am I, then? with a finger at his chest, and he’d catch the finger and kiss it again and tell you what you were – everything – and you’d pretend it wasn’t enough, and demand he phrase it better, and he would.
Jack would phrase it better then better than that, mouth at your knuckles, your wrist, working up the arm between clauses.
Mine, obviously, don’t be stupid. You’d hum, and he’d say it slower – mine, ob-vi-ous-ly – and you’d call him useless, and somewhere you’d end up bickering about whether Italy even had good food. He’d take your side on, traitor to decades in under a minute, and your sulk would die of neglect without either of you watching it.
“I don’t know what that means, sweetheart,” he said, trying to force a casual smile through a small, chuckle. He shook his head confusedly.
Your lips pressed together as you shrugged. “I don’t, either. Not really,” you said.
Before Jack could respond, you reached over and patted his chest twice and said, “Long night?”
It took Jack a second. He heard actual sound, cogs audibly changing gears, because you’d been in Italy, and now you were in his shift, and the border between those two had been crossed with no warning. He’d been asked this normal question a thousand times; it was a fine question, a normal one. He’d answered it a thousand normal ways.
“Uh, yeah – middling,” he said, hand now coming to find your waist where you sat and tugging slightly, getting you back down into him. “Don’t wanna talk about the shift, though.” You landed against his chest and his chin fell to your head, some unscripted instinct in him kicking in. “Wanna talk about you.”
“Me?” You laughed slightly. “Nothing to report here.”
“Disagree.” His hand started running over your spine, pressing his mouth to your hair for a second, breathing you in. “Missed you today,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Listened to your voice memo twice on the way back.”
“Really?”
His arm tightened around you, bring you up closer to his face, where he could reach your temple without any work. He pressed one, then another, and another kiss against them slowly, mouth lingering against your skin on the last one as he waited. For what? He had no idea.
Your hand traveled up from his ribs to his jaw, cupping it, then running your thumb against the stubble once against the grain, the way you liked. It usually came with commentary (you’d make such a good beach, Jack; this is my favorite texture on earth; Jack, keep it like this always) and tonight he got none of it.
Jack turned his mouth to it on reflex and pressed a kiss to the middle of your palm, and felt your fingers curl slightly on the contact, gathering the kiss like you were keeping it.
“Love you,” you murmured. “Go to sleep, Jack.”
“Love you, too,” he said.
He couldn’t ignore how you’d practically shut off right in front of his eyes. So, he asked, “You tired?” he asked, feeling some base need to clarify.
“Yeah,” you whispered between your faces, and you did sound tired. Tired, Jack knew how to work with.
“Good,” he murmured, softer, relieved to hear it was that. “We’ll be tired together, then we won’t be tired.”
Your breath billowed softly over his mouth, something like a laugh, and his hand slid down to your arm to find your hand, tucking the whole laced knot of it down between your chests where it lived. Your head ducked slightly to go under his, burrowing in his neck, and he smiled as his chin came to rest at the top of your head.
“Sleep,” he said gently, with all of the command he could muster whilst three-quarters gone himself. “We’re gonna sleep the whole day away.”
You did. Sleep – that is. Or stayed in his arms until his breath went long and even and unmistakably out. When you were sure – when that deep untroubled weight of him told you he was really under – you extracted yourself out of the bed.
You didn’t want to, but sleep wasn’t coming easy with Jack tonight. It sucked; sleep always came easy to you with Jack. Getting out from under him, too, wasn’t easy. He slept like he meant it now, all of his weight poured over you, one heavy arm slung across you like a seatbelt.
You lifted his arm by the wrist, an inch at a time, and slipped out from underneath it. He stirred and made a rough sound of protest and reached for the warm gap you’d left, patted once, then again, searching, and you winced at the sight of it.
You hurriedly fed your pillow to his arms and watched him gather it against his chest, watched him settle, thinking it was you.
You should have gone outside now, like you’d planned, and instead you leaned in over the mattress, drawn back down by some law you had never once repealed.
Because – even now – you couldn’t leave Jack Abbot undecorated, you weren’t functioned that way.
Every time you left his vicinity, you’d paid a toll at the door; a kiss to the knuckles, the shoulder, the one time you pressed his closed eyelid so gently he’d told you about it during breakfast, thinking he’d dreamed of it, that it’d felt nice.
You picked the stubbled jaw and pressed the smallest kiss there for half-a-second, and he hummed just as you leaned away. His arms pulled the pillow tighter.
You felt heat build up behind your eyes at it. Jack was, somehow, reassuring you unconsciously, four fathoms down. You blinked at the ceiling, because this was just Jack sleeping with a pillow. Normal girls do not cry about things like this.
When you successfully made it to the kitchen to make some coffee, which you didn’t end up making, you scrolled through your phone absentmindedly for a few minutes.
Your teeth were digging into your lower lip, and you were sure they could’ve left a permanent dent on them because of how long you’d been sitting on the countertop next to the coffee
You were being mature. You were being so very mature about this.
Any second now, the maturity would kick all the way in and you’d feel it; the maturity, the security, the calm, grown-up ease that’d let you hear about your boyfriend’s beautiful doctor ex-girlfriend and their beautiful accomplished Italian holiday and simply nod. Maybe you’d be glad he’d had love before you, had something great enough it’d taken a tour across oceans.
You wouldn’t be this.
She was three years to your year.
You’d been counting since the bed, some sick little voice in the back of your head clicking away – that’s longer than you, so much longer, it’s double! and then one more!
She got a whole coast and you? Every time you tried to set the voice down, it just picked itself back up and started again.
You had – after a year – found the one proof that you’d always been, cruel-to-yourself, looking for. Jack Abbot had lived a life before you, several lives, and he’d had love.
So much time she’d had with Jack.
When you reached for your enormousness, for the claws, for the whole arsenal, you found your armor completely empty.
She predated you; you had no way to be big at her. You couldn’t bodyguard Jack from his own past, though you wished he’d have been a bodyguard to it from you. It was an insane thing to wish. All he did was answer your questions, because you’d come knocking.
An unfair, childish, foolish part of you wished he’d lied and decided the truth was too heavy for you and carried it himself.
She had Jack, and she let him go. You could hardly let Jack go for the length of a shower. You’d have died.
What did she know that you didn’t? What was it like, being a woman who could afford to lose him? She’d walked away from Jack and was whole; if you’d lost Jack, there’d be nothing left.
You knew it was dramatic, that it didn’t work that way. It wasn’t true, but it sure felt like it. Jack had filled your life completely, and you didn’t ever want that space ever again.
Nothing about that is romantic. You’re just a girl who bet everything she had on the first big thing she saw.
Jack had lived a whole entire grown-up love – the real kind, the serious kind – with her.
Your cruel brain wondered if there were others. You’d never heard about Diane before, what was one more name he’d never mentioned? He had decades you knew nothing about.
It all happened before you’d ever set your eyes on him and thought he was the only man that existed. It had happened before you’d seen him and thought he could be the one, then wished that he would be the one. He’d had that before.
You’d always known that, abstractly. But the idea of years and years of Jack being loved by great women who understood his work, women his own age, women who’d been there for parts of him you never got to meet. That a door swung open all the way tonight.
You were the latest in a line you didn’t even know the length of.
You’d never even thought about Italy – it was so far away, and you didn’t even think you’d said the country’s name out loud until tonight.
Italy was – you always thought – a thing that happened to other people. It happened, you understood, to Jack. Not your Jack, another woman’s Jack, back when he was somebody’s whole future instead of their past.
He had been loved over there. He'd been to Maine with a family who’d probably thought he was the one.
You were holding the frayed end of a rope whose length you’d never wanted to measure, because you’d assumed stupidly, sweetly, that the rope started when you’d grabbed it, that Jack began the night he met you.
Stop. You’re being crazy – like always. A part of you always had known Jack liked getting a rise out of you, and you liked giving him one. Get a rise out of him, the petty, young part of your brain supplied.
You laughed softly to yourself, clutching your arms around your waist as you folded over, forehead dropping to your knees.
With whom? If you looked for ammunition, you found no Diane.
The guy before the last guy whose last name you couldn’t even remember anymore; a handful of small-time relationships that had lasted one season and ended not because they were wrong but because they were nothing.
You had no great, grown love in your belt that you cold hold up to the light and make Jack ache over.
You had Jack. Jack was your Diane and Jack was your Italy – your three years, your coastline, and your entire globe, probably even more – the biggest love you’d ever had by a distance so vast it was hardly a competition.
Jack knew about your entire life and every supplementary information about you that held no weight on you, or only very little.
Jack knew about your first pet’s name, and its cause of death, and the movie you still couldn’t watch because of it. He knew your worst subject’s grade and, worse, the teacher’s name, and had once gotten angry at that man on your behalf.
He knew the reason you hardly talked to your family; he knew it all by now, because you’d kept handing out pieces over this year, and somewhere around the eighth month you’d realized he knew the story completely now.
He’d learned it all, greedily, like each fact was worth having. You’d hand him a dusty nothing – a camp story, a recurring dream since seven, your opinion on cilantro – and watch it get written down somewhere behind his eyes. Weeks later, he’d produce it at the right moment. No cilantro, she hates it.
It had felt like Jack had opened your junk drawer and thought of it as treasure.
Your life was small and short enough to fit into his hands entire. It was a carry on. He held all of it and had room left over for more. You just didn’t have any more to give him.
Jack had finished reading you.
You’d been collecting him, too, greedy in your own right, thinking you were getting, at the very least, to the hallway. Now, you were wondering if you’d only just walked up the porch to the door.
You could produce Italy in your brain now; Jack against some sun-warm railing over water; Jack driving a little car on the wrong side of the road with confidence; Jack looking longingly at a woman who was speaking a language he couldn’t understand, holding him up.
Some parallel-Jack, out in the corner of your mind, who’d married the doctor.
Jack who was, right now, in some other version of this morning, drinking coffee, happy, whole, entirely fine. Jack, who was talking about some case from a journal – in his fluent doctor-language with someone who never needed the glossary – never pausing to translate English into – well, English. He was never smiling patiently and having to shrink his work down to a bedtime-story size like he did you. That Jack’s wife could meet Jack in the dark after his bad shifts instead of standing at the edge with a flashlight, calling in.
You couldn’t even imagine parallel-Jack lonely with something missing at his table. Your imagination – which loved him, which had only ever been able to love him – refused to even draw him sad. It kept handing you Jack complete; a whole finished Jack, out there in the corner of your mind.
This Jack’s completeness had to require your absence. It needed you to put yourself out of this world and into the crevice of your mind that hated you.
You had to widen your eyes on the floor. Your heels knocked the cabinet.
No. No. Your Jack – the real Jack – was thirty feet away and had never once been anything but certain of you.
Jack had never once not been certain of you. You were sitting on the countertop in his sweatpants right now. Your fingers were curled into the cotton of the pants, holding it like it was his hand, because Jack himself suddenly felt like too much to deserve.
You were getting homesick of him, getting jealous of women in your own head, grieving trips that had already happened, creating an entirely one-girl production in your mind that was only cruel to you, and the man who’d done nothing to put it there.
Go to him, you tried to tell yourself. Go to Jack. Wake him up. Talk to him.
He never turned you away. You had come to him with nothing, a whole lot of nothings, and he had never once turned you away.
( You’d had a terrible dream that your childhood house was empty. It was the whole dream. You’d walked through it, room-by-room, and everyone was gone and the furniture was gone and your voice didn’t work. It was classic dream-physics. You’d woken up with shaky breaths, body tensing up over, well, nothing. Over the fact that the wallpaper was gone. You’d lain there for four minutes being reasonable about it, then you’d poked Jack.
Poked him once, then again. Then again – his hand caught your finger, eyes still shut, reflexes working. He folded your finger in his fist and kept it there, on his chest as one eye dragged open, looked at the little digital clock, looked insulted, then looked at you.
“What?” At your silence and the sight of your small pout as your body went still, both his eyes opened, everything in his face shifting around not making this worse. “What happened?”
“Bad dream,” you said, and because he’d wait all night without asking, you added, “My old house. Everything was just gone. It’s stupid, it’s not even –”
“Not stupid.” His arm had come up to haul you down onto his chest in a drowsy motion, your ear landing conveniently over the slow bass of his heart as his hand rubbed over your skin. “Empty house,” he murmured, clicking his tongue. “Yeah. That’s not a great one.”
He always agreed with you. Then, he added, “This place has got everyone we both need in it. Go back to sleep.” )
Your mind had, finally, gone quiet. Finally. Even it knew overkill when it saw it.
Fuck, maybe you were fucking crazy. Jack should have gone running. If he had any sense, he’d have looked at you and walked calmly in the other direction. He hadn’t. He had stayed.
This morning your enemies included a hypothetical, a memory, and Europe al-fucking-together.
He hadn’t let you go, you had to remind yourself. He’d kept you. Had, a few times, put a foot on the door to keep you there.
You slid off the kitchen counter to make your coffee, almost distantly. You made it this time, too. By the time the machine started its slow gurgle, you’d forced yourself to wrestle the whole thing back where it belonged, blinking your eyes clear and dry. It was the deal you’d made with yourself, you supposed, when Jack had said Italy and that she was a doctor, just like him.
You weren’t going to be the crazy, young girlfriend who spiraled over an old flame. You were going to be so graciously secure about all of it that Jack would never, ever know the morning had touched you at all.
You’d nearly convinced yourself of it, too, as you settled on the couch with the mug on the little glass table beside you as you scrolled through your phone. Then, you’d heard the bedroom door, and the soft knock of crutches against the floorboards as Jack shifted his weight.
You felt your heart drop at the sound of it, and had to force yourself to look up at the ceiling for a few seconds before he materialized, because you had never – not once – felt that feeling in your body in the three-sixty-five and a few more days you’d loved him.
No, you had to tell your body. We don’t feel this way for Jack. There’s no need to start now.
He came around the corner a second later, crutches under his arms and squinting against the light, hair flattened up on one side of his head from all of forty minutes on the pillow. His eyes swept across the room quickly and landed on you, face easing slightly.
“There you are,” he said, voice rough with sleep. He stayed there for a second looking at you, head-to-toe, checking. “Woke up to a pillow,” he said, one brow going up, dipping his chin at you in soft accusation.
“Jack –” You pushed yourself up off, padding over to him on instinct, because you were you, it was now nine in the morning and he’d hauled himself out of bed after only one tiny blink of sleep after his shift. Every single step he was taking on those crutches was a step he shouldn’t have been taking. “What are you doing up? Go back to bed –”
“Could ask you the same, baby. You’re never up this early.” When you got close enough, his eyes immediately came down to yours and stayed, moving over slowly. Then, he flicked his gaze to the entirety of the living room behind you.
“You get lonely out here? Something wrong? Should’ve come got me.” he fired off at once, so quickly that your mind had to catch up to process it.
“Not lonely. Nothing’s wrong. You needed sleep – ”
False. False. True. You were a liar more than half the time today, and you knew you were making this bed all by yourself.
“I need lots of things.” His hand came up off the crutch grip – balancing himself there on one – and reached out to you, knuckles first, dragging down your cheek slowly as his head tilted to look at you. The touch was so, so tender it almost undid the whole act you had running. “Sleep’s like – fourth.”
You leaned into his hand before you could stop it, and his face flickered for a second – relief, there and covered – and his thumb pressed in to hold it, keeping it.
“I just couldn’t sleep,” you said into his palm, because half-truths were easier to say to his palm. “You can, though,” you said quickly. “You worked all night. I’d already slept before you came home.”
He appeared to weigh this, and when your eyes finally moved back to his face, it was tilted slightly to the side, lost. Like a dog, hearing a new sound. It was a new sound, you realized the second it left you. It sounded like exactly what you had decided you were going to be – reasonable and considerate – and you had never once been reasonable about Jack going to bed. Sending him off to rest, so generously, without you, sounded – to you and him both – like another person’s girlfriend talking.
He took in a small breath, a chuckle dying in his throat, and his head dropped closer, the stubble catching in the light.
“Counter-offer?” he murmured. His hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck, settling there. “Couch. Both of us. Nobody sleeps. Nobody does a single thing.”
“Like gremlins,” you murmured.
The crease in his brow lost a little bit of its altitude. “Exactly like gremlins, angel,” he said gravely, instantly.
Your lips moved hesitantly, and your hands came up to his bare chest, pressing slightly. “You’ve been up all night, Jack,” you said through a short laugh, fingers skating around the breath of his chest to sit at his ribs, trying to turn him.
“Stop it – please, no.” He stayed put, eyes flicking down to where your hands had come up and lips twisting in, what you could only describe as a snarl. “I’m not tired.”
It was such a bald, indefensible lie that you visibly shook your head at him. The evidence was all over his pretty face, the pretty, lying face. The curls were silvering mess flattened on one side and standing at attention on the other, and you had to physically stop your hands from going to them.
The morning stubble had come in along his jaw in that salt-and-cinnamon scatter you’d once spent a full minute petting against the grain while he sat there letting you, patient as a trained dog. Still, tired lived well on him. Everything lived well on him. You’d told him once, and he’d thanked you, because he’d found himself tired a lot and hadn’t quite found a way to ease it. He’d tried.
“Jack,” you tried, voice warming a touch.
“What?” he drawled, shaking his head at you now, like he was deciding to show how scandalized he was now by all of this. “I’m not allowed to sit with my girl?”
He started moving to the direction of the couch – crutches finding their rhythm – without giving you any time for defense. “Man works a night shift and isn’t allowed to sit with the prettiest thing he’s ever seen?”
You huffed. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” Jack called over his shoulder. “Come sit.”
You trailed after him, because what else could you do? Dig your heels in, tell him no? That would’ve been a tell the size of five fucking houses. The second you were in range, his arm left the cushion and hooked over your waist mid-step and hauled you onto his lap. Your yelp was swallowed by the drop, and you landed sideways across his thighs with his arm already snaked across your back.
“Your leg, Jack – ”
“My leg’s thrilled.” His other hand collected your knees and folded them up toward his stomach, tucking you in closer, arranging you into the compact bundle he preferred, until you were sitting in the wide, warm bowl of him with nowhere to look that wasn’t him. His hand then came up to your back and pressed, instructively, until your cheek gave up and landed against his shoulder. He let out a long, slow breath at the contact, chin coming to rest on your hair. “There we go.”
You breathed in a lungful of air as you settled against him, his presence like fire and water over you right now. You were so scared of someday losing this, this exact thing. His chest hair scratching at your cheek; the weight of his head – carrying so much – on your head; the way he smelled like your soap because you’d asked him to once and he’d never gone back, and now this man walked around his emergency department smelling like pink fruit all day and let everyone at work deal with it.
It was so, so unbelievably simple to be with Jack, to be in this flowery presence of this gruff man, being his. Jack had come along and he’d made you put everything down – the checking, the second-guessing – and you had, you’d put everything down, and dumped both arms around his neck instead.
“How do you wanna use our nights off today, hm?” he asked softly, moving his head to press a quick kiss to the top of your head.
This was your event. You knew that was why he was asking, dangling it, because the planning was half the having for you and he’d learned to just hand you the whole day and watch you go. You always had opinions.
Before you’d tucked yourself into bed last night, you’d thought maybe you and Jack would go to the diner whenever you woke up, breaking fast in the afternoon like degenerates.
Maybe the flea market afterwards, because Jack, at a flea market, haggled in such a nice, slow voice that made grown sellers fold like the lawn chairs they were selling. He’d followed you around from table to table for two hours, never once questioning why you were suddenly looking at doorknobs. You could’ve looked at gravel, and he’d have carried it. Then you’d come home, couch, a game on, his head in your lap – heavy, trusting, king of some small kingdom – while you messed with his curls.
It all seemed so unbelievably wrong now. It seemed nice at the same time, the same as before. But the diner. She probably never made him eat at diners. The flea market; she went to Positano. You had no idea what Positano even looked like, exactly. It was probably the most beautiful place on all of earth and Jack had stood in it, years before you existed to him, being well-loved, and you’d spent this morning secretly hoping it was ugly.
You pressed your cheek harder into his chest and he hummed, appreciatively, and adjusted his arm to noodle you.
She got this, too.
You had to stop yourself from groaning at your own voice, from yelling at it altogether. The thoughts were just pushing you closer and closer to him, your cheek nuzzled against his chest, shifting slightly like the bare contact of his skin could just scrub it all out; your cure and disease were Jack. Every awful, awful thought sent you burrowing closer into his exact chest that had caused it, and he kept receiving you, warm and obliging, having no idea he, right now, was both your wound and bandage.
You just wanted your day back. You couldn’t tell anyone how insane this was, least of all Jack. You’d have crawled inside his ribcage if it zipped.
You knew that Jack had been trying to get under your skin – you knew that he liked it – but you’d figured this game was one that was built for you to win. Every round was just Jack setting up an excuse to spend the afternoon demonstrating with his mouth, his eyes, his face, that there was no contest to even worry about.
Because you couldn’t very well go to Positano today, and because you suddenly felt like a kid handing over a macaroni necklace to someone who owned diamonds, you said, “I don’t know,” into his chest. “You decide.”
His thumb paused on your skin for a second, then it resumed.
“Me?” he murmured, chin tilting for a second to press his lips to the top of your skull again. “I wouldn’t have the first clue, angel.”
“Try,” you said.
He huffed slightly. “Alright, then. Bear with me – first day on the job. We stay here till noon, then the diner with your jams. Then that stretch by the river you like, lemonade from the good cart guy.” He squeezed your arm and pressed another peck to your head. “Home by dark and it’ll be the best outing in the world.”
It sounded so perfect. You pressed your whole face down into his chest, even as you thought about how his outings were once grander, with people who’d done grander. With a doctor, no less. “Sounds perfect.”
For a moment, the two of you just breathed there. It may have been the fact that when it got quiet when you were with Jack – instead of quiet with just yourself – things seemed a little easier, but you found yourself saying, against him, “Jack?”
“Yes?” he said instantly, chin lifting off your head and you felt his attention come down on you, whole and immediate, like he was summoned.
“Are you gonna get the coffee?” you asked.
“Huh?”
“With her,” you said. “You know –”
Your words cut off as you shrugged, suddenly feeling stupid all over again. Saying it made it real again, and now you’d brought the topic to the couch. It happened on the bed, and you’d carried it to the kitchen, and now it was on this lovely couch. You were going to taint it all with it.
“You should probably go. To catch up.” You lifted your head up to meet his eyes, forcing your voice even. “I don’t mind.” It felt like it’d come out with steel; you almost winced at your own words.
Jack blinked at you, then his head tilted, and the softest, most confused grunt left him.
“Baby,” he started gently, amused, almost, reaching for the joke in it at first. His knuckles came up to brush against your cheek for one second. “I’m not going anywhere near that coffee – you’d have me chipped like a dog by Tuesday.”
It was a gift, you could see his words wrapped and extended – him invoking your domestic insanity, holding it up like the reason the sky was blue – and all you had to do was accept it. The morning would become the, in all senses of the word, usual.
You would’ve preened at the portrait of you, and now you heard it from the morning’s new ears – he’s got an ex who speaks Italian and you think it’s fun to threaten him with 24 hour surveillance.
“I wouldn’t, though,” you said quickly.
When his knuckles paused on your cheek, questioningly, you continued, “You should go. I won’t be mad at you.” Your lips pressed together for one second. “I promise.”
Jack’s hands went to your hips and his jaw shifted from side to side, as he looked away from your face for a second. “Yeah. Okay. I’m not grabbing coffee with another woman.”
“She came all the way. You guys are old –”
“Stop,” he interrupted with a laugh – disbelieving and no humor in it – as his head reeled back.
“Stop it – I don’t want this.” His hands flexed on your hips, then came up to wave in the general direction, then fell back down. He looked at you really, really upset, or baffled, or both. “Who cares how far she came? People fly places. I don’t want to have coffee with anyone.”
You shrugged, letting your head drop into his chest again. “If that’s what you want. You don’t have to do it because of me.”
“I am absolutely doing it because of you.” His arm came around you, bringing you back close to him. “I’m not going ‘cause my girlfriend exists. That’s a whole reason. It’s a great one. So don’t talk me out of it.” He pressed his lips to the top of your skull. “Not your reason to give away. And you can get me chipped, if you like.”
You opened your mouth, then closed it. What could you even say to that? You felt him nod over you at the silence, felt some hesitance creep into his body, as he pulled you in.
“Actually,” he said after a moment. “Let’s put a pin in the plan.” One hand lifted off you and made some small motion, you couldn’t see it but you felt the absence where it had been, before it came back. “We’ll do it tomorrow. Next week. River’s not goin’ anywhere.” His arm resettled around you, snugger than before. “Today we’ll stay in.”
“Jack –”
“Blanket, couch, girl.” He counted your day off your spine, three soft taps of his fingers. When you made a sound of protest, his said into your hair, quieter, “I’ve got all I need. I’m not feeling the outside today. That okay?”
“No, it’s not – let’s go. I’m just tired right now. I’ll be up later.”
You felt him breathe, then, the gust of air pooling into your hair.
“Then come to bed,” he tried weakly, and he sounded so broken you wanted to cry. You could hear him knocking at the door of you. “Sleep. Let’s sleep together, if you’re tired.”
“Not sleepy-tired,” you said, and heard how little it made sense even as it came out of you.
Then, you pushed yourself up off him, palms to his chest, trying to keep the motion casual. “I think I just need to wake up properly. Move around a little.” You stood, angling your face away, blinking fast as you looked at the dark TV screen. “I’m gonna get in the shower, if that’s okay?”
When you tried to look over your shoulder, he’d straightened up, palms falling down to his sides on the couch as he looked up at you.
“Course it’s okay,” he said, hands following up then to settle for your hand, thumb passing over your knuckles. He gave your fingers the gentlest tug and pulled his head back, catching your eyes for a second before you could look away again, and the look on his face was so, so soft. “Do you want breakfast?”
You nodded quickly. “Yeah – thanks.”
He made a small sound, then pressed his lips to your knuckles, then let your fingers go one at a time. You made it four steps down the hallway with his gaze heavy on your back, and you couldn’t stand it.
There was a great, large, incessant bug in you that couldn’t stand Jack back there with his worried face and scared smile. So you half-turned over your shoulder, your eyes down at the baseboard, and called out, “Love you, Jack.”
You’d told Jack you loved him at full speed, into his mouth mid-argument, into the phone before you’d even said hello, at grocery stores, at funerals, at red lights, six times a day minimum. It was the surest sentence you owned. This time, it went out like a paper boat, pushed onto the water with two fingers, and watched all the way across.
“Love you, too,” he called back warmly, after what felt like a hundred years.
Jack had once spent a very, very long time to get you to believe that even if you held onto something good loosely, it won’t run away. He’d had to get you to believe that even if your grip on him loosened, even just for a second, even for a month, he would still be right there. Why was he feeling the need to hold you so tightly now?
He set your plate at your spot, and his at his. He poured the coffee, saw the first coffee you’d abandoned on the counter, full and stone cold, and stood there looking for a second longer than the mug deserved.
He’d put on his prosthesis after plating the food, a part of him too large and hopeful – instead of its usual, content, un-worried hum – expecting you to come out of your shower wanting to do something, the diner, the river, after all, trying to change his mind.
He’d hoped you’d come out wanting to be carried somewhere on his back. He wanted to be ready, he always was now. He kept himself pre-approved for whatever you thought of next.
The inside of your head was a busy little harbor, boats coming in at all hours, and he’d been granted a standing spot on the dock. You’d let him become the first to hear about octopus, cats, furniture, which part of your body felt cold, warm, or lukewarm. A year of receiving your pretty cargo and he’d never once been bored.
He, decades your senior, had seen the world be made interesting again by you just narrating it at him. He had the sneaking suspicion he’d follow your voice wherever it went, into traffic, a dock, into old age, and the shower.
The water kept running. He wasn’t the kind of man that’d track your showers, but years of working in emergency and emergency-adjacent situations had honed up his internal clock eerily well, smoothened out his pattern recognition.
He had to tamp down the urge to deploy it, to use this innate, terrible, awful instinct in his brain on you – you, who he felt more than monitored, who he’d only ever read with love, no grains of salt, no instruments.
You were the girl who rearranged things in his cabinets by feeling and left in it a system he still couldn’t crack and refused to fix. Opening a drawer looking for a spatula and finding your hair ribbons had become one of the small startling joys of his one life.
He’d been a clinician for so long, and you’d built with him a corner of the world where he was just a man, holding a girl, and being completely in love with her.
Jack, bring me the towel even though it’s right there. Jack, come look at this bruise. Did I not wash out the conditioner out properly? Jack – Jack, Jack, come and just sit with me while I shower.
His knee bounced under the table, and he stopped it.
Your eggs had gone cold, glossy, and began settling into themselves. The toast had lost its heat, and the jam sat unopened with its little lid on – the grape, the good one – and the jam was a small purple fact that he could not find himself liking to sit across from. You’d have opened it by now and started walking the length of the place, spoon in your mouth, talking.
A year of you had taught him what mornings looked like when they were going right. He knew this one had gone wrong so quietly and terribly, that he’d been able to hold you the entire time it was happening.
It was the bitter feeling of the surge he’d had in his chest this morning at the thought of your instincts.
He’d read a woman’s name off his screen and come home with it like it was a match to your pretty fire. He’d carried it into bed with you, and all Jack knew was that at this morning, his girl had been in his arms so sweetly, and minutes later, her fingers were hesitant to press into his skin. The only thing that happened in between was his own mouth, having fun.
Jack wasn’t sure when he’d stood up, but he was walking to the bedroom now, to the ensuite bathroom. A year ago, this hallway had been a hallway. Now, it was a museum of you mid-motion, and he moved through it with his heart going at a pace he hadn’t earned sitting down, past the bed still holding the shape of the forgery you’d left him in, a pillow. He had to look away from it like the sun.
He told himself that the bathroom door being closed was normal. Steam, privacy, nothing; all of it were real things.
“Hey,” he said to the door lightly, knuckles going in two soft taps. It was the same knock he used with the you in the bath going pruny as he was happily serving you wine. “You fall asleep in there? S’been a minute.”
He tried to force his lips into something close to a smile even though there was a door between you right now.
Perhaps it was because Jack – even now, even morbidly confused – knew you, and knew that the door would be locked before he confirmed it with his shaky fingers.
( You, who talked to him through the glass of the shower, sat cross-legged on the counter while he shaved – you missed a spot, no, the other spot, how do you have a medical license, genius – and stole his coffee between critiques and made him laugh hard enough he’d nicked his jaw and you’d gasped like the injured party, then kissed it before pronouncing him stable.
You, who had once flung the shower door open mid-rinse to tell him that you’d figured out what you both were in a past life. He never got to hear the answer. You’d seen him standing at the sink in his towel and lost the thread altogether, and the past lives were never mentioned again, and Jack had walked around for the next twenty-four hours unreasonably pleased about being distracting at his age to you.
A door had, simply, never existed in your relationship. )
The key was right there. He’d put it there himself, two summers before he’d ever met you, the day the door had swung shut at its own draft and locked an empty bathroom. He’d forgotten it existed, but his hand went up and found it first try, blind, and came down holding this tiny cold thing.
His fingers were unsteady fitting it in, which was new. He’d threaded needles into people in moving vehicles. Now, in his home, his fingers trembled over a privacy lock like a first year, because on the other side of the door was the whole of his one life, in falling water, hiding from him – him – and every second the key took was a second you sat in there believing you had to do so.
“I’m coming in,” he said to the door, softer than an announcement this large should’ve been, like some part of him was afraid of the wrong reaction at your response to it. “Just me. I’m coming in, okay?”
His chest caved – folded in on itself, turned over – because there you were, on the floor of the shower, curled up under the pour of the water, your knees to your chest and your arms wrapped around them, your face hidden down against them. His girl – the loud one, the strongest person he’d ever let himself love – made small and quiet and hidden on the floor of the shower. He had seen you in this place a thousand times and never once, not ever, like this.
“Oh – baby. No, hey –”
Your head snapped up at his voice, and just that sharp little movement of you made him tilt back slightly. Your face – wet and swollen, eyes red at the rims, gone raw and young and caught in a way he’d never seen it – did something terrible when it saw him in the doorway. It crumpled then hardened, both at once, a door slamming behind glass, and you scrubbed the heel of your hand over your eyes like you could take back the last thirty seconds if you were quick enough about it.
“No,” you said quickly, the word cracking out of you with a sharp edge under the thickness. Your hand came up between you, a flat little barricade under the steam. “No – get out, Jack – I told you I’ll be – please, get out –”
You didn’t push him. This wasn’t a thing that happened. You pulled – you reeled him in by the shirt, you climbed into his lap, you fought tooth and nail for every inch of distance he’d tried to keep, whose entire love was a set of hands hauling him closer, closer, closer.
He had spent all this time being pulled by you, gladly, helplessly, and he did not have – had never needed – a single instinct for being pushed.
“Hey – hey, no – don’t –” His hand came out to the glass, pushing slightly. “It’s just me. It’s me. Look –”
“I don’t want it to be you right now,” you said, and the words were so awful and completely jagged.
You turned to face away, like you were trying to push yourself out of his sight entirely. “Please. Please, just go and get out. I don’t want you here – please, Jack.”
“No, don’t ask me that,” Jack said immediately, voice breaking clean in half as his eyes went glassy and desperate. “It’s me – you don’t hide from me – we’re not that –”
“Please,” you said, voice barely audible over the running of the water, and his nose burnt as he caught sight of you shaking. “Please, just give me a minute – a minute. I’m – I’m asking you to leave.”
Jack’s hand hung empty in the air as he looked down at you, heart in actual pieces on the tile, and he understood – quietly – that the only thing you were begging him for was the single thing he’d have rather died than do, to turn around and leave you crying.
So – because you’d asked, because pushing past a plea like that would only carve you open worse, because loving you had never once meant taking what he wanted when it wasn’t what you needed – he made himself.
“Okay,” he said, voice coming out in ruins. “Okay, baby. Okay. I’m going – I’ll go.” He reached up and took your towel off your rail and set it closer to the shower. “I’m right outside. I’m not far – I’ll be right there and you come get me the second you want me, you hear? The second.”
You stayed silent, so Jack, clumsy with grief in a way his body never was, made himself turn his back on you. At the door, he paused, eyes pinching shut to make himself not look over his shoulder. Instead, he said, “I love you.”
He pulled the door behind him, left it breathing half ajar with the steam sighing out through the gap, and pulled himself to sit at the edge of the bed, facing the bathroom. Like you were going to run from him, like some part of him needed both feet under him and the door in his eyeline needed to be ready. For what? He couldn’t have said. To catch you, he supposed. To get you the second you’d let him. To not be caught sitting down when you finally opened the door and needed him standing.
He sat there with his elbows braced on his knees and his hands pressed together against his mouth and waited, and it was the longest ten minutes of his recent life.
Every second of it was stretched unbearably, because he was learning there is this particular hell in loving someone past all sense and being made to sit on the other side while they hurt. He didn’t know what to do with this feeling, had never had to think it was a possibility between the two of you.
When the door opened, Jack was on his feet before he’d decided to be. There you were, towel-wrapped, hair dripping onto your shoulders, face swollen and turned just slightly away, eyes on the floorboards. You crossed your arms over your chest, gripping the towel closed.
“Hey,” he said, breathing through it, his voice half-ruined, shaking. He caught it and hauled it down a register by force, into the very low, sure place his voice lived when everything depended on it.
He made himself stay planted – made himself open his arms instead of using them, wide, a whole doorway of him – while every muscle strained against its leash, because his body had exactly one theory about you crying and the theory was to go, and he stood on that theory with all his weight.
“Come here,” he said instead, begging with a steady voice, a whole vacuum sealed into two words.
Your eyes climbed as high as his chest and gave up there, arms tightening. You shook your head dimly, water flicking. He nodded to himself, made himself stay standing, without letting an ounce on his face where you’d have to carry it.
“One step. That’s all I’m asking.” His arms turned palm-up at the ends of his open arms, still, though nothing behind his ribs was. “You don’t have to talk. Or explain anything. Not tonight, or ever. I’ll die curious – but I’m standing here figuring out I don’t work right until I know how you feel in my arms and I haven’t known for hours and I am asking you –” His voice strained, and the words came out bare, “ – Please, I am asking you to come let me hold you.”
You let out a small sound, eyes pinching shut, and he watched a whole war happen on your face. Jack thought, uselessly, hopelessly, that he’d have stood there through a winter or as the building came down, holding a door ajar in himself for as long as doors took.
You crossed, though. Your body came to him hard, all at once, like you were dropped from a height, and Jack caught you with one arm crushed around your towel-wrapped back. The other flew to your wet hair, his palm rounding the whole back of your skull, pressing you into his heart, gathering you in and in and in, past where space existed, trying to find one more setting past where proximity itself existed. He let out a sound that was – dangerously – close to sob into your hair, finding himself completely undone for the first time in a very, very long time.
“There you are,” he murmured, rocking you slightly as his mouth pressed to the top of your dripping hair. “I’ve got you. Got you now.”
You shook against him, and Jack winced at the feeling of it, gently reeling both of you down onto the edge of the mattress, then back, then over, until he had you sideways across his lap, your knees folded over his thigh, your face tucked into the crook of his neck, his arms locked around you like a cage. The towel gave up at under your shoulder, so he pulled the corner of the blanket up over the bare curve of it – wrapping you precious – and then his arm closed the last of the circuit and locked.
For a while, he simply let his hand move up and down your spine while you cried into his throat, and every shudder that went through you went straight through him, too. He pressed his lips to your temple and left them there and rode it out with you, breathing slow on purpose, loud enough for you to borrow the rhythm off of his nose, an old medic’s trick he was running on the only patient he’d loved past all sense.
Somewhere in the middle of it, with your tears running down his throat and pooling at his collarbone,
Jack thought, helplessly, that even this was somehow yours and somehow beautiful; you cried like you did everything, with your whole body, holding nothing residual, generous, so generous, even in grief. You’d never given him a partial anything, and Jack tightened his arms around the full, shaking entirety of you and thanked the universe, genuinely, that when you’d finally fallen apart, you’d walked the few steps and done it on him.
When your crying wore itself down, Jack made himself stay silent. The questions, fully formed, seventy versions of them and redrafted since the kitchen, he swallowed, because he had a feeling he had pushed enough for one simple morning. He’d pushed this morning smiling. He held you and let the question live in him like a swallowed stone and, apparently, he was less subtle about it than he thought.
Your voice came up out of his neck, waterlogged and small, as you said, “I know you want to ask.” Your fingers moved faintly against his chest, a fidget with no strength in it. “It’s okay. You can.”
Jack had to close his eyes at your first full sentence being a door held open for him; you’d crawled out of your own wreckage to check on the driver.
“I do,” he said into your hair, honestly. “But I’m not gonna spend your turn. So here’s mine first.”
He felt you go still against him – attention gathering, a tiny tilt of your head at his collarbone – and he breathed in heavy, big enough to lift you where you lay, to pay up.
“I got really scared today,” he said, voice going into a whisper as he leaned down to talk to you. “I woke up to you not in my arms and my whole chest felt – wrong. I do this for a living, I’ve got all the words. It wasn’t – wasn’t sick. It felt wrong, you not being somewhere you’re supposed to be. First time in – forever, if I’m being honest.” He tapped you skin twice, to hold himself.
“And when I found you, I couldn’t reach you. And now – seeing you –” He felt you stiffen up at that, and he nodded in understanding, skipping over. “I’m thinking of getting rid of all our doors.” His hand kept moving down your spine, and he faced your head then. “Bathroom’s the priority. Bedroom might be load-bearing, but. Front door stays. Everything else is beaded curtains by Friday.”
You made a small sound against his neck, and Jack had to stop himself from crushing you into the tightest hug at the bridge of a laugh. He pressed his mouth to your temple for a few seconds instead. “Another thing while I’ve got the floor. Telling me to go get coffee with an ex – don’t do that again. I’m not gambling with you. I’ve only got one of you. So, I’m never going to coffee with anyone else again.”
“You’re allowed to cry,” he said, setting the joke aside. “I’m sorry I made you feel you couldn’t do it with me knowing about it. That’s mine, and I’m gonna find it and fix it if it takes me the rest of my life.”
“You didn’t do anything,” you protested, sounding wounded.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “That’s mine. That’s what I felt today. You don’t have to give me yours.”
His arms adjusted, and some helpless, incurable corner of him – the one that had flirted with you through every disaster you’d ever handed each other – added, “But, if you wanted to trade, I can make it worth your while.”
You laughed at that again, and the two of you stayed silent again for sometime. Your fingers crawled up his chest, up over his collarbone, curling loosely around his neck, your palm settling in like you needed contact to speak.
“You went to Italy,” you said.
Jack’s brain did one, full lap around the words, and came back with nothing. He did the only thing he could when you handed him a coin he couldn’t read, which was holding it up to the light and keeping his voice soft and not dropping it.
“I did,” he said, carefully. “Long, long time ago, baby.”
“Was it nice?” you asked, the words coming out so small. In the same breath, like a small dam breaking, you added, “Do you miss it?”
Jack never had to look for a trap in your words, not like this.
There was none now, either. You’d asked about Italy like you asked him about bad days, ready to receive whatever came back, your thumb doing a nervous sweep against his neck like you were comforting him in advance. You’d found the one grief in the world with his fingerprints on it and your first instinct was to ask if he wanted it back.
For an ugly second, he thought he could have lied. No, it was overrated, beds were weird, bad food. You’d have heard it, and Jack thought that it would’ve taught you that you couldn’t survive the truth.
“It was nice,” he said quietly, hands moving up and down your spine. “I was young. Younger, anyway. Whole trip was –” He exhaled, shaking his head as he tried to hunt for the honest size of it. “It was a trip, baby. It was nice.”
He pressed his lips to your hairline. “I don’t miss it. There’s nothing in there to miss. Like –” He clicked his teeth, searching for the words. “Driving past a house I used to live in. Half the time, can’t even remember which window was yours. You just keep going, ‘cause everything you own’s at the new place now.” His fingers tightened on you. “Think if I’d known what this was, back then, I’d have kept missing this, there.”
Your breath shifted against his throat, and you nuzzled your face into his neck.
“What’s got you worried?” he murmured. He closed his eyes, letting his head lean to rest against yours, palms moving from your waist to your nape, then down. “I can get us to Europe by Thursday, just say the word. I’ve got PTO and miles I’ve been sitting on for years. I think they were for this.”
“I don’t wanna go to Italy,” you said, smiling against his neck. “I think this is something I have to get through myself. It’s not anything you’ve done to me.”
Jack felt that familiar twist in his chest. It’d come to him for the first time today, and it kept coming up and up and up, and he couldn’t help but want to claw at his own mouth for his selfish, cruel little game, for every grinning careless word he’d dropped on you like they weighed nothing. And now you felt that you had to deal with it yourself, like it was yours to carry alone, off in a corner, someplace he couldn’t get to. Because he had done this.
You were, simply, acting like the two of you weren’t the two of you; you had spent a whole year proving to him that ‘by yourself’ was a thing that, now, never existed.
He drew you back, fingers threading through the back of your hair, trying to physically take you back from wherever – whatever – this by yourself was. He put your face in the light, wet-lashed, trying so hard to keep it together, and his thumb swept the damp while his own face did whatever it was doing, open and scared and thoroughly past the point of keeping it in check.
“You don’t have a ‘yourself’ anymore, sweetheart. I don’t have that anymore. You woke me up at three in the morning to tell me how you fell off the monkey bars in third grade – remember? You didn’t think twice about it.” His forehead came down, brushing your nose with his. “And now you’re gonna sit here and tell me this – the saddest thing that’s crossed that pretty head all year – this one you’re keeping alone?”
“Jack–”
“What is going on in that head of yours?” he interrupted, words soft but pointed, suddenly having given up all pretense of coaxing and gone straight to needling.
He watched you open your mouth as you took in a breath, and maybe it was the closeness or the way his thumb kept moving along your jaw, but you said, “I don’t know if I’m the real one.”
Jack’s brows furrowed, feeling heat build up behind his eyes as he looked at you with a pained, confused expression.
“I don’t know if I’m the one you do it for real with, Jack, or if I’m just – the young one. The one you get before – or after – I don’t even know how it works.”
Your hands came up between you, aggravated at yourself, at him, at the lack of vocabulary.
“You’ve done so much. You’ve got countries. Experiences. So many of them. And I’ve got –” Your shrug came out tiny. “– you. You’re my biggest everything. You’re my Italy and I feel like I’ve been with you for three years and my – you’re all of it, Jack. I’m terrified I’m just the person that came after your big thing.”
You blinked, and Jack’s fingers reached up to catch the little tear falling over your lashes, his own eyes blinking furiously. Jack wanted, so badly, to reach to you and press your kiss to your mouth to stop this, to to kiss this whole wilted garden you’d created in your head out of you.
He shook his head. “I hope I’m not your – her,” he said, a wince in the words, finding it difficult to even get them out. “Or your Italy.”
“You are –” you said, with so much conviction, chin coming up, ready to fight him for the honor of it, “you are – that’s what I’m telling you –”
“I’m your Jack.” His hands tightened on your face, voice coming out slightly cracked. “I’d forgotten about this woman until this came up. I don’t want you to forget me. I’m your Jack and I’m the luckiest man for it everyday. So you pick a better word soon, and don’t take that title away from me.” He shook his head. “I like it. I like it a lot.”
You bristled slightly, your eyes shining into his as they went wide, the whole of you locking up at the words. He tapped his palm gently against your cheek once, then again, frowning as he thought he really ought to tell you this more, for a girl who kept a running tally of everything else.
You’d created a museum out of things he’d said, and somehow this one, the biggest one – the luckiest man of it – he’d been rationing. He’d been handing it over in the glances and over eggs, assuming it was arriving, that a girl who read him so fluently was taking what he’d said to you over and over again, so simply because it was just a fact.
Never again. He’d tell you daily now, remind you of it while making you look him in the eyes.
“I tried to make you jealous,” you said, the words coming out through a sad, shameful laugh. Something in his chest broke hearing you confess it like it was a crime. “I’ve got nothing, Jack. You won’t care about Sam, or Dave, or – I don’t even remember one’s name. That’s all. You had a doctor you went to Italy with.”
His eyes fluttered for a second, the muscle in his jaw clenching as his fingers ran over your cheek. The nature of it all was too backwards. Jack had made a very sad sort of peace with himself – he’d known what he was – and somehow, at the end of all that, at the bottom of the ninth of his whole entire life, you’d walked into it glowing like something confiscated from heaven. You’d looked at the full of him, and decided you wanted him. You, dished out to him probably because of some fate-giver who’d been asleep at the desk, who had let the single best thing walk out to him.
If a single one of those guys had stayed awake one more hour, asked one more question, been at the right angle to see who was sitting across them, you’d be – Jack grimly, awfully thought – somewhere else right now. And Jack never would have known; he wouldn’t have known to miss you. You’d have been long gone and loved properly, early, by someone with the sense to do it.
Jack would have worked his nights and run the bay, choosing every day to enter a new crisis, and never known the whole time that the best thing that would ever happen to him had happened to somebody else instead, on time, the way it properly should have. It was their loss, and he was going to make his entire life out of it.
His arms moved before the thought even finished, hauling you in impossibly closer, resettling the whole, true warm weight of you against him. “Stay right here,” he murmured.
You did. Your lashes stuck wet in little points and your fingers resettled on his neck. You were wearing his shirt, drowning in it. Jack had been the steadiest set of hands in many rooms, he knew it without vanity. But nothing in his skill set covered you; steady hands didn’t win a girl who lit up rooms; being good in a crisis didn’t earn a woman who made every ordinary Tuesday feel like a celebration. He’d spent so long getting excellent at the exact things nobody falls in love with – triage, containment, blood – and you’d walked into his life and fallen for him anyway, for reasons he couldn’t successfully point to, and he’d stopped asking why out of superstition. You, he was not in the mood to reasonably place; Jack knew when a person was handed one, that they should keep showing up for a miracle, quietly hoping it stayed.
Jack, falling apart at every seam of him, eyes hot and jaw aching, huffed. It was one, soft breath of a laugh, and your eyes snapped up to his, betrayed, and he shook his head fast, thumb pressing to your cheek to stay with him.
“I’m not laughing at you,” he said, shaking his head softly, thumbs framing your face to tilt it up. “I promise. I’m laughing ‘cause you’ve got no idea what I’d give to have your problem.”
You blinked at him, mouth curved into a frown. That one, he was sure, was aimed at him. His hands were shaking slightly against your jaw.
“I mean that I am very, very glad that you’ve got no Italy to wave at me. You think I want you to have another big grown love in your pocket? Some guy you crossed the country with?” His hands tightened on your face, eyes shining. “It would ruin me. I’d never sleep again. And I’m sorry for waving mine at you this morning, because I didn’t think it’d make you not sleep.”
He held your eyes through it, taking his medicine looking at you. “I said it ‘cause I love you jealous. It makes me feel nice to know you care about me.” His lips curved into a sad smile. “I didn’t think what it’d do when I brought this up. I will be very, very sorry about that for a long time.”
When you smiled softly, eyes hooded as you looked down at his mouth, he nodded to himself.
“And I had a nice trip with a woman a hundred years ago, and it ended, and I have zero photos of it. That’s a thing that happened to me. You are not a thing that happened to me. You are what it was all for. All the years, the whole time, all the wrong turns. That was just me taking the long way to find you. You are my biggest thing – biggest one that’s ever happened to me – and I want you to know some pretty life-changing things have happened to me.”
You stared at him, mouth open, tears going uncaught now, because Jack had gone completely still, needing you to see all his years on his face at once.
He huffed, mind flicking through this haze of memories. He could reach back and find the years, the apartment, and it all came as nothing. He’d loved women, had meant it completely, with everything he’d had on hand, and he may not have been wrong. And now he can carry the tender knowledge that a person can feel absolutely certain there is everything to be felt and be off by a whole magnitude; he’d stood inside his biggest feeling and called it the biggest and had simply, innocently, not met you.
“And since you told me yours,” he said, quieter, eyes going down because he found he couldn’t quite hold your gaze for this.
“I know what it feels like to think you’ve found what good love is, and then to find out how it is to love someone bigger. That the thing you could’ve sworn was everything was just – nothing, in the grand scheme.”
He turned his face to the side as he held your face, suddenly finding the enormity of this simplicity pressing at the back of his eyes. Everything – he was sure of it – had just been the longest drive over to you.
“But you got this first. You’ve got nothing to check it against.” His thumb swept your cheekbone, and his eyes came back to you.
“I know how big this is because I’ve got my whole life to look at it against. And you just have to take my word for it.”
He tugged his lip between his teeth, searching your eyes with question, checking whether the words were pushing through, whether they had the gap to push through. Your face was tilting toward him, listening with every feature at once; he could see the whole war playing out on your face you had never once been able to conceal from him. You had no poker face, at least to him, you didn’t.
“This is the one,” he said, nodding just barely. “There was never a morning I woke up and had to think about anything before you. You are the reason I know what you think is the big thing is small.”
Your breath stuttered, and your chin trembled once before you caught it from gritting your teeth inside your mouth.
“And sometimes –” He nodded, more to himself, as he forced himself to continue. “– I have felt a similar thing. I see you, and I wonder if you’ll think about some guy your own age, out there somewhere. Standard legs. Normal hours.” He shrugged. “No years of the stuff I’ve carried. And I think, someday, you’ll look over at me and think you settled for the –”
“That’s crazy,” you interrupted, the words shooting out of you instantly. Your fingers flew up to grip both his wrists. “That’s crazy, Jack – I don’t want – I would never. There’s no guy, I don’t want standard legs. I want your legs – leg – fuck, Jack.” Your voice broke off as you let out a small, pained groan. “I would pick you over any person who has ever lived.”
“Yeah, see,” he murmured, a small smile coming up as he let the weight of your words land on him. “Can you see how it sounds crazy when it’s coming at you?”
He brushed his nose against yours at your stunned silence. “I feel the exact same way about what you said. It’s crazy.”
He had to blink over and over as he settled on the weight of your words, said so simply and furiously with no build up. The biggest sentences of his life just slipped out of you, unwrapped, and you had not the first clue what they weighed. Any person who had ever lived. God, you’d waved off the whole crowded history of the species in one breath to pick a tired man in Pittsburgh.
“Let’s go,” he murmured, wrapping you up and pulling both of you back against the cushions, resettling you on his chest. Your ear was at his heart. The blanket was up to your shoulder. “We’re gonna lie here a while now. I think we both need it.”
“It was a weird morning.”
“Mhm.” His hand went to your spine. “Top five weirdest.”
And he should have let it be, but there was still something sitting in him.
Jack pressed his lips together as he once again said, “I am sorry for this morning. I was –” He breathed in through his nose, fingers coming up to your head, tapping it twice to get you to look up at him. You did, chin pressing into his chest and your eyes tired yet focused. “Immature.”
Your lips twisted slightly, then you tugged them with your teeth once and looked away, like you were trying not to agree.
“I was,” he said, easily, agreeing for you. His thumb traced your hairline. “Good thing for me, I happen to be with a girl who likes getting her revenge. Even when I don’t think I did anything.”
“You do –”
“I do. I do. You’re not wrong,” he said, the opposite of a complaint in it. “You know how to settle a score. And this morning I racked up a real big one. And you’ve just been sitting on it, being gracious.” His nose wrinkled, his fingers going to cradle the side of your face. “You keep that up, you’ll start minding your business and I’ll be living with a stranger.”
At your small, hesitant smile, Jack continued, “I know you don’t like the paintjob of my truck.” You nodded at that, honest as ever. “What I’m thinking is, you key it.”
Your eyes widened.
“Go nuts on the thing. Do some drawings. Write nice words. I drive it around after, everyone sees it. And when we’re good and done with that show and tell,” he continued, fingers threading into your hair, “we take it in. You pick a new color. Any color. Change the seats if you want, too.”
“People will think –”
“People will think a woman loves me enough to key my truck. Do we have a deal?”
summary: Luck did not seem to be on your side today. The entire ER had figured out your attraction to older men thanks to Trinity, and now it was coming to haunt you. All you could hope for was that Jack wouldn’t figure out that it was actually about him.
tags/warnings: jack abbot x fem!reader, yearning, reader gets assaulted, injury, angst, miscommunication, medical inaccuracies, fluff, age gap (reader is in mid-late 20s, jack is in late 40s) jealous!reader, trinity and dennis dont have boundaries, pitt crew appearances
wc: 4.7k
“The mystery man you've been crushing on is night shift attending Jack Abbot?!”
Trinity bursts into the lounge whisper-shouting. Your eyes go wide and you abandon the yogurt you were eating to run over and clamp a hand over her mouth. “Shut the fuck up! Shut up. Please for the love of god, shut up.” Your heart was beating like crazy, and you felt like you were gonna throw up. She slowly nods and you finally let go.
“What makes you say that?” You say with an almost threatening tone. She grins sheepishly at you before backing a few inches away. “Well I might have gone through your locker, and I might have taken a peek at your journal…”
“Oh my god, that's a total invasion of privacy Trinity! How the fuck did you even get my combination?!” You were running your hands through your hair, this girl was unbelievable. “Huckleberry might’ve helped me,” she says while trying her best to avoid your gaze.
“No, you know what, that’s great, I'm so glad I decided to move in with the nosiest people in Pittsburgh!” You clasp your hands together and start pacing back and forth.
“Okay, first of all, Perlah and Princess beat us in that category, and second of all, you weren't telling us anything! No hint, nothing, so what better way to find out than snoop through your most prized possession? A book that you never let leave your vicinity. Don't worry though, we skipped all the emotional stuff and landed on the page that had a cutout picture of him with hearts around it.” She chuckles, and you feel like you could kill her.
“I'm burning that goddamn book and the two of you with it. I can't believe you guys went through my journal!” Your cheeks burn with embarrassment, god, did they know anything about boundaries?
Yes, you had a picture of your night shift attending with hearts around him in your journal, but you weren't obsessed with the man. The topic of manifestation had come up once or twice with Trinity, so you decided to try it out knowing nothing would probably happen. You had a crush on him since you started working at the PTMC, feelings you knew he would never reciprocate, so that silly page meant nothing, not really.
“I'm sorry, we went too far.” Trinity walks over and puts a hand on your shoulder, the guilt finally catching up to her. “But I'm surprised I never caught on. Now thinking about it, your feelings for him are so obvious.” She almost sounds annoyed at herself.
You scoff and remove her hand. “Obvious? Please.”
“Oh my god, is he the reason why you make me or Huckleberry bring you in early and leave late?” she asks, her annoyance now directed at you. “N-No, don't be ridiculous.” You're a lying, stuttering mess. Of course he was the reason why.
“And the way you hover, listening to every last word he says. I've noticed the way he flirts with you but he does that with everyone, so I didn't think anything of it. I just thought he was a mentor that you admired, but it all makes sense. Just know that I never caught on cause I didn't know you liked them old.”
“Likes what old?” Panic rushes into your chest as Robby walks into the room cutting you two off. “Her men,” Trinity says casually and Robby’s eyes go wide. “Oh?”
You start shaking your head and fake laugh. “She's just joking, I don't like them old, that would be weird! N-Not that there's anything wrong with being old and liking older men but I definitely don't.” You were speaking so fast your brain couldn't catch up with your words. Horrified, you watch Robby look at you amused while Trinity holds back a laugh.
Fuck, you were such a bad liar.
“Okay— I'm gonna grab an apple and head back out so you two can keep discussing your attraction to older men,” he teases, walking towards the fruit basket. You watch him grab his apple and chuckle before heading out. As soon as he's gone Trinity lets her laugh out and you smack her chest. “Ow, my boob.” She rubs her chest frowning.
“That wasn't fucking funny, why would you say that it was so humiliating!” You cover your face with your hands, your embarrassment being tenfold now. “To be fair your response was what made it humiliating, but you'll be fine babes, it wasn't that bad, and at least it wasn't the man himself.”
You moan into your hands and look back at her. “We’re not discussing this further. I'm mad at you.” You state, while walking to throw your yogurt away, not being able to stomach the rest. “Hey, that's not allowed!” You flip her off as you exit the room, trying to leave your embarrassment behind as you reenter the chaos.
She follows, but it's not long before you freeze, almost causing her to collide with your back. You see Jack rush into Trauma One with one of his SWAT officers on a bed bleeding out.
“Maybe you should sit this one out,” Trinity says while passing you to head to the room. You nod and stay in place as you watch them get to work. Seeing him felt weird now that Trinity and Dennis knew, it made your crush feel more real, and completely childish.
“You doing alright?” A deep voice from behind you pulls you from your thoughts, making you jump. “Dr. Langdon, you scared me.” You turn to see him with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. “Yeah, you were completely zoned out there.” You see him glance at what you'd been staring at, and back at you. “You know them?” He asks and you shake your head. “No, I was just lost in thought, sorry, I'll get back to work.” He slowly nods his head. “If you need a break doc, take it.” He pats you on the back and moves past you.
God, you'd be pathetic if you had to take a break over Jack Abbot.
The next time you saw Jack was right after they'd successfully saved the SWAT officer you saw him roll in with. You had come looking for Robby, wanting a second opinion on a patient you had just seen, when you heard Jack speaking with Dr. Al-Hashimi the new attending. “We should grab a beer sometime, share war stories” You felt a wave of jealousy pass through you. “I'd like that,” she casually replied, and walked out of the room. Trying to ignore your stomach you walk up to Robby. “She seems cool.” Jack says to Robby, both of them not noticing your presence “Yeah, maybe.”
You clear your throat, trying to catch Robby's attention and you watch the amused look from earlier reappear on his face as he turns to look at you. “You here to tell me more about how you're ‘not into’ older men?” You see Jack perk up in your peripheral vision and your eyes go wide. “Um, no, but if you have time could I get a second opinion on this patient?” You try to keep your voice steady even though your heart felt like it was going to explode. He chuckles and looks back at his laptop. “Yeah, I'll be out there in a second.”
You nod and turn to leave. Once out you hear Jack’s voice through the door. “You gonna tell me what that was about?” Hearing him laugh makes you burn up at the thought of Robby telling him everything. You don't know if you could handle any more embarrassment today, so you were gonna try and focus on your charts for the time being.
While looking through your charts you hear someone clear their throat next to you. “You enjoying Dr. Al-Hashimi’s AI tool?” Your eyes go wide as you look up to see Jack standing next to your desk. “Oh, no. I'd rather write these up myself.” You say, turning to look back at the monitor, unable to hold eye contact with him. “Smart girl.” He says and moves closer, making your heart skip a beat.
“Sorry I couldn't help earlier, hope your friend’s doing better now.” You muttered, trying to ignore his closeness and warmth. There was some guilt there, you had froze, so Trinity moved for you. “He's gonna be fine, but it would've been nice to have my favorite resident there.” He says softly.
Favorite resident?
The smile that emerges on your face is subtle but you know he can see it. He starts speaking again before you can respond. “But I think she was too busy staring at an older man.” You whip your head to look back at him, your smile instantly dropping. “W-What? He shrugs playfully while turning to walk away. Your heart was beating so fast, he definitely knew you were looking at him, but you hadn't even realized he noticed you earlier. You quickly get up abandoning your charts to busy yourself with something else, you were too worked up to sit at a desk right now.
The next few hours go by somewhat fast. You were able to avoid Jack the entire time surprisingly. You slipped into random rooms when you heard his voice nearby and would rush to find a patient when you'd see him. Were you being dramatic? Yes, but you needed to stay clear of him, his teasing would be the end of you.
You had just discharged a patient, working on finishing their notes when you hear a familiar voice. “I'll pay for it.” You don't know how you heard him, he was borderline whispering, and you were surrounded by a noisy hospital. So you couldn't help the curiosity that crept in you deciding to walk by the room you heard his voice in.
He was sitting on the hospital bed shirtless with Dr. Mohan smiling behind him. You hear her say “Our little secret.” and the frown that was usually on his face was gone, replaced with a similar smile. As much as your body wants to stop in place, you don't and keep walking.
Jack was known for being a smooth talker, you knew that, but there was a small part of you that had hoped it was different when he flirted with you. Now witnessing it twice in one day with two different women, you couldn't help but feel stupid. I mean you had never gotten as close to him as Dr. Mohan just was, you could only imagine what else had transpired between them.
“Damn, where you headed to?” Trinity’s voice stops you in your tracks, you see her head emerge above a monitor. “To check on a patient Trin, where else?” You lie, but it's because you don't want to deal with her questions right now. “I don't know, it looks like you're running away from something, plus you have this horrified expression on your face.” She dramatically waves a hand over her face, emphasizing “horrified expression”
You groan and shake your head. “I'm not running, and I do not have a horrified expression on my face. Please just go back to doing your charts.” She opens her mouth to reply but you cut her off by walking away.
You make your way towards the ambulance bay and when you walk out you're instantly hit by a cloud of smoke. You look over and see Dana leaning against the wall. “Hey, kid.” You reply with a quiet "Hey" and walk over to stand next to her. “Don't look too good, you want a puff?” She holds the cigarette out for you to take and you sigh. “Fuck it.”
Smoking wasn't really your thing, but right now, it didn't seem too bad. You grab it and bring it to your lips, inhaling slowly, then exhaling. You mumble a “thank you” and give it back to her. “No problem, although I'm surprised, you’ve never accepted before.”
You let out a laugh because it was true, you never joined in drinking when the crew would ask you to after a rough shift, and the very few times Dana’s offered a cigarette you've refused. It's not like you don't partake. You used to in high school and college, but ever since you started working at the PTMC you haven't had the urge to, which is surprising considering the fact that it's the reason most people start and continue.
“Today's been rough, nothing terrible, just mentally draining.” She nods at your words, understanding that feeling before you continue. “How bout you? How's your shadow, Emma doing?” You watch as she deeply sighs at your question. “She's doing real good. Yeah, she’ll be great.” You can hear the concern in her voice. “You're doing good too Dana, she’ll flourish under your wing.” You put a reassuring hand on her shoulder wanting to comfort her even though you know her concern will never fade.
“Yeah, here’s hoping.” She takes another drag while looking at the calm in front of you two. There's comfortable silence before she looks back at you. “You out here because of Robby's loud mouth?” A bitter chuckle escapes you, because of course he was going around talking about what had happened in the lounge.
“No, not really, I didn't realize he was telling everyone.” He was your superior but that wasn't gonna stop you from killing him. “Oh yeah, word travels quick round here, everybody knows about your interest in older men now.” She was laughing now.
You wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out.
“Ugh, it's all Trinity’s fault! She told Robby I like my men old, and then I word-vomited trying to save myself from humiliation. I failed miserably, if you were wondering.” You were reaching for the cigarette in her hand again, which she easily gave up. “Santos, really?” She asks and you nod your head while breathing in more smoke. “Eh, I wouldn't worry too much, I'm sure everyone will forget about it by tomorrow. They're so bored they’re grasping for any sort of gossip, something new’ll come up soon,” she says, putting her hand on your shoulder now.
“Honestly, I don't get what the big deal is. Why is it so crazy that I'm interested in a guy that's maybe a little too old for me? News flash, I'm a fully grown adult.” You can't help the irritation in your voice, this was all so annoying. “It can be a big deal, depending on the circumstance,” she says, and you sigh, taking another drag. She's right, HR would be on your ass if they found out all this ruckus was about Jack.
“You're lucky no one else knows which older man you like.” She adds and you start coughing, choking on the smoke you inhaled. “Christ, I'm sorry kid.” You can hear the smile on her face as she speaks. She moves her hand from your shoulder and pats your back, trying to help you.
You catch your breath and look back at her. “Don't tell me you went through my journal too,” you say defeated.
She shakes her head. “I've known for a while now, I can see the way you look at him.” She hesitates before continuing. “And the way he looks at you. You need to be careful.”
You can't help but scoff at that. “Dana, the man's a chronic flirt. There's no need for you to worry, cause nothing will ever happen.” You try to take another drag, but she grabs it from your hand and drops it on the ground, crushing it with her sole.
You pout your lips at her, and she shakes her head. “Alright, no more cigarettes for you. How bout you go back in, I'll be right behind you, just give me a second.” You mutter an “okay” and start walking back into the ER, there was no point in arguing with her.
You’re only a few steps in the hospital before you hear a scuffle in one of the rooms. Walking over to see what was going on you witness a patient putting Emma in a headlock.
Panic and pure adrenaline surge through you as you run into the room to get the man off her. You used all your strength to pull his arm, managing to free her from his grip, but now he was focused on you. He lunges for you, grabbing onto the sides of your head before head-butting you. As you fall to the ground you hear Dana yell and watch her tackle the man to the floor, stabbing him with a needle in the process.
You close your eyes as you hear a bunch of footsteps rush into the room. “What the hell happened?” You hear Robby's voice, the noise making you wince. “He attacked them so I gave him a shot to settle him down,” Dana replies, her eyes wide with shock.
You feel movement next to you before someone touches your face, knowing exactly who it is before he speaks. “Fuck, she’s bleeding, help me get her up.” You cry out as Jack picks your body up. Your head is throbbing, and your face is on fire. “That fucker got me good.” You open your eyes to see Jack in front of you, concern covering every inch of his face.
You look over at Emma wanting to make sure she was okay, and she's staring right back at you while being bombarded by questions. You notice the red ring around her neck, and you feel anger finally hit you. “Hey, focus on me, we need to get you to a different room.” You nod your head, and hear Robby grilling Dana as Jack leads you out of the room, your hand tightly wrapped around his arm.
As soon as you sit on the edge of the bed, Jack is on you, checking your face and head. You weren't able to hold back your whimpers as he touched the inflicted areas. “I'm gonna kill him.” He mutters under his breath and you manage a smile. “I'm fine.” You’re breathless as you speak. He picks your chin up, eyes not leaving yours.
“You could have a concussion.”
“I don't,”
“Your nose could be broken.”
“It isn't.”
He sighs before grabbing an alcohol pad to wipe your face carefully, you hadn't even realized your nose was bleeding.
“I didn't realize you could be this gentle, Jack.” You watch as he freezes, it was the first time you had said his name out loud. “I like the way you say my name.” You couldn't stop the bitter laugh that escaped you. “I wonder how many girls you've said that to.”
You move to grab the wipe from his hand but he grips your wrist before you can take it. His touch was scorching, while the metal band on his ring finger was freezing. “I haven't used that on anyone.” He states, and you raise an eyebrow at him. “Really? Not even earlier on Mohan?” You don't know what had gotten into you, were never confrontational, maybe you did have a concussion. His eyes go wide and he drops your wrist. “What are you talking about?” He asks, confused.
“Our little secret? I'll pay for it?” and you watch as he figures out what you were talking about. “When I said I'd pay for it, I was talking about getting her an uber for supplies she wanted to send home with a patient. That's all.” He sighs before continuing. “And I was grazed by a bullet earlier, I didn't want to do the paperwork, so she helped and promised to keep it quiet. That's it, I promise.”
Now you were the one looking at him with concern. You felt so stupid, you were so quick to assume things. “Are you okay?” You place a hand on his shoulder, worried. “I'm fine, don't worry about me,” He says while putting his hand over yours. All you could think about was kissing him, your jealousy from earlier completely gone, and you could tell he was thinking the same with the way he was staring at your lips.
You start leaning in, only for him to back off. “You‘re not feeling okay, you're not thinking straight.” He shook his head, voice wavering, almost like he was trying to convince himself.
The rejection stung, and to make everything worse, your head was fucking killing you. “I'm fine.” You snapped, moving to get up, but as soon as you're on your feet your legs get wobbly. “Let me help you.” Jack grabs onto your waist and you push him off. “Jesus, get off me, I said I was fine!” Your own volume made you wince, and the hospital lights were only getting brighter. You stumble out of the room extremely dizzy, almost tripping before Jack catches you.
The movement grabs Robby’s attention. “Is she okay? I need to ask her what happened.” Robby questions, but before Jack can answer you cut in. “The guy headbutted me, and I fell. I'm fine, I just need to rest, please.” Robby runs over, opening your eyelids to check your pupils. “Shit, did you evaluate her?” and Jack shakes his head. “I was going to, but she got up and ran out.”
You remove Jack’s hold on you. “I'm a little dizzy and the lights are too bright, so if you need to give me a CT scan go ahead, but I'm telling you, all I need to do is rest. I'm coherent, I'm good, if anything I have a minor concussion but I doubt it. I'll answer any other questions you have, just get me in a fucking bed, and away from him,” You say, jutting your head at Jack. No one says anything, Robby just gives Jack a weird look before coming to your side to bring you back to the isolated room.
By the time Robby's done asking questions and evaluating you, you’re ready to sleep. “I'll turn the lights off so you can get some rest, but you're going home immediately after. You're lucky it was only a minor concussion,” Robby says and you nod slowly. “Is Emma okay?” You had been worried about her since Jack dragged you away from the room earlier. “Yeah, she's okay thanks to you. There are some red marks around her neck but that's about it,” he says, attempting to comfort you.
You let out a sigh of relief, what happened to her was awful, but you're glad nothing worse happened. “Okay, well Is Dana in any trouble?” you ask, remembering Robby's questions. He was asking if you had seen what she’d done, which you had, but you lied, because you know she shouldn't have had any type of sedative on her. “I don't know.” He sighs and you know not to prod. “I’ll be back soon, rest up,” he adds, and you mumble an “okay.” before you close your eyes, drifting away.
When you wake up, your head feels better but you're riddled with anxiety. Everything that had occurred earlier was immediately taking over your mind, so you get up and get ready to discharge yourself, not wanting to be stuck in this hospital any longer. You make your way to Robby and quickly debrief with him, making sure he knows you're okay, before you say your goodbyes and leave.
You didn't have a car, usually choosing to ride with Trinity or Dennis, but because they still had a couple of hours left you had no choice but to order an uber home.
As you're walking out you hear your name being called. Turning to see who it is, you watch as Jack runs, trying to catch up with you. He stops a few feet away from you and you can see the sweat glistening on his skin. “I heard you were going home, how are you feeling?” You can't help but roll your eyes at him. “I'm okay,” you reply dryly. He sighs and steps closer. “Look, I'm sorry about earlier, I wanted to make sure you were all there.”
“Save it, I don't wanna talk about this right now.” You glance at your phone and see that the uber was only a couple of minutes away. “No, please let me explain,” he pleads and you look at him frustrated, but ultimately nod giving him permission to continue.
“I wanted to kiss you, I did, but I didn't want to while you could've possibly had a head injury. I wanted to make sure you were thinking straight and I didn't want you to regret it.” Your stomach was doing flips at his words.
“Jack—” You try speaking but he cuts you off.
“I really like you, sweetheart, and I have for a while.” He says softly, his eyes holding yours intently. “Jack, don’t say it if you don't mean it.” Your body was on fire, and you were squirming under his gaze. This all felt surreal.
“When I came in today, you were the first person I searched for only to see you already staring back. Later when Robby told me about the conversation he had with you, I couldn't help but wonder if it was about me. Then that feeling turned into certainty when I overheard Santos and Whitaker talking about the older men rumor and how it was specifically about me.” He chuckles, thinking about how the day unfolded.
He was saying all the right things, but couldn't help but cringe. “God, that's so embarrassing, I hate that you had to hear that from them.” You hide your face with your palms, but Jack clicks his teeth and moves them away. “Don't hide from me. And if anything, I'm grateful that I did, don't know if I would've had the courage to confess if I didn't.”
He shakes his head as he moves his hands to hold your face. “You scared me earlier. I don't know what I would've done if something happened without having the chance to tell you how I felt. I just needed you to recover before I did anything, before I did this.” He slowly inches towards you and stops, searching your eyes for permission. This was everything you ever wanted, and you didn't want to waste any more time, so you nod your head and move forward softly planting your lips on his.
The kiss is slow, gentle, and the taste of him was addicting. It was better than you ever imagined. You tilt your head, and wrap your arms around his shoulders, wanting to give him more access, but whimper when your nose brushes his a little more aggressively.
He pulls away instantly, checking to see if you were alright, making you giggle. “I'm okay, I'm still a little sore.” He pouts and brushes a strand of hair behind your ear, before resting his hands on your hips. “You need to rest. Please tell me you're taking a couple of days off,” and you shake your head. “I'm coming back tomorrow, I can handle it.” He squeezes your hips and presses his forehead against yours. “I'm gonna make sure you rest, you're not coming in tomorrow. I'll take care of you, don't worry.”
“I won't argue with that. I guess some rest would be nice, especially if you'll be there.” You move to connect your lips again, but are quickly interrupted as a car honks behind you. You groan as you force yourself to look back at the car, “That's my uber.” He presses a quick kiss to your forehead before letting go of your body. “Go home, rest, and I'll be there after my shift.”
“Okay, I'll send you my address. See you later?” you ask as you step away, heading towards the car. “See you later,” He replies smiling, and you light up.
As soon as you're in the car you're messaging the group chat with Trinity and Dennis explaining everything that happened and that you'd have a visitor soon. You scold them, but also thank them for being insufferable today. Then you find Jack’s name and type in your address. You might be a little concussed and in pain but things finally felt amazing.
You shake your head in disbelief, you can't believe you managed to manifest Jack Abbot.
a/c: I was on vacation working on this and just got back so i can finally post it!! I wanted to do smth short but fun while i was away before continuing to work on the sammy bryant fic so theres not gonna be a part 2 but i hope you all enjoy!!
: 18+ MDNI After the confirmation of a long awaited date when you both were Hawaii, Jack and you finally spend your evening together…and your night.
content warnings. light smut (maybe?), a little fluffy, f!reader, sexual topics, mentions of sex (not descriptive, but HEAVILY implied), body insecurities, descriptions of body and amputation, maybe some inaccuracies regarding art (?), age gap ofc, mentions of shitty parents and broken dreams, lmk if I missed any
notes. smirks. slightly proofread.
read part one here. read next part here
You were nervous. You didn’t know why you were nervous. You had been fairly confident on the trip. You’d flirted, you’d kissed. But you had also been left alone to overthink for nearly a week after.
Jack hadn’t really said much regarding the date, at least nothing more than texting you updates on when he was picking you up and where he should pick you up. Everything else was the same.
Clothes and shoes were thrown all over your room, covering your desk, your bed, your poor cat Cheevies that had of course taken solace underneath the largest pile. You had to make sure you didn’t step on her when you went through to put everything back when you got home because knowing her, she’d still be there.
Your hands smoothed over your stomach, then your sides. It had already been over an hour since you started getting ready and he’d be on his way now.
Everything was too much or too little. On one hand, you didn’t want to seem like you were trying too hard. He’d seen you covered in almost every type of bodily fluid. What did it matter? On the other hand, you didn’t want to dress too casually and have him think you just don’t care about what he thinks. You hate to say it, but you really do.
“That one looks nice,” your sister’s voice came from the phone propped up on your dresser. “Why are you even worried about what he thinks? You’re hot and smart. You’re a catch.”
“Yeah, and he’s hot and smart,” you huffed in return. “I just…I want to look nice.”
“Well you do- wait,” she paused and shuffled something around. “Didn’t you say he was picking you up at five?”
“Yeah, what time…oh my God. I’m running out of time. I have to go,” you hung up abruptly and pulled at the dress before slipping your heels on. You smoothed the dress down one more time and checked your makeup.
It was the doorbell that forced you out of your anxiety influenced spiral.
“Okay, okay…” you let out a heavy breath and pulled the front door open. Jack stood there, a bouquet of lilies in his hand. He was in the middle of smoothing down his own shirt.
“Hey,” he took a deep breath and gave you a good look over. “Wow.”
“Good wow?” You glanced down at your dress before looking him over. You forced yourself to not audibly gulp.
“Amazing wow,” he reassured, stepping inside as you stepped aside. “You look beautiful.”
You tried your best to stop the heat from rising on your cheeks, but you could tell you failed by the subtle smirk he’d let play on his lips.
“You look nice as well,” you were able to force out without sounding too weak in the knees. “You got me flowers?”
“You mentioned liking lilies once,” he hummed and nodded. “I wasn’t sure if people still, you know, gave flowers before dates.”
“Not many guys my age,” you said before you could stop yourself. “Wait-” you turned to face him quickly. “That wasn’t a jab at your age or anything. Shit, I’m sorry-”
“Are you nervous?” He shook his head and placed both of his palms on your forearms. “You’re…are you?”
“A little,” you admitted. A wave of calmness washed over you as he rooted you in place. “I just…I don’t even really know why I am. I see you every day. You probably know me better than anyone at the hospital. It just feels different now that it’s an actual date and not just- flirting in passing.”
“You know me,” Jack smiled softly while brushing a piece of your hair behind your ear. “Yeah, it’s a date, but we’re also friends. You don’t have to work yourself up over this. Just…be you. That’s what I want. You.”
“You’re good at this,” you whispered, interlacing your fingers with his as his hands slid down to yours.
“Trust me, I’m still rusty,” he chuckled. “Come on. Hand me your stuff and we can head out.”
Jack was a gentleman through and through. He opened car doors, building doors, held his hand out when you got in and out of the car or walked down steps because apparently you’d thought heels would be a good idea. Short heels, but heels no less.
He was adamant about paying for everything, going as far as physically holding onto your wallet for the entire date so you couldn’t offer to go half on something. He was a gentleman.
You’d always felt bad accepting gifts from people. You’d been like that since you were a little girl. Always guilty when people tried to take care of you. Jack picked up on that a while ago when he’d gotten you a coffee on his way to the hospital and you followed him around with a ten dollar bill any chance you had. He just thought it was cute.
“Did you know that some artists traditionally used fossilized whale bone and walrus ivory to make their sculptures? It’s sad. I feel bad.” You rambled for what felt like the ten-thousandth time. “Oh, also- did you know a whale actually doesn’t have any bones in its tail? It’s just made out of fibrous tissue.”
“I did not,” Jack hummed. He’d been immersed in every fun little fact you’d dropped in the last hour and a half. Even if they had completely strayed from the topic of art. “You know a lot about sea animals. Is it a hobby of yours?”
“Uh, not really a hobby,” you bit the inside of your cheek. “More like an alternate career choice. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was younger- well, up until I was maybe 17.”
“Really?” He looked surprised. You almost felt embarrassed. “What made you change your mind?”
“My parents weren’t going to help out unless it was something worthwhile.” You laughed it off but he could tell it wasn’t something you were completely over. “A doctor is more important than a marine biologist. A doctor is useful. There’s revenue in this field.”
“A marine biologist is useful as well,” he frowned, nudging your shoulder. “Who else will help those animals? Someone has to advocate for them.”
You gave him a tight lipped smile. “It’s fine. I know it’s not exactly on the same level with the importance of medicine. Besides, orthopedics is something I’m actually interested in. So…”
“Yeah?” He sounded unsure. “Well, at least you’ll have something to poke Park the Shark about.”
“He’s already warned me,” you winced, letting out a genuine laugh after.
“He’ll love it just like everyone else does,” Jack slipped his hand into yours. “Trust me. No one can resist Little Miss Encyclopedia."
Oh? Oh. Oooohhhh.
“Oh, you liked that?” He murmured, pressing his lips against your cheek. “Little Miss Encyclopedia.”
“Jack.” you warned, pulling back just slightly and pouting.
“Just teasing,” he smiled, pecking your cheek before pulling you into his side. “Let’s go get something to eat, then I’ll drive you back home.”
It was disappointing the closer the date got to ending. You found yourself craving more time with him. Even if it was just a little. It was almost pathetic. And as Jack pulled into your driveway. As he walked you up to your door-
You were losing an internal battle. Your brain was no longer winning.
“Do you want to-” you cut yourself off. “No, nevermind. It’s silly.”
“Nothing you say is silly,” he shook his head. “What’s up?”
You pressed your lips into a thin line and played with the hem of your dress. “You can come in, if you’d like. No pressure or anything.”
“You want me to stay?” He hummed, glancing back at his truck before looking down at his phone. “We have to work tomorrow night. You sure?”
“You can just sleep here- only if you want!” you shook your head. “Just…an option.”
“You’re anything but,” he smiled softly. “I can stay. Might need to shower here though.”
“I have a shower,” you nodded and unlocked your door.
“Let me grab my bag from my truck,” he snorted. “You go on in.”
You let out an almost inaudible “okay” and slipped into your house, making sure to leave the big door open, but the storm door closed so none of the pesky summer bugs got into your house.
While you rushed around to pick up any remaining evidence of your wardrobe struggle from earlier, Jack took a moment to compose himself outside in private. He was a man, after all. Who wouldn’t feel this way after someone as smart, beautiful, and amazing as you invited him to spend the night?
The last thing he wanted was for you to feel pressured. He never wanted that. If all you wanted to do was talk, that was fine. If you wanted him to sleep in a spare bedroom or on the couch- that was more than fine. Better for him, even. Who knows if he’d even be able to get sleep when you’d be lying next to him.
“Jack?” You called out. When he turned, you were looking at him from the front porch, a concerned expression splashed across your features. You had a thin jacket over your dress and you were no longer wearing your heels- instead wearing a pair of house slippers.
He hadn’t even realized how long he’d been standing there, but it must’ve been a while considering you looked like you were contemplating ever stepping over the line of asking him to spend the night.
“You don’t-”
“Nuh-uh,” he shook his head as he walked up the steps. “I was just catching a breather. Hard to focus when you’re around.”
“Oh,” you paused, letting him press his palm on your lower back to guide you back into the house. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“All that flirting. Don’t you ever run out?” You frowned, watching him push his shoes off. You caught a glimpse of a portion of his prosthetic, the gray coloring of the foot catching your eye.
“Don’t run much,” he joked, but was met with an unamused look. “No. It comes naturally when I’m speaking to you.”
“There you go again,” you groaned and turned away. “Well, come on, loverboy. I’ll show you where the guest shower is.”
You took the time to shower while Jack did. You subtly left the shower chair in there from when you had broken your leg your second year of residency. You didn’t want him to feel like you thought he couldn’t handle himself nor advocate for himself, you just wanted him to be comfortable.
The second you stepped out of the shower, Jack could smell it. That same citrus-y shampoo that he smelled on you all the time. Argon oil, or something along those lines. You smelled like summer all year round.
“Hey,” you smiled, scrunching your hair in a towel. “Was the shower good?”
“Yeah,” he nodded, readjusting the prosthetic on his leg. “Sorry. I tried to be finished by the time you got out.”
“What? You didn’t have to rush,” you shook your head. “Also you don’t have to wear that. I have, uh, crutches…somewhere.”
“Oh you don’t have to look for them. It’s okay.”
You were already digging through a closet looking for them. “I want you to be comfortable,” you shrugged, pulling the crutches from the closet. “They’re from when I broke-”
“Your leg,” he cut you off. “That was…what, your second year of residency? I remember that. You were pissed.”
“Had to miss three weeks,” you let out a short laugh. “You might have to adjust the height a little bit, but they’re medical standard.”
“Thanks,” he sighed. He was a little relieved that he didn’t have to keep the leg on. You’d both been walking for hours and the last thing he wanted to do was have to continue walking around with it. “Hey, that shower seat…”
“Was it obvious?” you grimaced.
“A little, but I know your heart was in a good place,” he chuckled. “I appreciate it.”
“It’s not that I don’t think you can’t handle a shower without it or anyth-”
“I can’t,” he admitted. “At least not comfortably. Saved me the embarrassment of almost falling in there.”
“Oh,” you smiled to yourself, mentally patting yourself on the back. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about asking for any accommodations either. I know about the leg. It’s only normal that there’s some difficulties.”
“Yeah?” He looked over at you with this glint in his eyes. Adoration, maybe? He wasn’t sure. Your consideration was attractive to him. You didn’t make him feel like he needed to be ashamed of his missing limb. Not that he was any other time, but it was different. He’d gone on maybe two dates since the passing of his wife and both of those women had that same look of pity on their faces when he’d mentioned it in passing.
You didn’t look at him any differently. It was refreshing, like ice cold water. Which he really needed right about now because the way you were looking at him was making his mouth dry up.
“What’s going on up there?” You smiled, tapping his temple with your pointer finger. You’d kept your hand there, and he used it as an opportunity to press a kiss to your palm.
“Just thinking,” he hummed, peppering kisses down to your wrists.
“About…?” you trailed off, your smile softening.
“You,” he spoke gently. “I’m glad you let me take you out, and that you let me kiss you in Hawaii.”
Your cheeks and ears flushed. You could feel the heat creeping up and brightening your skin. It was disgusting. You were so giddy on the inside, it felt foreign. But it was Jack. It was always Jack.
“Yeah, well,” you sucked in a breath, already moving. “You can always kiss me some more.”
“Oh yeah?” He nodded leaning back so you’d fit on his lap. And fit you did. Perfectly. Just perfect. All of you.
You could taste the toothpaste as you kissed him. Minty fresh. His hands moved cautiously, not wanting to overstep. One found the curve of your hip and squeezed softly, the other found the curve of your neck and pulled you impossibly closer. You pulled away first, and he assumed it was to catch your breath.
Until you gripped his chin and started pressing wet kisses down his jaw all the way to his collarbone.
“So this was your plan all along?” He sucked in a sharp breath when your teeth nipped at his skin.
“Kind of,” you murmured against his skin. “Is this okay?”
“More than,” he sighed, letting his head fall back. “Feels good.”
You smiled against his skin and pulled back once again. “Lift,” you tapped his arms and he listened. Embarrassingly fast on his part.
When his shirt was finally off, you took your time admiring him and ran your hands down his torso. It was riddled with salt and pepper hair, but you’ve seen it before- back in Hawaii when he was on full display.
“Your turn,” he pulled you out of your thoughts, reaching for the hem of your loose tee. “Up.”
You lifted your arms and felt the goosebumps rise on your skin as soon as your chest was bare. You had been planning this. No bra meant faster undressing.
Jack looked up at you with glossed over eyes, his lips parting slightly as you pressed down against his aching bulge. His hands ran up and down your sides before searching further up. His thumb brushed against your sensitive bud, forcing a small twitch from you.
“Sensitive…huh,” he whispered, leaning forward to wrap his mouth around the other one. Your head fell back and you couldn’t stop the pleased sigh from escaping you.
“Jack,” you whispered, no, pleaded.
“Take me to your bedroom?” He murmured against your skin while he pressed his face into your smooth flesh.
“Yeah…yeah,” you nodded lazily, pulling yourself back together. Your hands covered your chest as you waited for Jack to stand up with your crutches. He nudged his head towards you when he was ready and you led him down the hall.
Your room wasn’t anything fancy nor put together. You’d forgotten to clean up the mound of clothes you’d left in the corner of the room from last week’s failed attempt at washing laundry. It was just a bunch of scrubs and pajamas.
“You should see mine right now,” Jack hummed, sensing the discomfort. “We’re busy people.”
“Yeah,” you let out a breathy laugh, letting him pull you back towards the bed. He sat down at the edge and sat the crutches down on the carpeted floor. His hands found your hips again and his lips pressed against your stomach.
“Can I?” He looked up at you through his lashes.
God, he looked delicious.
“Do I?” He laughed heartily.
“Oh my God,” you covered her face. “That wasn’t something you were supposed to hear.”
“No, I’m glad you’re having a hard time keeping things in,” he shook his head, pushing your pajama pants down just enough so that he could feel your hip bones. “That’s gonna be useful in a minute.”
“You can,” you placed your hands over his and began pushing your pants and underwear down.
Jack’s eyes traveled lower, watching the fabric hit the floor before moving you back a little so he could get a good look. He hummed, squeezing the fat of your thighs in his calloused palm.
You weren’t sure what he was thinking. Jack wasn’t a jerk and you were sure he didn’t mind the extra weight you had put on over the last year. It wasn’t much, but you had filled out a little bit. He’d seen in all before anyways, well, whatever your bikini had allowed.
“Ravishing,” he whispered, sliding his hands back to grip the plump of your ass. “So beautiful, baby.”
You bit the center of your bottom lip, absentmindedly playing with the short gray curls that occupied his head. Jack liked that more than he wanted to admit. He liked it even more having you slumped next to him, chest rising high with every breath you took trying to settle the aftershocks of each orgasm he had pulled out of you.
There was a thin coat of sweat that covered both of you. Jack hadn’t stopped kissing you yet, just slowed down a bit like he was trying to seep into your skin rather than get you all worked up for another round.
“Mm, thank you,” Jack whispered, nibbling at your jaw softly.
“Are you thanking me for sex?” You pulled back with an amused expression.
“Not that, but thanks for that as well,” he snorted, brushing his thumb over the apple of your cheek. “You make me feel normal.”
“You are-”
“Let me finish,” he cut you off with a kiss to the forehead. “You don’t make me feel like less than a man for being older…or for missing a leg. You’re pretty accepting of my baggage.”
“Everyone has baggage,” you huffed, scooting closer to him. “Plus…I’m pretty sure I saw two legs.”
summary: jack had made it clear from the start—he was only available for casual, no strings attached stress relief. the way he acts after finding out you went on a date says something else entirely. (9.5k wc)
warnings: 18+ MDNI, porn with some plot, angst, coworkers with benefits, jealous!jack, yearning!jack, unspecified age gap, attending/resident power dynamics, jack is an ass (he gets slapped so it's chill), pet names (pretty girl, sweetheart), detailed explicit smut, mean!jack (reader likes it), dom!jack, brat/brat tamer vibes, dirty talk, dacryphilia, unprotected pnv, car sex, cowgirl, doggy, oral (f & m receiving), fingering, face sitting, chokehold, spanking (all my jack ass man believers stand up), breast & nipple play, pussy slapping, squirting, little blue pill mention, apologies & confessions, happy ending, fem!reader, reader is dana's niece, no physical description/mention of being blood related, dana haunts the narrative, no use of y/n, dual pov (i think), ending kinda rushed but fuck it we ball, briefly proofread so no doubt incorrect grammar lols
authors note: woof woof, bark bark. this is 70% filth, 20% angst, 10% fluff. i have no excuses honestly. no seriously this was only meant to be 5k. majority written at 3am in sleep deprived insanity. some of the smut warnings are just mentions, not explicit details. this is kinda toxic, if that's not your thing keep scrolling :-)
song inspo: read your mind - sabrina carpenter
masterlist
You say that you need to be alone
But night and day, want me at your beck and call
You say you know that you might be crossin' a line
Wastin' all our time
To think that we could be casual
You're not my friend and, baby, you never were
Why the fuss if you say you just wanna be mine?
6:55am
Abbot: Meet me at my truck in 15.
No hi, hello, how are you. If you were to scroll through your text thread with Dr. Jack Abbot, you would see that the faux pleasantries stopped three months ago. The two of you started sleeping together four months ago; it took four weeks for Jack to discern that he didn't need to use basic human greetings to get you in his truck, in his bed. That's not to say you were easy—god, no—it was just that you two had a mutual understanding for what this was.
Sex. That was all it was. Pure primal, fuck like you're going to die otherwise, sex.
It started after the night of the PittFest mass casualty. You had come in early along with your fellow night shifters to work through what was one of your most gruelling shifts to date. The Pitt only lost six patients, but the weight of that day was going to stay etched into your bones for the rest of your life.
Dr. Abbot came back to the ED around two am, checking in on how Shen was handling things—at least, that's what he used as a guise. The truth was that he had struggled to close his eyes once he got home, tossing and turning with the police scanner on, endless memories of dust and gunshots plaguing his mind.
He stayed until shift change, the act of caring for others quietening the buried memories that were crawling to the surface. He stayed to keep an eye on his staff—noticing how people were a little more quiet, how they were exchanging soft, hesitant smiles with one another instead of their usual jokes. At least, that's what he noticed about you.
You couldn't remember what exactly was said to transition from you two walking towards your cars to you sinking onto his cock in the backseat of his truck. In your memory overridden by lust, you could vaguely hear him saying something vulnerable; a response you weren't expecting after your exhausted tongue let slip how you were struggling with the events of the day.
Mutual words about feeling on edge, needing some kind of release, were whispered into the hazy dawn glow—the fusing saffron skies and coral clouds painting you both in a different light.
Mosaics of amber and olive flaked with gold stared up at you, catching every morsel of pleasure that scrunched your eyebrows and relaxed your mouth. Strong, sure hands moulded the flesh on your hips, keeping you completely at his mercy as he pounded up into you. One of your hands met the condensation slicked window, the wet glass providing no support as his every thrust bruised your cervix.
Your nails dug crescents into his sun-speckled canvas, a crescendo of moans and gasps drowning out the wet mess gushing from your core. Hands you admired while wrist deep in chest cavities clutched your ass, one rearing back to land harsh slaps to the heated and aching skin—setting the fire coursing through your veins ablaze.
Your head flung back with a guttural cry of his name, the warmth of his release coating your walls plunging you into a sea of ecstasy. A groan of your name pushed through the ringing in your ears, the thick chest pressed against yours rapidly rising and falling with pants.
The sex thick air in the truck turned suffocating in the tense aftermath—both your minds spiralling about how bad of a mistake this was. Jack's stomach curdled from his blatant abuse of power, your hands trembled in fear of fucking for special treatment accusations—terrified of tarnishing your reputation.
Jack was the first to break the silence. "This was a one time thing."
You nodded, avoiding his eyes as you straightened your scrub top, pulling your pants up while his seed continued to leak out of you. "Agreed."
Despite his unforgiving mind reminding him how badly he screwed up, Jack fell into a dreamless sleep—the ghosts that permanently resided in the back of his mind staying locked in their rooms, letting him rest alone for once.
He struggled to make eye contact with Dana when he arrived for his next shift—the feeling of betraying one of his dearest friends gripping his chest. The logical side of him reasoned that you weren't her daughter—you were an adult capable of making her own questionable decisions, and letting him manhandle you in the back of his truck was just one of them. Unfortunately, that logical side couldn't silence the guilt that invaded him when he saw her wrap an arm around your shoulder and kiss your temple.
However, that guilt vanished hours later—replaced with a sick sort of admiration, one wrapped in barbed wires of lust. He always knew you were competent—hell, out of all his residents, he would trust you the most with his life in your hands. He always knew you were beautiful—it was a fact he accepted with ease the second you set foot in the Pitt.
But now, he knew how your pussy felt squeezing his cock—knew how your hips moved the closer you got to your release, how you crumbled into a whimpering mess as you reached your precipice. Your competency mixed with this new knowledge created a dangerous concoction, one that infiltrated his bloodstream and made him drunk on the thought of you.
You tried to not let it affect your work—willed your nerves to steady with a scalpel in hand, trying to ignore the empty ache you felt since you left his truck. The ache you tried to soothe on your own but failed every time. Because Jack Abbot had fucked you better than all of your exes combined, and it pissed you off. You refused to be a cliché—the young resident who followed the older, handsome, charming attending around, basking in whatever affection and praise he discarded without a care.
You were better than that. Stronger. Evans women didn't risk their careers for silver foxes who hid behind wry quips and flirty smiles.
Apparently, you weren't as strong as you thought.
One week later, you found yourself back in his truck—your knees pressed into the worn carpet, drool dripping down your chin and neck, the air filled with the sounds of his grunts and your gagging.
He instructed you to slip a hand into your pants, to swipe your fingers through your folds and show him how wet you were from sucking an old man's cock.
"Fucking soaked," he groaned out, the slick on your hand shimmering like liquid gold as the sunrise filtered through the tinted windows. "Knew you'd like being on your knees," a calloused finger tapped your cheek, urging your glistening eyes to meet his, "always so eager to please."
The finger slid down to your jaw, tracing a line until his hand cupped the back of your neck. His grip was tight and strong, keeping your head exactly where he wanted it. His other hand encircled your wrist, yanking your hand coated in your arousal to his mouth. Eyes black with hunger penetrated yours, daring you to look away and disobey his silent command. His tongue slipped out, licking a strip up your fingers. Your responding whine was muffled by his cock thrusting down your throat, resulting in a sinful vibration that had his spine tingling.
In this moment, he wasn't your attending and you weren't his resident, weren't one of his closest friends' nieces. You were two willing adults—a man and woman troubled by their own demons, seeking release and relief.
His hand gripping your neck kept you still as he started to fuck your mouth in earnest, each hit of his tip to the back of your throat earning him a gag. Jack watched as tears breached your waterline, slipping down your cheeks to mix in with the slobbery mess glazing your neck. His eyes drifted down, taking in the sight of your wrinkled black scrubs—committing it to memory, to fuck his fist to later. The shift of your hips didn't go unnoticed, the way you were trying to grind against nothing drawing a mocking laugh from his chest.
"You that desperate, huh? Drooling all over my cock got you so worked up you're tryna fuck nothing."
You nodded your head with another muffled whine, lust overpowering your innate urge to bite back. He eased your head back, leaving his leaking tip resting on your tongue, letting you fill your lungs with oxygen before he continued his efforts to ruin you.
"Touch yourself, pretty girl."
You happily obliged, trying to pull your hand from his grasp.
"Uh-uh," he tutted, tightening his grip—just shy of leaving bruises. "This one's mine. You got another one, don't you?"
Your hand clutching his thigh for support let go in an instant, eager to please Jack and in turn please yourself.
You were so sensitive, your panties already soaked, your clit puffy from arousal and neglect. The first touch had you mewling around him, your hips humping your hand with fervour. Jack chuckled above you, gleaming eyes enraptured by your desperation.
"Fuck your fingers like you wanna fuck my cock." He ordered, heat gathering at the base of his spine when you obeyed immediately. He brought your hand back to his mouth, eagerly licking and sucking your slick off it, all while keeping his eyes locked on your hooded, hazy ones. "Taste so fucking good," he moaned, his hips picking up speed.
He came down your throat minutes later, watching your eyes roll back as you swallowed all of him down. Your own orgasm rushed up behind you, tightening every muscle in your body as you clamped down on your fingers with a moan.
Jack manoeuvred you onto the seat next to him, brows furrowed as his post orgasm clarity soured his gut again.
He kept his eyes locked on where he was twisting his ring around his finger. "That wasn't—I didn't mean to," he cleared his throat. "I didn't intend on being so harsh—mean."
You could feel the stress radiating from him, his words softly spoken and genuine.
"It's okay," you murmured, biting your lip. "I…I liked it." And because you wanted to ease his worries and silently give him permission—"I've begged for worse."
He lifted his head, shocked eyes meeting yours with a disbelieving chuckle and shake of his head.
"This is gonna keep happening, isn't it?"
You answered by pulling your scrubs and panties down your legs, pouting at him with a twinkle in your eyes.
"Need you to help me clean up my mess, Doctor Abbot."
You collapsed into the drivers seat of your car with two orgasms and a mutual agreement under your belt.
Strictly physical, no strings attached. No kissing, no cuddling, definitely no staying the night. Nothing untoward within the Pitt's walls—these two hookups in the parking lot staying as the only ones.
Never speak a word of this to anyone else.
Three nights—technically mornings—a week you found yourself pulling into Jack's driveway, parking your barely road-legal car behind his truck. His black, navy, and white minimalist interior didn't surprise you one bit, neither did the barren walls. The first few times, he led you into the kitchen with the offer of a drink, exchanging idle chatter about the weird cases that came through the Pitt's doors hours before.
The first time your skin touched his soft sheets, he had you on your back with large, calloused hands pushing your legs towards your chest as he devoured your pussy like a man starved. He made your vision dance with stars, made your ears ring from two earth shattering orgasms before he removed his face—his mouth and chin soaked with your release, a cocky smirk deepening the lines carved around his eyes. Your skin was still tender from his stubble when he sunk in deep, reaching spots you didn't even know existed—pulling sounds from your chest you didn't know you could make.
As you floated from his front door to your car, you knew that Jack Abbot had ruined you for any other man. No one had read your body that quickly before, no one else had found the switch to turn off your brain and give in to primal desire.
And you didn't even know what the simple touch of his lips against yours felt like.
By the sixth night you had learnt absolutely nothing new about him. Well, nothing that was outside of bodies and pleasure.
You learnt he was an ass man, needing to land slaps to your cheeks no matter what position you were in. You learnt he liked to talk—liked to mock every pathetic sound he wrung out of you. You learnt that he had a bottle of blue pills in his bedside drawer, learnt that he was unashamed to swallow one down in front of you and fuck you with his tongue and fingers until it took effect.
You knew exactly what Jack liked in bed. Outside of that? Absolutely nothing.
His favourite colour? Fuck knows.
How he cared for his leg after a long shift and long night of screwing you senseless? That was between him and his physiotherapist, you guessed.
And he knew nothing about you. Or, at least, he didn't try to get to know you.
You stopped thinking of this arrangement as friends with benefits—friends felt too generous of a word. Coworkers with benefits sounded the closest to the truth. You worked together, spent at least twelve hours a day in the same building, exchanged the occasional witty remark under fluorescent lights. There were no lingering looks, no secret touches, no dropped voices and subtle smirks. And you were fine with it being that way.
Until you weren't.
By month two it had become impossible to ignore the pang that ricocheted behind your ribcage every time you drove away. The pang that grew to an ache every time you went to Dana and Benji's for dinner.
You adored their relationship, admired it. Your parents' messy divorce had left you skeptical of love, had you doubting if it was worth pursuing if it only ended in misery and spite. But your aunt and uncle softened that cynical side of you, reminding you that yes, love could be messy, but it could also be beautiful and fun. It could be coming home to your best friend everyday, hugging each other even after an argument because going to sleep angry never solved anything.
You tried to find what they had in your exes, putting more effort into relationships that drained you by the end. You heard too many times to count that your lives weren't compatible, that they couldn't give their all to someone who was happy to run out the door when the hospital called.
They didn't understand you—didn't understand what it meant to make a difference, to hold someone's life in the palm of your hands and safely return them to their loved ones. They only focused on the days when you couldn't save someone, when the grief held you captive and motionless. They didn't want to continue holding your hand on those hard days.
And so somewhere along the way you stopped trying—convincing yourself that you were fine with casual, that it was the most suitable relationship for your lifestyle. But every time you saw Dana and Benji, you knew that wasn't true.
They reminded you that you wanted, and deserved, more.
Jack had never slept better. Even with that little voice in the back of his head telling him that he had crossed a line—that he was risking not only your career but his friendship with Dana. He managed to silence that voice three times a week; the sounds of the pleasure he was unleashing on you drowning out everything else.
He truly believed he could keep things separate—that the beautiful woman he had in his bed wasn't the same beautiful woman he trusted and found himself proud of every shift. He could totally keep them separate.
So what if his eyes followed your ass when you walked away from the Hub, admiring how the black scrubs clung like a second skin, knowing how they looked discarded on his bedroom floor. Knowing how the globes of your ass felt clutched in his hands, the sound of his palms slapping them reverberating off his walls.
So what if he found himself craving your taste a minimum of three times every shift, the mere thought of your sweet nectar drenching his face leading to inopportune boners.
No one had to know that whenever he saw you biting back at arrogant surgeons that his eyes were glued to your lips, remembering how good they looked—how good they felt—wrapped around his cock. The no kissing clause had been his suggestion—a subconscious part of him knowing that if he felt your lips against his, he wouldn't be able to let go.
The simple act of kissing felt infinitely more intimate than everything else you did. It was a tender act, saved for the person who walked out his door in the morning only to return in the evening. Saved for the person that had left one cold, winter morning and never returned in the frigid evening.
Jack ignored the warmth that spread throughout him in your company, convincing himself it was just lust, just sexual desire. He convinced himself he didn't need to know anything new about you—he already knew what type of student you were, the doctor he had watched you flourish into from the sidelines.
He knew where to touch you, that mouthing at the spot below your ear made you putty in his hands. He knew what positions had you trembling, had your eyes rolling back as you squirted on his dick, on his face. He knew his favourite view was a tie between you above him, suffocating him as you ground your pussy on his mouth, nose, chin, and him behind you, holding you up with a bicep wrapped around your neck in a chokehold, ordering you to keep your eyes on the mirror across from his bed as he stretched your tight pussy with his thick cock over and over again.
He knew that your car was a piece of shit, knew he was worried every time he heard it sputtering out of his driveway—worried enough to demand you stop driving it, to let him drive you to and from work until you could get it fixed, or better yet, buy a new one from this century. (You compromised by getting the bus instead, saying that you two arriving and leaving together would look suspicious.)
And unfortunately, due to his close friendship with Dana, he knew other things about you. What your childhood nickname was, that you once found an abandoned kitten and tried to hide it from your parents—the kitten that was now an old cat, spending it's days curled up on the couch in Dana's sunroom. He knew your parents had an ugly divorce, one they threw you in the middle of—forcing you to choose a side, which subsequently left you in the care of Dana and Benji for a few years.
He knew more about you than he ever wanted to.
"Strip."
Oh, you fucked up.
The drive to Jack's had been dead silent, his anger rolling off of him in waves—sitting in between you two like a physical being. It had your muscles tensing, and more shamefully, had a fire brewing in your core. Because you liked when he got mad—when he barely spoke a word to you, choosing to get his frustrations out by relentlessly drilling you into his mattress. You liked when he got mean—because at least then you knew he was feeling something towards you other than indifference.
You did as you were told, stripping out of your black scrubs, leaving you in your mismatched bra and panties. From his spot leaning against the wall, Jack could already see the damp patch spreading on your underwear. He let out a humourless chuckle, a thrill running through him seeing how desperate you were already.
"Take your bra off. Lie on the bed."
Again, you followed his instructions with no complaint, no backtalk. Which was the complete opposite to how you had been three hours before—questioning his treatment plan in front of everyone in Trauma One, implying that his orders would cause the patient unnecessary problems later on.
You had a good argument, but he was not going to let your attitude go unchecked. He was not going to let you think the way you spoke to him was something you could do again.
He pushed off the wall, ignoring the pain in his leg—he would deal with it later, once you were in an uber on your way home. He sat down next to you on the bed, trailing light fingers from your ankle up your leg, avoiding the area you wanted him the most. He revelled in the sight of your breasts heaving up and down—you were so responsive, nothing more than his teasing touches starting to unravel you. His fingers continued their journey up your body, skimming over your trembling stomach and resting in the valley between your breasts.
The light touches distracted you enough that you weren't expecting his other hand coming up, slapping your tit before pinching the pebbled nipple. Hard.
"Ah—Jack!" You shrieked, your back arching away—or towards, you weren't sure—from the pain. Whimpers slipped from you as his touch eased up, his head dropping to place soft kisses around the tender skin. The fingers between your breasts trailed to the neglected nipple, tweaking it gently.
He pulled back, smirking when you whined at the loss of his touch. "Anything you want to say before we get started?" He drawled, raising his eyebrows pointedly.
You pouted, pretending to think. "Your curls looked really good today."
A rough hand dropped to your thigh, spreading them apart and pinching the sensitive flesh of your inner thigh. "Flattery will get you nowhere, not in this room."
"So there are other rooms where it will get me somewhere?"
"You need to learn when to keep your mouth shut." He didn't give you time to talk back, raising his hand and landing a harsh slap to your clothed pussy. Your hips shot off the bed with a gasp, chasing the friction—needy for it. He openly laughed at you, his free hand pushing your thigh down as he delivered another slap.
He moved back to sit on the edge of the bed, patting his thigh with a warning look. He watched with sick pleasure as you crawled towards him on all fours, grabbing your upper arm once you were close enough and pulling you over his lap with force. You let out a yelp, muffled by the sheets as you failed to catch yourself on your arms.
His hands gripped your ass cheeks, squeezing and kneading them. "Love this ass, sweetheart. Distracts me a bit too much at work, though. Somethin' else you need to be punished for."
You huffed, pushing up on your arms. "How is that my fau—" you cut off with a gasp, a hard slap to your left cheek stealing your breath and jolting you forward. The heat travelled the short distance to your core, adding fuel to the flames already blazing. Your panties were embarrassingly soaked from his rough treatment, sticking to your skin and his scrub pants.
"What did I say about keeping your mouth shut, huh?" His hand rubbed over the tender spot, tsking.
"Technically," you started, voice light and breathy, "you didn't tell me to shut my mouth."
You were rewarded with three slaps in quick succession, pulling a loud moan from you. You ground your hips the best you could, trying to get the right angle for your aching clit to rub against the growing bulge under you.
"Fucking brat," Jack spat, faux malice lacing his tone. "Running your mouth in my ED, and now you're trying to get off without my permission?" He pulled the ruined cloth between your legs to the side, a light finger ghosting along the slick covering your folds. He groaned, pulling his finger back to suck it clean. "You're dripping—not much of a punishment if you're enjoying yourself, is it?"
Any response you had is stolen from your mouth, whines falling out instead as he plunged two thick fingers into you. He didn't start slow—he never did when he was like this—pistoning them in and out at a force that was bordering on inhuman, making sinful wet sounds fill his room. His other hand forced your head into the sheets, muffling your whimpers—the sheets growing damp underneath you from your drool.
He hit your sweet spot with every thrust, your clit rubbing against his leg from the force. You could feel your high rapidly approaching, the spankings leaving your nerve ends feeling raw and exposed. Jack could feel it—how your walls were fluttering and clenching around his fingers, your muffled whines and moans turning high-pitched. He inserted a third finger, stopping the thrusting and leaving them still—the pads of them rubbing oh so slowly against the textured spot.
He knew it felt like torture to you, how slow he was going—keeping you right on the edge, suspended in the air, looking down at the waves of pleasure he was denying you. Your hips moved back and forth, trying to fuck yourself on his fingers. His hand left your head, delivering another harsh slap to your aching ass—making you sob from the unbearable mix of pain and pleasure swirling in your core. "Who said you're allowed to do that, sweetheart?" He asked, mockingly sweet.
"Please," you whimpered, turning your head to look at him with glazed eyes. "Please, Jack."
"Begging isn't gonna do you any favours tonight, pretty girl."
He pulled his fingers out, leaving you empty and clenching around nothing. "Up you get," he said, helping you move until you were straddling him—your naked thighs bracketing his clothed ones. One large hand was clutching your ass, keeping your hips from meeting his—prolonging your search for sweet relief. His other hand came up to your mouth, a wet finger tapping your bottom lip. "Clean up your mess," he muttered, hooded eyes focused on your lips parting for him.
You licked the tip of his finger teasingly, moaning at the taste of yourself on his skin. Something low rumbled in his chest, and he pushed all three fingers into your mouth—watching intently as you licked and sucked your slick off of them. Your dazed eyes met his and it struck him—not for the first time—how beautiful you were, how you allowed him to see you like this. It made that annoying thing in his chest happen—the thing that felt like his heart was aching in longing, yearning.
He thrust his fingers in deeper, making you gag around them—watching in sick delight as tears slipped down your cheeks. Your hips started to rock in his hold, seeking friction that you weren't going to find. His cock was painfully hard and tenting his scrubs, making it impossible to ignore—especially not when you looked so fucking ruined.
He removed his fingers from your mouth, a string of saliva keeping them connected to your lips. He felt the overwhelming urge to kiss you—again, not for the first time—and knew that the only way to stop himself from doing so was to fuck you from behind—a position he had been favouring lately, for this very reason.
He unceremoniously shifted you onto the bed next to him—a small, surprised squeak escaping you. His lips twitched at the cute sound, and he briefly forgot what he was doing, what he was mad about. Your hand sneaking onto his lap to squeeze his cock reminded him.
Jack abruptly stood up, placing himself between your open thighs. He gripped your chin, tilting it up so you couldn't look anywhere except his eyes—his desire painting them black, amber flames surrounding the dilated pupils. "You're just making this harder for yourself, sweetheart. You sure there's nothing you wanna say?"
Your eyes dropped down to the tent inches from your face, your fingers twitching with the need to start palming him. "You sure you're not the one making it harder for yourself?" You met his eyes again, watching them narrow menacingly as your innocent smile morphed into a cheeky smirk.
His hand moved from your chin, gripping your cheeks hard and squishing them 'til your lips puckered. "Still haven't learnt your lesson." He pushed your head back, encouraging you to lie back.
He grabbed the sides of your soiled underwear and yanked them down your legs, leaving you completely bare while he was still fully dressed. His hands found your waist, flipping you onto your stomach with ease and pulling you back so your legs were hanging off the bed with your ass in the air.
Your cheeks received one more slap each—Jack really was obsessed with your ass—before you felt his tip prodding at your entrance, slipping down to nudge your clit. You whined at the teasing, pushing your ass back against him. A large hand splayed between your shoulder blades, pressing you into the mattress with force.
"Stay. Still." He ordered through gritted teeth.
Then he plunged in, sinking to the hilt in one thrust. A choked moan lodged in your throat, his size still a shock no matter how many times he stretched you open. He gave you no time to adjust, setting a harsh rhythm, making your hands scramble around on the sheets looking for support.
"So big," you gasped out.
A deep laugh rumbled from him. "So big," he mocked you. "You say that every time."
Skin slapping against skin filled the room, along with his grunts and your mewling. You could feel the fabric of his scrubs on the back of your thighs—the fact he was fucking you while fully clothed sending a shiver down your spine.
Jack picked up on the signs of your impending orgasm straight away, feeling his own tightening his balls. "Hold it," he demanded, slipping a hand under your hips and easily finding your clit. You sobbed into the sheets as he rubbed tight circles, your body locking up in effort to keep your release at bay.
"S'not fair," you whined, high and wrecked. The fire in your core was raging, threatening to set you aflame—Jack's orders be damned.
"Y'know what's not fair?" Jack grunted. "When pretty residents walk around like they own the place." His hand moved from your back, his palm resting on the sheets next to your head. He dropped forward, dragging his lips up your spine, biting down on the curve where your shoulder met your neck. Your eyes rolled back, the pain adding to the dizzying pleasure that was making your whole body ache from holding back. "S'not fair," he mocked you again, "when you make me walk around hard. All. Fucking. Shift." He punctuated the last words with hard thrusts, the force knocking breaths out of you.
"Come in me, Jack, please." You whined, delirious and in need of whatever he'll give you. "Need it s'bad, I'll be good f'you—promise!"
He groaned at your begging, pulling out at the last second to deny you what you were so prettily asking for. Even if he wanted nothing more than to fill you to the brim, this was part of your punishment. He spilled over your ass and lower back, painting your skin in white streaks.
You sobbed at the loss of him, at his hand leaving your burning clit and giving you no relief. He leaned back over you, his mouth hovering right next to your ear. "Aw, you wanna come, sweetheart?" You nodded fervently, tears soaking the sheets below you. He gripped your chin tight, turning your face until your lips were inches from his—your breaths mingling together. "Be a good girl and apologise."
"But I didn't do anything wrong." You whimpered out.
He tutted. "Try again."
His hand returned to your clit, fingers rubbing agonisingly slow figure eights—the fire blooming at full force beneath his touch. He watched the sweat beading at your hairline, the tremors running through your body making his bed shake; you were so determined to not give in, and it only made him inevitably breaking you that much sweeter.
He moved his head, nuzzling into the side of your neck—breathing in your intoxicating scent before he started nipping and sucking at the spot below your ear. And just as he predicted, that was your breaking point. Your body shook harder underneath him, a debauched moan slipping from you lips.
"M'sorry, Jack! I'm so sorry—won't do it again." You whimpered, hips rolling back and forth, trying to hump his hand. "Please—it hurts so bad!"
Satisfied that you finally said you were sorry, he moved off of you—flopping onto his back next to you and not wasting a second to grasp your waist and pull you on top of him. He positioned you so you were hovering over his face, giving you a moment to get your bearings before yanking you down and absolutely devouring you.
Your hands were quick to thread into his curls, tugging hard as you rode his face. Three fingers thrust into you again, this time curling and hitting your g-spot perfectly. The most sinful sounds he'd ever heard fell from your mouth, a sharp cry jolting out of you when his lips wrapped around your clit and sucked hard. You were so close already, the teasing and edging for what felt like hours leaving a painful knot that was ready to unravel violently.
"Jack—oh, fuck!" You shook above him, your body glistening with sweat as you climbed higher. He groaned, marvelling at the sight of you—yeah, he was never going to forget this. It sent vibrations through your pussy and your vision started to blur at the edges. "I'm gonna come—please let me come!"
He doubled his efforts, silently telling you to let go. You threw your head back with a scream, an all-consuming orgasm tearing through your core—ripping every single one of your nerves apart, a new galaxy bursting behind your eyes. You squirted all over Jack's face, his eyes never once leaving your heaving body as he eagerly drank every drop you offered him. He continued fucking his fingers into you, mouthing at your clit as you came down. You tried to lift your hips off his face but he refused, not letting up until overstimulated sobs left you and you begged him to stop.
He sat you on his chest, rubbing his hands along your thighs and hips. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?"
You returned home feeling both light and heavy—your head light from the brief sub space Jack put you in, your heart heavy because you couldn't do this anymore.
You couldn't do casual, you deserved more. And you knew Jack could never offer you what you truly needed, not when he was so adamant on being alone—which, honestly, was bullshit. He was never alone—choosing to either strap his SWAT vest on or pick up an extra shift in the ED, calling you up when he wanted company sex, refusing to sit in the silence by himself.
You didn't re-download the dating apps right away, content with accepting the fact that you were ready to start looking again. You continued your routine with Jack, albeit with a little less enthusiasm than usual. If he picked up on it, he didn't say anything—it wasn't like you two talked much anyways.
A few weeks later, you were at the Northside Farmers Market with your mom, browsing the stalls before you had to leave for your night shift. It was something the two of you tried to do every other week when your schedules lined up—an old tradition you had as a kid, every Friday going to the market to buy fresh, local ingredients for your family dinner the following Sunday. It stopped when your parents' tumultuous arguments in front of the vendors, the public, tainted something you once held so dear. Now that you were an adult, you were determined to replace those memories with good ones again.
You were at the baker's stall, exchanging idle chit-chat with Billie—the vendor—when a tall man approached the stall. Billie's face lit up at the sight of him, the older woman rounding the counter to pull him into a hug.
"Ollie," she said, pulling back and swatting his arm lightly. "I should be mad at you, y'know. You work how many blocks away, and you're only visiting your Ma now?"
You turned to the man in surprise, watching his cheeks flush red. He was older than you—most likely in his forties, if you were to guess from the few grey hairs streaking his dark beard. He was ruggedly handsome but tamed—his clothes looking like he would fit in on a farm, but the stitching on his jacket told you he would've paid at least a couple hundred for it.
Before he could respond, Billie looked between the both of you—the smile of a cunning mother overtaking her face. She placed a hand on his bicep, turning to you. "This is my son Oliver, he works at Westbridge as an anesthesiologist. If I remember correctly, you work at a hospital, don't you?" Oliver turned to you fully then, kind green eyes looking you up and down in pleasant surprise.
You smiled bashfully. "Yes, you remember correctly. I'm a third year resident at PTMC, specialising in Emergency Medicine." Oliver held out a hand and you shook it, offering him your name.
Billie returned to the other side of her stall, helping out with another customer. You and Oliver stepped to the side, falling into easy conversation about your jobs. Time passed quickly, and before you knew it your warning alarm to leave for your shift was going off. Oliver politely asked if he could get your number—saying that it's been really nice talking to you, and that he would love to get to know you more over a coffee or dinner sometime. You happily gave it to him with the smallest flutter in your chest—something in the shape of hope.
You found your mom at the books & records stall, gushing to her about the handsome man you just met.
"People hardly meet organically anymore!" She exclaimed, looping her arm through yours, the two of you practically squealing as you left the market.
Not even an hour later, you were standing at the Hub, talking to Lena about the parents in North Three with a degree in medicine from Google University, when your phone vibrated in your pocket. You pulled it out to see a text from an unknown number.
7:15pm
(412) 858-5725: It was really great meeting you today, I would love to take you out for dinner one night soon if you're interested
(412) 858-5725: I completely understand if our schedules don't match up, no pressure at all :)
(412) 858-5725: This is Oliver, by the way. If that wasn't obvious already haha
"I know that look," Lena singsonged, pointing an accusatory finger at your face. You looked up from your phone to see a sly smirk on her face. "Who's the guy?"
You looked away, biting your lip to suppress the smile you didn't realise had bloomed across your face. "It's no one, really. We only met, like, an hour ago."
"Ah, young love," the older nurse swooned. "Let me know how it goes, hon." Then she was throwing you a wink and calling after Vivi who was rushing past.
Luckily, you and Oliver figured out you both had the following Friday off and made plans to go to a family-owned Italian restaurant—not too intimate, not too casual. You kept the date to yourself—not even telling your mom—in fear of jinxing it. The two of you exchanged a handful of texts before your date, each one making you feel more giddy about your upcoming date.
You went to Jack's once in the week before your date with Oliver—cutting your usual three nights a week down to one, claiming that you were feeling too unwell the other nights. Which technically wasn't a lie, the guilt was starting to make you feel uneasy. You reminded yourself that you had no reason to feel guilty—you and Jack weren't dating, weren't exclusive, and you hadn't even been on a date with Oliver yet. But even with your reasoning, there was something clenching your chest and curdling your gut. You reminded yourself that you and Jack were just coworkers who used each other for stress relief; you didn't tell Shen about your date, so why would you tell Abbot?
The guilt stayed with you as you got ready for the date—feeling like you were trying to cover a cold secret with someone else's warmth. Your thoughts were briefly distracted when your phone pinged with a text.
7:03pm
Abbot: Come over to mine tonight. 9pm.
You: Sorry, can't tonight. I have plans.
Abbot: 👍
You scoffed at his response, your previous guilt evaporating in an instant. This was what you needed—the reminder that you deserved more than what Jack could give you.
You walked into the restaurant just before seven thirty, feeling like you had something to prove—to yourself or to someone else, you weren't sure.
The date went well—great, even. Oliver was charming, but also humble—mentioning his less than glamorous upbringing, how he got into med school on a scholarship, that the first thing he did with his first big paycheck was pay off part of his parent's mortgage.
You bonded over the struggle that was med school, the failing healthcare system, the weirdest cases you've worked on. Dinner continued into dessert, then another bottle of wine, but there was still a tension in the back of your head. It had you turning your head when he leaned in to kiss you, his lips brushing your cheek instead of your lips. It had you comparing the hand on your bare shoulder to another hand, one that wore a dark ring and knew exactly how to touch you.
You parted ways with tentative plans for a second date; the next time your nights off aligned wasn't for another two weeks, and you both didn't want to put too much pressure on a set date just yet.
You visited your mom the next day for lunch, filling her in on all the details about your date. She was ecstatic for you, claiming that she always knew the market was going to pay you back somehow.
Monday rolled around quickly, and you walked into your shift ten minutes early like you always did—allowing yourself a few minutes to catch up with your aunt before she went home. Dana was at the Hub as usual, complaining to Robby about the nurse shortage and the pressure it was putting on her people.
She looked over as you approached the counter, her face morphing into a smirk that you knew meant she had been talking to your mom.
"Hey, doll. How was your weekend?" She emphasised the question with a small wink. "Your mom told me you had a handsome date on Friday."
You rolled your eyes at her fondly. "I should've known she'd tell you as soon as I left on Saturday."
Dana rounded the counter and slung an arm around your shoulder. "It wasn't straight away, she waited until we had dinner that night." You laughed with a small shake of your head. "Don't leave me hanging, how was it?"
Robby was still stood behind the counter with his arms crossed, partially paying attention to you and your aunt. His face was pulled into a puzzled expression as he observed Jack standing not far behind you—clearly eavesdropping on your conversation with Dana, a small frown furrowing his brows and setting his mouth in a straight line. It wasn't really eavesdropping since you were both talking at a normal volume, any of your colleagues passing by would've heard your conversation.
What Robby found odd was that Jack had stopped walking on his way to the lockers to listen, one hand frozen on his bag strap and the other curled into a tight fist at his side. His cheek twitched in the way that meant something was bothering him, and Robby came to the chilling realisation that Jack was jealous. Over you—Dana's niece.
You started recounting the date to Dana, a giddy smile stretching your lips. It felt good to be openly wanted by someone, to not be a secret kept in the dark—to be something other than a stress relief booty call.
Robby watched in unease as Jack continued to stand as still as a statue, the vein in his forehead starting to bulge as a dark red crept up his neck.
Robby grabbed a tablet and casually rounded the Hub's counter, trying not to draw your attention. He started towards the North rooms, grabbing Jack's bicep in an iron grip and forcing him through the North Bay doors.
Once safely out of your earshot, he turned to his friend with a scolding glare.
"What the fuck did you do?"
Jack was pretty damn proud of himself. He managed to get to the end of his shift without blowing up at you once. It was due to Robby's threat ringing in his ears for the most part—having your best friend threaten to castrate you with a dead serious face tends to lower your anger to a simmer.
Jack hadn't uttered a word to Robby, the guilt and jealously written all over his face told him enough. Robby kindly reminded him that he was the least of Jack's worries—if Dana found out he so much as touched a hair on your head, losing his dick would be sweet relief compared to what she'd do.
So, Jack treated you as normal—ignoring the stabbing in his chest, the beast in his gut demanding to be let out.
There were less than ten minutes left of his shift when he caught sight of you talking to Lena at the north nurse's station.
Keep walking, he told himself. His feet didn't seem to get the memo.
"I meant to ask," Lena said, leaning her arms on the counter. "Any update on Market Guy?"
Robby had dragged Jack away before he heard the full recount of your date to Dana, which he had been both grateful for and disappointed by. He needed to know like he needed air to breathe—which was a terrifying realisation to him.
"We went out for dinner on Friday," you replied, biting your lip to hold back yet another smile. "It was really nice. He was a total gentleman, very charming, pretty down to earth." Lena nodded along, hanging off of every word. "We're planning a second date for when our schedules next align."
That was it for Jack. His vision clouded with a red fog, the beast in his gut rearing its head and breaking out. He stormed over to the two of you, gripping your upper arm.
"We need to talk," he bit out, ignoring the shocked look Lena gave him.
He didn't wait for your response, pulling you towards the only empty Central room. Once the door was closed, you struggled in his hold, trying to rip your arm free.
"Let go of me, Dr. Abbot." You demanded as calmly as you could, your heart beat quickening at the storm rolling over his face. He let go but stepped closer, crowding your personal space.
"That's why you couldn't see me on Friday? Because you had a date?" He seethed through clenched teeth.
You stepped back, anger starting to grip your chest. "I'm sorry—what?"
He followed you, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Did you sleep with him?"
"How the fuck is that any of your business?"
Unbeknownst to the both of you, the day shift had started filtering in—Robby and Dana finding their command posts at the Hub. Dana was the first to notice the two of you in Central Seven, her eyebrows drawing together at the furious look on your face.
"Hey," she said to Robby, getting his attention. She nodded towards where you and Jack looked like you were having a heated discussion. "You know what's going on with them?"
Robby followed her eyeline, tensing as he saw what he prayed wouldn't happen within the walls of his ED. He rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. "Uh, no, not a clue."
Dana eyed him suspiciously. "Well, do you mind telling them we have patients who could use that room?"
"I'd rather not go in there."
Dana slowly turned to him, levelling him with a glare. "Michael Robinavitch, what aren't you telling me?"
Back in the room, your hands were starting to shake from anger, and Jack's head was throbbing from holding back the full wrath of his jealousy.
"I have the right to know if you're screwing other people."
You let out a humourless laugh. "Are you kidding me right now? You don't have the right to know shit!"
Jack's cheek twitched. "Yes I do. You said no to me to see some other guy."
"Oh, what—so I'm meant to come running at your beck and call?"
His jaw flexed and he opened his mouth, but your anger and disbelief at the situation had taken over.
"This has just been one big waste of time! I don't want casual anymore—not with you, not with anyone."
Jack opened his mouth before he could think better of it. "I didn't hear you complaining when you opened your legs for me."
A crack echoed throughout the room, the sound of your palm slapping Jack's cheek filling the tension riddled air. "You're a fucking asshole, Jack Abbot."
You shoulder checked him as you rushed out the door, refusing to let him see the tears streaming down your cheeks. You hurried past the Hub, not noticing Dana and Robby watching you with shock painting their faces. Your hand was tingling from the impact, your vision blurring as you made your way out the ambulance bay doors.
Dana didn't stop to think, storming into Central Seven where Jack was staring at the ground—his hand rubbing his tender cheek.
"What the fuck did you do to my baby?" She demanded, her voice dangerously low.
Shit.
The cold morning air made the tears staining your cheeks sting slightly, the sensation grounding and stopping you from completely falling apart. You never cried over a man—it was a rule you made for yourself when you were young, after seeing how your dad would make your mom fall apart at least once a week. They weren't worth your tears.
You wanted to charge back into the ED and slap Jack again for making you cry.
You stayed sitting on the ground with your back against the brick wall until your tears dried, until your breaths evened out and didn't hurt on their way out your lungs. You tensed when you heard uneven steps approach you—there was only one person whose steps sounded like that.
Your head shot up as he sat down opposite you, glaring daggers at him. He raised his hands placatingly.
"Please don't hit me, I'm here to apologise." When you didn't make a move to leave or attack him, he slowly lowered his hands. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean what I said—to imply that you were easy."
"Then why did you say it?" Fuck, you hated how small your voice sounded.
He let out a long breath, looking up at the sky. "Because I was mad—upset." He looked back at you, his eyes softer than you'd ever seen them. "I didn't know that's how you felt…you never said anything to me."
"How could I when you barely speak to me? You just fuck me and then push me into an uber. Really makes a girl feel special," you shook your head, wrapping your arms around your chest—starting to feel exposed. "I can't read your mind, Jack. You can't tell me you want casual one day and the next get mad because I went on a date."
He had the decency to look ashamed, wincing and squeezing his eyes shut. "That's fair. I don't really have any excuses, no good ones at least."
You sighed, your head feeling heavy and starting to throb. "I don't need excuses; I just want to know why. Why you act like you don't know me, why you won't—" your voice dropped, wobbling slightly. "Why you won't kiss or hug me. I mean," you let out a bitter chuckle, "do you even know what aftercare is?"
He started to twist his ring around his finger, his mouth moving side to side as he struggled to find the right words to say. "Kissing and hugging felt too intimate—felt like things I couldn't take back." He looked up at you again, his eyes glassy. "I didn't want to admit to myself that I had—have—feelings for you, and the thought of kissing you…I mean I've thought about it a lot—to the point it's been driving me insane." He rubbed a hand along his jaw, a huffed laugh leaving him. "I was worried that by kissing you I wouldn't be able to let go, and that terrified me. It meant you could become another photo I keep in my nightstand."
You knew what he was talking about—you had opened it while looking for tissues, finding a collection of photographs in the drawer. You tried not to snoop, but you were fairly certain one of them was his wife and a couple others were his old army buddies.
"I get that, I do. The universe has handed you more than enough grief and hardship for one lifetime." You stood up, closing the distance between you and sitting next to him. "But that isn't solely your decision to make, Jack. You've been hurting us both by keeping your feelings to yourself." You brought your knees up, hugging them to your chest and resting your cheek on them. "And, honestly? A girl needs kisses and cuddles after coming four times in one night; a sub drop can be pretty brutal."
Jack's guilt multiplied tenfold. "Shit. Fuck, I'm sorry—I didn't even think about that." He shifted slightly, turning to look at you fully. "I would like to try again, if you'll let me. No casual bullshit, no pretending like I don't think about you all the time. Lots of kissing and cuddling—and orgasms, so many orgasms."
It was then that you noticed the ice pack in Jack's hands, resting over his groin. You couldn't stop the snort that slipped out. "I see you had a chat with Dana."
"Don't know if I would call it a chat. She's got a harder kick than I was expecting."
You hummed. "Just be glad you didn't get to experience her right hook—she gave my dad a black eye when she found out he was cheating on my mom. And she won't hesitate to give you one if you hurt me again."
His eyes were shining, hope swirling around the honey gold and sunlit green. "Does that mean you'll give me another chance?"
"Yes," you replied, letting the small smile break through. "But no sex until I think you deserve it."
Jack nodded, his own megawatt smile putting the sun to shame. "You're in charge here, sweetheart." He leaned in slowly, his eyes flicking between yours and your lips. "Can I kiss you, at least?"
You barely managed a nod before his mouth descended on yours, his lips achingly tender. He moved slowly, basking in the warmth he had been denying himself of for so long. A cold hand came up to cup your cheek and you jerked away in surprise, making him laugh and apologise before diving back in, settling the hand on your back to pull you in closer.
"I was right," he mumbled against your lips. "There's no way I'm letting go now."
GOLDI!!!!! WOAHWOAH OMG I INHALED THIS I DEVOURED THISSSSS jack abbot you are the stupidest man aliveeeee - for some reason manchild jack does something to my brain
this was SUCH a good read omg dom!jack you will always be important to me... i actually felt my feral activate while reading it i need to give him so much attitude it’s INSANE
also did you look in my brain and know that the no kissing rule always makes me go crazy bc omg chef’s kiss !!!! pathetic emotionally constipated jack abbot we have you exactly where we want you !!!
i was giggling so bad watching him realize how badly he messed up like the angst and the smut hit SO well + dana was literally the cherry on top omg mama bear
“You could become another photo i keep in my nightstand.”
Jack nodded, his own megawatt smile putting the sun to shame.
Lots of kissing and cuddling—and orgasms, so many orgasms."
count your days goldi you made me fold for him after he was so mean how did you do this and when’s he proposing - thank you for feeding me this i literally licked the plate clean
synopsis you and Robby had been going casual for a while now, but when Jack comes into the picture and wants your attention Robby has to share, but with how much the two of them talk about each other while with you, you suspect they might be more than happy with the situation... (7.3K words)
warnings smut MDNI. Three ways kinda. fingering, breast play, handjobs, making out, p in v sex, pussy eating, getting frisky at work, three way kissing? langauage, age gap but no specified
author note consider this my sorry for no part two to golden girl.... there probably won't be a part two to this though either....
the pitt masterlist! other rabbot x reader work!
You had never known two men to be as competitive as Jack and Robby.
Two men who admitted to themselves they were both good doctors- great even, though they had different styles. They could look past each other's ways of doing things in order to support each other. One could lead with authority and drive, the other moving round his leadership with kind steps and guidance.
Except when it came to you.
When it was you, they were two teenage boys on the pitch trying to impress a field of girls.
When Jack had asked you for drinks you'd been overjoyed that your lingering glances and petty touches had been enough to convey your interest. However, you then had to explain yours and Robby's arrangement.
You'd been fucking quietly (as in on the down low, nothing about the way you fucked was quiet) and needed to make sure Jack was okay knowing that wouldn't be stopping just because he was taking you on one date. As much as you'd been looking at Jack, hoping for his attention, you couldn't stop the attraction you had to Robby. It had come first, afterall.
You'd said as much to Robby with his cock deep inside of you. Your hands on his shoulders as you bounced, the plap plap plap of skin bouncing off his bedroom walls. “Jack- Jack asked me for drinks,” you gasped.
Robby's skin glowed in sweat. His hands dug into your hips, helping you move up and down at a brutal pace. “My Jack?”
Something about the way he insisted Jack was his had you moaning out, your walls tightening around him.
“Fuck, don't do that,” Robby grunted, head thrown back on his headboard with a whack.
“Your-your Jack. Yes!” Your hands reached back to his thighs, fingernails digging into his skin.
It thrust your chest in Robby's face and he didn't miss a beat to trail his tongue messily across your chest, tasting your sweat and groping at your breast to take your nipple and swirl his tongue around the bud. He moaned around it, sucking like a baby and sending stimulation through your body.
“Fuck-fuck, Robby,” you moaned, dragging your core over him in delicious circles.
He hummed and watched you with encouraging nods. He pulled away from your breast and took your neck, bringing you in to him sharply. He nodded along with the movements of your body. “Come on my cock, scream my name, then we can talk about your date with Jack.”
Come on his cock you did, body shaking, mouth hung open soundlessly as Robby held you close into his chest and rutted up into you till he finished, painting your walls and biting down on your shoulder.
Moments later you were tucked into his side, Robby twirling bits of your hair with his head rested against yours.
“So Jack, huh?” he'd asked. “You want to go.” He wasn't looking at you but at the empty space at the bottom of his bed. There was a chest at the bottom with the essentials for such activities: towels, wipes, condoms, lube, maybe even some toys you'd slipped in as a joke all well within reach for him.
“Yeah I do,” you said. “We're only casual right, I'm within my rights to see who I want, aren't I?”
It was all teasing. You knew Robby didn't really want to share you but couldn't commit either so until then you'd be exercising your freedom.
Till he broke, because you knew he would.
That's how you ended up at a bar with Jack, crowded together in a small booth in the corner just days later. A few empty glasses sat around you, as well as an empty basket of chicken wings you'd shared earlier in the night.
Jack's arm was thrown around the booth, finger so close to touching, thigh almost pressed to yours but he kept just beyond touch. Either out of respect for yours and Robby's arrangement, or to drive you crazy.
“How long's this thing with you and Robby been going on?” he asked.
“Few months. We both needed a release with no strings attached kind of thing and it just happened that way.” You weren't ashamed of it. Not embarrassed that you'd given in to Robby the way you'd always wanted to. You didn't care that he was your boss or older than you by some decades. If stuff like that bothered you, you wouldn't have been sitting in the bar with Jack.
“You ever thought of asking me?” he asked with a smirk.
“If you were there that day, I just might have.”
It wasn't like you could ever ignore how attractive Jack was. Just as you couldn't ignore how attractive Robby was.
“And if I wanted to take you on more dates,” said Jack. “How would that work with you and Robby?”
You took your time in running your fingers over the rim of your glass.
The fact of the matter was you thought it wouldn't get better than Robby. Same hours and the same needs bled into sex that had your body shivering and never left you without pleasure. You liked it. You hadn't thought about changing it. You didn't know if you could find as deep a knowing as you had with Robby.
“I-I don't know,” you said, frowning to yourself at your own admission.
“Hey-hey,” said Jack, hand brushing back your hair and cradling your cheek. “I'm not asking you and Robby to stop.” Jack shuffled closer, finally touching you. “I'm just asking if you had room for one more.”
That's how you ended up in the back of Jack's truck pulled around to the dark corners of the bar, sprawled naked along the backs of his seat, legs spread and his mouth hot and heavy on you.
He'd got an orgasm from you pressed up against the wall, fingers curling and circling in the ways you liked like he'd been studying for this.
“Yeah... yeah...” Jack talked down to your pussy, your arousal coating his lips and almost dripping down before he dove back in, fingers spreading you wide and tongue slotting in.
“Jack! It's-it's too much!” you cried, desperate to close your thighs but his hands darted out and kept one high up on the back seats and the other limp on the floor. “Jack!”
His tongue fucked into you. “Just come. Come for me baby and I promise I'll stop, I promise-”
Condensation rolled down the windows of his truck, your body moving against the seats as you withered in pleasure. You had come on his tongue, not that it stopped Jack as he promised it would.
You had to explain to Robby the next time you saw him why there were bruises he definitely didn't leave at your thighs and why the pussy he'd memorised the taste of had something different to it.
That's how the challenge started.
Your time was split three ways: Work, Robby and Jack. Downtime was spent in Robby's apartment or Jack's place. You had a perfectly divided sets of your favourite clothes in each wardrobe, had given enough hints for each of them to get in your favourite snacks and a toothbrush in each bathroom.
You had, you would say, perfectly trained them.
They knew it. They knew they'd somehow become your toys. They knew if you weren't with one of them you'd be with the other and they used your body like a telegram to read each others messages, but as far as you knew they'd never brought it up with each other in person.
“What are you doing tonight?” asked Robby, hovering next to you, looking down at the tablet in hand.
Around the two of you the Pitt carried on moving. The doctors and nurses conversed and walked, the patients complained and crashed and nobody looked twice at the boss talking to a resident. If they'd looked too close they might have realised how often the two of you did speak in work.
You stood, staring at the board, trying to find a blank spot to slide into. “Uh, dinner with Jack.”
From the corners of your eyes you spotted Robby shifting his weight, head lowering as he huffs.
“Dinner with Jack, second time this week, huh,” he said. “Wonder how this place can manage without him.”
A smirk graced your lips as you turned to consider him.
“Someone feeling neglected?”
“Noooo,” he said, dragging it out and finding something on the tablet cover that was much more important than staring at you. He quipped his head to the side. “Just... you and Jack been going on dinners a lot, this week.”
“Our second one?”
“I could take you for dinner too.”
“But you never do.”
“Do you want me to?” he tried to sound casual but his brows rose at once.
You shrugged. “Ask me.”
“Got to book in time to see you now?” Robby asked. His head bent lower to your ear until you could smell the mint on his lips and feel the heat of his breath ghost the shell of your ear. He blew on it lightly, knowing how it sent shivers down your spine and made your body curl closer into his. “I was here first.”
You tried to hold back a smirk as you stepped back, turning to him. “Is someone jealous?” you teased.
Robby pulled his lips into a frown and shook his head, but he couldn't meet your eyes.
Casual was what Robby wanted, what he thrived on and the only thing he thought he was consistent at. So consistent it was his only relationship. Really, he had no right to be jealous and yet you saw the way his eyes narrowed when patients flirted with you. You knew he felt it when he fucked you hard after doctors on higher floors came down and stared too long at the way you leant over a computer. Casual was what Robby was good at, so he'd never admit he was getting it wrong.
“I'm a single girl,” you reminded him.
“That you are,” he trailed every word longer than it needed to be, saying it as if he didn't quite believe himself.
“And I'm allowed to have dinner with whoever I want?”
“It's not about the dinner,” he said, eyes following a nurse that walked a little too close to the two of you. “It's the fact that I want you in my bed tonight and you tell me you have plans.”
“If you wanted me in your bed more you could just make me your girlfriend?” you said, biting down on your lip to stop your smile.
You watched a glimmer of panic flash in front of his face before it gave way to relief. He knew you weren't really asking because casual worked for you too. Not having to remember dates, or buy anniversary presents or text constantly. It was what you needed. And yet, you loved to tease him with the G and B words.
“I don't have to. You'll come around,” Robby shrugged. “You always do. Tell Jack I said hi.” He walked past you then, hands grazing your elbows as he shuffled by like there wasn't plenty of space.
The small touches he teased you with through out the day was never enough to sustain you. That's why he did it: to keep you coming back for more.
Your dinner with Jack ended how it did almost every night, you in his lap in his apartment, lips moulding against yours, hands running up your back.
Jack always took it slow like the pleasure of you was something to savour, like he didn't believe he'd ever get the chance again. But it had been three months of going back and forth between the two, three months of your body bathed in their kisses and walking around with your head in the clouds.
As much as you loved being with Robby, Jack was new and you were still learning.
“Grinding down on my lap?” he teased slightly breathless, pulling back enough to speak.
You hadn't even realised you were until you felt your panties dampening, till you felt the tension in your hips and the smirk on his lips.
Jack seethed in a breath and went back into you, hand catching the back of your head to draw you in as he encouraged your movements. “Does Robby not satisfy you?”
You smiled against his lips, nipping. “You boys,” you muttered, shuffling closer into his hardening cock, hidden behind his jeans. “Really want to out-do one another, huh?”
“Just want to make sure you're not wasting your time,” he said. Jack pecked your lips over and over again as his hands found the buttons to your jeans, deftly popping them. “With either of us.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
It didn't take long for Jack's fingers to wriggle themselves into your jeans, running lines against your clothed pussy that cried for him. He loved to watch how you moved against his smallest of touches, how you reacted slowly, needy.
“Jack,” you gasped, tilting your head back as his thumb pushed down on your clit, circling slowly. “Robby-Robby says hi.”
Jack hummed. “Does he?” his middle finger slid past the elastic of your panties, finding a home in the warmth of your walls. “He can come say it to me, no good using our girl for messages.”
His lips kissed sweetly at your temple, his endearing move that would catch you off guard in the dirtiest of moments. When he was coaching orgasms out of you through curling fingers or driving into you with your cock, his lips would find your forehead and stay there, mumbling encouragements and compliments that had your body grow fuzzy in a different way.
It was the same way Robby pulled you into his side, fingers twirling around your hair or knuckles grazing your forearms.
They had ways of surprising you, still.
“I got you something,” said Jack, pulling back to get a look at you.
“Oh?”
Jack nodded and tilted his head to nudge against your hose like some horse begging for attention before he withdrew his finger from you. He patted your thighs and you climbed off, falling back into his sofa and letting the cushions swallow you.
You watched as he put his finger in his mouth, licking off the taste of you as if it was a taste of his favourite dish.
Your eyes trailed down his body as he disappeared. The swing of his hips, the pull of his pants over his crotch and the veins that pulled in his arms that had you drooling.
When Jack returned there was a small box in hand and he settled down next to you, throwing an arm around the back of the sofa and offering you the box.
“What is it?” you asked without taking the box. The instinct to sit on your hands to not reach out was a hard one to fight against.
You didn't do gifts, at least not with Robby. His gifts came in litters of kisses and drawn out pleasure throughout long nights. The only present he'd ever got you was a set of lingerie that had only ended up in strips and tears of fabric sprawled along his bedroom floor.
Jack shrugged. “A puppy. You want him to suffocate?” he teased.
With a roll of your eyes you pulled the lid open as Jack tugged your legs into his lap, running his hands up and down.
A thin chain lay on a small velvet, black cushion, a delicate J hanging on the end.
You could feel Jack's eyes on you, watching and waiting for a creation. You were scared to reach out and touch it. Terrified that you'd reach out and the lid would snap shut, that the chain would strangle you. It was as if you'd never been given a gift so beautiful. You hadn't. “Jack, I... I don't know what to say.”
Was it too much? If you and Jack were as casual as you and Robby how could you wear his initial on a necklace?
But you didn't want it to disappear.
You thought about the J hanging over your heart, the chain dangling when you slowly sank onto Jack's cock. You imagined Robby finding it, the way his fingers would push down on the letter till J was etched in there. Or when you rode him, lingering over him to watch his pleasure, would he take the metal letter into his mouth and keep it warm?
“I think you should say-” said Jack, taking up the chain and slowly moving, resting it around your neck. “I love it.”
You moved your hair aside, allowing him to clasp it and relishing in the cooling metal against the flush of your skin. “I do. I love it.”
Jack kissed over the clasp against your skin. “Yeah?”
When your head turned his lips were there, waiting and kissed yours sweetly, hand crawling up to your neck to lay you flat against him. He tested the taste of you with his tongue. His hand ran down your front, pulling at your shirt and exposing the skin only just healing from your last night with him.
“This way,” he said, lips moving against yours with enough time to find words. “When you're with Robby, I'm there too.”
Robby caught sight of the necklace a week later.
“Hey,” he said, eyeing Samira who stood over your shoulder. “Can I borrow you? Ten minutes? Fifteen, tops?”
Sometimes with how well you and Robby played co-workers you couldn’t tell the difference between needing to see a patient and him needing you.
“Course.” Your chair scraped back as you bid a see you later to Mohan and followed after Robby.
He was making a hard line through the department, wearing out his trainers as he didn’t once look back to see if you were hot on his heels. You were.
“Everything okay?”
He led you out the doors and past the stairwell where the on call room was tucked in a corner. It was a room you’d grown familiar with. You knew the desk was rickety and wasn’t best for the kind of activities you and Robby got up to in the room. You knew it was best to cushion the headboard with a cushion, not because there were neighbours to worry about, but to stop anyone else passing by from hearing the thud.
Robby pressed his key into the door and held it open for you, checking the coast was clear before nudging you in and slamming it closed behind the two of you.
His hands were on you, fisting your scrub top, lips claiming yours like he wanted to share his very breath with you.
In spite of the patient you had waiting on discharge, the chairs that you never seemed to quite catch up on and the monitors still ringing in your mind, you held onto Robby with just as much fever. Your hands gripped his shoulders, finding his scruffy hair and pushed your tongue against his.
“You know better than to tease me at work,” he said.
You bit down on his bottom lip, tugging it out.
Robby guided you back to the bed with steady hands on your hips. “Or at least I thought you did.”
When the back of your knees met the bed frame you fell back, dragging Robby with you.
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” you mumbled, hands winding under his top, scraping at the roundness of his belly and feeling the bristle of his hairs.
He hummed, pressing his weight into you. “No?”
“Nuh-uh,” you said.
Robby pulled back enough for you to catch the darkness in his eyes, your slightly tinted lip balm smudging his lips. “I thought you were clever, huh?”
Teasing. You'd only been leaning over charting, maybe jutting out your hips a little more. Maybe grazing against Robby more than you needed to.
There was little time to reply before Robby was licking into your lips again, groaning at the taste and the push of himself into you. He opened your mouth and sort your tongue, hands pushing and pulling up your scrub top until skin gave way to skin and he could feel the plains of you, the warmth you were giving off. He tugged and moved at the skin and pulled off your scrub top.
You knew how it would go. In ten minutes Robby would work you up, have you teetering on the edge of insanity and want then send you back out to the ward. He'd demand you to double up on patients and get them all discharged before you left. He'd get you begging by the end of the night.
Your scrub top was thrown to the corner and Robby's hands grabbed your breasts, groping and moving, licking over what spilled from your bra and nipping.
Your legs wrapped around his waist, tugging him in closer-
Then- he grew cold and still, his lips moving away from his chest.
“Huh? Robby, what?” You shook yourself out of your haze and looked at him.
“What's this?” his voice was low in his throat as he pulled back.
There was cooling metal rested on your chest. Your spine tingled as a finger traced the letter there.
Robby was staring down at the necklace with a frown, eyebrows pinched together and mouth twisting.
You'd imagined Robby finding out about the chain a dozen times, but you didn't expect the look of hurt or anger there. “It's nothing. It's just- Jack, a gift.”
“Gift?” he questioned.
You nodded and gulped, suddenly worried. What if Robby said he couldn't do it anymore? He couldn't share you? Would he insist upon you ending it with Jack to have you all to himself, or would he ditch you and leave you to Jack's capable hands.
The both of you shuffled. Robby swung his legs over the bed, running a hand through his hair as he hunched over and you sat up.
“It's nothing, just a gift, I promise, Robby. I promise,” you said, holding onto his shoulders and pressing a kiss into his shoulder.
Robby stared down at his hands. “It's pretty,” he grumbled.
“You're prettier,” you said, resting your chin on his shoulder.
Robby turned and pulled a face at you.
You smiled and kissed his shoulder again. “Don't think anything of it.”
He inhaled, body moving against yours as he did. “Hard not to. His fucking letter of his name is sitting in between my favourite place.” His eyes flickered down to where your chest was lying in temptation.
You stilled as his hand darted out, picking up the J and fiddling with it.
There was an odd look to him. There was a clench in his jaw and you could feel his body tense but that familiar darkness was still in his eyes. He still licked his lips like he wanted to take a bite from every bit of your flesh and he wasn't letting go of the initial at your chest.
You'd seen the ways your boys acted. When you mentioned the dinner with Jack and watched Robby try to act like he didn't care. When Jack stripped you bare and eyed the bites Robby had left the nights before. Jack would give time to making those marks worse, deeper in colour and mixing Robby's dried spit with his own. How even with his cock deep inside of you Robby would go the lengths of asking for excruciating details on your dates with Jack.
“Well, I have a theory,” you said, swinging yourself into his lap. His hands fell upon you, working like velcro. “You quite like it, the challenge.”
His brows rose, hands casting up and down you. “Challenge?”
“You and Jack. Sharing me.” To test the waters, you rolled your hips against him and felt his cock answer. “The back and worth. Wanting to do better than the other.”
“Don't I?” he asked, kissing over the chain between your shoulder and neck. He picked it up between his teeth and dropped it back down.
“You both have your talents,” you whispered, tilting your neck back and grinding down on him.
“Yeah?”
“Your favourite things... your favourite parts...”
“Parts?” Robby's eyes were wide and pleasing, looking up to you.
You nodded and closed your eyes, chasing the feeling of him. “Jack... he likes to be down there more,” you said with a particular roll down on your hips. “You like to be up here.” You brought your hands up and squeezed at your breasts to bring them together.
Robby's eyes practically bulge out his head and he latches himself between them, groaning into your skin like this was the only rest bite he craved. The only place he needed to be.
“Jack's staking his claim,” you moaned. “Making sure... you see him.”
His tongue left a trail of his saliva over your chest. “Then I guess I better stake mine.”
Three days later, Robby's head was between your thighs, nudging his tongue in deep, rubbing his nose into your wetness.
You were calling his name, moaning his name when a new smaller cold chain wrapped around your ankle. You pushed yourself up on your elbows, looking through the haze of pleasure to see a band around your ankle, a delicate R hanging there.
Robby's eyes flicked up to you, smirking and your arousal wetting his lips.
“An anklet, huh?”
“You started it,” said Robby. “A necklace?”
Jack shrugged. “It was something nice.”
“It was a dig.”
Jack shook his head innocently. “No.”
The two of them were leant casually over the counter, stealing a few minutes of relative peace before Robby had to lead him room to room and tell him who was going home and who was not. Who had good chances of living a normal life and those that did not.
Their idea of peace was staring at you from across the floor, where you lingered with Dana. You were talking, just talking with the occasional smile but it was enough for the two of them.
They kept their conversations timid regarding you. They could say everything they needed to say by leaving little bits of each other on your skin.
It seemed the new gifts suddenly sprang on you was encouragement enough.
“So what do we do about it?” asked Jack.
Robby was reluctant to tear is gaze away from you as he slowly dragged his gaze to check on Jack. “On what?”
Jack nodded toward you. “We gonna do this forever?”
“Seems to be working,” said Robby.
“Forever?”
Robby nerves grew on him. He turned his body to Jack, considering him as he considered you. “Has she... said something?” Robby knew he wasn't what made boyfriends or husbands, but were you not happy with what you had?
“No,” said Jack, moving to look down at his hands. “We just gonna keep sharing her? I don't like the idea that I'm stealing your guys time from you.”
“We make it work,” said Robby.
The both of them returned to observing you.
“I like her,” said Jack.
Robby agreed. “Yeah. More than me?”
Jack's eyes ran up and down from you. “Only time will tell.”
“If you're worried about her time we can work something out,” said Robby.
He had the feeling you'd like something like that too. Your time together exhausted him in the best way possible before work so he wasn't sure how you managed splitting your time between him, Jack and work and supposedly getting some rest all between it.
“Work something out?” asked Jack, frowning at the words. It seemed the both of them were stubborn about you. “What? Like a schedule?”
Robby's head fell side to side. “Something like that.”
It took two more weeks of shared dates and beds before you, Robby and Jack could finally be in the same room that wasn't the hospital.
You'd noticed the two of them were talking about each other more. It wasn't unusual for one to bring up the other with arms firm around you, lips etched to your neck.
“Has Jack found that little spot that gets you whining yet?” Robby would ask, sucking on said mark with thick fingers curling into you.
Jack had but you didn't need to answer that for him to know.
“Mmh, mmh, I love this pussy,” Jack said one night when he'd already spent fifteen minutes in lucking and sucking up your pussy. “Can fucking taste Robby in here.”
It was becoming apparent to you, even if it wasn't them, that they really, really liked seeing each other in you. Liked kissing over the same marks and tracing the same path.
Robby had invited you over under the pretence of just casual drinks. You'd said you had plans with Jack (his nights off getting increasingly more likely) and saw the tick in Robby's jaw that you had plans again. Plans that meant his time with you was limited to what he could steal in the staff lounge and on-call room.
Which was why Robby had invited you and Jack around to his. For drinks. Casual.
It didn't stay casual for long.
“Oh, come on,” said Jack taking a swig of his beer, all sweaty from how he'd held it most of the night. “If both of us approached you at a bar, who you picking?”
“I'm not answering that,” you laughed.
You were sandwiched between the two of them on Robby's sofa, curled up between the meat of their thighs that were spread to touch you. Around the back of the sofa, Robby rested his arm while Jack watched you with his head rested on his arm propped on the back of the sofa.
“What? You have to,” said Robby.
“No, I don't,” you said again with a laugh, taking a sip of beer.
“We're big guys, we can handle it,” said Jack with a shrug of indifference.
You doubted they could, whoever you picked. The other would take you to bed and fuck you into the mattress and lick their name against your spine.
Robby's finger prodded into your shoulder for an answer.
“Okay,” you said. You leant forward and ditched your can on the coffee table before settling back with their bodies closer to you. “How does it work?”
“How does what work?” asked Robby, very intrigued by the prospect of who you'd go for.
You rolled your eyes and flattened your feet on the floor. “Dress it up for me. What's the bar like? Who am I with? What are the two of you doing?”
Robby made some sort of pfft sound and laid back.
Jack rubbed a finger over the bottom of his lip and dedicated time to think about it. “The bars dark, low, that kind of thing you'd find downtown,” he recited like he'd thought about this a hundred times. His hand comes to your knee, circling it till you jerked at the tickle. “You'd come with a bunch of your girlfriends and Robby and I-”
“- at the bar,” interjected Robby. His eyes drifted from Jack to you. “We met for a couple drinks, tired from work.”
“Oh, this is very realistic,” you smirked.
Robby gave his own back. “And then you walk in. Little dress, like that black thing you wear sometimes.”
“Practically begging to be noticed,” said Jack. “How could we not? Two old men, down on their luck and a pretty, young thing like you walks in.”
The tingle down your body ran deeper, fuzzier than ever with Jack's hand on you and Robby's eyes lingering. Their breaths and heat co-existing drove you slowly mad.
“Then you start throwing down favours? Is that it?” you asked quietly.
“Rest of the night carries on a bit,” said Robby, drawing your attention to him. He shifts his head side to side as if weighing up the different ways this hypothetical night could go. “Jack and I are having drinks, keeping an eye on you all night.”
“Some of your friends decide to call it early but you want to keep having fun,” said Jack, his hand travelling further up your leg. “Wild girl.”
You had no time to retort before Robby was reaching for you, talking again.
“Jack and I had been waiting for you all night, watching, thinking about buying you drinks every time you got out your card out.” His voice was low, body leaning into you.
“I approach you at the bar, some cheesy line I know you'd secretly like-” added Jack.
“You come sit with us,” said Robby, “Stuck between the two of us just like you are now.”
Robby's breath fanned your pulse thumping in your neck and Jack's hand travelled to the height of your thigh, rubbing his hand up and down. You could imagine it. The bar with the lights down low, catching the eye of the two men who leaned in to talk to each other. Maybe Robby would spot you first as he was saying something to Jack and un-able to take his eyes from you Jack would just have to take a look also.
From there you'd dance with your friends, swing out your hips more than needed, brush back your hair with every sway. You'd check they were watching, enamoured by you every once and in a while and of course they were. How could they not?
“I'm sitting with you now?” you ask, voice breathless as you struggled with knowing who to look at.
Jack's head nodded as his hand came up, popping the button of your jeans. You didn't rise to meet him, nor did you try and stop him.
Neither did Robby.
“Just like now. A good girl, sat between two men who are just slowly, slowly trying to get a taste.” Robby's voice dropped lower and lower, head ducking until he brushed hair from your neck and pressed light kisses along there.
You could feel your own chest heaving, see the the quick moves of it under your hooded gaze.
Jack's hand had slid down your pants and was making a slow observation of your clothed pussy, wet like he'd never known it to be.
You leant your head back for Robby as another warmth spread along the other side of your neck. “Do I let them?” you asked. “Get a taste?”
“Oh yeah,” said Jack, on the account of Robby finding a home in your neck and kissing and licking over his favourite spot. The spot that had your panties growing wetter. “Yeah you let them try, you're so sweet like that.” He pressed a kiss onto your clothed shoulder.
“Whose do we go back to?” you asked, your hands coming up to cradle each of their heads.
“Mine.”
Both of their voices were muffled from lips pressed to different parts of you, but both were just as possessive.
Your fingers curled delightfully around the backs of their heads.
The two of them retreated, looking to each other.
“No cat fights now, boys.”
You leant into Jack first just to grate against Robby's nerves. You pressed your lips into his, holding his face to yours as your lips parted his and you swallowed the sound of surprise he gave you. He groaned and moaned into your lips as he fingers prodded at the gate to heaven under your panties. You were sure he was making more of a noise and more of a show of it because Robby was at your other side.
You didn't know if you'd expected Robby to groan and complain about the show the two of you were putting on. Whether or not he'd get up from his sofa and demand you both leave, ending what you'd been teetering on for months.
Instead, you felt him remain steady and close behind you, his eyes burning into your skull.
You pulled back from Jack slowly, the wet smack of lips leaving the room.
Robby eagerly took you in his arms when you leant back into him.
He sighed at the taste of your lips but as soon as your mouth opened up he moaned at the taste of you mixed with Jack, some forbidden fruit he'd taken the first bite of and become addicted to.
“Oh my god,” Jack groaned from behind you, finally slipping two fingers past your panties and into you folds.
You gasped against Robby's mouth, teeth clashing with his. He held your neck, holding you in to draw out the kiss as his tongue flicked against yours.
You felt Robby's arm stretch out and you expect the feel of his warm embrace, of his hands cupping your chest or pulling back your hair. Instead, he moved past you and wrapped his fingers around Jack's wrist, urging him to move his fingers inside of you in a steady pace.
“Oh-” you moaned, back arching up into Robby was he dropped his head to your neck.
“You're squeezin' me like that, honey,” Jack mumbled against your ear. “Feel like you're already gonna come, huh?”
Robby made a noise into your neck. “We got her excited.”
With your eyes closed in bliss and focusing on not rocking into Jack's hand you blindly reached out. A hand gripped onto Jack's thigh that tensed under your claws digging in and the other to Robby's cock that strained against his jeans.
“Please,” you said, breathless.
Any other time maybe Robby would have put up a fight, make you work for just a glimpse of himself but he smiled and clicked his tongue before he shifted in his seat and started to pop the buttons slowly.
Jack bit down on his lip, his finger working you open and curling but eyes on where Robby's hands fumbled for the belt. “Yeah, that's what you wanted? Wanted Robby's cock?”
“Yes,” you said with a lick of your lips.
Jack brought out his fingers and spread you arousal all around you before circling that small bundle of nerves.
Your head was thrown back, stretching out the skin of your neck. “J-Jack!”
His teeth scraped your neck.
“Gonna come already?” asked Robby, amused at the state of you. He'd never had a front row seat to the effect Jack had on you and by what you'd felt through his boxers and jeans, he was enjoying it.
You shut him up when you bypassed his layers of clothing and wrapped your hand around his cock.
Robby seethed and laid back as you reached around for him, taking what arousal was leaking for the head and dragging it down him.
“You're so good at that, aren't you, baby?” asked Jack as set a steady rhythm upon you. “So good.”
“Jack,” you panted. “Please, I wanna- I wanna-”
He nodded against you.
“You wanna come?” asked Robby from behind you, a hand running up and down your back. “So soon?”
“Let her finish,” said Jack pulling back and staring at you. He worked his fingers over your clit faster, dipping into your heat to drag up your want and repeat it until you were starting to tremble. “Not her fault she's excited by the both of us against her.”
Robby grumbled but couldn't find the words to say much else as your thumb swept the tip of him repeatedly.
“J-Jack!” you came onto his hand with a breath of a moan, your hand squeezing Robby.
“Fuck!” he groaned as he watched you come down from your high.
Jack sent a smirk over your shoulder. “What? Gonna come so soon?” he teased, licking a finger into his mouth and cleaning you from himself.
You caught your breath, slowly taking away your hand from Robby's cock and sitting up straighter. Your heart hammers, your ears were left ringing like you'd just gone through something life changing. You think you had.
Both of the men at your sides shuffled to sit up on either side of you.
“What's up?” asked Jack. “No regrets?”
You looked between the two of them and shook your head.
Before you knew it Robby took to one side of your neck, Jack the other. You were left sitting there as they held you up for them to do their diligent work.
Your eyes closed as you focused on the rub of Robby's beard as he sucked a deep mark onto you. On the other side Jack's slight stubble grazed as he scraped his teeth against different spots of you, unable to settle.
Their hands were hot as Robby's ran over the length of your back, coming around to squeeze at your breasts and earn noises of relief as reward while Jack focused on pulling down your jeans, on pulling open your thighs, desperate to be slotted in between them.
You guided Robby up by his chin, kissing him with a heavy tongue and eager lips writing everything you wanted him to do to you. His cock was still out, protruding and begging for attention with every messy swipe of your lips.
Jack was still on you, making a work at your neck.
You pulled away from Robby, his eyes still almost black from need when you moved to Jack, to kiss him and give him a taste of Robby.
You didn't know if it was just the adrenaline of the two of them kissing you, working you open and apart but you swear you'd never felt the two of them kiss you like they did then. With the other watching, with the other just within reach and with their lips still on the soft skin of yours.
You kept like that for a while, in between them, kissing each one moment, the other breathing hard on you. At some point Jack had gotten his own hardening cock out, rubbing it up and down leisurely as if you had all night to enjoy everything.
Delicately, you dragged your nails down their necks, cupping their chins and kept them steady and like putty in your hands.
Enamoured and under you spell neither realised when there wasn't just one tongue but another. When your smooth skin gave way to stubble neither blinked and when the hands became gruff and coarse, they relished in it.
All until you could guide Robby and Jack's mouths in together, settling back on the sofa like you were about to watch your favourite show.
You watched as Jack's grey and Robby's brown brows furrowed in as they focused in on the new taste, the rougher lips and hotter tongue. Their hands were searching these new bodies with grips and grasps.
Their cocks bobbed with their movements and you watched, mouth salivating.
Noises you'd never heard them make before left them but you weren't even jealous. You were wet and trying to remember what they looked like caving into each other to keep in the back of your mind for months to come.
Only when their faces were reddening and you feared they might fait from suffocation and you'd have to call PTMC and explain why their cocks were out, you clapped your hands once.
Their eyes opened, mouths still against each other as they caught their breaths before looking to you slowly, eyes hazy and faces red, lips swollen.
“Well, this has been fun,” you said, patting their thighs and wedging yourself out from between them. “But I should call it, work tomorrow, early night and all.”
The two were frozen, dumb-founded like teen boys realising they might like their guy friend a little too much.
You were already at the door, throwing your hair over your shoulder and showing the beautiful litters of marks they'd left on you. “See you in work!”
You left gratified. You'd got to come by Jack's hands once and had watched them make out. And even though you were accustom to a drawn out night of pleasure, you were more than set up for the rest of the night with the image of the two of them safely stored away.
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