summary: in the middle of the worst e.r. shift of your whole career, you catch your not-quite boyfriend, shirtless, in an empty room with another resident. (6.4k)
contents: established relationship/friends with benefits, jealousy (mohabbot take five real quick), angst, hurt/comfort, kinda canon divergent 'cause i wrote this when the spoilers dropped a few weeks ago cw for s2 spoilers, physical assault (a la dana in s1), panic attacks, mentions of blood and medical procedures, mentions of patient death, brief mentions of grief, brief mentions of not eating due to stress n sadness, allusions to smut 18+ (MDNI)
The lamplit room is filled with Jack’s exclusion from it.
You writhe beneath the mussed blankets, still buzzing from the remnants of your orgasm, and watch his shadow move beneath the crack of the bathroom door. You’re still filled by him, still leaking a mixture of him onto the stained sheets below, and yet you find yourself missing him, anyway.
He does not seem as grieved by the distance as you are. He sobered almost instantly from his own orgasm and promptly slid off your body, without another word or a kiss of reassurance shared between you. He’d slipped his prosthetic back on and made a beeline for the adjoining bathroom — where he has been for some minutes now, just pacing, and leaving you to stew in the worry of what you had obviously done so wrong.
“Do you wanna order food?” you call into the quiet, reaching for your phone on the nightstand beside you. You miss once, then twice, with hands still tingling from a soul-ascending pleasure. The screen fills the dim room with a blue-white light that makes you squint until your tired eyes adjust.
“What?!” Jack shouts back, muffled from behind the door. The hissing faucet shuts off to a slow drip.
“I said, do you—” You cut off your yelling when the bathroom door squeaks open. Jack appears in the doorway, now dressed in the t-shirt and jeans he’d arrived in. He’s shadowed momentarily by the light behind him until he switches it off again — then he’s painted a dim golden color as he walks back into the bedroom for his shoe.
You hold the thin sheet to your bare chest and shift further up the headboard, bending your knees to accommodate his body when he sits on the edge of the mattress to tie his laces. Your eyes soften, waiting for him to look back at you.
He never does.
More quietly, you tell him, “I asked if you wanted to order food. ‘Cause I don’t really feel like cooking right now and, depending on what you want, we should probably wait to order ‘cause Love Island doesn’t come on for another hour, and—”
Jack’s scruffy chin brushes the thin fabric of his shirt as he turns his head slowly to look at you. There’s a distance in his eyes that cuts you off, like you’re a quick fuck that doesn’t know when to stop talking, like he’s waiting for you to stop so he can get away.
“I think I’m gonna head out now, actually,” he tells you, then returns to knot his laces.
“Oh…” you hum, half-breathless, and pretend his foreign dismissiveness doesn’t tear your chest in two. “Are you… Are you okay—?”
“Yeah,” he shrugs and rises from the mattress. “I’m fine. I just— Need to get home.”
You follow him with wet eyes as he rounds the bed for the opposite side, where his phone and wallet sit on the nightstand and his branded rucksack rests on the floor. “Well, do you want me to wait to watch it with you? ‘Cause then I have to text Princes and tell her not to spoil it for me in the morning—”
“Go ahead,” Jack shrugs, with a faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, as he slides the camo strap over his broad shoulder. “I think I’ll survive a week without it.”
Your frown deepens at his joke.
“Did I do something?” you wonder in a meek voice that makes his chest ache.
“No,” he scoffs. “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know…” you murmur shyly, shifting on the mattress and grimacing slightly when the sticky sheets cling to your thighs. “You never leave right after we have sex, so I— I didn’t know if, maybe… It wasn’t good for your something, or if I said something—”
“No, it was great—” Jack interjects, but cuts himself off quickly thereafter, like he was about to say something he shouldn’t.
The word ‘honey’ was about to roll off his tongue the way it always does when he’s talking to you, but it feels wrong to say it now, for a reason he still can’t name that threatens to strangle him all the same.
“I just gotta go now. Okay?”
At a loss for what else to do, or what else to say that might make him stay, you just nod with a sad smile. “Sure…”
Jack leaves with a polite nod — like the sex was some sort of mindless transaction he’s thanking you for and not something you’ve done quite regularly for the past several months. He doesn’t speak another word to you when he walks out, and doesn’t look back at you once when he shuts the door behind him.
You stew in his absence and forget to eat.
Your tired body functions the following day on nothing but heartache and half a granola bar.
You drown in the bustling emergency department, and in the void of the white screen ahead of you, where you try and fail to do your charting. You can’t quite garner the strength to use your hands, much less use your brain to put letters on the screen that’ll just look like alphabet soup to you anyway. You’re stuck idling in the emptiness inside of you, where your heart withers along with your stomach.
Robby watches from afar, studying you as he flits between patients and residents requiring his attention. He has, self-admittedly, quite the soft spot for you — because you’re the smartest person on this floor and the most sensitive, too, which makes for a great doctor but very often the saddest person you’ll ever meet. He waits for you to correct yourself before he has to step in, and potentially make your day worse than it’s obviously already going.
You don’t move for six minutes straight.
He timed it.
“What is going on over here?” Robby wonders slowly, leaning over the top of the desk and peering down at you with a pair of stern brown eyes.
You blink rapidly to clear the haze of rumination from your vision and shrink into your cushioned seat like a scolded child. “Charting…” you answer with an unconvincing waver in your voice.
“Looks like it,” Robby scoffs with a hint of a smile that gets lost in his greying beard. He taps the desk with his palm and stands to full height again, nodding his head and urging you to follow him. “C’mon. Walk with me.”
He saunters off in the opposite direction of the work station, taking a tablet that Dana hands to him as he goes. It takes a long moment for his words to compute, and you scramble to your feet when he throws you an expectant look over his shoulder. You fall into step with the older man as he drags his glasses from the shirt pocket of his black scrubs.
Robby sets the black frames on the bridge of his nose and wonders aloud with his gaze turned to the screen in his hand, “What’s going on with you today, kid?”
“It’s nothing,” you shrug dismissively, sticking close to the man’s side as you weave within the crowded hall.
He flashes you an unenthusiastic glare in return. His eyes dart between your furrowed brows, to your anxiety-bitten lips (where your teeth dig into the delicate skin even now), to where you wrench the hem of your long-sleeved undershirt into trembling fists. Whatever it is, it’s very clearly not nothing.
“I’m not asking to be polite, kid,” the older man tells you, firm but not entirely unkind. “I can tell something’s wrong, and it’s affecting your work, so— Just tell me.”
You swallow hard and struggle to find the courage to speak, or to meet the man’s gaze as your eyes dart everywhere but back at him.
“It’s about your friend…” you confess in a sheepish murmur that gets lost in the droning of the bustling E.R.
It takes Robby a moment or more to catch your meaning.
“Jack?” he presses, because he knew the two of you were seeing each other, but not that it was quite so serious to warrant the off-day you’re having now. He makes a mental note to ream Abbot out for it the next time he sees him — ‘cause he can’t have any of his residents upset, least of all you.
You nod with an averted gaze. “He’s just… been off—”
“He’s always off,” Robby scoffs.
“Well, not with me,” you tell him, foreignly firm in your quiet argument. “And now he’s not talking to me, and I have no idea what I did…”
“Well, knowing Jack, you probably didn’t do a damn thing,” Robby concedes with a heavy sigh and flashes you a sympathetic look as you turn the corner. “Just give him some time, alright? He’ll come around. He always does. For now, you’ve got a patient in 8 that’s asking for you—”
Before you can make a guess on who it is — though you think you already know the answer — a strong hand wrenches suddenly around your wrist.
The man’s fingers are warm, calloused, and unwavering against your delicate skin. Your heart lurches into your throat at the sudden panic as your chin snaps towards the man towering over you. He’s tall, bearded, rugged, and so angry he’s red in the face.
“I have been waiting out there…” the man starts, taut voice wavering with a withheld fire. “…For four hours. When the hell am I gonna see somebody?”
“How did you get back here?” is the first thing you think to squeak out, because you vaguely recall McKay sending him back to Chairs after taking his vitals some time ago.
Robby steps in then, cutting between you and the stranger to urge him backward and away from you. You rub at your tender wrist when the man’s brutal touch is gone.
“We’re seeing the sickest patients first, sir. So count yourself lucky you aren’t back here,” Robby explains in an even voice, sounding much calmer than he really feels. “But touch anybody in here like that again, and you won’t be seen at all. Got it?”
The man caves with a heavy breath and with his weathered palms splayed in surrender. “I was just asking a question, man…”
“I’ll handle it, boss,” Ahmad cuts in, rushing towards the three of you after catching sight of the altercation from down the hall. He steps between the two of you and the angry patient and ushers him back toward the waiting room.
“Don’t touch me,” you hear the man spit, but complying anyway.
“Trust me, man,” Ahmad quips. “I don’t want to.”
It takes you a long moment thereafter to catch your breath.
It was certainly not the first time you’ve been grabbed by an unhappy patient, and it would certainly not be the last, but you can never quite get used to the fear. The panic is slow to ebb from your veins, even as the man is escorted back to Chairs. You find him sneering silently at you when you catch his eyes, moments before the door shuts behind him.
Robby steps into your tunnel vision, ducking down to meet your gaze with dark eyes glimmering with worry. “You alright, kid? Did he get you?”
“I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory and muster a smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “I’ve seen my fair share of assholes, Robby. Today, even.”
“Well, yeah,” the man scoffs playfully. “You’re with Abbot— I’m sure you’re an expert at dealing with assholes by now…”
By all accounts, you were not supposed to have favorites at the PTMC. And you didn’t really; everyone who stepped foot into the E.R. got the same level of medical care from you — even the assholes. But Louie Cloverfield was different, special. He was the first patient you ever saw as an R1, and when he kept coming in, and you kept picking up his cases, he became your patient.
If Louie was in, and you were on shift, you were the one tending to him. Always.
So, you stay by his side when he loses his pulse, even when the rest of the E.R. reduces to the inevitable chaos of the afternoon rush — even when you know the rest of your co-workers could probably use your help out there now — even when you know there’s nothing more you can do for Louie to keep him alive.
Sweat beads on your forehead as you kneel at his bedside, pounding firmly at the man’s chest in a feeble attempt to keep his heart beating. You’ve lost feeling in your arms now — they’ve gone from aching, to burning, to utterly numb — but your attempt at resuscitation never stops, not even as dark crimson blood spits from his breathing tube; the clearest sign of blood in his lungs.
Robby watches from the back of the room, keeping a close eye on you and the bodies donned in camo outside the window — as the TEMS unit treats a trauma patient across the way, with Jack Abbot among them. He catches the man glancing around the crowded E.R. for a moment, peering over passing heads for a glimpse of you, before the work inevitably drags him away.
Robby knows you have not yet noticed Jack’s presence.
You’ve got the sort of tunnel vision you always get in a crisis, when you refuse to move on until you’ve helped the person in front of you first — which has undoubtedly made you the very backbone of the PTMC patient satisfaction score, though at a detriment to yourself perhaps. Because you never know when to stop; and then, when you inevitably have to, you’ll always find a way to blame yourself for it.
“Three minutes since the epi,” you hear Perlah say, over the sound of your pounding heartbeat in your ears.
“Hold compressions,” Robby commands.
You stop on instinct, and feel the ache done into your bones. You exhale heavy breaths as you wipe sweat from your brow with the back of your gloved hand, careful to avoid the drops of blood spotted there. You feel like your chest is tearing in two when that same, menacing beeping sound fills the air.
“Aystotle,” Robby sighs. “Resume compressions.”
“Give me another amp of epi— and more suction,” you say through panted breaths, situating your palms back over the older man’s sternum. You look past the rogue flyaways falling over your eyes and the nurses crowded around you, peering at Robby with a determined but no less pleading gaze. “What do we do? Should we— Should we give PCC?”
Robby shakes his head with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, it’s too late for that…” he hums sympathetically. “And he’s not an ECMO candidate, so—”
“Well, can you tell me something that we can do?” you snap, harsher than you mean to.
Robby only softens further, dark eyes going tender around the edges as he tells you, “There’s nothing else we can do for him, kid…”
“Robby,” you whimper, flinching like he’s hurt you, but never once stopping your compressions. “C’mon. Please, we can— We can think of something— We still have two more rounds of epi, maybe it’ll—”
You exhale a punched-out breath, like not being able to save Louie hits you like a fist to the stomach. Your aching arms tingle with numbness when you part from the unconscious man. That wretched beeping fills the air once more, ringing through your ears and pounding skull.
“12:07,” you hear Robby announce the time of death, as Perlah’s soft hands grasp gently at your shoulders.
“C’mon. I’ll clean up,” the woman tells you, sniffling. “You take a second.”
“I’m fine,” you shrug, half-strangled, as you slip the bloodied gloves from your half-numb hands. You blink back burning tears as you walk them to the trash.
“You’re not,” Robby murmurs, head bowed to meet your averted gaze. “And that’s okay. Just take a second.”
You remind yourself to breathe — in for seven beats and out for eight — as the muffled exam room breaks away into the chaotic E.R. The rest of it becomes a blur in your tunnel vision, and the calls for concern turn to inaudible slurs in your ears.
“Whoa… you okay?” you only vaguely hear Trinity ask as you storm past the work station.
“Fine,” you squeak on instinct, despite the obvious.
“Oh, yeah, he totally croaked in there,” Ogilvie murmurs, as though to gossip with her, but forgetting to be subtle about it.
“Do you ever think before you speak?” Santos quips. “Or is the stupidity genetic?”
Your heavy eyes search for an empty room to duck into, to at least muffle your screams before you cry in front of everyone. There is no patient in the bed in Central 15, so you burst into that one, still struggling to catch your breath.
Your much-needed inhale gets caught in your chest at the sight you find in the corner of the room — Jack Abbot, stripped off his shirt and wiping blood from his stomach, with Samira standing just behind him, tending carefully to the scrape on his back.
Your sneaker scuffs the tile as you still suddenly in place.
The sound of your sudden presence makes them freeze, too. Their heads dart in your direction, gaping with wide eyes and parted mouths as if you’d just caught them doing something terrible. In a way, it feels like you have.
It feels like you’ve stumbled upon some achingly tender moment between them, of which you had been deprived for some time now — because even when Jack was with you, he was a thousand miles away. You wonder if, maybe, a part of him wanted to be here — with Samira, perhaps — and if that’s why he had left you so abruptly last night, as if it had only occurred to him then that you were no longer what he wanted.
You wouldn’t have blamed him for it, if that were the case. You just wish he would’ve told you before now, so it would feel like less of a white-hot knife lodged into the center of your sternum to find him this way.
“Sorry,” you just barely manage to choke out, though it gets lost in a whimper as you fight back the urge to cry.
Jack’s scruffy chest pinches with worry at the crack in your fragile voice and the visibly frazzled sight of you, all wild-haired and glassy-eyed. It hurts him far worse than the wounds burning red-hot on his pale skin now.
“What happened?” he asks, greying brows lowered in concern.
Samira stills with her soft fingers on Jack’s broad, freckled shoulder, touching him with a tenderness he hasn’t let you give him in some time.
“Are you okay?” she wonders, soft with a worry that is always sincere coming from here, but finds you more like a slap in the face just now.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory, then sniffle as you shake your head at yourself. “I’m not, actually— I don’t know why I said that— Louie just died. Pulmonary hemorrhage. And I was just looking for an empty room to cry in, I didn’t mean to… to interrupt…”
“You didn’t,” Jack assures you, parting from Samira to take a step closer to you.
It takes quite a lot of strength from you to turn away from him, instead of leering at his shirtless form or cowering at the gentle look in his light eyes. “I-I’ll see myself out,” you stammer hopelessly. “Sorry…”
You just barely hear Jack calling your name before the heavy glass door shuts behind you.
With nowhere else to go, and not willing to face the embarrassment of walking back the way you came, you make a beeline for the ambulance bay. The automatic doors part for you, and the cool air outside takes your breath away a second later.
Your chest hitches as you inhale a sniveling breath, trying and failing to regulate your breathing. You stand at the edge of the curb with one hand balled into a fist and one hand clutching your aching chest. Your heart’s telling you that you’re having an embolism and you’re about to keel over at this very moment; your brain’s telling you that you’re just having a panic attack and you need to suck it the hell up.
“Hey,” a man calls from further down the sidewalk.
Your head snaps in the direction of the familiar voice. You tense at the sight of the man who had grabbed you earlier, and your aching heart forgets to beat when you see him storming over to you. You find he’s wearing a smile on his bearded face when he’s close enough, but it looks more cynical than kind.
“You’re the nurse who got me kicked out earlier, aren’t you?” he asks.
You don’t have the breath or the bravery to correct him now.
“I’m sorry, sir…” you sniffle, wet-eyed, and turn away. “It’s just… It’s been a long day, okay? I didn’t mean for you to get escorted out. You just scared me, that’s all. I’m—”
You turn to face him again when he’s standing ahead of you. But before the words of an apology can spill from your mouth, his weathered fist collides with your nose.
You hear a sharp crack, a wet whoosh, and then the dull slap of your body hitting the pavement. You grimace when the back of your skull meets the concrete, and struggle to blink away the black spots from your vision.
The very first face you see is Langdon’s, though you’re not quite sure how long it’s been since your eyes have closed — a few seconds, maybe, or several minutes. You’re still lying on the rough pavement when you come to, with Frank’s gentle fingers brushing the hair out of your eyes with one hand and shining his penlight into your eyes with the other.
“There you are…” the man coos. “What happened to you out here?”
You hardly hear him, like he’s speaking to you from underwater. You answer him with a question of your own, lifting your trembling fingers to the dull throbbing sensation in your nose.
“Is… Is it bad?” you wonder aloud, half-slurring. You grimace first at the wet feeling on your cupid’s bow, then at the bright scarlet blood staining your fingertips. You whisper, voice breaking. “Ow…”
“Whoa, careful there…” Mel wavers, rushing from behind Langdon to help you when you try to sit up on your own. She crouches down beside him and takes you by the elbows in a pair of gentle hands. She squints behind her glasses when your inhale rattles in your chest. “Did you fall on your back?”
“Did somebody hit you?” Langdon presses from her other side, bushy brows lowered in worry.
“Wow…” you mumble, blinking hard, and wincing when you taste blood in your mouth. “So many questions…”
Mel and Langdon share a panicked look you don’t see.
“Yeah, c’mon. Let’s go,” the older man sighs, urging you up by the elbows and steadying you when you sway softly in place. “Come with me…”
“I can walk,” you protest through your ragged breaths, and through the blood dripping from your cupid’s bow and into your mouth. You pull your arm out of his grasp when the strength to do so returns to you, and stagger the rest of the way to the entrance until you regain your footing. “Just… Be normal, alright?”
“Right…” Langdon scoffs and fights back the urge to laugh — because you obviously have no idea how you look right now, with the lower half of your face all covered in blood, as if you’ve just been rescued from a bar fight. There’s hardly anything normal about that.
You try to be, anyway, as you stroll through the crowded E.R., hoping to be blanketed by the chaos inside. Everyone’s too busy charting or rushing to patients to notice your being there. You’re five or more steps away from making it to the bathroom when Robby’s eagle-eyed stare locks in on you from behind his computer.
“Jesus fucking Christ…” the older man blurts, sliding off his glasses and rising from his chair. He abandons his work without a second thought and rounds the workstation to rush to your side.
“I’m okay,” you tell him with a dismissive wave of your hand, pressing onward even when you hear his footsteps nearing you. He stops you with a gentle hand on your shoulder and steps in front of you to block your path.
“What the hell happened to you?” he wonders aloud, looking past you to Langdon and Mel as he drags a pair of gloves from his scrub pockets.
“We found her like this,” Frank shrugs.
“I told you to take a break, not get into a bar fight.”
“Ha-ha,” you monotone, then flinch when it hurts to smile. “Ow…”
“Who did this, huh?” Robby asks, cupping your bloodied face in his gloved hands. He runs his fingers over the back of your head first, to make sure you have no wounds there, before pressing his thumbs gently to the apples of your cheeks. “It wasn’t that asshole from before, was it?”
“I didn’t see him,” you lie through your teeth.
“Any trouble seeing? Any double vision?”
You shake your head against his hands, then inhale another rattling breath.
“Did you fall on your back?” he asks you then.
You nod once.
“What about a headache?”
“I always have a headache,” you answer. “I’m fine, Robby. I just need to get cleaned up—”
“Look at you— You’re not fine,” the man snaps. “Now, c’mon. You’re coming with me.”
You have no choice but to follow him when he wraps a firm, gentle hand around your arm, ushering you to walk ahead of him. You ignore the looks and calls of concern from the coworkers around you, except for Mel’s voice, which comes from behind you.
“Should I find Dr. Abbot?” she wonders aloud.
Your head snaps over your shoulder to look at her, and it makes your vision swim.
“Absolutely do not do that,” you answer, a little harsher than you mean to.
“O-kay…” she stammers and trails off.
“In here,” Robby urges, swinging open the door to the nearest empty room. He keeps a steady hand on your back to keep you stable and turns back to Mel before he follows you inside. “Find Abbot,” he tells her.
You lie on your back on the hospital bed while Robby does an impromptu exam. He presses the cold chestpiece of his stethoscope to your skin and listens to your breathing until it evens out again, from where the air had rushed out of your lungs after the fall. He finds your pupils both equal and reactive, and your nose free from swelling or cracking — “Nothing that mother nature can’t fix,” he says, and takes to cleaning you up instead.
“These beds are so hard,” you murmur, shifting uncomfortably with an icepack pressed to your nose, which Princess had brought by some minutes ago. “We should really get new ones in here. How are patients supposed to be comfortable in these?”
“Yeah, I’ll go tell Gloria,” Robby scoffs, dabbing at your nose with a wet wipe. “I’m sure she’ll get right on that…”
He parts from you to chuck the red-tinted napkin into the bin at his side and waits for you to laugh at his stupid joke. You stay silent. You don’t even give him a pity giggle, and you always, at the very least, give him a goddamn pity giggle. His brows furrow in a mixture of confusion and concern.
“Can I ask you a stupid question?”
“Better than anyone I know, Dr. Robby…”
“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, reaching for another wipe with a gloved hand. It’s freezing against the burning skin of your neck as it dabs it gently there. “Why didn’t you want me telling Abbot about this, huh?”
“Because he doesn’t care…” you mumble cynically, almost inaudibly so.
“Oh, c’mon,” Robby scoffs. “Even you don’t believe that.”
You don’t. Not really. You know Jack cares, if only because it’s in his blood to do so. His basic human empathy is what made him such a good doctor. You just aren’t sure that he cares about you in the way you thought he did — in the way you wanted him to — and you’re not quite sure how to voice that to Robby now.
“He’s busy right now,” you answer instead, still half-hidden behind the icepack. “Too busy for me, and I don’t wanna bother him, so… Just drop it.”
Robby flashes you a sympathetic smile that you don’t see as he swipes at the last bit of blood from your skin. “I know he may not act like it, kid, but he does care about you.”
“You’re right,” you mumble. “He doesn’t act like it—”
Jack Abbot bursts into the room like a red-hot flame through a burning house. His broad chest heaves with panted breaths beneath the thin navy shirt he wears in place of his tactical gear, though his camo pants still sit heavy on his waist.
His wild eyes scan your form. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he blurts.
You glare at Robby from behind the icepack. “I hate you.”
“Yeah, I know…” the man sighs, dropping the crumpled wipe into the trash beside him.
“What happened?” Jack presses, more firmly this time.
“Nothing,” you murmur shyly, unable to meet his gaze when he towers at your bedside with his hands on his hips. “It’s not the first time someone’s swung at me—”
“Yeah, but it’s the first time it’s been this bad. Bad enough that someone had to come get me,” Jack argues, made a bit harsher with the concern pinching at his chest. His head whips over his shoulder. “Who the hell did this?”
“Some guy from Chairs, I think,” Robby shrugs. “Name’s Driscoll. Ahmad’s already handling it. He’ll deal with the police.”
“Good,” Jack nods, firm in a way you’ve always adored about him. He was inherently resolute where you were perpetually indecisive. It mostly came in handy when you struggled to figure out what to eat for dinner, not usually in situations like this. “‘Cause we’re pressing charges on this asshole, alright?”
“Honestly, Jack, I don’t care what you do…” you sigh. “But my head is really starting to hurt, and I really don’t feel like handling this right now.”
“On it,” Robby nods, taking the hint and stalking out of the room. He shuts the curtains after him and dims the light as he goes. The noise of the Pitt muffles again when the door closes behind him, leaving you and Jack alone in the not-quite-silence and the not-quite-dark.
“Here. C’mon,” the man urges suddenly, motioning with his chin. “Make room for me.”
“What?” you ask, eyes squinted in confusion as the man turns to sit on the edge of the twin-sized bed, adjusting his prosthetic to swing it over the side.
He gives you an expectant look over his shoulder. “Scooch,” is all he says, in a strangely strong voice despite the very silly command.
You shift on the thin mattress despite your better judgment to make room for him. Jack urges his right leg up first, then his left one second. He settles in beside you and urges the railings up to keep him from falling off the side. You try to do the same, though you possess a lot less strength with only one hand than the man beside you.
Your breath catches when he reaches over you with a strong hand, helping you lift the barrier the rest of the way.
“Thanks…” you mumble, half-shy.
“Don’t mention it,” he huffs politely, with one arm on his stomach and the other curled around your shoulders, keeping you close to accommodate both your bodies on the twin-sized bed. He smells of sweat and musky cologne and antiseptic. It takes everything in you not to melt into his warmth. You remain tense beside him, feeling slightly strange in his hold in a way you never have before.
“I’m sorry about, Louie—”
“You don’t have to do this—” you blurt simultaneously.
His head snaps over to you. He has to jerk his scruffy chin back to look at you properly from the dwindling proximity between you. His eyes dart between your averted gaze and the slowly melting icepack you fidget with like a stress ball.
“Do what?” he asks.
“I didn’t mean to walk in on you and Samira, okay?” you confess quietly, ‘cause any octave higher, and your voice will start to shake. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to make it a whole thing, you know? So you don’t have to come in and pretend to be all nice just because you think I’m upset, ‘cause I’m not.”
(Your rambling is hardly convincing in the matter, but he makes no mention of it.)
“Okay. I hear you,” Jack murmurs gently, always so patient with your rambling, even though he can only halfway comprehend it a lot of the time. “But I’m still not sure what Mohan has to do with this—”
Honey, he wants to say, but doesn’t allow himself.
“If you want to be with her, that’s okay— Or if it’s just because you don’t wanna be with me, that’s okay, too,” you explain in a strangely even voice. “But I wish you would’ve just told me, instead of bailing on me last night—”
“I didn’t bail on you—”
“—So then I wouldn’t have to catch you and Samira doing…” you trail off, face screwed. “Whatever the hell you were doing back there.”
“Catching us?” Jack echoes with a laugh you can feel rumbling against your shoulder. “That would imply we were doing something worth getting caught. She just walked in on me while looking for her patient, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well…” you hum, gaze averted to the icepack in your lap. “It seemed pretty intimate…”
“It wasn’t.”
“More intimate than you’ve been with me,” you argue sheepishly.
“Well, not to be crude here, but…” Jack trails off with an audible smile in his voice. “We literally had sex last night.”
“Yeah, and you left,” you spit, turning to look at him for the first time since he stormed in. You wear a wet look in your glassy eyes and a bruise blooming on the bridge of your nose. “And I cried myself to sleep about it. Which means I didn’t get to watch Love Island, which means I forgot to eat, which means I’m running on fumes on what has arguably been the worst shift of my whole life.”
You take a much-needed breath when the words are gone from your mouth.
Jack does not jump immediately to defend himself. He knows he doesn’t deserve it now. He just lets himself stew in your fiery words instead, so you know they’ll have a real impact on him before he responds.
“You’re right,” he sighs after a few long moments. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” you shake your head at his apologetic tone. “Just don’t… Don’t be so mean, you know? If you don’t wanna be with me anymore, why can’t you just say?”
“Because I do want to be with you,” he answers, weathered features screwed in offense. “How would you ask me that?”
“Because you aren’t acting like it—”
“Because I almost told you that I loved you,” Jack blurts suddenly, in a stern tone of voice that snatches the breath from your lungs. He swallows hard and continues. “Last night, I mean, when we… I almost said it… Because I felt it, but then I… I realized I hadn’t said that to anyone since my wife passed, and it freaked me out.”
“But…” you start in a broken whisper. “Why does that have to be such a bad thing?”
“‘Cause it makes me feel guilty,” Jack answers. “The way I love you makes me feel guilty, like I’m abandoning her. And I… I don’t know what to do with all that… grief.”
You feel your heart aching, for the third or hundredth time that day. You notice Jack’s right hand hanging on your shoulder, how his fingers fidget anxiously there, and how his left hand scratches at the rough fabric of his camo pants — made overwrought by his confession, and unsure what to do with it now.
“Why don’t you just give it to me?” you wonder quietly, then shrug at the confused look Jack gives you a second later. “Your grief, I mean. I can take it. You know, make it a little more bearable for you. So you don’t have to carry it all on your own.”
The softness of your words knocks the breath from Jack’s lungs.
The corner of his mouth quirks in a wavering smile as he blinks burning tears out of his eyes. “Jesus, we're a couple of goddamn sad sacks, aren’t we, honey?” he scoffs a sad laugh and runs his free hand down his scruffy face.
Your lips twitch upward, feeling giddy but fighting it. “That’s the first time you called me that in two days…” you observe distantly.
“What?”
“Honey.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I’m sorry for that, too…”
“Don’t be sorry,” you repeat, this time with a smile. “Just— kiss me or somethin’…”
“Gladly,” Jack says with a wider grin.
You tilt your chin up to meet him halfway when he leans down to kiss you. His nose bumps into the side of your bruised one, as your hand reaches for his wounded shoulder. You flinch against each other in tandem.
“Ow,” you whimper.
“Ouch,” Jack winces. “Shit, honey— Sorry.”
“Are you okay?” you ask with a sympathetic scrunch to your features, cupping his scruffy face in your delicate hands. “I haven’t checked in on you yet, I know you’re hurt—”
“I’m fine,” he assures with a shake of his head, leaning instinctively into your touch. “I got a little banged up, but… I’m good now.”
“Promise?” you whisper, swiping an eyelash from his cheek with your thumb.
“I promise. I'll tell you about later,” he nods once and smooths his calloused fingers across your temple, looking at you with a tenderness you’ve been craving all day. “What about you, honey— Are you okay?”
You inhale sharply through your bruised nose and nod on a slower exhale.
“I will be,” you answer honestly for the first time all day.
i’m in desperate need of a very self indulgent sammy bryant x reader southland rewrite series, just like they did with steve harrington. it’s moments like this i wish i was a writer 😭
summary — the worst-cared-for girl in the county keeps washing up in jack’s er, and he can’t help but start paying attention.
warnings — 19.2k. large age gap (jack’s fifty/reader’s in twenties), doctor/patient dynamic initially, power imbalance (attending/nursing student, age, life experience), yearning!jack, protective!jack, jealous!jack, and literally every single word in the book, mutual pining, slow burn, he falls first, hurt/comfort, reader shows signs of adhd but it isn’t explicit, alcohol use (recurrent drunkenness, mention of alcohol poisoning, ER, and repeated intoxication played somewhat lightly), loneliness/self isolation, low self-worth, it’s very difficult for her to accept care, lack of family support/implied estrangement, financial stress and overworking, she’s also spending an unrealistic amt of time hanging out in the ed but it’s fanfic so it’s ok, jokes about financial stress, injuries (sprains, split lip, bruising, gravel burns), medical setting, blood, referenced patient death (patient dies, off-page, Jack grieves), making out/heavy kissing, suggestiveeee content (thumb-in-mouth beat, grinding) but nothing explicit.
notes — oops sorry this fic is so so self-indulgent 🫶 i literally loved writing them tho i was thinking about them for days on end. tried to take a swing at this based on this idea i had + thank you @ker0senebunny for inspriring the shoe scene!!!! inspired by this post + my er visits where i was literally the worst patient ever
Friday and Saturday after midnight, the board filled up with the same predictable words; alcohol poisonings, bar-fight lacerations, the kids who’d taken things they couldn’t name and showed up convinced they were dying when they were mostly just twenty and having a large thought. Jack triaged it on autopilot, and he’d stopped finding any of it interesting somewhere around year seven.
Sure, sometimes there were some cases that got a mild laugh out of him or turned his head. There was a kid who’d superglued his halloween mask on his own face for a dare. The guy who’d lost a bet and swallowed something he wouldn’t name in front of his mother, who was present and furious. The occasional genuinely strange thing the human body did that still, after all these years, made Jack think huh, that’s interesting, the small grim curiosity that was about the only part of the job the years hadn’t fully sanded down. He kept those and told them to new nurses over shitty coffee at four a.m. because he supposed that was a better story than what he could say about the Middle East.
The first time you came in, he’d handed you over to Shen. You were a sprained wrist and a BAC that explained the wrist, sixteen other things were louder, and Shen was free then.
He’d clocked you for half a second on his way to a GI bleed in bay nine: girl on the gurney, one heel too high on, and one somewhere in the greater metropolitan area, some little pink lace-trimmed thing sliding off one shoulder, telling Shen with enormous seriousness that she was so sorry, she didn’t usually do this, she’d had a singular margarita. Only.
Singular. He’d categorized it under the thousand other single margaritas he’d sworn to in this department and forgotten you before he’d reached the bleed.
The second time, he didn’t take you either, but he noticed the wrist.
Same wrist. Different night — a Saturday, three weeks in, the sort of shift where the waiting room sounded like a kennel — and he caught it sideways while he reviewed another chart. It was the same left wrist, taped this time, the nails on that one hand done in some soft pinky color gone chipped at the tips as though the week itself outlasted the manicure, somebody walking you through the discharge paperwork you clearly were ignoring. Something thought for him instead of him thinking much for it, some pattern-recognition thing buried under twenty-some years of reading bodies fast, the same instinct that made him glance twice at something almost normal. A wrist that kept coming back, he supposed. A thread snagging on a nail, there and gone.
The third time, it was Shen, breezing past the station with his Dunkin, saying over his shoulder, “Frequent flyer’s back.”
He shrugged, not yet placing that you were the frequent flyer, and went to bed four.
And that — somewhere between the third time and a number he stopped keeping an honest count of — was where it stopped being a chart and became some sort of thing. A bit, he’d say. The nights the bars let out and the board lit up, he’d find himself reading the incoming names a half-second longer than triage required, and feeling something wrong in his chest when yours wasn’t in them.
Pittsburgh was notoriously interesting, Jack learned through you, in that it apparently contained an infinite supply of ways a girl could get herself in trouble. He was convinced he could’ve drawn a map of the city by your injuries. There was the ankle, of course, a recurring grievance, always the shoes, never your fault. There was one time you’d burned your hand on a curling iron getting ready tipsy and come in more upset about the makeup you’d had to redo (because of crying it off) than the blister. The night you’d gone over in a parking lot because you refused to look at the ground while walking — looking at the ground, while drunk, you informed him, was how you trip — and the time you sliced your finger open trying to shotgun a White Claw with a key because someone had bet you couldn’t. You were really proud of the last one, you’d won the bet.
You were never the same disaster twice, he had to give you that. A little too keen on busting yourself up here and there, sure, but at least it was the wrist once, then a knee that met a curb, then a memorable evening involving a fence you’d been certain you could clear. You came in apologizing — always apologizing, to him, to the nurses, once, memorably, to the wall — and you came in sweet, which was the part that got under him, because drunk people in this ER were a lot of things and sweet was rarely one of them.
“Mmm,” you hummed the fourth or fifth time, the second your eyes found him through the gap in the curtain, going boneless with relief like Jack was the cavalry and not the man who was meant to flash light into your eyes for thirty seconds. “The pretty one.”
Jack let out a huff. “Thanks, doll.”
“Doll,” you repeated, the word going gummy in your mouth. “He calls me doll.”
“Eyes open. Follow the light.”
“You call everyone that, Dr. Abbot?” you said, his name coming out in a cluster like you were losing thread of it, the Abbot dissolving into something closer to a hum.
“Sure do,” he lied. “Track the light.”
You looked at his mouth, then his hands, then back up, a slow uncoordinated sweep because your eyes had stopped reporting to anything in particular, much less what they had to. Pupils blown wide and lazy. He thumbed your eyelid up a fraction to get the light where he needed it; your lashes were clumped and starry with whatever mascara had survived the night.
He held the penlight steady and waited you out. He had nowhere to be. That was the thing about the dead hours after bars closed; the bleed had been signed up to the floor, the chest pain turned out to be a panic attack and a large energy drink, and there was just you, and the saline ticking into your arm one slow drop at a time.
“What’d you get up to tonight?” he murmured, thumb finding the pulse at your wrist, counting without meaning to.
“S’fast ‘cause you’re here,” you said, sounding very pleased with yourself.
“Sure it is. Where’d you hurt yourself tonight?”
“... stairs,” you said after a moment, like your brain had to run a few laps to get to the word.
“Oh, yeah?” He hummed. You lifted your free hand a little off the mattress, lost track of it, and dropped it back down. “How many?”
“Mm. Four?” You squinted at the ceiling. “Maybe three. I dunno. Not the Great Wall or somethin’. Promise.”
“I believe you.” He nodded, then turned your forearm to the light, finding the scrape you’d come in with. It was gravel-burn, raw, the heel of your hand and a stripe up your wrist. Nothing that needed more than cleaning. You watched him do it with your head tipped against the pillow, gone quiet so the talking had run out for a second, which never lasted.
“Should I get a better first aid kit?” you asked, then clenched your jaw for a second like you felt something was wrong with it. “S’I don’t have to bother you all the time?”
“Might be a good idea to invest,” he said. He pulled the swab through the gravel-burn slowly, and you hissed and tried to pull back the hand on reflex. “Easy.” He kept it, his grip light yet unmoving around your fingers. “Almost done. Don’t fight me.”
You hummed, like you wanted a different answer.
Jack wet his lips, shaking his head slightly. He worked the grit out of the scrape, a fleck of it catching raw skin, and he tilted your arm to the light, getting it on the second pass, and wiped it on the gauze. Your hands twitched in his, and he pressed your fingers flat to the mattress with his thumb, and they stayed.
“You’d have to do it yourself, though,” he said. “Bathroom sink at three in the morning with one hand.” He reached for fresh gauze. “You’d make a mess of it.”
You frowned at the ceiling, nodding. “Sounds a little bad.”
“It’s a lot bad.” He laid the gauze over the scrape, thumbed the tape down at the edge of your wrist slowly, smoothing it flat where it wanted to lift. His knuckle dragged once over the thin skin there, and he felt your pulse jump under it. “You’d scar, probably.” His thumb passed the chipped polish, the chunky gold ring you’d kept on, even for this. “You’ve got nice hands. Shame to wreck ‘em over the sink.”
It took you a second. “You think so?”
“Don’t wreck ‘em.”
“You like when I come in,” you said, delighted.
“What I’d like,” he said, flat, lifting his eyes to yours, “is you off the stairs and down to the one drink.” His thumb settled over the back of your hand again. “But if you’re set on flinging yourself down, then you come here. Deal?”
Your fingers had curled around two of his somewhere in there loosely, without you noticing. He felt them settle, and he held very still so as to not spook you. He chose to not acknowledge it or look at it.
“Deal,” you mumbled, somewhere far off, probably forgetting the front half of the terms.
He let it go at that, taping down the last edge and turning over your wrist once more to be sure of it. Then he set your hand back on the mattress, yours still loosely hooked through his, going nowhere.
“Anyone out there to get you home?” he asked.
“Dunno.” Your nose scrunched. “Was gonna Uber.”
He sighed through his nose. “Where’s that girl — the one you came in with last time? Why don’t you call her?”
“That’s annoying, Dr. Abbot,” you said, almost in a whine.
“Yeah?” He kept looking at the wall behind you. “What’s annoying about a ride home?”
“Calling people. Making it a thing.” Your free hand flopped vaguely. “Then they gotta come get you, and they’re all — have to be nice about it, but you can tell.” Your nose scrunched. “It’s a whole production.”
He pressed his thumb flat back over your hand where your fingers were still caught in his.
“Oh? Nothing annoying about it, sweetheart. You call, she comes. Simple as that.” He turned to face you. “But if you insist on it, I’m not signing you off until you’re good enough to go home alone. So you call your girl, or you sit right here and keep my department company till you’ve cleared enough that I’ll sign off on it.”
Your eyes narrowed as you looked at him as though he’d spoken a different language. “Second one?”
“Obviously you pick that one,” he said.
He pulled the stool over and sat. For a few minutes, he had nowhere to be, and now, apparently, neither did you.
It wasn’t that you simply didn’t let people help you, either. Jack had never seen anyone so committed to being simply fine. Jack had met the stoic kind before; construction guys who walked in with rebar through a forearm acting like it was a small inconvenience; old ladies who’d been having a heart attack since last Tuesday and didn’t want to be a bother. But Jack had always believed those people to be suppressing, and you were just convinced, somewhere down in the foundation, that needing anything was an imposition.
That was also why the shoes confused him so much.
“This is the same damn ankle,” Jack said, turning your foot in his hands, watching the swelling outside of it.
“You don’t have to remind me. Most men buy me a drink before they get this familiar with my ankles,” you said, then groaned as you looked at his eyes going over the swelling.
“No drink.” He pressed along the bone. “Not my fault you keep handing your ankle to me.”
You tipped your head back against the pillow, groaning again. “Dr. Abbot, they look so bad. I feel like I’m pregnant.”
“I can do a quick blood draw and we can rule it out.” His palm flattened on the mattress beside your feet, leaning over to meet your eyes again. “But I think it’s those heels of yours, doll.”
Your eyes snapped to him. “Don’t be a dick, Dr. Abbot.”
He tilted his head, then pointed at the laminated paper stuck to the wall. “Aggressive behavior of any kind toward healthcare workers is a felony.”
“Then arrest me, doctor. I’ll die on this hill — and they’re not heels.” Your lips pursed, and the corner of your mouth kicked up. “Cuffs may be a little forward for a date, but I won’t stop you.”
“Aren’t you just so sweet,” he muttered. “What are they, then?”
“Bottega Lido Mules.”
The words meant absolutely nothing to him — could’ve been a pasta dish, a town in Italy, a wine — but they clearly did to you, so he remembered them.
“That’s nice, doll. They’ll be the reason I see you again.”
“Maybe, ‘cause I’ll never stop wearing them.”
You said the words your whole face, hands coming off the mattress to make the point with a drunk theatrical conviction as you argued something that genuinely mattered to you. Jack thought, not for the first time since he’d met you, that you’d have been magnetic stone-sober at a dinner party, the kind of girl that made a table lean in. It was just that he only ever got the 3am version.
At least you had a hill you’d die on and didn’t apologize for, Jack supposed.
“You married, Doctor?” you asked as he started icing your ankle.
“No,” he said, holding your eyes for a second. “Why — you got a boyfriend I should know about, then?”
He almost wished you did have one. He wished that there were somebody whose name you’d have said just now who’d be in the waiting room with his jaw tight because you’d gone and hurt yourself again. Somebody who’d take care of the ankle when you walked out of here in crutches, who took the keys when you had too many. He wished there was a person in the world whose job you were.
And you weren’t his first patient who he’d understood to not have someone taking care of them. He knew that if he carried them all, he’d drown inside a month if he tried to be the person nobody else had been. He’d never once had it turn into a wish, standing here with an ice pack in his hand going slack in his hand because he was too busy resenting someone who didn’t exist for not being in the waiting room.
He wondered when down the line you’d stopped letting the people in your life around you be the ones you could call, became a girl who said sorry for bleeding and had nobody, nobody, and looked at him like he was the warmest place she’d been in all week.
You laughed. “If I had a boyfriend, would I be laying it on so thick?”
He let out a breath through his nose, despite himself. “Stop wearing the heels, doll. Not nice to not have a foot.”
The next time you came in, it was a Thursday. With some pileup of bad luck, you came in somewhere past one with a split lip and a story about a dance floor he only half got the shape of. Jack hadn’t even been assigned to you yet, he’d just seen your name on the board, and reassigned himself quietly enough that dared anyone on shift to comment. Nobody did.
“Lip’s not bad,” he said, tilting your chin up under the light, thumb at your jaw. The split was already going fat and shining at the center of your lower lip, and he found his eyes stayed on your mouth a second past the part that was his job, on the soft unhurt swell of it under the hurt. He moved his thumb. “Doesn’t need anything. You bit it when you fell down. That’s all.”
“S’throbbing, Doctor,” you mumbled, the word coming around muffled around the split.
“It’ll throb. You’ve got a swollen lip.” He let go of your jaw and reached for the penlight. “Eyes on me.”
“I was so cute before this,” you said through a groan.
The huff that came out of him was almost a laugh, dragged out against his own will, and he shared a fleeting look with Bennet — a fairly new nurse — who had tilted his head briefly and was too afraid to meet your eyes.
“Alright. Still the prettiest girl I’ve treated tonight,” Jack said when your brows had furrowed together.
“You treat other girls?”
“It’s a hospital,” he said. “Few hundred a week.”
Your face looked wounded. “Few hundred.”
He leaned in slightly, faking a whisper. “You’re my top three.”
You were further gone than usual tonight. He’d noticed it the second he came around the curtain, the way your head was having a hard time holding itself up, the loose unmoored swim of your eyes that took longer than it should to find his finger. A piece of hair had come loose and stuck to the gloss at the corner of your mouth and you hadn’t the coordination to deal with it, and he had the unprofessional impulse to, and didn’t.
Bennet kept working the blood pressure cuff up your arm, half an eye on you, half on his own work.
“Track the light,” Jack murmured. “Slowly.”
“Too bright.”
“Tough.” The corner of his mouth moved up slightly. “You can bat your lashes at me when we’re done. Right now, I need ‘em open.”
You batted them anyway, slowly and theatrically, just to be a problem about it. They were long, and the theater of it was so ridiculous, and Jack had to bite down the inside of his cheek to keep his face flat to wait you out, until you gave up and tracked the finger. Your pupils were reactive, equal, and lagging half-a-beat behind. He clicked the light off.
“Too bright,” you said again.
“It’s off,” he drawled, chuckling.
Bennett thread a line into the back of your free hand, and you watched him sink it with a drowsy focus.
“Why’s it go in the back of the hand?” you mumbled. “More nerves there. Hurts more. Why not the — inside. By the elbow.” You tilted your head slightly to let your eyes wander to the crook of your arm. “Bigger vein. The antec—antecubital,” you said carefully, sounding out each syllable, afraid of messing it up. You wet your lips and turned to face him, then Bennet. “Why’s nobody use the good one?”
Jack pursed his lips and looked at you for a moment.
“Saves the good one,” he said, catching up, eyes going back to your chart. “AC vein blows easily when somebody’s moving around, and you —” He tipped his head at you, raising a brow, the squirming drunk of you. “ — Are gonna move around. Back of the hand’ll hold. I’d rather you be sore than re-stuck twice ‘cause you couldn’t sit pretty for thirty seconds.” He paused as he saw your eyes glaze over. He sighed. “Ask me how I know that about you.”
You’d gone busy, lips moving slightly like you were repeating it back to yourself so it’d stick, and Jack felt something in his chest shift a degree as he watched you do it.
He sighed, dragging a palm over the lower half of his face. “Where’d you learn that, then?”
“School,” you said to the ceiling, a small hint of pride taking over your voice. “M’gonna become a nurse. Gonna be good at it.”
Bennet snorted, finishing the tape. “Gonna be patching up drunk girls just like you then, huh,” he said. “Full circle.”
Jack watched the pride go out of your face slowly, like a house losing its power. Your chin dropped and your eyes slid from Bennet to the curtain as your hand fisted in your lap.
“Yeah,” you said, almost curiously. “Guess so.”
Jack’s jaw clenched involuntarily. It wasn’t the guy’s fault, not really. It was a nothing joke, the sort the whole department tossed off a hundred times a shift, the gallows shorthand that kept you sane at two in the morning. Jack had made worse about patients who’d never know, about drunks who wouldn’t remember, about exactly this, exactly girls like you. He’d just never had one of them go quiet before, watched the bright thing fold itself up and get tucked away.
“Bennet, you done?”
“Yeah, line’s good — ”
“Then go take vitals on six. I’ve got her.”
Bennet went, and it was just the two of you again.
Jack pulled the stool over with his foot and sat — lower than he had to, level with you, taking himself out of the column of people standing over you tonight and telling you what you were — and waited until your eyes came up off the curtain and found him.
“There she is,” he said when your eyes found him. He turned your taped hand over under the light like there was still something to do with it. There wasn’t, he just wanted his hands on something of yours while he undid what the room had done. “Look at me. Nothing good on the curtain.”
“How’s school treating you then, doll?” he asked, aiming for offhand and not steering you off whatever Bennet had knocked loose.
“Hard,” you said, but a small smile had crawled up your lips. “But I like it.” Your shoulders came up loosely.
“Yeah?” He kept his thumb moving over the back of your hand slowly, like he could press the bright thing back up to the surface where it belonged. “I think you’ll be good at it.”
It was such a strange feeling, Jack distantly noticed, to feel this utter conviction. He was rarely sure of anything good anymore. Sure of plenty else; sure within ten seconds of a bad rhythm which way the night was going to break, sure of which of the kids wheeled in at 2 am he’d see again and which he wouldn’t, a grim accumulated certainty that had nothing in it he’d ever wanted to be right about.
The job had made him an expert on the downslope of things. He could read the exact moment a body wanted to quit better than he could read most of what people said to his face. And here you were, and he was so sure of the other direction, and he felt the same weight of it behind his sternum, except it had swung and pointed at something good for once. You were going to be excellent at this.
It bothered him a little, how much he wanted to be there to see it, whoever you were going to be once you stopped washing up on his floor on the worst nights of your week. He’d known you, what, a handful of shifts as a frequent flyer, a bit, a name his eyes unconsciously caught on. He had no business feeling certain of anything about you, and he was, and he’d let himself feel it.
Your eyes found him properly again. “Liar.”
He huffed out a short laugh. “Tell you what. You finish that program, you get through all that mess where they try to drown you.” His thumb smoothed over the tape. “Then you come find me here and we’ll see if we can get you here with me on nights. Clearly you’re at your finest then.”
It was maybe something silly to say, and Gloria may have his head for it. He had no actual standing to say anything like it, even though you’d never remember it. He knew better; hope was a controlled substance in his field and he was stingy with it on purpose, because he’d seen the withdrawal.
But God, he’d love to see the part of you he could only catch glimpses of through the wreck like a light under the door. He’d love to be the one who taught you which arrogance to keep and which to let the job take away. He’d love, plainly and without anywhere to put it, to watch you become who you’d just told him you were going to be.
It was a lot of loving for a girl who’d been in his department and wouldn’t recall his face or a word of this by tomorrow morning. He was getting sentimental, or old, or both; the years stacked up behind his eyes until he started mistaking everything for a second chance at something.
Your lips moved. “So I can patch girls up like myself?”
“Nah.” He kept looking at your hand. “You can patch up old bastards like me, too.” Then, he pointed his index finger of his free hand at you, mock-stern. “Gotta make sure you’re not at point three BAC, though. Will have to do that work to get you working with me.”
“Mm.” Your eyes flickered up to the ceiling, weighing it with the enormous gravity of the very drunk as though he’d posed a very real proposition to you. “Okay. For you, I’d stop.”
“For me?” he repeated, mostly to buy himself a second.
“Mm-hm.” You turned your face to him and said it with such ease, no glance away to leave yourself an exit. “You’re worth not drinkin’ over.”
Your words went in clean, the way the best and worst things do, under the ribs where he kept nothing armored because nobody ever aimed there. Jack felt the back of his neck go warm and was abruptly, intensely grateful for the light that wouldn’t display it.
Jack huffed, having to look away at the floor then. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all year, and you’re not gonna remember it. Hell of a thing.”
When he made himself look back up, you’d tipped your face into the pillow, watching him from the side with your eyes gone soft and heavy, the smile arriving unguarded across your mouth. The split tugged one corner of it, that small wince folded right into the sweetness, and you seemed to not feel it.
He had the sudden, idiotic wish to have met you on a night you’d remember. To have perhaps caught you when you fell at the bar, to have been the stranger whose arm happened to be there, not the doctor it eventually routed you to. Perhaps he could’ve been a man in your night instead of a stop in it.
He shook his head. “You’re trouble, you know that, right? Saying all these nice things. What’s a man supposed to do with that?”
He’d have liked to have been remembered, was the bottom of it. By you specifically. He’d spent decades being the man people were grateful to and glad to forget.
“What’s your name, Doctor Abbot?” you asked, drowsy.
He looked down at his badge, then back up at you. “Take a wild guess?” Then, he added, “You never looked at my badge?”
“Sorry. Didn’t read.”
“Don’t apologize to me. It’s Jack.”
Jack was doing his usual rounds this Friday, on a rush from a chest pain in two that turned out to be a panic attack and a kid in five who’d put a kitchen knife through the meat of his own palm trying to halve a frozen bagel when Ellis caught him by the elbow at the board.
“Heads up, Abbot,” she said, grinning. She nodded toward triage, toward the doors. “Bed three. Your, uh—” The grin tipped over, delighted with itself. “Girlfriend’s got a boyfriend.”
It was a running thing now. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth time you’d washed up on his shift the staff had started on it — your frequent flyer, your stray, your girl’s back — and Jack had stopped bothering to deny it because that’d only feed it, and he’d learned not denying it had a way of starving the joke faster.
He looked, and was immediately able to notice what you weren’t doing more than what you were; you weren’t grinning at the ceiling, weren’t doing that boneless sweet-relief thing. You were sitting up too straight on the bed, hands folded in your lap, and there was a guy fitted to the chair beside you with one arm slung along the back of yours and a hand resting on your knee like he’d put it there to mark the spot. He was saying something low to the side of your face, and you were nodding at it, and not looking at anybody.
Jack felt a muscle tick in his jaw, immediately not feeling anything nice about the situation. “I got it — you mind taking six for me? I’ll come in a couple minutes.”
By the time he’d made it to you, he’d settled his face into something unbothered. You could read it, he’d realized at some point during your frequent visits, and that only meant he had to be on his better behavior around you.
“Evening.” He pulled the curtain half-round behind him, glanced at the chart clipped to the foot of the bed, then at you. “What’d we do tonight?”
“She caught an elbow,” the guy answered. “Some asshole on the dance floor. It’s nothing — she’s fine. She’s just a lightweight, aren’t you — ” A little squeeze on your knee. “ — didn’t even really need to come in, but y’know. Better safe.”
You weren’t a lightweight, he immediately wanted to correct. He’d seen you put away enough over the months to know your tolerance better than this guy apparently did; he knew the difference between the nights you were genuinely wrecked and the nights you came in clearer than you let on, and looking at you, tonight, you weren’t anywhere near the state implied.
“You,” he said, tipping his chin in your direction. “Not him. Where’d it get you?”
You lifted your hand up from your lap and touched your cheekbone, movement slow, and Jack stepped in and tipped your head up toward the light with two fingers under your chin, thumb resting just shy of the scrape. The skin had gone dark along the bone, tender, an elbow’s worth of it. Nothing that needed more than an ice and a night, but you were still holding still under his hand and not meeting his eyes, and that he didn’t like at all.
“It’s okay,” you said. “Really. S’not even — ”
“Let me be the judge of that, sweetheart. Gettin’ paid for this.” His eyes flicked down to yours and caught, holding it there a second with a small question in the rise of a brow, before he went back to the bone, thumb tracing the edge of the bruise so light you barely felt it. A small frown pulled at the corners of his mouth at the sight. “Follow my finger. Eyes only.”
You followed, pupils fine and equal. No concussion in it.
“She’s fine, I told you,” the guy said from the chair, a little laugh under it like he was inviting Jack in on something. “Hardly. She bounces back.”
Jack clicked the penlight off and turned to the side. “Gonna need the room.”
“I’ll stay.” The hand went back to your knee. “I’m all good here.”
“Can’t clear a head strike with people in the room. You get it.” Jack tilted his head to the side, raising a shoulder. “Liability. Coffee machine’s down the hall. Give me two minutes with my patient.”
The easy smile on the guy’s lips went thin around the edges, looking for a thing to push against and not finding it. He stood up slow, making a show of it, squeezing your knee and letting you know he’ll be back in a minute, babe, a hand trailing your shoulder on the way past, all of it aimed less at you and more at Jack holding the curtain. Jack pressed his lips in a thin line as he met the guy’s eyes.
The second the curtain closed behind him, a breath left you, tiny and involuntary, and your shoulders came down in the empty room.
“Sorry, Dr. Abbot,” you murmured. “I keep being a mess at this place.” You took in a short, almost shaky breath. “Sorry.”
“None of that,” he almost grumbled, penning your chart. “Your folks down here, sweetheart?”
“No,” you said to your lap, picking the edge of the blanket. “Back home. A few states over.” You let out a laugh. “Just me out here. S’nice.”
Jack forced a small smile, having to look at the ceiling while you looked down at your lap, shaking his head, more of an action for himself than for you. He pulled the stool over with his foot and sat, getting level with you.
“What’s goin’ on with you, huh?” he asked quietly, making sure there was nothing sharp in his tone at all. “Honest. I like seeing you but not like this bruised up with a guy who talks for you.” His thumb found your wrist. “So talk to me. What’s going on?”
“He’s fine,” you said. “Just likes being around.”
Jack tilted his head, dipping his head to meet your eyes that were still facing down. “Not the important part of the question, and you know it.”
You sighed. “Sorry, Jack.”
“Quit it. The only thing I want from you tonight is some honesty, alright?”
A corner of your lip kicked up, even though the dimness in your eyes held. “Your eyes look really pretty tonight.”
“Heard that one before,” he drawled. “Had ‘em fifty years. Try a new one.”
“Your neck’s going red,” you mumbled, fingers reaching up to press flat to the warm of his skin, right there below the jaw, like you just had to feel whether it was true.
Jack stilled. Your fingers were cold on his neck. He distantly registered his pulse was probably going under your fingertips, and you’d feel it if you held there a second longer. And then you caught yourself, hand snapping back to the blanket.
“Sorry. Sorry — I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that — ” you said, the words coming out in a taut string.
“Easy,” he said, voice coming out rough. He swallowed. “Got me all flustered and now you’re gettin’ all shy?”
You huffed a small laugh, your hand still fisted in the blanket where you’d snatched it back. “I’m not allowed to do that. I don’t think.”
“Had no idea you knew how to behave,” he leaned a little back from the stool, crossing his arms. “Should I be worried about that guy out there?”
“Jealous, Doctor?”
He rolled his eyes slightly, not responding.
You sighed when you realized he wasn’t taking the bait. “He’s fine. He just likes being around.”
He stood off the stool and reached for the discharge clipboard at the foot of the bed.
“Whatcha doing there?”
“My job.” He clicked the pen. “Clearing you. You’ve got no concussion. You’re not dying tonight.” He scrawled on the paper. “And I’m writing you a script for the bruise and a code for an Uber — ”
“No, no,” you said immediately. “Please don’t do that.”
He raised his hand with the pen, palm open. “You never let me Uber you back when you’re alone. At least have this.” Your face scrunched up, and he could practically feel the guilt building in you. “Don’t need to use it now. Or ever. You can keep it for whenever.” He set the slip on your lap before you could push it back at him, the matter completely closed on his end. “Goes in your phone case. You can forget it exists until you need it.”
“You can’t keep handing me stuff — ”
“Department’s got a whole stack. You’re not special.” He capped the pen, though the corner of his mouth made it slightly visible that his words were false. “Don’t flatter yourself, doll.”
You looked down at the slip, your thumb worrying the edges of it. “I don’t like taking things.”
“I noticed. A few hundred times now.” He tucked the pen back in his scrub pocket, and his voice came down a notch. “If it really makes you feel so bad, though, then maybe we can start taking care of ourselves so you don’t have to keep ending up here?”
Jack was in the middle of hand-off, Robby doing his thing before Robby left and did whatever the hell he did. They were at the board, Robby running down the floor. It was six-fifteen in the ugly hour, the in-between where the day shift was dragging itself toward the door and the night hadn’t started biting yet, the light through the ambulance doors gone gold and slanted and almost decent for once.
And then the doors slid, and you came through them. Jack’s attention peeled to you the second your shape entered the room, except this was wrong, he distantly registered. It was daylight and six in the evening and you were on your own two feet, upright and, assumedly, sober and walking in through the front like a person as opposed to a patient. You were wearing a jacket that swallowed you, and he assumed underneath it was shorts of some sort. He could see a stripe of navy cotton peeking from under the collar of your jacket as you adjusted a tote bag on your shoulder.
You looked, frankly, like a completely different species from the one he scraped off bed four on weekends. The jacket was too big — his first thought was that it was a man’s, and his second thought, which he didn’t care for, was about whose — sleeves shoved up to your forearms, a stripe of soft navy cotton on the collar, and below it bare legs and shorts and sneakers that had likely never seen the inside of a club. Your hair was up and a little damp at the temple and your face was scrubbed clean.
You looked like somebody’s whole good day, he thought. You looked around around the waiting room with slightly widened eyes, a lost expression coating your features like you’d built up a lot of nerve to walk in here and had no idea what to do with it.
“ — and the tox screen is still pending, so don’t let them,” Robby was saying.
“Mhm,” Jack said, attention already halved.
And Bennet, breezing past the triage desk with cheerful obliviousness, caught your figure and said, out loud, “Don’t tell me you’ve started day drinking. It’s barely past six, you gotta pace yourself — ” He let out a small laugh at his own joke, and kept walking, and didn’t see the way it landed.
Your body stiffened, and you looked like a deer in headlights. Your mouth opened, some sort of flustered apology forming, he was sure.
Jack let out a short groan, shaking his head. He set the tablet on the counter, already moving to cross the floor toward you. “Finish the hand-off with Shen. I gotta go deal with something.”
Robby said something at his back — deal with what? — but Jack was already gone, crossing the floor slowly but somehow still eating the distance fast, and he watched you spot him coming and watched the relief crash over your face. Except you were sober now, in the daylight, and your whole face was going soft and grateful and just slightly wrecked at the sight of him.
He stopped a couple feet short of you, closer than a doctor, further than he stood to you at night. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands — there was no chart to hold (he should’ve brought the tablet) or wrist to take or a penlight to shine — so he clasped them behind his back, and tilted his head to get a better look at you.
“Hi,” you breathed.
“Hey,” he said, eyes doing a quick once-over to make sure you really didn’t have any new injuries.
You shifted the tote under his gaze and clutched whatever was in the bag a little tighter.
“Jack —” you started, stopped, like the name had come out wrong. “ — Dr. Abbot.” You winced, pinching your eyes shut for a second. “Jack?” you tried to say again, smaller, your eyes flicking up to check his face to check if you’d overstepped. “Sorry, I don’t know which — ”
“Jack’s great.” His mouth tugged up, despite himself. “You’ve called me a lot worse. Jack’s a step-up.”
You let out a startled little laugh, your mouth coming over your mouth like you could catch it, as your body eased a degree.
“I’m sorry — I don’t — God, this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry.”
“You know how many times you’ve apologized to me? Quit it.” He rubbed a finger over his lips. “What’s got you here today, then?”
“Um, I came to see you.” He raised a brow, and you let out a short breath, then continued, “I might not remember a lot of it, but I remember you took really good care of me. And my friends who came in with me sometimes said you took really good care of me.” The words came out softer now, flowing, more earnest. “Even though I was a mess. Especially when. So I just wanted to —” You shrugged, smiling slightly. “ — come say thanks.”
Jack felt the complete warmth of you land somewhere he kept no armor. “It’s the job,” he said quickly, before he could stop himself. “You didn’t have to come down here for that. That’s — it’s what we do. Anybody on shift would’ve done the same.”
Your expression faltered for a moment, and your eyes dropped to the tote at your side as your shoulders came in. You shook your head, a small motion, then smiled again.
“Right. No — yeah, of course.” You chuckled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it a — I know it’s your job.” You shifted the bag, then shifted your weight from one foot to another. “Still, though. You did, so I wanted to.”
Jack already wanted to take his words back, but he couldn’t, so he just shook his head. “Hey, you’re my problem, though. So thank you. For the thanks. We’re even.”
Your shoulders eased and you nodded. “Well, I also have something for you.” You hauled a container out of your tote and held it out to him with both hands before you could chicken out. “It definitely doesn’t make up for all of the times you helped me.” You looked down at the container. “And I don’t know if you’re lactose intolerant, or have a peanut allergy or anything. I’m sorry if you do — I can — ”
“I’ve got a cast-iron everything. The cookies won’t kill me.” When you pushed the container further to him, he took it off your hands, eyes quickly scanning the round chocolate chip cookies, forcing a smile down. He swallowed whatever had lodged in his throat.
“These are homemade?” He weighed the container in both hands, absurdly. You nodded. He swallowed whatever on earth had lodged in his throat at that.“Didn’t have to do all that for me.”
“I wanted to,” you said quickly. “I wasn’t sure how the food here is, so thought it might be a nice change.”
“Worse than you’re imagining,” he said, then tipped his head to the side as the memory crawled into his brain, uncalled for. “You’ve actually thrown a sandwich across the room.”
Your palm came up to your mouth, and you let out a muffled, “I’m so sorry.”
Jack snorted, shaking his head. Then, after a moment, he cleared his throat before it could get away from him. He looked back toward the board, then at you, knowing time was slipping and he’d have to go back to work and you’d have to go somewhere else, most likely.
“You got finals or anything coming up soon?” he asked.
Your lips curved down, and you nodded. “Yeah, in a couple weeks.”
“Am I gonna be seeing you getting wheeled in wasted?”
“I want to say no,” you said, smiling a little crooked. “I’m working on it. But I’ve said that before and ended up here. So.” You shrugged, lips jutting out like you were also unimpressed with yourself. “Ask me again in a couple weeks, I guess. I’d like it if you didn’t, though.”
“Then quit doing the hard nights alone,” he said, leaning in just slightly. “You keep yourself off the stairs, and you can come bother us instead here with a textbook.” He raised a brow as he held your eyes. “We’ve got a family room that’s almost always empty at night.”
“I couldn’t — ”
“Won’t be a bother. Trust me. You’d be silly not to use people’s help when they’ve clawed through the same exams to get the badge. You get stuck, somebody’ll know it cold.” He shrugged. “Half of ‘em are bored out of their minds some nights. You’d be doing us a favor.”
You let out a breath, brows pinching together. “That’s — yeah.” You let out a short laugh, looking away for a second. “I’d like that. A lot. Thank you, really. As long as you don’t mind.”
“This is a teaching hospital, doll. I don’t mind, so long as you don’t mind the company. Might be nice for me, too.”
You smiled and for a moment, neither of you moved to end it. Then you shifted the tote back up your shoulder, and Jack felt the pull to keep you here one more second before he could stop himself.
“Go home,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll be looking for you. So actually turn up, don’t make me look for nothing.”
The whole sun of you came up at that, stunned, like you hadn’t expected to be looked for by anyone. Jack felt the ground go quietly out from under him, the vertigo of having reached for a person’s happiness on purpose and connected, of being, for once, the cause of a face doing that. He’d gotten so used to delivering news that took the light out that he’d forgotten it ran the other way, too.
“I’ll turn up. I promise.”
He nodded, clearing his throat and turning for the board, bidding you a throaty goodbye.
“She’s the girl that everyone on night talks about?” Robby asked immediately, falling into step beside him.
Jack looked at him sideways, shaking his head. “You got something to say, too?”
“No,” Robby said, rubbing his palm at his chin like he was holding something in. “You like her or something?”
Jack halted for a second, pointing his index at Robby as he lowered his chin. “You shut up. She’s gonna be a nurse.”
“Oh, yeah,” Robby laughed. “Looks like she’s gonna be your nurse, old man. You’ll need it soon enough.”
Thank god you did turn up. Jack had the sense that maybe he’d scared you off altogether by his offer, and the line he’d toed had two very alternate spectrums: you’d find a new hospital altogether to go to in the metropolitan area after your falls or poisonings, or you’d be here a lot more often, which he still wasn’t sure would’ve been often enough.
The first time you came in, it was well past midnight and Jack had unfortunately not been able to catch you off the bat because he was in an emergency surgery. He’d walked out of it with his blood-stained surgical gown still on to be met with the sight of you by the nurse’s station, writing something down on the back of a discharge form for Lena, with another Tupperware laying on the table. He made the guess that you’d brought the whole floor something and were three minutes from having Lena eating out of your hand.
You’d found a corner of his department and made yourself a small soft home in it inside of ten minutes, and you were leaning in, and Jack stood there for a moment with the bad night still ringing in his ears and felt something unclench in his chest by a fraction.
“ — no, but you gotta,” you were saying to Lena in earnest as Jack approached closer. “If you put the brown sugar in while the butter’s still hot, it’s just — it’s a different cookie.”
“You taking the recipe, Lena?” Jack asked then, fully submerging into the knot you’d made with his charge nurse.
You turned to face him, a smile forming on your lips almost immediately, and then your eyes dropped over him, to the gown, the rust-brown stain dried dark across the front of it, the set of his shoulders.
“I am,” Lena replied. “Gonna make these for the kids.” She punctuated her sentence by holding up one of the cookies.
“Gonna make some for us, too, then?” Jack asked, raising a brow, and settled his elbows over the table. He turned his neck to face you properly, putting on his best smile.
Lena laughed shortly. “I don’t like you enough.” She pushed off the counter with some forms in hand. “Her, maybe. You can have whatever she leaves behind.” She shot you a look that was almost warm before she went and disappeared down the hall.
“Could be you someday,” Jack said, tilting his head in the direction of Lena’s chair.
You shook your head, then pushed the container in his hands. “I’ve got to graduate first. And pass pharm, which is currently — ” You patted your tote bag, textbooks heavy. “ — trying to kill me.”
Jack nodded toward the family room, placing the container on the table for a second beside him. “C’mon, then, doll. Let’s see what the pharm’s doing to you.”
“You don’t have to — ” Your eyes flicked down the gown again. “You just came out of surgery. You don’t have to help me study.”
“Actin’ like I’m the one who got the surgery,” Jack muttered, chuckling slightly. He was already peeling off the gown one-handed, balling it up to toss. He started walking, and you followed behind him. “C’mon. It’s pretty empty right now.”
It’d been pleasant that night and the few after to have five to ten minute increments of sitting with you helping you study in between doing his actual job. He’d duck in between things — a lull after discharge, the dread stretch while he waited for a CT scan, the ten minutes a trauma took to roll in once the call came — and you’d be there in the family room with your stack of cards on the couch. He’d drop on the chair across you or the couch beside you and pick up wherever you’d left off like he hadn’t left at all. Then his pager would buzz and he’d be gone, and you’d still be there an hour later when he came back, and he’d sit back down, and both of you’d pretend this was a completely normal way to study.
It’d annoyed him the first night how badly the flashcards were failing you; he’d seen you stare at the words and your eyes would glaze and slide right off it like they were greased. You’d memorized or retained nothing. And then he’d said, half to himself, a story for the why to click, and he’d watched it lock in you.
So he’d stopped quizzing you primarily off the cards and started telling you stories instead and you’d talk it back to him, reasoning out loud, getting there in the saying of it the way you never got there on the page.
The nights stacked up. The first week, you’d sat at a table across from him. By the second, you’d migrated to the chair beside him. Your coffee, the one by the far end of the table, was right by his elbow. Lena started leaving a second cup at the station when she saw you come in, his and yours, and never commented.
You’d stopped apologizing for taking up his time somewhere in there. He noticed when you’d started saving him the worst looking cookie on purpose because he’d once told you he liked the ugly ones. He’d noticed when you learned the rhythm of his pages; you’d go quiet and just hand him the next card when his eyes drifted to the board through the window of the door, would have it ready when he came back, like you’d kept his place for him while he was off keeping someone alive.
He noticed that he more than looked forward to it. Somewhere in the dead middle of a bad shift, his feet would take him toward the family room before his brain could catch up on the why of it all. An empty table on a night you didn’t come in sat wrong with him, a tiny disappointment he didn’t have anything in him to figure out why.
Sometimes, like now, you’d get distracted. Jack had learned. He’d walked into the family room to see you and Ellis folded into opposite ends of the couch, the flashcards abandoned in a fanned mess on the cushion between you, both of you mid-argument and enjoying yourselves too much.
“Poaching my study hall, Ellis?” he said, finally moving in.
Ellis pointed one stern finger in your direction as she pulled herself off the couch. “Do the crossword, not the sudoku.”
“She’s gonna make you a worse student,” Jack said to Ellis’s back.
“She’s making me a worse doctor,” Ellis said cheerfully, already at the door. “I’ve been here twenty minutes. I have patients.” She turned to you one final time. “Crossword. You’ll thank me later.”
She gave Jack a knowing look on her way out, one he didn’t want to read too much into, and she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her in one slow plunge.
You watched the door settle, and the entire wattage of your attention turned to him. He hadn’t gotten used to that, and he didn’t think he ever would. “Looks like I’ll never be a nurse.”
“Don’t say things like that.” He came around and lowered himself onto the couch beside you. “What’re you stuck on? Hit me.”
Your palm met his upper arm, a small smack.
He narrowed his eyes at you. “Hit me all you want. You’re not getting out of this.”
“But Jaaaack,” you drawled, tipping your head back on the couch. “Not here to study today.”
His eyes flickered over to your form briefly as he gathered the cards and squared them. “Oh, no? What’re you here for then?”
“Dunno.” You pulled your knees up to the couch. “Didn’t wanna be at mine. And work was a lot and boring.” You turned to face him then, a small smile growing on your lips. “Thought I’d bother yours instead.”
He set the squared deck on his knee. “Lucky me.”
He’d caught it, though, how you’d folded the sad thing in the middle of the sentence where it’d draw the least attention and moved on before it could sit. He let it move on, but he kept it. The image of you on a Tuesday, work behind you, and the choice you’d made was to drive to a hospital rather than go home to your own quiet. He was getting a picture of what that quiet looked like and learned that he didn’t like it very much.
“Work was boring, huh,” he said, though he couldn’t imagine what a fun day looked like as a waitress. “You working more?”
“Mm. Saturday girl quit, so now I’m on Saturdays, too.” You picked at your sock. “S’okay. Tips are good. I learned that old guys tip better when you call them ‘sir.’”
He huffed. “Do they?”
“Huge. It’s a cheat code.” You tilted your head at him, smiling shyly. “You’d tip well, I think. You’d overcompensate.”
“I’m not gonna sit here and get profiled by you in the only few minutes where I can catch my breath.” He held the card up, front to himself. “And I tip twenty-five percent like every functioning adult, thank you.”
You groaned. “Where can I get tipped more than that?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
“I do. I do. I’m a broke student. Point me to the money — where should I apply?” You shifted on the couch, fully facing him now, the cards apparently abandoned for the moment. “C’mon. You’ve lived a hundred years. You’ve gotta know where I can make some quick cash.”
“You’re sweet to me, doll,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. He set the cards down and looked at you, genuinely considering it now. He tried to ignore the fact that you likely had money troubles and tried to think about how he could actually help. “Define quick.”
“Like — by next Thursday.”
“Legally?”
“No.”
“Legally, you can sell plasma. Twice a week, they pay you, you sit there with a juice box.”
Your nose scrunched. “I don’t love needles in me sober.”
“You’re gonna be a nurse.”
“In other people. That’s totally different.” You waved it off. “Next. What else?”
“Sleep studies pay you to sleep. Egg donation pays a whole lot but it’s a whole process, not a Thursday deal.” He was ticking them off on his fingers, now fully committed. “Medical research’ll pay you to test things. Phase-one trials. You take an experimental drug and they watch you for side effects.”
“That’s the one.” You sat up. “How much?”
“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I bring you in here to keep you from blacking out. I’m not gonna have you volunteering to get poisoned for a quick four hundred bucks.” He pointed at you. “Maybe start laying on the ‘sir’ a little too thick from now on.”
“Sir.” You tested on him directly, dropping your voice, leaning in an inch, lashes going slow. “Could you help me out, sir? Tips have been so slow, sir.”
He turned his face away from you, now making himself look out the window. “I’m not entertaining this.”
“Oh, but sir.” You’d fully abandoned the cards now, scooting closer, a hand under your chin, the picture of innocence. “I’m just a girl. A poor, hardworking girl trying to be a nurse. Don’t you want to help me out, sir?”
“I am trying.” He pulled up the flashcards. “If it’ll help, I’ll bring my SWAT buddies into your place and they can run up a tab.” He waved a card in front of your face, trying to get your attention back to it. “You do this, I’ll have eight cops eating mozzarella sticks in your section by Friday, overtipping ‘cause I saved their lives. Won’t even have to call ‘em sir.”
“Right. No, that’s — ” You let out a little laugh too quickly, eyes widening at his words, and you took the card out of his hand mostly to have something to do with yours. “You don’t have to do that. Obviously. I was kidding — ” You batted the whole thing away with a shake of your head. “God. No. I’m okay, I promise. I was kidding.”
“I’m half-kidding,” he said, raising a brow. “I do know those guys. It’s no skin off me. But it’s okay.”
He let the offer sit like that, and he saw you pinch your eyes shut. He watched the whole thing happen on your face, the small involuntary recoil you always had when anyone offered you real kindness. You were bad at it. For a girl who lied so charmingly about how much she drank and how her night went, you had absolutely no poker face for being cared about. You had not the first idea how to hide it.
He found it unbearably endearing.
You opened your eyes and looked a little caught, a little sheepish as your thumb worried the corner of the card.
“You’re a strange girl,” he mumbled, fond, before he could stop it. “You know that?”
“Shit — Jack,” you said through a small laugh, shaking your head. “I don’t — I’m — ” You pressed your lips together and your shoulders came up almost to your ears in a stiff shrug. “Is there anything I can do for you? I can’t just accept — all your help.”
He snorted. “What help? I give you a study room and review flash cards.”
“Let me do something. I’m a good cleaner — ”
His head went back slightly, shaking his head. “You’re really not.”
“Okay,” you continued, rallying. “A dog? Guys like you always have dogs they don’t walk ‘cause of their hours. I can walk dogs.”
“No dog.” He raised his hand when he saw your mouth move again, stopping you. “You pay me back by passing your boards. You can pay me back plenty if you end up working here, doing good at the job.”
You went quiet for a second. “That’s just me doing my own thing. That’s not real.”
“That’s real to me.” He shrugged, like he hadn’t just made your whole future the price of his kindness. “I get a good nurse out of it someday.” He pulled himself off the couch. “And now I gotta go. Floor’s not gonna run itself.”
“Boo,” you said, pulling the entire deck on your lap now. “You’re the worst study partner. You leave constantly.”
Tonight, Jack had come into the family room after leaving you for a longer stretch of time than usual — a multi-vehicle situation that had eaten two hours and most of his patience — and found the studying had long since lost.
You’d migrated to the couch at some point. The textbook was open face-down on the cushion beside you like a small tented roof, your flashcards fanned across the middle seat, and you were folded in the corner with your knees pulled up and cheek mashed into the worn armrest, fighting your eyes and losing completely. You’d dimmed the overhead lights, lighting the lamp in the corner, the one nobody used, throwing everything low and gold.
He paused in the doorway. “You awake?”
“Mhm. Need a cat nap, though,” you murmured.
Jack snorted, shutting the door behind him as he walked closer to you. “How far’d you get?”
“Far enough.” Then, you added, “Cat nap.”
“Sayin’ it like I’m gonna not let you have one.”
Your eye cracked open a sliver, tracked him, then fell shut again. “Feel like you’re gonna make me do more cards.”
He toed the leg of the coffee table aside, reached down, and started clearing your mess off the cushions. He lifted the textbook and shut it around the receipt you’d jammed as a bookmark; gathered the flashcards and squared them in his palm; capped the highlighter and pocketed it. You watched the cleanup through one half-open eye, not lifting a single finger, your cheek staying flat to the armrest.
“There. No more cards. You’re done for tonight, doll.”
“Hooray,” you mumbled.
He nudged your socked foot where it had crept up across the cushion. “C’mon. Budge up a second. Don’t want you wrecking your neck sleeping like that.”
You made a small sound of protest but you went, peeling your cheek off the armrest with reluctance. There was a crease pressed into your skin where the fabric seam had been and your hair was flat on one side and mushed on the other. You blinked up at him, swaying where you sat, eyes glassy and unfocused in the gold lamplight.
He sank into the space he’d cleared, the cushion dipping, tipping the two of you a fraction into each other. That was all the invitation your body apparently needed, because you folded into him without a beat of thought — too tired to second-guess it, he supposed — your temple finding the warm of his shoulder, your whole side melting against his. You drew your knees up and tucked them against his thigh. Your hand came to rest on his chest, palm flat, fingers spreading once before they went still. You exhaled after a moment, long and slowly, and burrowed your nose into his neck.
Jack stilled.
“Ten minutes,” you murmured, the words barely coming out as words.
He took his arm off the back of the couch and settled it around your back, broad hand spanning between your shoulder blades and drawing you that last fraction deeper into him. You went boneless with it, a small contended hum slipping out of you.
Because he couldn’t help himself, he tipped his head down a fraction to say into your hair, “Been doin’ really well, y’know that, sweetheart?”
You hummed, the sound of it vibrating against his throat, your fingers curling the faintest bit in his scrubs. “Thanks, Jack.”
“Gonna be a good nurse,” he murmured, thumb moving once along your shoulder.
“Gonna work with you,” you mumbled, three-quarters gone. “You said.”
“Mhm.”
“Holdin’ you to it.”
“Yeah, I know you are.” The corner of his mouth flicked up where you couldn’t see it. “Go to sleep. You can hold me to it in ten minutes.”
When you didn’t answer for a second, Jack realized you were already gone. You were warm and trusting at his side, your hand slack over his heart, your breath sinking deep and even into his neck.
Jack let his head tip back against the couch, pinching his eyes shut at the feeling of you, at the feeling you caused. His hand spread slowly across your back, feeling the breath go through you — the proof of you — and he let his thumb find the curve of your shoulder and rest there, keeping his eyes shut. He sat with the enormous fact of you, the girl he’d not seen anyone circle back for, gone soft and so pliant in his arms like she’d always belonged there, and he stopped pretending he wasn’t already lost.
The ten minutes came and went. He let them. He’d have given you the whole night, the whole shift, the whole of whatever this was turning into. There wasn’t one place on the earth worth standing up for, and he’d known it for weeks, and only now, with your breath slow against his throat, did he let himself sit all the way inside of the knowing.
Jack came out of the OR and signed — albeit distantly, mind running a meter a minute about nothing good — what needed signing and said the things he was meant to, feeling the familiar piece of his own damn soul rotting away in the place those things went to rot. He knew the spot by now. It’d been decades of depositing them into the same place, and the place didn’t fill, exactly, but it never emptied, either. It just sat there, getting heavier, like things usually do when you keep adding to it and never take anything out.
This one would sit a while. Jack had started to sense it around the first year in this job; the ones that stayed had a weight, and you knew on the table whether you were getting one of those or whether it’d wash off by morning. This one wouldn’t.
He stripped his gloves, and somebody said something he answered without hearing, and then his feet simply walked past the board, carrying him down the hall toward the one door on the whole floor that wouldn’t have somebody else’s catastrophe behind it.
His hand was flat on the door. He was still wearing the gown, and he looked down and registered it too late. He should’ve changed it, left the thing in the dirty bin with the rest of what the shift had taken, the way he always did before he came to you, kept the two halves of the floor separate on purpose.
He opened the door. You were on the couch, one leg tucked under you and the other foot on the floor and a half-empty cup of coffee on the table going cold. You’d been doing something on your phone, or nothing, when the door opened, and you looked up with the easy expectant expression on your face you always had before it dropped. He watched it melt.
“Hey,” you said, making your voice soft.
“Hey.” His voice came out rough, and he almost winced as he heard it himself.
You set your phone face-down on the cushion and unfolded yourself from the couch and stood, crossing the room to close the gap between you. You stopped in front of him and looked up, your brow doing a small worried thing, and he let himself be looked at.
“Sit down,” you said. “You look like you’re gonna fall through the floor.”
He distantly registered you walking him to the chair — your hand finding his forearm, a light touch — and he let you. He folded into the chair like the strings of his own body had been cut, his elbows finding his knees and head dropping.
He heard you move, small domestic sounds of you filling a cup, the tap somewhere down the hall turning on then shutting off. Then your socks were back in his eyeline, toes pointed to him.
“Here.” You crouched, came into his lowered field of vision, and pressed a cup into his hands — water, cold — and folded his fingers around it when they were slow to close. “Drink it all.”
He drank because that was the path of least resistance. The water caught something he hadn’t registered was bone-dry. You took the empty cup out of his hands when he was done, setting it on the table behind you, and then he felt your hands find his shoulders.
He flinched just slightly, the smallest involuntary thing, for nobody touched him like that. Nobody put their hands on him that weren’t shaking one of his or needing something from him. You settled your thumbs into the iron base of his neck and pressed slowly, working the knots the night, the days, the weeks, and probably the year had wound there.
Your thumbs were unsure of themselves — you weren’t good at it, you weren’t trying to be, you were simply trying — and that was somehow worse because it got further to him than skill would have; there was the unpracticed earnestness to it, like you’d simply decided his shoulders had been holding too much and you wanted to put your hands there to take some of it down.
He felt his head drop lower, coming forward on its own, the tension bleeding out of his neck by degrees under your hands. Your thumbs found a place at the top of his spine that had been clenched so long that it had stopped registering as pain, and you pressed there, and a fraction let go. He felt his shoulders drop the inch they’d been holding up all night, and an uneven breath went out of him.
You kept your hands moving, your thumbs working the meat of his shoulders through the cotton, occasionally finding a knot and leaning your weight into it until it gave.
His head tipped a little forward after a stretch of time — chasing, or simply falling — and it found the soft of your stomach. His forehead rested against the front of you, where you stood close in the gap between his knees. He hadn’t intended for it, or maybe he had, somewhere under where the intention happened, his body had chosen to stop holding its own weight and give it to the nearest thing that felt like it’d take it. His eyes were already shut, and he stayed there, hands coming up on their own to rest at the sides of your waist. His fingers anchored into the fabric of your shirt.
“Shitty job sometimes,” he mumbled after a moment.
“Yeah,” you said softly above him. “I bet it is.”
Your fingers had found his hair, threading through the curls. Then, you added quietly, “But you’re really good at it.”
His fingers tightened a fraction at the fabric on your waist as he let out a short huff.
“Didn’t help him,” he said finally, the words coming out muffled behind his own mouth. “Whatever I’m good at didn’t help him.”
“Maybe not.” Your fingers scraped carefully at his scalp. “I think you were the best shot he had.”
He breathed you in, choosing to let the words rest in his skull for a while instead of fighting them.
“I’m — ” He heard you take in a breath and felt it go through your whole body. “I’m really grateful I met you, Jack.”
For some reason, he waited for you to take it back. There was a primally fast thing in him that told him that you’d take the words back, and he’d have understood.
“You don’t have to say anything,” you added. “I just wanted you to know. While you’re here being all — ” Your thumb moved at the back of his neck, tender and so gentle. “ — Figured it was a decent time to tell you I’m glad you exist.”
He took in a shaky breath against you, fingers tightening again.
“Thank you, sweet girl,” he said, and it sounded like it’d been punched out of him. “Likewise. More than you know,” he finished, his arms wrapping around the rest of your waist now, pulling you in like he could just fold himself smaller if he held hard enough.
Your fingers kept moving slowly in his hair, your other hand coming around the back of his head to hold him there. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d let anybody do this; as far as he could remember, he’d decided in some wordless permanent way that he’d carry his own weight from then on, that it was cheaper, that needing somebody was a bill that came due eventually and he’d rather not run the tab.
“You should sit,” he said after god knows how long without letting go. “Selfish, keepin’ you standing here.”
“It’s okay.”
He hummed, thumb moving once at your waist. “Two more minutes then.”
“Whatever you need, Jack,” you said, voice quiet. “I’m not going.”
Jack’s phone lit up on the arm of the couch at 10:52, face-down, buzzing itself a quarter-inch off the leather before he caught it.
He’d been working his way, with grim completionist patience, through an iceberg video you’d sent him three days ago with the message ‘THIS rabbit hole i need you to fall down.’ You’d followed it up by telling him, ‘do Not skip tiers!!’ He hadn’t skipped tiers. He was, in fact, ninety minutes deep and only about two-thirds down the pyramid, somewhere in the tier where a young man with a serious voice was explaining internet folklore he couldn’t believe was real.
He was fairly sure it’d been invented by some teenager, but Jack only shrugged, distantly wondering why on earth anyone would spend the labor — the diagrams, alone — hoaxing a thing this elaborate for an audience of complete strangers. He also wondered why on earth you were so interested in this. As quickly as the thought arrived, he realized that he was working down the iceberg himself.
Working down a thing you’d handed him felt adjacent to sitting next to you, and his apartment had become the sort of quiet that made adjacent worth ninety minutes of contemporary folklore. He’d sooner have chewed glass than admitted it out loud.
It was a good apartment and an unwitnessed one. He’d realized somewhere in the past year it was untouched by any hand but his. Every object was exactly where he’d last set it down, for there was no second person to nudge the remote three inches or leave a hair tie on the counter or ask why there was a mug in the sink and no bowl. His leg was off for the night, propped against the arm of the couch, the whole standing weight from his night shift to SWAT calls finally set down somewhere it was allowed to stay.
So, the phone going off, went off loud in the silence that had become almost-permanent. Your name lit across the screen, and the picture with it (one you’d set yourself, commandeering his phone to do it). It was already strange that it was a call. You never called; you texted in floods, six messages deep before he’d gotten to the first, but the ringing meant the thing had gotten past the point where typing it out would hold.
He looked at your laughing face buzzing on his phone for a second too long, the cold little instinct, and thumbed it green.
“Hey,” he said. “You know it’s almost eleven on my night-off. This better be good.”
You stayed silent for a second, and he could hear your breath and the hollow of a call connected in a car, the cooling engine’s tick and automotive acoustics.
“Hey,” you said finally, and Jack felt it wrongly. The back half of the word had gone soft and unsteady at the end.
Jack was already sitting up. “Hey, yourself,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He heard you swallow quickly. “Sorry. God, this is so dumb. You — were you asleep?”
“I was almost through with your iceberg, if you want the truth.”
You made a sound that tried to be a laugh but didn’t clear the runway, breaking apart halfway. “You watched it?”
“Almost.” His fingers were drumming against his prosthetic leaning by the couch now. “Are you out?”
“I’m —” You paused, then hummed like you were debating. “I’m kind of near your place, actually?” Your voice rose toward the end, like you were embarrassed or questioning it all yourself. “I know. It’s creepy. But I think I need to — talk to you.”
“Yeah?” He tried to keep his voice light, though he could already feel something in his body start racing, panicking. “You break something?”
“No. No. Promise. It’s nothing like that.”
For some reason, that put a deeper hook in him. If it wasn’t a wrist, an ankle, or your body doing something it shouldn’t, then it was the other kind, and he had no idea how to hold something like that. He wasn’t sure what he could do with a sprain he couldn’t ice.
“Okay — ”
“Wait,” you interrupted, voice pitching higher, and he could see you were psyching yourself out. “I could just say it now, honestly. It’d probably be easier over the phone.”
Jack’s eyes widened a fraction at that. His stomach suddenly felt cold.
“No,” he said, voice rougher than he’d intended. “I won’t make it hard. Whatever you want to say, I promise. Just — not like this, okay? Come here.”
He listened to you breathe as you weighed it and knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he wouldn’t like what you were going to say. “Okay,” you breathed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Jack opened the door after the first knock, unembarrassed of waiting. You’d come as you were, a coat thrown open over sleep clothes, good wool hanging loose over a thin cami with lace at the collar and soft shorts and bare legs down to the sneakers you hadn’t laced properly. The second fact that registered to Jack was that you’d been crying; there was a soft ruin around your eyes, the mascara long gone, wiped with a sleeve somewhere back in the evening. Your hair was up and losing, a claw clip hanging looser than he believed it was meant to.
“Hi,” you said, eyes raising to meet his. “Thanks for letting me come by.”
Jack felt his shoulders rise to his ears just slightly at the formality. He felt like a bucket of ice had been dropped upon him because somewhere in the past few weeks, you’d stopped apologizing to him as much, which had felt like a small victory he never told you he was counting. And here it was again, your stiff little courtesy, the door swung back shut on a thing that had been open. Jack didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
“You don’t thank me for coming by,” he said gruffly, opening the door wider.
You came in, but only just. Before he could steer you to the warmth of his apartment, you were already reaching into the bag on your shoulder — hands shaking, he realized, with a fine tremor — and pulling out a folded piece of paper, creased hard down the middle and then again like you’d tried to bundle it up into a fist.
He unfolded it and smoothed out the edges, eyes looking for yours briefly, but you’d already looked away. Your bottom lip was between your teeth and you were looking at the ground. He forced himself to look down.
It was your pharmacology exam. Your cramped looping handwriting scattered the margins, a star drawn to one question because you starred everything. There was red pen all down the side and a number circled on the top. The number, Jack saw immediately, was not catastrophic, not a failure even. It was a low pass, the sort of grade that would’ve stung for Jack in his school days and evaporated by the next exam. He’d expected worse from the way you’d been shaking holding it.
He looked back at you, confused more than anything. “Congratulations, you passed.”
Your jaw tightened, and he could see your eyes go bright and wounded. “It’s a seventy-one.”
“That’s a pass.”
“Barely. Barely.” You took the paper out of his hands, folding it away like you couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. “And you helped me with this so much and I still couldn’t. I’m so tired of — ” You stopped, looking up at the ceiling as you pressed your lips flat. “It’s not about the test.”
“Okay.” He leaned back against the counter, giving you the whole floor of the room. “Talk, then.”
You looked at him, and he watched you gather it all up, deciding, as it settled into your face, your mouth, whatever you’d come here to say.
“I don’t wanna waste your time anymore,” you said, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as your eyes landed on the wall behind him. “I can’t — it’s not fair.”
Jack felt the whole floor shift under him and felt his brows go up an inch as he tried to keep his face seem collected.
“You’re you,” you continued. “You’ve got a whole life, a hard one, and I’ve been just — dumping mine on you. Making you sit there and hold my hand through studying and I’m — ” You shook your head, face going grim as you said the words. “It’s not fair to you. You’ve been carrying me for so long, and it’s not fair. None of this is yours to carry. I’m not yours to carry.”
His nose scrunched just slightly, something like burning blooming at the center of his face. Something in his chest had cracked along the seam he had no idea was there, because he’d never had to look at it once straight on. It was easy to carry your own weight when there was no one asking to take some. It was easy to call solitude a principle when nobody had ever made the alternative real. And you had. You’d made it real for months, and here you were proposing — no, telling — to take it back, to hand him his loneliness again because of some measurement of fairness.
The horror of how much Jack didn’t want it — how badly, how completely he didn’t want to go back to how it was before you — was the first honest look he’d taken at himself in longer than he could stand to count.
“That so?” was all he could say, voice roughening as his brows narrowed at you.
“Yes.” You mistook the roughness for agreement, or maybe you just needed to do so, because you kept going. “You don’t have to help me. The only thing I can think is you’re — you are a good person and I was there. And you help people, it’s what you do.” Your hand waved in the general direction of him as your voice cracked. “So help someone who’d actually make it worth it. Who won’t barely pass and keep getting too drunk and — ” You laughed slightly, and it was all wet and terrible, the sound. “I’m a bad use of you. You’re this — you are so much, Jack, and I’m a bad place to put it. So put it somewhere better.”
Jack had to force a swallow when you ended your words with a sharp intake of breath, the pool behind your eyes slipping free slowly down your cheeks. You’d run out of anything that’d make you wipe it away now, and that undid him worse than the crying itself, that you were standing there and letting it fall, done hiding, wrung all the way out.
“I’m sorry — ” he started.
“It’s okay,” you said immediately, shaking your head.
“For making you think that’s what it was,” he said, lowering his voice. “That’s on me, that you talked yourself into thinking this has been some sort of charity.” He cocked his head to the side then, wishing you’d look up at him. “But you’re gonna quit shaking your head for one minute, and hear the rest, ‘cause you got it wrong. All of it, backwards and upside down.”
He came off the counter and closed the space himself, until you had to lift your chin to keep his eyes.
“I’m not a man who spends his nights on a stray out of the goodness of his heart. Ask anyone I work with what I’m like. I don’t have that lying around spare.” His jaw tightened. “So take the halo off. That’s not what this was.”
“Then why — ”
“You,” he said plainly, for he learned it cost him nothing to do so, and a lot if he didn’t. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone. There’s nowhere else I want to put it.”
He watched everything in your face tighten at his words, the disbelief and reflex to argue all curdling underneath.
“If you don’t want this.” Me. Me, he wanted to say. “Say it. I’ll leave you alone. You don’t owe me anything.”
“That’s not — ”
“But don’t act like it’s some favor for me.” He was closer now than he’d been. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving for my sake. That’s a lie.”
“It’s not — ”
“It’s a lie,” he said, voice going flat and so final, as he slowly nodded his head. He looked at you a second, lips coming between his teeth, then looked away as he felt something physical seize over his entire body.
Jack himself had to process the words as he said them, because he was only just realizing how much truth they held.
“You make it good.”
He forced himself to look back at you, and you had tilted your head now to look up at him, caught and still as stone, the arguing gone completely off your face now and replaced with something more frightened.
“Don’t — ” One of Jack’s shoulders came up in a half-hearted shrug. “You’re the one part of my day that doesn’t take anything out of me. Just — get that straight, sweetheart.”
You were just looking up at him with your whole face undone, the tears gone still on it, as though his words had knocked your own clean out of you.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” you said quietly. “People don’t — that’s not a thing that happens to me, Jack. Being — ” Your sentence broke apart and your hand had come up and fisted loosely in front of his shirt without either of you deciding it should, holding on, holding him there. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Nothing.” His hand came up slowly and covered yours where it fisted in his shirt, holding it flat there against his chest. “It’s just true.”
You made a small, pained sound and dropped your forehead against his sternum, right where his hand held yours, and he felt the whole strung-tight weight of you gave at once and settled into him. He felt you breathe against his shirt at the same time he felt his own pulse going too fast on your knuckles; he wasn’t bothered enough to try and slow it, because there was no point now. You’d already found out.
“Very grateful for you,” he murmured, his other hand pulled up to rest over the back of your skull. “Told you so earlier. Meant it more than you let yourself hear.”
You huffed against his shirt — half a sob, half a laugh, maybe the ruined cousin of both — and he felt it go through the cotton and land warm against his skin, felt your fingers uncurl a fraction from the fist they’d made then re-fist, like even now some part of you was checking he was still there to hold onto.
Jack held still for it, same as you had in the family room for him. He was good at holding still, it was half the job, but this was a different kind — he supposed — where there was a plain animal willingness to be a wall for as long as you needed one and not move a muscle that might spook you out of it.
He rested his chin at the top of your head, murmuring, “I don’t have to tutor you anymore, if that’ll help.” He swallowed, closing his eyes as he breathed in your faint perfume. “We can scrap the whole thing, if that’s what’s making you feel so bad.”
You stilled for a second, then made a small sound against him.
Despite himself, despite it all, he let out a short chuckle. “S’okay. I’m the reason you got a seventy-one. You’re allowed to switch.”
“You’re the reason it’s a seventy-one and not a thirty,” you said, and it came out muffled and immediate. You almost sounded cross, like you didn’t want the slander against him to stand even now.
After a moment against him, you added, “I don’t want to be just someone you help, I think. I don’t want to be somebody — I guess — that you’re just good to.”
When Jack hummed, you continued, “I don’t know what I wanna be instead. Just — a friend — or, I don’t know. Something that goes both ways.”
Jack’s chest swelled at the words. He felt that he’d have been anything you asked of him, simply because it had just become how it was. It was almost outrageous how, if you’d asked, he’d have handed it over, the whole rest of it, whatever you wanted the name to be, whatever box you needed him in.
A man his age was supposed to be past this. He was supposed to have calcified somewhere in the second decade of the job into something that didn’t reorganize himself around what someone he’d known properly only for the better part of the year had asked him.
“Consider it done,” he murmured, letting the word settle. Friend.
You breathed against him, and Jack felt himself want to remain exactly here and knew that he shouldn’t. He knew that the kind thing now was to give you somewhere to put your face that wasn’t his chest, some ordinary ground for you to set your feet back down on.
“C’mon.” He got a hand on your shoulder and eased you off him gently, a slow, slow reclaiming of the eight inches of air between your body and his. He dipped his head to catch your eyes, which were pink-rimmed and swollen and doing their utter best to avoid his now that the worst was out of you. “Do you want me to order food?”
Your neck rolled back slightly as you met his eyes, caught slightly off-guard at the shift of tone. You blinked. “That was a lot, and now you’re asking about food?”
“It was a lot,” he agreed. He reached up and thumbed a smudge of leftover mascara from under your eye briskly, and you let him. “And now it’s done. So, food, and we can watch the stupid video you sent me before you head home.”
It had been six days since you showed up at his apartment, and Jack had embarrassingly counted every single one of them. You’d left his apartment somewhere past two with your eyes finally dry and a paper bag of his leftover Thai you’d protested and taken anyway, and he’d walked you down to your car and stood in the lot like some idiot in a movie until your taillights turned off his street, and then he’d gone back up to a quiet that felt, for the first time in years, like something had been in it.
Since then it had gone like it always had and nothing like it; you still turned up with flashcards and left a graveyard of half-drunk coffees on every surface. But he’d noticed how you started letting him sit closer now, let a compliment land without flinching off, and once, mid-story, had reached over and fixed his scrub top where it had folded under, casual as breathing.
Friend was the word you’d settled on. Jack was thinking about that when Shen dropped into step beside Jack with a cup of fresh Dunkin sweating in his hand.
“You know it’s not standard to let your girlfriend occupy the family room for three hours of your shift, right?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jack immediately clarified. It seemed more important to do now than it was earlier, when people only knew you when you came in as an emergency. Still, it felt wrong, like a key going in the wrong hole. “And you got a problem with it?”
Shen lifted the coffee in surrender, unbothered. “You know we’ve grown to her. She and I do the Wordle every midnight.” Then, he spread one hand. “Administratively, she’s not staff. She’s not a patient. She’s not family of a patient. Which leaves the category I’d have to call —” He tilted his head, faux thoughtfulness. “ — Abbot’s girlfriend, and I don’t think that’s in the handbook.”
“Try again,” Jack drawled, thumbing a form he wasn’t reading that didn’t need to be read. “She’s a nursing student getting hours of free tutoring off a board-certified attending. Put that in the handbook. Teaching hospital. I’m teaching.”
Shen shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “Alright. Alright. She’s not your girlfriend. Mind if I ask her out, then?”
Jack snorted. “If you could only be so lucky.”
“Clearly she has a type for attendings,” he pressed, grinning. “Or is it just the ones with gray hair?”
Jack looked at him sideways. “This is getting a bit weird, even for you.”
“I’m happy for you, man. Even if you’re gonna make us all watch you not do anything about it for the next six months.”
“Mind your own damn business.”
“Sure,” he turned, lifting a hand over his shoulder as he went. “Close the blinds anyway. There’s a window on that door. Everyone can see her making you dumb.”
Jack looked down the hall and set the form down before going there to close the blinds — telling himself it was for the window, for Shen’s real talk — and knowing, somewhere under that, that he was really just going to you.
He could see you through the window in the door before he reached it, which was, he supposed, exactly Shen’s point. You had a textbook open in your lap and you were chewing the end of your highlighter, brow pulled in, mouthing something to yourself, working a card over your head. You’d pulled the sleeves of one of his old sweatshirts down to your hands, the one you’d swiped from his locker two weeks ago and never given back and that he’d never once asked for, because he’d found he didn’t want it back, found he liked seeing it swallow you.
You gave him a smile when he walked in. He reached up and tipped the blinds shut on the window with two fingers, the floor outside tipping away.
“Why’d you close them?” you asked, slightly bored.
“Apparently the whole department’s been getting a show.”
You furrowed your brows then. “A show of what? Me failing?”
“Somethin’ like that.” He let it go at that, coming around and lowering himself onto the couch beside you, the cushion dipping and tipping you toward him a degree, what it always did that neither of you ever corrected. “How’s it going? Honest.”
“Honestly?” You blew out a breath, closing the highlighter. “I’d kill for a drink.”
“Oh?” Jack settled back against the couch, his arm coming up along the top of it behind you. “Telling that to the one man who’s seen what you look like at the bottom of the bottle.”
“Jaaaack,” you said, almost in a whine. “Let’s go to a bar.”
He snorted, dragging a hand down his face. “Now I’m wondering what’s pushing you toward the edge.”
He picked the flashcard you had set on the textbook, the one you’d been studying. He read the front of it without much intention — your handwriting was cramped and looping, a star drawn next to it — and turned over and checked the back. He did the same thing he always did, the story, the image; he’d done it a hundred times by now. He could do it half-asleep, and most nights he half was.
You thought about it for a second, your bottom lip tugged between your teeth, then walked yourself to the answer.
“Mhm. See. Good,” he murmured. He flipped the card to the back to check you, and you’d had it. Of course you’d had it, you’d had more of this than you ever gave yourself credit for. “Tell you what. Get the next three right, and I’ll get us a drink once your exams are done.”
Your brows narrowed. “Bribe?”
“It’s an incentive.” He held up the next card, eyes on you. “Don’t think. Just answer me.”
You did. One, then the next, then the one after. You were quicker now that there was something on the end of it, your lip caught between your teeth as you walked yourself there each time. He noticed you worked when there was something to earn. After all three, he hummed. “See. Good girl, there you go.”
He felt you go still beside him, and his eyes flickered up to you to see your eyes dropping to your textbook. He stayed silent a second, eyes raking over you, your thumb running the worn edge of a card back and forth.
Jack knew better than to point out how you being flustered was almost silly when he’d said the same words many times while taping you up or shining a penlight in your eyes. He let his arm stay where it was along the couch, hand not quite touching your shoulder, and watched the side of your face.
“You wanna do some more?” he said finally, voice coming out rougher. “Or are we done for the night?”
You held up a finger, as if telling him to wait.
“Okay, then,” he mumbled, leaning back further against the couch. “Take your time.”
After a second, he turned to say something dry to break the silence. You’d turned your head, too, and were closer than he initially realized, your eyes coming up off the card and finding his, near enough that whatever he had bubbling in his throat died there immediately.
Jack hummed involuntarily. You closed the sound by pressing your mouth to his, the feeling of the plushness so very featherlight, there and barely there, the softest press.
He went still as stone, every system in him locking at once. His hand was still along the back of the couch and his mouth hadn’t answered yours, not because he didn’t want to — God, he did — but because the entirety of him had gone still with the disbelief of it, with the you, here, choosing this — him — and the half-second of nothing stretched into a second, too damn long.
He’d seized on you, the fact you’d nearly walked, had stood in his kitchen finding the kindest way to disappear, and here you were, closing the last of the distance yourself.
You pulled back like you’d touched a stove, a gasp leaving your mouth, replacing where his own had been.
“Oh god.” Your hand flew up to your mouth, your eyes going wide before pinching shut completely. “I’m sorry — I’m so sorry, Jack. I read that so, so wrong. You’ve been so nice and I — fuck, I’m sorry.”
Jack made a pained sound that was lost somewhere in your ramble, at the sight of you snatching it back. Nothing had gone wrong. Jack knew you’d read nothing wrong, and that the only thing that had happened was that he’d been too slow, too stunned, too thirty-years-rusty to catch what had been handed to him in good reflex.
His hand came off the back of the couch and he caught your jaw, thumb on your chin as he pushed slightly against your skin. He was distantly aware that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so afraid about leaning in to kiss a woman, and went in to try and give you back the second he lost, mouth finding yours the exact way every bone in his body knew he should’ve the first time.
You made a startled sound against him before the entirety of you melted. His mouth worked against yours, thoroughly, making sure not to fumble it twice. His thumb stayed on your chin, tilting your face the half-degree he wanted it, and when your lips parted on half a breath, his entire upper body leaned in to follow it, deepening it.
It was you who moved first. Of course, it was you, always you. You followed it, the kiss pulling you up and forward, your knee coming over his thigh, and then you were settling over him. Jack let out the throatiest of a chuckle, still intent on keeping your mouth, as your hands slid from the front of his scrubs to his jaw.
Jack’s hands caught yours on instinct — one at your waist, one at your hip — steadying you down to him, your hips still slightly in the air like you weren’t sure you could close the last of the distance, your weight held in the suspended air in the ache of almost, thighs braced on either side of his.
Jack pulled back just enough to look at you, letting his head fall back against the back of the couch, dragging his eyes up the length of you poised over him. He blew out a short breath, the corners of his lips kicking up as his palm glided up and down on the side of your waist, catching onto your tank top on accident to show a sliver of skin at your lip — warm, soft, the band of your shorts sitting low — and he watched his own hand do it before he dragged his eyes back to your face.
“Nothing halfway with you, huh?” he said, the words practically coming out from his chest. His thumb rested against that bared sliver of you. “Climbing me at my work.”
You lowered your head, and your nose grazed against his. “You started it.”
“I did?”
“You closed the blinds.”
He let out a surprised laugh. “I can promise you I didn’t expect this when I did that.”
Your lips ghosted over his for a second, and his chest swelled at the sight of you trying to tamp down the sweetest smile. “Problem?”
“No.” The words came out immediately, because apparently somewhere in him, there was still something insatiable and teenage that had lurched up at the sight of you. “No. No problem.”
His hand spread flat and warm against the small of your back, fingers slipping under the hem of the top to your warm skin there, and he drew you down, finally, that last suspended inch collapsing as he settled your weight flush over him.
He had to pinch his eyes shut a second, then open them again to take in the whole sight of you. His hand came up to your jaw. The light caught the loose hair at your temple, the bare line of your shoulder where the strap had slipped. Your mouth was full and flushed from his, parted slightly, your breath coming. The skin under his hand at your back was hot to the touch, and he spread his fingers wider against it just to feel more of it.
You were trying not to smile. Your lip caught between your teeth, the corners pulling anyway.
His finger perched against your jaw moved to your lips, dragging slowly across the lower one, parting it under the pad of his thumb. He watched it give, your breath warm against his skin.
Your eyes flicked up to his as your lip closed around the first knuckle, your tongue hesitantly pressing flat against the pad, the wet heat of it catching him so completely off guard that the air went out of him in a rough exhale. His other hand fisted at the small of your back, turning over to gather the hem of your tank in his grip.
“Oh.” His eyes had dropped to your mouth and fixed there, his jaw slack as his head cocked to the side. “Pretty.”
His gaze was locked on the sight of his thumb disappearing past your lips, no hesitation in it, that same no-halfway boldness turned filthy and sweet all at once. The tired man in him went down all at once.
His thumb dragged free, catching on your bottom lip and tugging it down before it slipped loose. His chest heaved harder now under the warm weight of you.
“Where’d that come from?” he muttered gruffly, almost to himself, thumb pressing the slick of your own lip back against you. His palm moved to cradle your face, tapping your cheek softly once. “Can’t be doing things like that here, doll. I’m on call.”
“Then don’t make it so easy.” Your lips brushed his thumb, then you moved down to press your mouth to the line of his jaw, the stubble catching your lips, then lower to the warm of his throat.
“You callin’ me easy?” he said through a chuckle, letting his head tip back. You scraped your teeth over the cord of his neck and felt the whole of him go tight underneath you, his fingers flexing hard into the bare skin of your back.
“Alright.” His voice had dropped to stone. “You’ve had your fun.. No more of that,” he said, though made no move to stop you.
You peppered a line of pecks down his throat down to where his collar had started, your lips dragging over the jut of his collarbone through the thin cotton. He swallowed. One of your hands slid up to the back of your neck, fingers pushing into the soft gray at his nape, scratching light, and the other flattened over his chest, over the steady-then-not rhythm, fisting slow in the fabric just to feel him breathe wrong because of you.
You sat back an inch to look at him. His head was still tipped back against the couch, his throat bared where you’d left it momentarily pink and glossy, his eyes half-lidded. His hands had gone heavy and possessive at your hips, giving up pretending he wanted them anywhere else, you anywhere else.
You dragged your thumb over his bottom lip, watched it give, the same way he did to you.
“Can I ask you something?” you asked, quietly, your hips settling more firmly into his lap.
“Mm.” His hands spread wide, settling you down harder against him. “My social security number is — ”
You laughed.
“Two-two-six — ”
“Jack — ” You swatted at his chest, the seriousness dissolving into something giddier. “I’m being serious. Stop.”
“Okay, okay.” The corners of his mouth lifted up, and his hands squeezed slightly at your hips. He pulled his head up off the couch to meet your eyes properly. “Shoot. Doubt I could stop you.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
He let the question sit, humming. His thumbs moved idly at your hips, head tilting against the couch like the question required any real thought. “There’s a few women,” he said, lowering his voice as he looked at you, like he was letting you in on a secret. “There’s a nice lady who brings me fruit baskets.”
Your hand, on the flat of his chest, slid up slow to his throat and he kept talking like he didn’t notice.
“ — there’s this nurse on days who keeps leaving me her number at the station — ”
You leaned in and closed your teeth slightly on his earlobe. He let out a short laugh, one that was dragged out of him, his head tipped to give more of it to you without permission.
“Alright. Okay,” he said as your nose dragged the line of his jaw. “Stop doin’ that. I don’t wanna explain teeth marks to the whole floor.”
Your hips set firmer into his lap. “Jack,” you warned. “I can’t do this if you’re seeing fifty other women.”
He sobered a degree, his thumb going still at your waist, his eyes coming up to actually hold yours. The joke drained out of his face as he realised the edge of seriousness you tried to tamp down, and he momentarily short-circuited at how it was even possible for you to wonder.
“Hey.” His hand came up off your hip, pushed the hair back from your face and stayed there, cradling. “Until five minutes ago, there were zero women. Forget fifty.”
Your only response to that was a smile and your cheek leaning further against his palm. He let his thumb move once across his cheekbone, watching the way your cheek turned into his hand. Your eyes drifted half-shut. There was a speck of dried highlighter ink on the side of your finger where it curled against his throat. The strap of your top had slid off your shoulder again; he looked at all of you and stopped bothering to pretend, even to himself, that he was looking at anything other than the only thing in the room he wanted.
“What about you? You seein’ anyone?” His thumb stayed where it was, but his voice had gone quieter. “‘Cause I’ve seen people bring you in. And I never liked one of ‘em.”
You huffed a small laugh, your nose grazing his. “Jealous, Doctor?”
“Yeah.” He watched the laugh stall on your face at how easy he gave it up. “If there is, he should be worried. I’d like to take you on a nice date to change that.”
“Ohhhh,” you drawled through a laugh. “There’s no one, but I won’t say no to the date.”
“Then you’ve got yourself one, doll.” He kissed you on it — short, sure, his hand still cradling your face — sealing the thing as the corner of his mouth caught yours before he pulled back. He let his forehead rest against yours for a second and breathed you in.
Then, with a short groan, he tipped his head back off of yours.
“I gotta get back out there.” His thumb was still moving at your jaw, clearly working against the very thing he was saying. “My work ethic’s going wrong and my residents might actually report me.”
Then, his hands found your waist and he lifted you off, setting you off his lap and onto the cushion beside him where the entire thing had started. You landed with a small affronted sound, your hand fisting in his collar a beat longer before he had to let it go.
You flopped back into the cushion where he’d deposited you, one hand pressed flat to your chest, the picture of wounded. “I guess it’s true what they say about old men. They use you. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.”
He stood up and scrubbed his palm down his face like he could wipe the last ten minutes off it before he had to walk out and be a doctor again. He could still feel the heat sitting at the back of his neck and even though he’d tried to scrub your gloss off, he was sure there was a remnant somewhere the worst possible person would notice.
“Yup, got exactly what I wanted. Thank you, ma’am.” His hand came down to rest at the top of your head and gave it a slow, condescending pat, ruffling the wreck of your hair worse than it already was. “I’m a terrible man. You’re welcome to stay here while I go be one somewhere else.”
He made himself step back and snagged his pen off the table, the badge, the small armor of the job clipping back into place piece-by-piece. The whole time his eyes kept catching on you, sprawled and rumpled where he’d set you down, looking up at him like the night had gone exactly where it was supposed to. He’d seen this room a thousand nights. He’d never once not wanted to leave it.
“Mm. Gotta go home. S’almost three,” you mumbled. “And you get off at seven.”
“I do.”
“So.” You pushed yourself off the cushion, slow, gathering your hair back off your face and pushing up your strap, putting yourself back together piece by piece the same way he was, the night closing in on both ends. “I’ll go and let you be a doctor. You’ve been very neglectful.”
“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. He watched you reach for your textbook, your highlighter, the flashcards, and sweep it all back into your bag, feeling the small stupid pull of not wanting the room to empty out.
He stepped in before you finished, catching your jaw, tilting your face up to kiss you once more. You went still under it, the bag forgotten halfway zipped, your hand coming up to rest light on his chest. He pulled back an inch to look at you.
“Text me when you get home,” he said, thumb dragging along your jaw.
You chuckled, brows pulling in. “It’s a ten minute drive.”
“Text me. Humor an old man, since I’m so terrible to you already.”
summary. You think guys that cook are hot.
pairing. John Tucker x Reader
tags. Fluff, crack-ish?
note. I did giggle while writing this at 1am.
ice time. 1.8k
You think that guys that cook are hot.
That’s basically the number one thing on your list of standards for a guy.
And if you add in, John Tucker, #46 of the Briar U hockey team, who not only cooks but does it wearing a pink apron with the kind of earnest, unbothered pride that should not be as attractive as it is — you can therefore conclude that Tucker is hot and totally your type.
Hannah and Allie are 100% aware of this fact, considering that they were there when you started massively crushing on the hockey player back in sophomore year, and were the ones who listened to you ramble about said hockey player early into the year when you found out he could cook.
Unfortunately, your two friends learning about this fact while also actively dating two guys in Tucker’s own friend group meant that you were now in the unique and deeply unfortunate position of being perceived. Specifically, being perceived by people who knew Tucker, liked Tucker, and had absolutely zero reason to keep your little crush under wraps.
Allie, bless her heart, had lasted approximately three weeks before she'd accidentally let it slip in front of Dean that you thought Tucker was, quote, "disgustingly attractive and it's all because of the cooking thing." Dean, being Dean, had found this information deeply funny and had done absolutely nothing responsible with it, ultimately teasing you every time you and Tucker were in the same vicinity of each other, although thanks to Allie, had really did keep the teasing to just you. You still found the whole situation deeply mortifying.
The only thing keeping you from burying yourself in gravel and suffocating was the knowledge that Tucker, as far as you knew, had not been told. Yet.
You were choosing to believe the "yet" was still working in your favor.
It mostly meant that whenever Tucker showed up places that Hannah or Allie also happened to be, you developed an immediate and urgent need to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Bathroom. Kitchen. The parking lot. You were adaptable. Very much so.
"You're not even being subtle about avoiding him anymore," Hannah had told you once, watching you physically reverse direction in the hallway when you spotted Tucker heading your way. "Like. At all."
"I'm being incredibly subtle."
"You walked into a trash can."
"I meant to do that."
She had given you a look that said, very clearly, that she did not believe you. You had chosen to ignore it on account of self-preservation.
The problem was that Tucker kept showing up. Outside the dorms when you'd come to hang out with Hannah and Allie. At the coffee shop near campus. At Malones — because you worked there and that was literally where the group hung out. At the rink when you'd come to watch a game and hadn't factored in post-game corridor hangouts. And every time, without fail, he was easy to talk to and warm and sincere in that genuine, unguarded way he had, the kind that felt less like a personality and more like a reflex — like being kind was just the thing he defaulted to, same as breathing.
It was even more annoying because he was always like that. Like the teasing from his teammates rolled right off him, and he just kept showing up with food and a good attitude and that small, steady presence that made you feel like whatever room he was in got a little calmer.
It was fine. You were fine. Everything was completely fine.
Which brings you here, to Hannah and Allie's kitchen, helping set up for a casual get-together that you had been assured would be small. Just a few people. Chill. Relaxed.
They were currently hosting eight people and counting, and Tucker's jacket was by the door when you arrived. Hannah had neglected to mention this when she'd asked you to come early and help with the food, even when you asked about the paper bag on the counter, which you later on learned was brought by none other than Tucker.
You were starting to think your friends were not entirely on your side, because the moment you arrived, Allie and Hannah started teasing you increasingly.
The thing is, you didn't know exactly when the conversation in the kitchen shifted to types in men (again), and your crush on Tucker. Which you tried very hard to keep his name as lowkey as possible. They find it amusing. You don’t.
Allie hands you the tablecloth then heads to the sink to wash the dishes left, humming something under her breath like she isn't the reason you're currently in this situation.
"So," she says, turning on the tap. "Hannah was telling me you nearly bolted out of the rink last week when Tucker walked into the corridor."
"I didn't nearly bolt. I had somewhere to be."
"You told us you had to go check on your laundry," Hannah calls from across the kitchen, not even bothering to look up from where she's arranging the snack bowls. "At eleven at night."
"Laundry doesn't have a curfew."
Allie snorts. You smooth the tablecloth aggressively.
"Can we not do this tonight?" you ask, with as much dignity as you could muster. "There are guests."
"There are guests because we invited them," Allie says pleasantly. "Including Tucker, who brought ingredients and is currently grabbing something else and will be back in a few, which I know you clocked the second you walked in."
You had, in fact, clocked it the second you walked in. You say nothing.
Hannah finally looks up, the picture of innocence. "You know, it's kind of impressive how much energy you spend avoiding someone you claim to just have a small crush on."
"It's a normal-sized crush."
"You once left through a fire exit."
"The regular door was blocked."
"By Tucker saying hi to you."
A pause. You smooth an already-smooth section of tablecloth. "It was a crowded hallway."
Allie turns off the tap, reaching for the dish towel with the serene expression of someone who is deeply enjoying herself. "All we're saying is that it might be time to, I don't know, exist in the same room as him for more than four consecutive minutes."
"I exist in the same room as him all the time."
"Without a planned escape route," Hannah amends.
You open your mouth. Close it. The tablecloth is extremely smooth at this point. You are doing a great job with the tablecloth.
"My type," you say finally, pivoting with what you feel is remarkable, amazing, grace, "is simply guys who can cook. That is a completely reasonable standard."
Hannah rolls her eyes at you, turning to set down a bowl of snacks while you finish wiping the counter. "Your type is guys that can cook."
“And? I think cooking is hot.” You miss the way Hannah’s eyes drift past you to someone behind you, busy wiping down the counter as you shrug. Your increasing embarrassment had made your tongue loose, and you had in fact given up on being vague. “Why else do you think I like Tucker?”
“Oh?” The voice behind you makes you freeze. Your hand stiffens on the tablecloth, eyes widening as you’re now suddenly acutely aware of the warmth behind you. “Is that so?”
You look up, and Hannah has a hand over her mouth, amusement dancing in her eyes as she speaks to you through your head.
"Hannah. Help me."
"Nah, girl. You got this. Go you."
Fingers gripping the tablecloth, you plaster a smile on your face and slowly turn.
Behind you stands Tucker, his eyes crinkling as he smiles at you. "Hey, Name."
Your cheeks warm. You are pretty sure that you are the definition of a tomato at this point as you clear your throat in an attempt to be nonchalant. "Heeey, Tuck."
His grin only widens, arms crossing over his chest. "So." His brow lifts, and you swallow. "You think I'm hot?"
You open your mouth. Close it. Open it again.
"I think," you say carefully, in the measured tone of someone carefully disarming a bomb, "that the cooking thing is hot. Objectively. As a concept."
"Uh huh." He doesn't look even remotely convinced, which is deeply unfair considering he's the one who snuck up on you. "And I cook."
"Lots of people cook, Tucker."
"Do they cook as well as me?"
You pause. And the horrible, traitorous, honest part of your brain supplies: no, actually, because you'd had his cooking twice now, once at a team dinner Allie had dragged you to and once when he'd brought food to the apartment for no stated reason, and both times it had been genuinely, annoyingly, unfairly good.
"That's not the point," you say.
His smile tips into something a little softer, a little more knowing, and somehow that's worse than the teasing. He takes one step closer, enough that you would have to actively crane your neck to look away from him, and doesn't say anything for a beat.
"I'll cook for you sometime," he says finally, like it's easy. Like he's offering to lend you a pen. "If that's what it takes."
You stare at him.
From somewhere behind Tucker, you hear Allie make a noise that she unconvincingly tries to smother with a cough. Hannah, you suspect, is still standing at the counter with that same hand over her mouth.
"That," you say slowly, "is the most confident thing anyone has ever said to me."
Tucker shrugs, that easy grin back in place. "I'm a confident guy."
"You're a menace."
"You think I'm hot."
"I think your cooking is hot."
Tucker laughs, saying your name in a way that makes your stomach flip as he tilts his head, and there's something warm in his expression underneath all the amusement. "Same thing."
You look at him for a long moment. He looks back, patient, like he has all night and fully intends to use it.
"Fine," you say, because apparently self-preservation has fully left the building. Your face feels like a furnace, and you are hyper aware of every little sound Allie and Hannah makes behind you, plus thawing Tucker this close to you. "Yeah. Okay. I think you're hot."
The smile that breaks across his face is, genuinely, a little devastating.
"Cool," Tucker says. "I'll text you about dinner. This week?"
You're pretty sure your soul briefly vacates your body.
"This week," you hear yourself agree.
He nods, satisfied, like that's settled then. He glances over his shoulder at Hannah and Allie, who are both staring with the barely-contained energy of two people who have been waiting for this for approximately two years. "Ladies." Then, back to you, quieter, "Talk to you later?"
"Yeah. Yep. Sure." you say, a little helplessly.
Tucker smiles. Then he's heading back toward the living room, and you are left standing in the kitchen, gripping the tablecloth, staring at the middle distance, smiling widely.
A beat of silence.
"Look at you!” Hannah says loudly, while Allie rounds the counter to throw her arms around you, giggling at your still flushed face.
"I hate both of you," you tell them, but the smile on your face doesn’t fade.
summary: another anniversary spent alone makes you spiral. jack comes home and is faced with how his neglect is ruining you.
cw: heavy angst, alcohol intoxication, vomiting, small injury (glass cut), implied depression/(brief) suicidal ideation, non-sexual nudity
wc: 2.4k
a/n: not beta-read yet, we die like, uhh, robby’s will to live
now playing: begged – Olivia Rodrigo
All that I want
Is to sit here silently
And watch movies on TV
What a shame you're not here
Here to witness my devotion
And my endless well of needs
I'm an anchor in the ocean
You know I could never leave
So I'm patient, you're learning
Pretend it's not hurting
And they say it's a virtue
To not let good love slip away
Your makeup has faded. Black mascara smudges around your lash line, having bled from tears that fell like gravity itself demanded it.
This is hardly the first anniversary you’ve spent alone. Far from it, actually.
Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, Christmases—you name it. There is a story to be told about each one of them, a story of how you sat on the couch, nursing a glass of wine while waiting for Jack.
If he wasn’t saving lives in the ER, he was risking his own. It doesn’t matter that you’ve knelt in front of him, the hardwood cool and unforgiving, as you pleaded for him to take a day off. Just one.
There is always something. A colleague who has children and needs that day to take them to Disneyland. Or a patient who only trusts him. A shift he just has to cover.
You’ve heard nearly every excuse possible and smiled like it didn’t matter, like you didn’t matter, because maybe you didn’t.
When you and Jack first started dating, he warned you that surgeons are the worst kinds of doctors to date because of their pretentiousness. He seemed to have forgotten to mention that ER doctors came in second on that list.
It wasn’t the desire for fame or hubris that made Jack so careless about your feelings. It was his devotion to everyone but you.
Sure, he’d kiss you and make you feel special—on a day when he could afford it. When he wasn’t chasing the high of being needed by strangers who’d maybe not even remember his name once he had saved them.
You know the placement of every freckle on his body, and still, it doesn’t change anything.
The third glass of wine doesn’t taste as bitter as the first. You don’t particularly like this brand or year or anything about it—you just know that Jack had bought it for today, back when he was still telling himself that he’d be home to celebrate with you.
As the cap of the bottle dances between your fingers, the metal now warm from your body heat, you glance at the clock.
Three hours and twelve minutes.
God, you’re a fucking loser.
Maybe it would be a different story if you were married. Maybe you could forgive yourself for your desperation, your constant attempts to convince yourself you mattered to him as much as he mattered to you. If there were a little bit of proof of his commitment, you’d be able to look into the mirror without feeling sick with shame.
But there is no ring on your finger or the promise that one will come one day. Jack doesn’t want to get married again. He says you two don’t need that.
Three hours, thirteen minutes.
You slosh the wine in your mouth while the darkest of thoughts creep in. It’s just a little fantasy you’ve curated and perfected over the years, and it’s an insane one, but you love to lose yourself in it every now and then.
Jack comes home. The house is quiet. Too quiet. Goosebumps creep up his arms and neck as he calls out your name. When no answer comes, he runs up the stairs and finds the bathroom door ajar. Light seeps out under it, along with a small pool of water tainted light pink.
Fine. You’re a little melodramatic. Maybe Jack’s neglect has driven you to regress into your teenage self who also fantasized about this whenever her dad yelled at her.
Once the fourth hour starts, the wine bottle is empty, and you’re so drunk it feels like time has stopped. The tears certainly have. They’ve been replaced by this hollow laugh that echoes through the house while you watch the trashiest TV show you could find.
While the alcohol courses through your veins, your eyes zero in on the women’s lip and cheek fillers. It stands out to you like black ink on white paper.
You wish Jack would’ve been a plastic surgeon instead. You wouldn’t care that he sees women’s naked breasts and gives BBLs on a daily basis if that meant that he was home in time for dinner.
Once you stand up to get a new bottle, you feel all the blood rushing to your head. Your legs are unsteady, and your forehead and nose feel so heavy, like they’re pulling you forward.
You find out just how firm the fridge is when you knock against it.
It’s not like you feel it anyway.
The next bottle of wine is closed with a cork stopper. You’ve seen Jack open this kind of bottle with that metal apparatus that looks like you could find it in a gynecologist’s office. You have no idea how to use it. So you take a knife and start hacking away. You only miss your fingers by pure, dumb luck.
That luck runs out when you try to pop out the cork stopper by hitting the bottom of the wine against the kitchen counter.
What used to be the bottle is now a bunch of shards and a cold, wet feeling seeping through your socks.
You laugh hysterically and drop to your knees, not half as careful as you should be. Something pierces your big toe, but you don’t care.
The front door opens. Jack steps inside. And his eyes widen. If anything, Jack has always had one hell of a timing.
You’re a fucking mess.
“Jackie,” you slur.
You try to get up, but your muscles protest.
“Jesus, what the fuck?” he hisses.
He is by your side in an instant, stepping over the glass carefully. It crunches underneath his boots when he picks you up by your underarms and puts you down on the counter.
“Baby, what the fuck happened?”
You giggle. You fucking love it when he calls you baby.
“Oopsie,” you whisper.
Jack stares at you with disbelief. His fingers catch your chin, forcing your eyes to meet his.
For a second, his mouth opens, and you await the lecture that never comes. Instead, his eyes dart over your face, taking it all in—the smeared makeup, the heat radiating from your cheeks, the glassy, far-away look.
“Are you drunk?” he asks, his voice trembling slightly.
You try to bite back a smile as you reply, “As a skunk.”
He lets go of your chin and takes a step back, running a hand through his hair.
You let yourself slide off the counter, trying to close the distance again.
“Stop,” Jack yells.
His arm snaps forward, pushing you back. For a moment, you stumble. Your back hits the counter, and you look up at Jack with a hurt expression. Then your eyes follow his, and you realize that you almost stepped into the glass. A stupid smile spreads over your face.
Jack’s expression falls.
“Hey,” he says sharply. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing, huh?”
He grabs you by your biceps and pulls you away from the sharp mess on the floor. You only feel the closeness as his fingers dig into your skin.
“I missed you today,” you murmur dreamily.
Even to you, your own voice sounds far away. Or maybe only to you? You can’t tell.
Jack stares at you, his eyes searching for something. Anything.
“Talk to me,” he demands. “What is going on? Why are you wasted on a fucking Thursday?”
Oh, that one blows.
On a Thursday. Yes, a random Thursday.
You giggle so hard your throat hurts.
“You’re never gonna believe this, but—” As you pause dramatically, Jack’s eyebrow twitches, “—it’s kinda an important Thursday. Like… really important.”
It’s almost visible how the wheels in Jack’s head start turning. They spark, creak, and squeak as he searches for the answer that’s written all over your face in the runny mascara and that look bordering on insanity.
His face falls when the wheels come to a stop.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
As his eyes dart to the calendar pinned to the fridge, you feel your stomach turning.
“Yeah,” you say.
Your mouth feels dry now, and nothing’s quite as funny anymore.
Jack looks at you, but you don’t meet his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
You believe him. That’s the worst part. But it doesn’t matter how sorry he is, because you’re sorrier. To the little girl you once were who thought she’d be happier than her parents ever got to be.
You shift your weight and wince softly.
Jack’s eyes widen.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
His voice comes out rough.
“No,” you murmur.
Jack pats you down anyway, his hands searching alongside his eyes as he inspects your legs. At the end, he finds a small shard of glass stuck in your big toe.
You're holding onto Jack’s head as he looks at your foot. His ears have grown red.
“You are hurt,” he mumbles. “I—Lemme…”
Torn between another apology and his worry, Jack picks you up. His arms slide under your back and your knees. The room tilts dangerously—you had almost forgotten that the contents of an entire wine bottle were coursing through your veins.
“Rollercoaster,” you whisper.
He shushes you as he carries you to the upstairs bathroom where you keep the first aid kit.
The bright, white light flickers to life and hurts your eyes, making you groan. Jack only glances at you with more concern before he sets you down on the bathroom counter.
“Hold still,” he instructs.
His arms keep you in place for a few seconds, like he is trying to show your body how to keep balance.
“Don’t fall, please,” he adds, a little gentler.
Then he crouches down, grunting a little as his knee pops. Somewhere through the haze of the wine, you remember that he just worked for sixteen hours. But then again, it’s your anniversary, and your empathy for his exhaustion is outweighed by your own misery. By far.
He finds the first aid kit and takes a pair of tweezers before he catches your foot with his other hand.
“It’s not too deep,” he says quietly. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t feel it until you moved.”
Yeah, you think to yourself, that’s definitely why.
“Spoken like the doctor you are,” you answer.
Jack looks up at you for a second, his lips pressed together. He murmurs something you don’t quite catch and then pulls out the shard.
You gasp as the pain shoots from your toe to your knee and pulls up high into your hip.
“Ow, what the—?” you hiss.
Jack keeps your leg still and rubs your shin slightly.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“Not for that.”
The air in the room grows cold.
Jack straightens up, and his knee pops again.
“I’m sorry for today, too,” he begins.
He doesn’t get very far because you immediately hold up your hand.
“No,” you bite out sharply.
For a few seconds, you just sit on the counter, your legs swinging slightly. Jack watches, fumbling with his fingers as he searches your face.
“Can I clean your cut, please?” he asks.
You shake your head vehemently.
“It could get infected if I don’t,” he retorts.
You open your mouth to argue, but the words don’t come out. Instead, a wave of nausea hits you.
“’m gonna be sick,” you mumble.
Jack’s eyes widen before his hands land on your waist.
He half-carries, half-drags you to the toilet and makes it just in time as the wine comes back up, tasting ten times as bad as it did when it went down.
“Shit, baby,” Jack curses.
He gathers as much of your hair as he can save and rubs your back as you throw up once, then twice.
It’s all liquid, too, because you haven’t eaten in a few hours—you were planning on having a big dinner with your boyfriend after all, as one does on their anniversary.
As your stomach cramps, you think about the muffins that you ordered, lemon batter and raspberry icing.
The third time your tummy revolts, it’s just dry-heaving.
Spit dribbles down your chin, and your hands tremble. You’re somehow sweating and shaking simultaneously. Jack whispers and shushes, but you don’t want his comfort. You want to keep drinking until you pass out.
“Leave me alone,” you murmur, your hands flailing weakly.
“And let you knock yourself unconscious? No, thank you,” he replies. “You’re so fucking drunk, you’re lucky you haven’t given yourself alcohol poisoning.”
It’s clear he’s aiming for dry and sarcastic, but you hear the fear in his voice.
“Get out,” you rasp.
Your throat might as well be on fire.
“No,” he snaps.
“You don’t care if I crack my head open,” you accuse.
His grip on your arm tightens.
“Hey,” he says sharply, “That’s not true. I care very much.”
You groan and rest your chin on the toilet seat as your head begins to spin again.
“Then why are you never here?”
The silence that follows is only broken by your renewed retching.
Once you’ve emptied your stomach, Jack leaves you by yourself on the bathroom tiles for a few seconds. His eyes keep flickering back to you as he turns on the shower, testing its warmth with the tips of his fingers.
He returns to your side and flushes the toilet for you.
“Can you stand?” he asks.
You’re surprised at just how soft his voice is.
You shake your head. He doesn’t sigh.
Instead, he nods quietly and maneuvers you against the wall.
“Put your arms up, baby,” he instructs quietly.
Piece by piece, he removes your clothes. You feel how his fingers tremble as he unhooks the clasps of your new bra, all black lace and clearly bought for today.
Once you’re down to nothing, he starts undressing, too. He leans his prosthetic against the wall and then manages to get both of you in the shower.
The tiles are cold underneath you, but the warm spray from above keeps you quiet. Jack doesn’t say anything as he sits next to you, his grey curls slowly growing darker as the water hits. He doesn’t reach for you either, but his knee presses against yours.
“You love me?” you whisper.
Jack braces next to you. You feel the tension travel up from where his leg touches yours.
“I do,” he murmurs.
You swallow hard.
“Then why do you never choose me?”
❤︎ just a quick reminder that the best way to support authors on here is to comment and reblog ❤︎ ☆ find my masterlist here ☆
the selfies sugar daddy!jack abbot sends you every time he gets all dressed up for a hospital charity event, showing off his nice suits and how well he’s combed back all his salt-and-pepper. he doesn’t really understand when you reply somethings purrrrrring but he does get when you follow it quickly by lemme pull on that tie dr abbot with a sticker of meg the stallion biting her finger. he’s an old man texter, always, OK. When I’m done, I’ll send an uber for you to my place. but it doesn’t negate that you’ll be able to see him that night, all suited up and sexy, and probably get to spend the whole weekend poolside at his house, and pull on more than just those brooks brothers ties.
author’s note 𓂃 requested by @myst3ryin0rperated 💌 this ended up being way longer than planned, but honestly? tuck deserves the attention. i love parts of this, but i’m also not fully sure how i feel about it yet, so i’d love to know what you think <3
── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
The first time Tucker saw you, you almost took out an entire row of glasses at Malone’s. Not one, not two, but an entire row.
It happened on a Friday night, which meant the bar was already packed with students pretending they didn’t have assignments due, hockey players pretending they weren’t exhausted from practice, and Della behind the counter pretending she wasn’t five seconds away from throwing someone out for ordering another round only to forget what they’d asked for immediately.
You were new, and that much was obvious. Not because you were bad at the job, exactly, but because you still had the bright, nervous energy of someone who hadn’t yet learned that Malone’s on a Friday night was less a bar and more a sticky-floored battlefield.
You came out from behind the counter with a tray balanced carefully in both hands, brows pinched in concentration as your bottom lip caught between your teeth. You were wearing black jeans and a Malone’s blue shirt, your hair pulled back messily, as if you’d done it in a rush, and Tucker found himself noticing you before he could think better of it.
He noticed the way you smiled at a customer who was definitely being too loud. He noticed the way you thanked Della twice when she moved around you. He noticed how hard you were trying to do everything right.
And then you set the tray down on the bar too quickly, caught the edge of a napkin holder, and sent three clean glasses tipping into each other with a loud, terrible clatter.
Everyone at the table flinched. Dean was the first to turn around, Garrett’s attention snapped away from whatever Hannah was saying, and Logan started laughing before he’d even fully figured out what had happened.
You froze immediately.
“Oh my god,” you said, hands flying up like you were surrendering to the glasses. “I’m so sorry. I swear I’m usually less of a disaster when no one’s watching.”
Della sighed, though there was already affection in it. “Sweetheart, nobody expects grace here. Just survival.”
Dean grinned from the booth where he sat with the boys. “Ten out of ten entrance.”
Garrett kicked him under the table without even looking at him.
You winced, cheeks burning, and immediately started gathering the glasses before any of them could fall off the bar.
Tucker was on his feet before he’d even thought about moving.
“Here,” he said, already grabbing a stack of napkins from the end of the counter and stepping closer. “I got it.”
You looked up at him, startled, like you hadn’t expected someone to help instead of laugh. Something weird shifted in Tucker’s chest.
“Oh,” you said, your voice softening. “Thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, steadying one of the glasses before it could roll off the edge. He gave you a small smile. “First Friday?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only a little,” he said, smile tugging at his mouth.
Your mouth curved into an embarrassed but sweet smile, and Tucker noticed the way your whole face seemed to warm with it.
Dean, because of course he did, leaned over the booth and said, “Careful, Tuck. She might make you work for free.”
You glanced between them, your smile still lingering. “Tuck?”
“Tucker,” he said, handing over the glass he’d rescued. “John Tucker.”
You took it from him, your fingers brushing against his for half a second.
“I’m [Y/N],” you said. Then you looked down at the glasses, sighed, and added, “Apparently also a public safety hazard.”
Tucker laughed, not because it was that funny, though it was, but because you were smiling at him like you were happy he had.
That was the first thing Tucker noticed. Not that you were the prettiest girl in the room, though you were. Not that you were the clumsy new waitress, though the boys would absolutely bring that up later. Not even that you were the transfer student Hannah had mentioned once, the one who’d started working at Malone’s because she needed extra money, and Della liked hiring people she could boss around.
The first thing was that you looked at Tucker like he was the one you were talking to — not the guy beside Dean, not Garrett’s friend, not one of the hockey boys. Him.
It was a stupid thing to notice, so of course Tucker noticed.
Over the next few weeks, you became part of Malone’s the way some people became part of a song — slowly at first, then all at once.
You were there on Fridays and sometimes Saturdays, always with your hair tied back in a way that never lasted more than an hour before pieces started falling loose around your face. You learned the regulars’ orders faster than anyone expected. You learned Della’s moods, learned that Dean always said he wanted something different before ordering the same beer anyway, that Logan would steal fries from whoever sat too close, that Garrett was polite because Hannah elbowed him when he forgot, and that Allie always tipped too much because she knew what the job felt like.
And Tucker — you learned his drink by the third Friday. That shouldn’t have affected him. It did anyway.
“You want the usual?” you asked, already reaching for it as he and the boys slid into their booth after the game.
Dean stopped mid-sentence and turned slowly toward Tucker, wearing the most irritating smile imaginable. Logan looked absolutely delighted. Garrett looked like he was trying very hard not to seem delighted. Tucker ignored every single one of them.
“You remembered?” he asked, which was the wrong thing to say because it made him sound surprised.
You blinked at him, then smiled. “You order the same thing every time.”
“So does Dean,” Tucker said.
“Yeah, but Dean changes his mind three times before going back to the same thing. You have to prepare for that emotionally.”
Garrett laughed quietly into his drink.
Dean put a hand over his chest. “I feel attacked.”
“You should,” Allie said, appearing beside him like she’d been summoned by the opportunity to tease him. “It was accurate.”
You grinned and slid Tucker his drink first, and he hated how quickly he liked it—hated how his eyes followed you when you walked away to help another table. Hated even more that Dean noticed immediately.
“Oh, you’re so in trouble.”
Tucker glanced at him. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t even say anything specific,” Dean said.
“You didn’t need to.”
Logan leaned forward, as if this were crucial evidence. “She gave you your drink first.”
“Because I was sitting closest.”
“You weren’t,” Garrett said.
Tucker shot him a look. “Aren’t you supposed to be mature now?”
Garrett shrugged, his arm around Hannah. “I’m in a relationship, not dead.”
Across the room, you laughed at something Della said, nearly dropped a pen, caught it against your chest, and looked far too proud of yourself for saving it.
Tucker tried not to smile, and failed.
Dean pointed at Tucker’s face as he’d just found evidence. “That. Right there. That’s pathetic.”
Tucker picked up his drink, unimpressed. “You’re literally dating Allie.”
“Yes, and I became pathetic in public. It’s part of the process.”
“I’m not becoming anything,” Tucker said.
“Sure,” Dean said.
Tucker knew exactly what they thought.
He knew how it looked: new girl, pretty smile, sweet enough to make everyone in the room feel like she was happy to see them. Of course, he liked her. Everyone probably liked her. You were the kind of person people noticed because you made it easy for them. You asked questions, laughed without trying to seem cool, apologized to chairs when you bumped into them, and once gave a drunk sophomore a full pep talk because he looked sad over mozzarella sticks.
You were sunshine in a place that mostly smelled like beer and fried food.
Tucker told himself that was all it was: you were friendly, and he was interested because of it. It didn’t mean you were interested back.
Girls usually went for guys like Dean: loud, confident, easy to flirt with because he did half the work for them. Or Garrett, with the captain thing and that accidental golden-boy charm, even though Hannah would probably murder anyone who tried. Or Logan, who looked like trouble and knew exactly how to make it work.
Tucker was the nice one, the safe one, the one girls asked to hold their coats while they danced with someone else.
He’d made peace with that a long time ago — mostly. Then, on the fourth Friday, you proved you were going to be a problem.
It was later than usual, with the crowd thinning out around midnight and the booths left sticky and half-empty. Tucker had ended up at the bar while the others argued over whether to go back to the house or order food. You were wiping down the counter with your sleeves pushed up, cheeks flushed from the long shift.
“You’re staring again,” you said, not even looking up.
Tucker blinked at you. “What?”
You glanced at him, eyes bright with amusement. “I said you’re staring.”
“I wasn’t,” he said.
“You were,” you said.
“I was just thinking,” he said.
“About the counter?” you asked.
“It’s a very interesting counter.”
You smiled, and Tucker felt stupidly pleased with himself for being the reason.
“You always do that,” you said, still smiling.
“Stare at counters?” he asked.
“No,” you said, leaning your hip against the bar. “Make jokes when I catch you looking at me.”
Tucker’s throat went dry.
That wasn’t fair. You couldn’t look that sweet and then say things like that.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
You hummed like you didn’t believe him, which was fair, considering he sounded ridiculous.
Dean appeared at Tucker’s shoulder at the worst possible time, because of course he did. “He never does.”
Tucker closed his eyes like he was praying for patience. “Go away.”
Dean grinned at you because, apparently, subtlety had never been an option. “Has he asked you out yet?”
Tucker’s head snapped toward Dean. “Jesus Christ.”
You froze for half a second before your face went pink.
Dean looked like Christmas had just come early.
“Oh,” Dean said slowly, looking far too pleased. “Interesting.”
“Dean,” Tucker said, warning clear in his voice.
You cleared your throat and turned back to the counter, trying to hide your smile. “Does he need help with that?”
Tucker stared at you, Dean made a sound like he’d been shot, and Garrett yelled from the booth, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Tucker said, far too quickly.
Dean turned back toward the table. “Tucker’s dying.”
“I’m fine,” Tucker said.
You were still smiling down at the counter like you hadn’t just caused chaos.
Tucker didn’t recover for the rest of the night.
After that, things changed. Not dramatically, and not enough that anyone else would’ve called it obvious — except maybe Dean, who called everything obvious if it helped him be annoying. But Tucker felt it.
You started lingering near him when the bar slowed down. You leaned across the counter when you talked to him, chin propped in your hand and eyes warm with focus. You asked about his classes. His practices. His stupid sandwich preference after Logan tried to convince you Tucker had “boring taste,” which somehow turned into a ten-minute argument about whether turkey counted as a personality flaw.
You also started touching him. Not much, just enough to ruin him.
Your fingers brushed his wrist when you set down his drink. Your knee bumped his when you sat beside him for five minutes during your break. Your hand landed briefly on his shoulder when you squeezed past him behind the bar, soft and apologetic and completely unnecessary.
Tucker told himself you were probably like that with everyone, right up until he watched you tell Dean to stop leaning over the bar because he was “ruining the ecosystem,” and decided maybe you weren’t.
By the sixth Friday, Della had started looking at both of you like she knew something neither of you had admitted yet.
That was also the night everything finally clicked into place.
The boys came in late after an away game, tired and loud, their faces flushed from the cold. Hannah and Allie were with them, bundled in coats and already claiming a booth while Dean declared he was starving with the drama of a man who hadn’t eaten in years.
You were working closing again, and Tucker tried very hard not to look too happy about that. Failed, probably.
From behind the bar, you caught his eye and smiled so brightly that his chest went warm.
“The usual?” you asked.
Dean groaned, as if he were personally offended. “This is disgusting.”
You laughed, confused. “What?”
“He’s smiling like an idiot,” Dean said.
Tucker elbowed him in the side.
You looked at Tucker, smile softening as you asked, “Are you?”
“No,” Tucker said.
“He is,” Logan called from the booth.
“He absolutely is,” Garrett added from the booth.
Tucker stared at Garrett. “You too?”
Garrett lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m just observing.”
You set his drink down in front of him, fingers brushing his for a second too long. “For the record, I don’t mind.”
Tucker forgot how to speak, and you walked away before he could find a response.
Dean leaned closer, his voice low enough that only Tucker could hear. “If you don’t ask her out tonight, I’m doing it for you.”
“You are not doing anything,” Tucker said.
“Then do something,” Dean said.
Tucker looked toward the bar, where you were reaching for a stack of napkins and laughing at something Hannah had said. You nearly knocked over a bottle with your elbow, caught it just in time, and then looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
Tucker had. You saw him seeing you, and your nose scrunched with embarrassment. He smiled before he could stop himself.
Dean sighed, as if this were personally exhausting. “God, you two are unbearable.”
Tucker looked away, like that settled it. “She’s just friendly.”
Dean stared at him.
“What?”
“Are you actually stupid?”
“Wow. Very helpful.”
“I’m serious,” Dean said, glancing toward you before looking back at Tucker. “That girl has been making heart eyes at you for a month.”
“She’s nice to everyone,” Tucker said.
“She threatened to pour soda on Logan last week,” Dean said.
Logan looked up from stealing Allie’s fries. “I deserved that.”
Dean continued, with the patience of someone explaining something painfully obvious, “She likes you.”
Tucker shifted, uncomfortable under the weight of the words. “You don’t know that.”
Dean’s expression softened slightly, which was somehow worse. “Tuck.”
“Don’t,” Tucker said.
“I’m just saying,” Dean started.
“I know what you’re saying,” Tucker said, his voice coming out lower than he meant. “But she’s new. She’s nice. And she has all of you literally sitting here every week. I’m not going to assume she’s looking at me like that just because I want her to.”
For once, Dean went quiet.
Tucker regretted saying it immediately. Not because it wasn’t true, because it was, but because he’d never said it out loud before. And, of course, because timing apparently wasn’t on his side, he looked up and saw you standing a few feet away with a tray in your hands, your expression caught somewhere between surprise and something softer.
Tucker’s stomach dropped. You had heard. Maybe not all of it, but enough.
You blinked once, then gave him a small smile, the kind that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “Della said last call.”
Then you turned and walked back to the bar.
Dean leaned back slowly, the teasing finally slipping from his face.
Tucker dragged a hand over his face, guilt hitting all at once. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, quieter now. “That one might be on you.”
The next twenty minutes were horrible. You weren’t rude, and somehow, that made it worse. You were still sweet when you cleared the table, still smiling when Hannah hugged you goodbye, still telling Logan he couldn’t take the basket of fries with him because it was “not a souvenir.” But you didn’t linger near Tucker, didn’t brush his hand, didn’t smile at him first.
By the time the others left, Dean gave him one very pointed look from the door. Tucker ignored it, mostly because he deserved it.
He stayed behind while you wiped down the bar, sitting at the end with his coat folded beside him like he wasn’t sure where else to put himself. Della had disappeared into the back, clearly on purpose, and without the usual noise, the bar felt strange. Softer. Too quiet.
You didn’t look at him for a while, and Tucker let you have that.
Eventually, you set the rag down with a sigh. “Are you waiting for Della or me?”
“You,” he said. You glanced up, and he swallowed. “If that’s okay.”
You looked at him for a moment before nodding. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry.” You seemed surprised by that, so Tucker kept going before he could lose his nerve. “For what I said earlier. You weren’t supposed to hear it.”
“Would it be better if I hadn’t heard it?”
“No,” he said, looking down at his hands before meeting your eyes again. “Probably not.”
You crossed your arms and leaned against the bar. “Do you really think I’m just being nice?”
Tucker hated how gentle your voice was.
“I think you are nice,” he said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
A small smile tugged at his mouth before he could stop it. “No, it wasn’t.”
You waited, giving him time to answer.
Tucker exhaled slowly. “I don’t know what I think. I guess I’m trying not to assume.”
“Assume what?” you asked.
“That you’d choose me.”
The words settled between you, quiet and honest and too exposed.
Your expression softened when you said his name. “Tucker.”
He let out a short laugh, but there was no humor in it. “I know. It sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” you said.
“It kind of does,” he said.
“No,” you said, walking slowly around the bar until you were standing in front of him. “It sounds like you don’t see yourself clearly.”
He looked at you then. Really looked. Your face was still flushed from work, hair coming loose around your cheeks, your eyes tired but warm. There was nothing teasing in them now.
“You keep acting like I’m looking past you,” you said, voice soft. “I’m not.”
Tucker went completely still.
You swallowed, a little nervous now, and somehow that made the words hit even harder. “I saw all of them first. I still looked at you.”
For a second, Tucker couldn’t speak. He’d imagined you saying a lot of things. Not that. Never that.
“[Y/N],” Tucker said quietly.
Your smile wobbled slightly. “Too much?”
“No,” he said, voice rough. “No, not too much.”
Della chose that moment to appear from the back, took one look at the two of you, and turned right back around. “I forgot absolutely nothing. Continue.”
You laughed, breaking the tension just enough for Tucker to breathe again.
He stood and grabbed his coat. “Let me walk you home.”
Your eyes lifted to his, softer now. “Okay.”
Outside, the cold air hit your face, and you pulled your jacket tighter around yourself. Tucker walked beside you, close enough for your shoulders to brush every few steps, but not close enough to crowd you. The streets around Briar were quieter now, wrapped in the kind of late-night stillness that made every little sound feel louder — your shoes on the sidewalk, Tucker’s breath in the cold, the distant noise from another bar down the street.
For a minute, neither of you said anything, and then you laughed softly.
Tucker looked over at you. “What?”
“I just realized I basically confessed to you in front of a bar counter that still smelled like spilled beer.”
His mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile. “Very romantic.”
“I’ve always been known for my elegance.”
“You did knock over four glasses the first night I met you.”
“Three,” you said, pointing at him. “It was three.”
“One almost fell off the counter,” he said. “I’m counting it.”
“You’re cruel,” you said, trying not to smile.
“I did help.”
“You did,” you said, your voice softening. “That’s why I remembered you.”
Tucker’s chest tightened at that.
You kept walking for a few more steps before adding, “Everyone else laughed. Not in a mean way, but still. You just helped.”
“It wasn’t exactly heroic.”
“It was to me,” you said quietly.
He didn’t know what to do with that, so he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and looked down at the sidewalk like it might tell him what to say.
You smiled at him, and somehow Tucker felt it even without looking.
By the time you reached your apartment building, the tension had changed shape again. It was still soft, still warm, but there was something electric underneath it now, something that had been building for weeks across bar counters, half-finished conversations, and every smile you’d given him like it wasn’t ruining his day in the best way.
You stopped when you reached the door.
“This is me,” you said.
Tucker nodded, like he knew that and still wasn’t ready to leave. “Yeah.”
Neither of you moved. Then you looked up at him. “Do you want to come in?”
His eyes lifted to yours. The question was quiet, but there was nothing unclear about it.
Tucker’s voice dropped when he asked, “Do you want me to?”
You stepped closer, your eyes still on his. “Yes.”
That was all Tucker needed.
The elevator ride was silent, broken only by your uneven breathing and the small ding of each floor passing. Tucker stood beside you with his hands at his sides, not touching you yet, though the restraint in him was obvious. You could feel it — in the tight line of his jaw, in the way his eyes kept flicking to your mouth before he forced them away, in the way he seemed to be waiting until you were somewhere private before letting himself want you properly.
Somehow, it only made you want him more.
Your apartment was small and warm, a little messy in a way that made you immediately wince as you unlocked the door.
“Don’t judge,” you said as you stepped inside. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Tucker looked around at the books stacked on the coffee table, the blanket slipping off the couch, the mug in the sink, and the tiny lamp glowing in the corner before looking back at you.
“I like it,” he said softly.
You smiled at him. “You’re very easy to impress.”
“Only when it’s you,” he said.
The words were quiet and simple, and they stole the air from your chest.
You closed the door behind him, then turned the lock.
Tucker’s eyes dropped to the movement, and his expression shifted. When he looked back at you, something had changed. He was still Tucker — still warm, still steady — but the softness in him had sharpened into something more focused.
You swallowed, voice suddenly smaller. “Hi.”
His mouth curved, just barely. “Hi.”
“You’re standing very far away,” you said.
“I’m trying to be respectful,” he said.
You stepped closer, eyes on his. “You can stop.”
His eyes darkened at that. “Yeah?”
You nodded, not trusting your voice.
Tucker moved then, closing the small space between you in two steps. His hand came up to your jaw, gentle at first, like he was giving you one last second to lean away.
You leaned into his touch.
After that, the kiss wasn’t gentle. It was warm, deep, and immediate, like weeks of almosts had finally found somewhere to land. Tucker’s hand slid into your hair, the other settling at your waist as he pulled you close enough for your chest to press against his. A soft sound slipped out against his mouth, and Tucker’s grip tightened.
“There you are,” Tucker murmured against your mouth.
Your stomach flipped at the sound of his voice.
You kissed him harder, your hands sliding up his chest and feeling the solid warmth of him beneath his jacket. Tucker walked you back until your spine met the wall near the door, his body caging yours in without ever making you feel trapped.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” he said, his mouth brushing your jaw.
Your head tipped back as his lips moved to your neck. “I wanted you to.”
His hand tightened briefly at your waist.
“Yeah?” His voice dropped lower. “Wanted me to walk you home?”
“Yes,” you breathed.
“Wanted me to come upstairs too?”
“Yes,” you breathed.
His mouth hovered near your ear, voice low. “Wanted me to touch you?”
Your breath caught before you could answer. “Tuck—”
He kissed the spot just beneath your jaw, pulling a sound from you that was almost a whimper.
His voice went rough. “Say it.”
You swallowed, your fingers curling into his shirt. “Yes. I wanted you to touch me.”
He groaned, low and restrained, before his mouth found yours again, hungrier this time. Your hands pushed at his jacket, clumsy with urgency, and Tucker helped you pull it off before shrugging out of it and tossing it somewhere near the couch.
You laughed breathlessly as it knocked into a chair.
“Sorry,” you breathed.
“Don’t care,” Tucker murmured, already kissing you again.
Your back hit the wall hard enough to make your whole body light up, but not enough to hurt. Tucker’s thigh slid between yours, and the second you rocked down against it without thinking, his hand tightened on your hip.
“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth. “You’re going to make me forget how to be nice.”
Your lips curved against his. “Maybe I don’t want nice.”
His eyes lifted to yours, and there it was again — that quiet intensity.
“I can do both,” Tucker said, voice low.
The words went straight through you, sharp and warm all at once.
His hands slipped beneath your shirt, his palms warm against your skin. He touched you slowly at first, almost reverent, like he was trying to memorize the shape of you. Then your hips moved against his thigh again, and his control slipped just enough that his fingers pressed into your waist.
“You’re so pretty,” he murmured, voice rough. “I’ve been thinking that since the first night.”
“When I dropped the glasses?” you asked.
“Especially then,” he said, like it was obvious.
You laughed, only for it to break into a gasp when his mouth found your neck again, his teeth grazing lightly before his tongue soothed the spot.
“Tucker,” you breathed.
“I know,” he murmured, his hand moving higher until his fingers brushed the underside of your breast through your bra. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
You shook your head quickly, voice barely steady. “No.”
“No?” he asked, voice low.
“Don’t stop,” you whispered.
His eyes darkened at that, and then he kissed you like those words had undone something in him. The warm, steady Tucker from Malone’s was still there, but this version of him felt different — more confident, more direct. His hands knew exactly where they wanted to go, his mouth knew how to make you melt, and every quiet groan he gave you made your knees a little less reliable.
He pushed your shirt up slowly, and you lifted your arms for him. The second your shirt hit the floor, his gaze dropped to your chest, and his jaw flexed.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
You almost made a joke. Almost. But the way he looked at you made it hard to hide behind one.
His hands came up to cover your breasts through your bra, thumbs brushing slowly over the thin fabric. Your back arched off the wall as a soft moan slipped out before you could stop it.
Tucker’s mouth parted slightly, his voice rough. “Don’t hide that.”
“What?” you breathed.
“Those sounds,” he said, his thumb moving again just to make your breath catch. “I want to hear them.”
Your cheeks warmed, but your body answered before your mouth could, another quiet whimper slipping out when he leaned down and kissed the top of your breast.
“Like that?” Tucker asked, voice low.
“Yes,” you breathed, your fingers tightening in his shirt. “Like that.”
He undid your bra carefully, sliding the straps down your arms before letting it fall between you. His eyes moved over you more slowly this time, and something about the softness in his face made your chest ache.
Then his mouth closed around your nipple, pulling a moan from you as your head knocked back against the wall.
Tucker groaned against your skin, one hand firm at your waist while the other covered your breast, fingers rolling your nipple until you started shifting against him, needy and restless.
“You’re so responsive,” Tucker murmured, kissing across your chest. “Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
You swallowed, surprising yourself with how steady it sounded. “Tell me.”
His eyes flicked up, and for a second, he looked surprised. Then his expression shifted, a small, almost dangerous smile tugging at his mouth.
“It makes me want to take my time,” he said, voice low. “Makes me want to find out every way to make you sound like that again.”
Your thighs pressed together, and Tucker noticed immediately. Of course he did. His hand slid down your stomach, fingers pausing at the button of your jeans.
“Can I?” he asked, voice low.
“Yes,” you whispered.
He unbuttoned your jeans slowly, eyes fixed on your face as he pushed the denim down your hips. You kicked them off awkwardly, nearly tripping in the process, and Tucker caught you with a quiet laugh, his hands steady on your waist.
“Still clumsy,” he murmured.
“You’re very distracting,” you said.
“Good,” he murmured.
You were about to answer, but then his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of your underwear, and every thought disappeared.
He touched you over your panties first, two fingers pressing against the wet fabric, and his breath caught.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “You’re wet.”
Your face burned at the way he said it. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m not,” he said, fingers moving slowly over your clit through the soaked material. “Just trying to process the fact that you wanted me this badly.”
“I did,” you whispered.
The admission came out soft and honest.
Tucker’s eyes lifted to yours. You held his gaze, even though it made you feel exposed.
“I wanted you,” you said again, softer this time.
Something shifted in his face. Then he kissed you hard, fingers pushing your underwear aside and sliding through your wetness. The first touch of his skin against your cunt pulled a gasp from you, your hips bucking toward his hand before you could stop them.
“There you go,” he murmured, voice rough with satisfaction. “That’s what I wanted.”
His fingers circled your clit slowly, steady and precise, and you clung to his shoulders as pleasure sparked low in your stomach.
“Tuck,” you whimpered, fingers tightening on his shoulders.
“Right here,” he murmured, his forehead touching yours. “I’ve got you.”
He slid one finger into you, eyes fixed on the way your lips parted, then added another when your hips rolled against his hand. The stretch pulled a louder moan from you, and Tucker’s jaw tightened like the sound was testing every bit of his restraint.
“Fuck,” he breathed, voice rough. “You sound so pretty.”
His touch grew deeper and more deliberate, his thumb finding you again as you stayed pressed against the wall, nearly bare while Tucker was still fully dressed. The imbalance should have made you embarrassed.
It didn’t. Not with him looking at you like that, not with his hand between your thighs, his mouth at your jaw, and his voice low in your ear.
“Tell me what feels good,” he murmured.
Your breath shook around the answer. “Your fingers.”
“Yeah?” he murmured.
“Yes,” you breathed, gripping his shirt tighter. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
His fingers curled again, and a moan broke from you into the quiet room.
“That’s it,” he murmured, voice rough. “Let me hear you.”
The pleasure built faster than you expected, heat tightening through your stomach and thighs, but just before it could break, Tucker pulled his fingers away.
A frustrated sound slipped out of you. “Why—”
He dropped to his knees, and your mouth went dry as Tucker looked up at you from the floor, hands sliding up the backs of your thighs.
“I’m not done with you yet.” It should not have sounded as hot as it did.
Then he pulled your underwear down, slow and deliberate, before lifting one of your legs over his shoulder.
“Tucker,” you breathed, fingers tightening in his hair.
His mouth pressed against the inside of your thigh. “Hold onto me.”
Your fingers slid into his hair, and then his mouth found your cunt.
The first stroke of his tongue made your whole body jerk, a sharp moan slipping out as his hands tightened on your thighs. He ate you like he’d been waiting weeks for it, slow and deep at first, tongue dragging through your wetness before flattening over your clit.
“Oh my god,” you gasped.
He hummed against you, the vibration making your knees buckle slightly, and Tucker held you up.
His mouth worked over you with a patience that felt almost unfair, tongue circling your clit, lips sucking softly while his fingers dug into your thigh every time you tugged his hair. You could feel how wet you were, could hear it too, and the sound made your face burn even as your hips started moving against his mouth.
“Tuck—fuck, right there,” you gasped.
He groaned like the words had gone straight through him, focusing there until the pleasure turned sharp and bright. Your head fell back against the wall, one hand still buried in his hair while the other braced beside you.
You were close, close enough that your thighs started trembling.
“Tucker,” you gasped. “I’m—”
He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. He only held you tighter, mouth sealed over your clit until you came with a broken moan, hips jerking against him as pleasure rolled through you. He stayed with you through it, easing the pressure when you started to shake and pressing kisses to your inner thigh when you finally whimpered from the sensitivity.
When he stood again, his mouth was wet and his eyes were dark.
You could only stare at him.
He wiped his thumb across his lower lip before leaning in to kiss you. You tasted yourself on his tongue, moaning into his mouth as Tucker made a rough sound against you.
“Bedroom,” he said, voice rough.
You nodded quickly.
The walk there was not graceful. You bumped into the side table, Tucker knocked into the doorframe, and you both laughed against each other’s mouths until the laughter turned into another kiss the second you reached your room.
Tucker pulled his shirt off, and you finally got to touch him properly.
He was warm beneath your palms, solid and broad, and his stomach tightened when your fingers dragged lower toward his belt.
“You okay?” you asked, a small smile tugging at your mouth.
His eyes met yours, dark and unsteady. “I’ve been better.”
You laughed, but then your hand brushed over the hard outline of him through his jeans, and his smile vanished.
“Oh,” you whispered, your smile fading too.
Tucker caught your wrist gently, his voice rough. “Careful.”
You looked up at him, pulse jumping. “Or what?”
His expression shifted again, that quiet confidence settling over him like he knew exactly what you were doing.
“Or I’m gonna fuck you against that wall before we even make it to the bed.”
Your stomach dropped, but you held his gaze. “Maybe I’d like that.”
For a second, neither of you moved. Then Tucker kissed you hard enough that you stumbled backward.
Your back hit the bedroom wall, his body pressing close while his hands lifted you by the backs of your thighs. You wrapped your legs around his waist on instinct, and Tucker groaned when you rolled your hips against him.
“Condom?” he asked, his voice strained.
“Nightstand,” you said, breathless.
He carried you to the nightstand just long enough to grab one before returning you to the wall, laughing low when you kissed his neck impatiently.
“Eager,” he murmured.
“You’re the one who mentioned the wall,” you said.
“I did,” he said, voice low.
“Then stop talking,” you breathed.
Tucker’s mouth curved, slow and dangerous. “Yes, ma’am.”
He shoved his jeans down just enough to roll the condom on, then stepped between your thighs again, one hand sliding over your hip while his other arm kept you steady against the wall.
The head of his cock brushed through your wetness, and for a second, both of you went quiet.
Your fingers dug into his shoulders, voice barely steady. “Tuck.”
His forehead pressed to yours. “I know.”
He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, stretching you open while holding you like you were something precious and something he wanted badly enough to ruin all at once. The angle was intense, your back against the wall, legs wrapped around his waist, his body doing all the work as he filled you completely.
Your mouth fell open, breath catching in your throat.
Tucker groaned, the sound rough against your mouth. “Fuck, you feel good.”
“You too,” you breathed, fingers digging into his shoulders. “You feel so good.”
His eyes squeezed shut for a second before he started moving. Slow at first. Controlled. Deep enough that every thrust stole your breath, his hips pinning you to the wall while his hands kept you steady. You were still sensitive from his mouth, still wet and aching, and every drag of his cock pulled another moan from you.
“Tucker,” you gasped.
“I know,” he murmured, his mouth brushing your jaw. “I’ve got you.”
“You keep saying that,” you breathed.
“Because I do,” he said, voice steady.
Your chest tightened, but then his hips snapped a little harder, and the feeling turned back into heat.
“Oh, fuck,” you gasped.
“There?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes,” you gasped.
He adjusted his grip, holding you higher before hitting the same spot again, and your head fell back against the wall with a moan.
Tucker’s eyes locked on your face. “That’s it.”
His pace built slowly, not rushed but intense, every thrust dragging sounds from you that you couldn’t hold back. The wall was cold against your back, his skin hot against yours, and your whole world narrowed to Tucker’s hands, Tucker’s mouth, Tucker’s cock moving inside you like he’d been waiting weeks to prove exactly how well he could ruin you.
“You have no idea how hard it was,” he murmured against your throat, “watching you smile at me from across that bar.”
A whimper slipped out of you before you could stop it.
“Thinking you were just being nice,” he said, hips driving into yours harder until you gasped. “Thinking I was making it up.”
“I wasn’t,” you breathed, clinging tighter to his shoulders. “I wasn’t looking at them.”
Tucker’s grip tightened, and you pulled his face to yours, kissing him messily. “I wanted you.”
He groaned against your mouth.
The next thrust nearly tore a cry out of you.
“Say that again,” he rasped.
“I wanted you.” The next thrust hit harder, stealing the rest of the sentence from you. “Tucker—”
“Again.”
“I wanted you,” you moaned, nails dragging down his shoulders. “I wanted you so badly.”
That broke something in him. His pace turned rougher, still controlled but less careful now, hips snapping into yours as he held you against the wall. You clung to him, moaning his name, letting him hear every gasp and broken sound because he seemed to need them as badly as you needed the way he moved.
“Touch yourself,” he said suddenly, and your breath hitched.
His eyes met yours, dark and intent.
“I want to feel you come around me.”
Your hand slipped between your bodies, fingers finding your clit, and the first circle made your whole body jolt. Tucker cursed, forehead dropping to yours as you clenched around him.
“Fuck, that’s it.”
Your fingers moved faster, clumsy from how badly you were shaking, but the pressure built quickly with him still fucking into you, his voice low and constant in your ear.
“Look at you,” he murmured against your ear. “You’re so pretty. Doing so good for me.”
Your breath broke.
“Come on, baby.” His grip tightened. “Let me feel it.”
The orgasm hit hard, your body tightening around him as your moan broke into something helpless. Tucker held you through it, thrusting deep and uneven as you pulsed around him, until he followed with a rough groan, hips jerking as he came.
He stayed there for a moment, breathing hard against your neck, holding you up like letting go was not an option. Then he laughed softly.
You opened your eyes, still trying to catch your breath. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, his mouth brushing your shoulder. “Just thinking Dean’s never going to shut up if he finds out.”
You laughed, still breathless and warm. “Then don’t tell him.”
“He’ll know,” Tucker said.
“Why?” you asked, smiling against his skin.
Tucker pulled back just enough to look at you, his smile softer now. “Because I’m not going to be able to stop smiling.”
Your heart did something stupid in your chest.
After that, he carried you to the bed and set you down carefully before disappearing to clean up. When he came back, he had a damp cloth in his hand, cleaning you gently and murmuring an apology when your thighs twitched from sensitivity.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
You nodded, still a little breathless. “Very okay.”
His mouth curved. “Good.”
He lay beside you, and for a second, a strange shyness settled between you again. Not awkward. Just new.
You turned onto your side to face him. “You can stay.”
His eyes softened at that. “Yeah?”
“If you want.”
“I want,” he said, without hesitation, and the answer came fast enough to make you smile.
Tucker pulled the blanket over both of you, and you curled into his side like it already felt familiar. His arm came around you, warm and steady, fingers tracing slow lines down your back.
For a while, neither of you said anything. Then you whispered, “I meant it, you know.”
His hand paused against your back. “What?”
“I saw all of them,” you said, tilting your head up to look at him. “I still looked at you.”
Tucker stared at you for a second, something tender and disbelieving crossing his face. Then he kissed you, soft this time, slow, like he finally believed you.
The next morning, Tucker woke with your leg thrown over his and your face tucked against his chest.
For a second, he didn’t move. He just looked at you — at the sunlight slipping through your curtains, your hair messy against his skin, the tiny crease between your brows like you were arguing with someone in your sleep.
He smiled before he could stop himself, which, as it turned out, was exactly the problem. Because when he finally left your apartment in yesterday’s clothes and walked into the hockey house just before noon, Dean was sitting on the couch with a bowl of cereal.
Dean looked up. Tucker froze. The spoon stopped halfway to Dean’s mouth as a slow, terrible smile spread across his face.
“No way.”
Tucker sighed. “Don’t.”
Logan appeared from the kitchen immediately, because he had a sixth sense for chaos. “What? What happened?”
Dean pointed his spoon at Tucker. “Our boy didn’t come home last night.”
Garrett looked over from the table, his brows lifting.
Logan’s face lit up. “[Y/N]?”
Tucker tried to walk past them. “I’m leaving.”
“You just got here,” Dean said, delighted.
“Then I’m leaving again.”
Garrett laughed under his breath. “Good for you, man.”
That was somehow worse than the teasing. Tucker shook his head, but he was smiling, and Dean noticed, because Dean noticed everything that made life unbearable.
“Oh, he likes her likes her.”
“Shut up.”
Logan grinned, leaning in like this was the best news he’d heard all week. “Did she finally get tired of waiting for you to make a move?”
Tucker paused at the stairs. Thought about your smile, your apartment, your voice saying, I still looked at you. Then he turned just enough to say, “Actually, she made the move.”
The room exploded. Dean yelled, Logan swore, and Garrett laughed properly this time.
Tucker headed upstairs before any of them could ask anything else, but he still heard Dean call after him.
maybe a fic where reader is with dean (not really a relationship) but there’s something going on between between her and tucker?
while you were sleeping
summary: an encounter in the kitchen reveals dean’s teammate has been paying much closer attention to you.
pairing: john tucker x reader & dean di laurentis x reader
content: emotional infidelity, mild possssive behaviour, temporary unrequited feelings, breaking boy code, language, situationship, guilt, angst, betrayal of trust, mutual pining, dean being dean, love triangle (?).
authors note: i’ve finally got through all my off campus requests (i’m going to take a break from off campus fics for now) but this one took a little longer than i thought it would..but here it is hehehe. i honestly don’t know if this feels on brand for tucker but this was very fun to write so we move.
the energy in dean's bedroom was always impossible to ignore.
between the heavy heat, and the buzzing tv, the room belonged to dean and he didn’t even have to try.
physically, you and dean made complete sense.
he knew exactly how to pull you into his orbit, how to tilt your chin up, and how to make you lose your train of thought with a single, slow kiss against your pulse point.
intimately, there was an explosive, effortless rhythm to the way your bodies fit together in the dark.
but as you sat trapped by his heavy, athletic frame, your laptop balanced precariously on your knees, a cold truth settled deep into your bones.
your bodies were aligned, but your souls were completely out of sync.
the laptop screen cast a sharp, blue glow over your face as you frantically tried to format the final pages of your design portfolio.
it was due for a massive internship review at eight o'clock the next morning, and dean had promised—no actually he had sworn—that he would let you work in peace, maybe even help you proof the layout text.
instead, his own laptop lay closed on the floor.
dean’s thumbs were hooked under the waistband of your joggers, dragging you backward until your spine was pressed against his chest.
his fingers pressed into your skin with an easy, practiced familiarity, his face buried in the crook of your neck.
the distracting heat of his mouth made your finger slip on the trackpad, almost deleting an entire paragraph of text.
"dean, stop, i'm being serious," you muttered, your voice breathless with rising panic as you tried to tilt your head away. "i need to align these final grids or the review board is going to completely throw out the application."
"they're not gonna throw it out, sweetheart," he murmured against your skin, his voice laced with that effortless, devastating confidence.
his lips tracked a slow, burning path up the sensitive line of your jaw, his warm breath fanning across your cheek.
his hands slid up under the hem of your t-shirt, his palms warm and slightly rough against your bare waist, his fingers splaying wide as he tried to subtly pull you down against the pillows beneath him.
"come on. take a break. you've been staring at those pixels for hours."
"because the formatting is wrong," you insisted, your hands coming up to press against his chest, feeling the solid, rhythmic thud of his heartbeat beneath his shirt. "you promised you would let me finish."
dean sighed, a soft, amused sound, and pulled back just enough to look at you. he flashed his signature, crooked smirk—the one that usually made you forget whatever you were complaining about.
he reached out, playfully tapping the tip of your nose with his index finger. "and i will let you finish. later. let's just go to sleep first. or, you know, not sleep." he winked, his eyes dark with a heavy, playful heat as he already began to lean back in for your lips, completely untroubled by the actual panic tightening in your chest.
see he wasn't trying to be malicious, he wasn't the malicious type. dean just assumed everything was always fine.
he couldn't see the quiet fraying of your nerves because he didn't know how to look that closely.
the disconnect made a dull, heavy ache settle in your stomach, cooling the heat his touch had ignited. "i need some water," you said quietly, closing your laptop with a soft click and shifting away from his heavy frame.
dean groaned into the pillow, letting his arms drop limply over the side of the mattress. "bring me one too, please."
you didn't answer him.
you pushed yourself off the bed, stepped over your heavy backpack, and quietly shut his bedroom door behind you.
the house downstairs was dark and freezing.
you padded into the kitchen, your fluffy socks sliding slightly against the cold tile, sending a sharp shiver up your spine.
you opened the fridge, staring blankly into the light of the shelves, feeling a sudden, overwhelming wave of frustration and exhaustion threaten to spill over.
the contrast between the intense, physical heat in dean's room and the cold reality of your deadline tomorrow was dizzying.
you leaned your forehead against the cool edge of the open fridge door, closing your eyes and taking a shaky breath, trying to blink back the hot tears stinging the backs of your eyelids.
"you okay?"
you jumped, the fabric of your fluffy socks catching against the tile as you turned around quickly.
john tucker was standing by the counter, holding a steaming mug of tea.
the dim light from the hallway caught the sharp angle of his jaw, highlighting his deep tan skin and the dark curls that he had tied back out of his face in a loose, low bun.
he wore a faded grey sweatshirt that made his broad shoulders look even wider, casting a long, steady shadow across the room.
"yeah," you lied, your voice cracking slightly. you quickly wiped at your eyes with the back of your hand before a stray tear could fall, clutching a plastic water bottle against your chest like a shield. "yeah, just getting a water."
tucker didn't move.
he set his mug down on the counter with a soft, deliberate click, his warm brown eyes scanning your face with a quiet, intense focus.
he took in the tight line of your shoulders, the way your t-shirt hung loosely off your frame, and the stress written across your brow.
he knew dean loved having you around—he knew dean considered you a permanent fixture in his life—but tucker also knew his best friend could be completely blind to anything outside his own immediate radius.
as tucker looked at you, your mind flashed back through the last few weeks.
this wasn't the first time you had found him down here in the dead of night.
whenever your mind was spinning too fast to sleep, or whenever the casual, superficial nature of things upstairs left you feeling completely untethered, you would slip down to the kitchen under the guise of getting a beverage of sorts.
and almost every single time, tucker would already be there, or he would wander down a minute later, claiming he couldn't sleep either.
those quiet, late-night rendezvous had secretly become the anchor of your week.
you would sit on the counter in the dark, speaking in hushed, rhythmic whispers so you wouldn't wake the rest of the house.
you would talk about your childhood, both your dreams and aspirations, his upcoming games—things you never really spoke about with dean.
tucker would listen with a rare, undivided attention, completely respecting the fact that you were upstairs with his best friend.
but he made it undeniably clear that he saw you in a way dean never could.
where you and dean shared a physical alignment, you and tucker shared a soul-deep connection that grew stronger in the quiet hours of the night.
tucker sighed, a low, heavy sound that seemed to vibrate in the quiet kitchen.
he walked over to the cabinet, pulling out a clean mug, and quietly poured some tea into it.
he slid it across the counter toward you, just like he had on so many of those sleepless nights before.
"sit down," he said softly. "you look like you're about to collapse."
you hesitated, but the warmth radiating from the mug was too enticing to ignore. you sat on one of the barstools, wrapping your cold hands around the ceramic.
"he's just trying to get me to relax," you defended weakly, trying to justify the routine you both knew was wearing you thin. "he doesn't mean anything by it. we're not... you know it's not official or anything. we're just casual."
"i know exactly what you two are," tucker said softly. he didn't corner you against the fridge. instead, he leaned his hip against the counter opposite you, crossing his arms over his chest.
he kept a respectful distance, but his brown eyes were burning with the accumulated weight of the past few weeks. "dean is one of my good friends, and i know he doesn't do it maliciously. but it's killing me."
the air in the kitchen suddenly felt entirely too thick to breathe. "what do you mean?"
"it's killing me to watch from the sidelines, and it's killing me to keep pretending these nights down here don't mean anything," tucker whispered, his voice thick with a painful honesty he had spent months burying.
"i've been keeping it to myself because he got to you first, but seeing you look this exhausted while he's upstairs completely ignoring what you actually need? i just can't look away anymore."
a tear you couldn't stop slipped down your cheek, hot and fast.
this time, tucker didn't control himself. he crossed the small distance between you, his movements slow and deliberate, giving you every chance to pull away.
his thumb brushed against your cheekbone, catching the tear before it could drop.
the touch was entirely different from dean's urgent, possessive grip—it was soft and heavy with a quiet devotion.
his hand lingered against your jaw, the warmth of his palm seeping into your skin, grounding you completely.
"if you were mine," tucker murmured, his voice breaking just a fraction, his thumb tracing a comforting circle against your skin. "you wouldn't be begging for someone to listen to you. you wouldn't just be a late-night option when he feels like it. i don't want to hurt him... but god, i want you."
you sat frozen on the barstool, the physical contact sending an electric, terrifying spark of recognition straight to your core.
your heart was hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against your ribs, because the truth—the heavy, hidden truth you had been denying during every single one of those midnight talks—flooded your chest all at once.
you wanted him, too. badly.
you remembered crowding onto the living room couch on sunday nights, where you and tucker would always somehow end up sitting next to each other, your knees brushing under the low coffee table.
you hadn't pulled away instead you had leaned into his steady, solid warmth while dean was on the other side of you fully engaged in a different conversation.
for weeks you were lying to yourself, pretending you were just being a good friend to dean's housemate and teammate, when in reality, you were secretly starving for the quiet safety tucker carried with him like a shield.
"tucker," you breathed out, your voice a faint, trembling sound. your hand came up to rest over his wrist, your fingers tightening against his skin.
under your touch, tucker's gaze darkened, his focus snapping completely down to your mouth.
the gravity of the past month, the late-night whispers, the unspoken tension that had been coiling tighter and tighter between you with every passing week, finally broke.
a sharp wave of guilt crashed over you—he was dean's best friend, you were upstairs in dean's bed just minutes ago—and you could see that exact same conflict tearing through tucker's eyes.
his jaw flexed, his chest rising and falling in a ragged breath as the wrongness of it battled the sheer, undeniable desperation of how long he had waited.
but the pull was too strong.
weeks of restraint dissolved in a split second.
tucker leaned down, his face tilting as he slowly closed the final inch between you.
your eyes fluttered shut, your breath hitching as your lips parted, the air between you turning agonizingly hot.
you could feel the warmth of his breath against your mouth, a split second away from a collision that would change everything.
a kiss that felt as inevitable as it did dangerous.
before your lips could actually touch, the heavy wooden stairs groaned loudly in the quiet house.
the sudden noise pulled you apart.
tucker jerked back just a fraction as you both scrambled, guilt and adrenaline making your heart kick violently against your ribs.
a second later, the overhead light clicked on, flooding the room with a blindingly bright glare.
dean was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his phone in his hand, his hair messy from the pillows.
the easy, arrogant smirk was still lingering on his face as he walked in. "hey, what's taking so long with that—"
the words died instantly in his throat.
dean stopped dead in his tracks. even though tucker had pulled back, the thick, undeniable air of emotional and physical intimacy in the room was a physical entity.
dean's blue eyes narrowed sharply, cutting between his best friend and you.
he took in your tear-stained face, the extra mug of tea, the way tucker was still standing entirely too close to you. the breathless, guilty shock written all over your features which was vulnerability you had never once shown him was glaringly obvious.
"hey," dean said.
the usual playful, effortless lilt in his voice was completely gone, replaced by something flat, and sharp.
he stepped fully into the kitchen, trapping the three of you in a suffocating, heavy quiet.
dean looked at you, his eyes scanning your face, then shifted his gaze entirely to tucker.
his jaw tightened so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek as he crossed his arms over his chest. "what the fuck is going on in here?"
tucker didn't back away completely.
he kept his brown eyes locked dead on yours for one final, silent second, a desperate plea burning in his gaze, waiting to see if you were finally going to admit what you both felt.
Summary: being sammy bryant’s girlfriend includes adding a little flair to his house…
Pairing: sammy bryant x fem!reader
Contains: fluff, implication of sex (no smut), domesticity, homemaking, basically (nonbiological) mom!reader, reader referred to as “mama”, no use of y/n
Word Count: 2.1k
Note: somewhat of a part 2 to my hand-off ficlet but can be standalone. i want to be sammy bryant’s little wifey (season ANY!) in a way thats concerning to feminism. also i just finished southland and then opened the pitt right after and my dumbass thought i was hallucinating when i heard sammy’s voice
Sammy's house was... plain, to say the least. A single father two-story in Castaic didn't exactly equate to bachelor pad. Sammy was the type of guy to furnish based on necessity rather than aesthetic. Although fairly new, there were also many issues with the house.
He had the social worker coming around soon, but between work and bills, he was splitting himself so thin. Your job was less demanding and largely work from home lately, so you took it upon yourself to help him out.
It was no hassle, really. You always thought that his house needed a makeover, stacking pinterest board upon pinterest board after being around for awhile. You loved a project too, whether it be a craft or the whole house.
Like a storm, the commotion started with a drizzle. It was first new dinnerware in the kitchen.
You had been sitting on the kitchen counter, sipping tea from a cat mug Sammy bought for you. Legs dangling against the cabinets, you watched Sammy open a cabinet with a cereal box in hand.
"Honey?" He stalled for a moment, unmoving and staring into the now full shelves.
"Uh, huh," You responded, moving the cup from your mouth.
He turned around with a maroon-rimmed ceramic bowl in hand as a grin creeped on his lips, "What's this?"
"Oh! Uh..."
"And these?" Sammy gestured to the rest of the plates and bowls in the cabinet. It was a sleu of colours— butter yellow, olive, light blues, peach, red accents, a few browns.
"Do you like ‘em?" You raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I just didn't..." He thought to himself, placing the bowl down. "Did you get them all for me?"
As you nodded, he crowded you, finding space in between your legs. His hands went to your waist and he kissed your cheek.
He breathed your name, leaning his head back to look at you, "You didn't have to spend money on me."
"Your house is getting depressing, Sammy." You ran a hand over his shoulder. "Can't stand that you have two sad bowls and one plate."
"’M just not home enough." He mumbled, squeezing on your hips.
"Gotta make this house a home, honey." You teased, cradling his cheek in your hand. After he placed a kiss on the palm of your hand, you reminded, “You know the social worker is coming next month.”
He sighed, "Yeah, I know, I know. I gotta call an electrician and a plumber or something.”
"So expensive..." You mumbled, squeezing his cheek.
"I know, sweetheart." Groaning, he threw his head back, "I’ve been covering other officers as much as I can too. Tammi’s kicking me in the ass with these custody bills."
“I can call ‘em,” you volunteered, “Already getting busy with work, Sammy.”
"I don't like you paying for things, though." He shook his head. "I’ll leave my card with you. Do not let them charge you for some bullshit."
Shaking your head, you laughed, "Impossible. I know where the guns are."
After a slightly confused second, he furrowed his eyebrows, "Don't—"
"It was a joke, Sammy."
"I'd hate for you to take that up with me." He chuckled.
"Then don't cross me." You said, pressing your index finger to his chest.
Then came the living room.
One of the light fixtures had broken ages ago, before you even got together. Truly, you didn’t understand why Sammy thought the copy-and-paste suburbs were a sustainable and trustworthy living space, but that was a conversation for another time.
You hadn’t known anything about electricity. With the mere fact that you locked in on the idea of fixing it, there was no stopping you. So, you googled and read Reddit threads and watched Youtube videos. It took a day of hardware store trips and a whole season of New Girl, but the living room lit up with warm lights.
When they did, you realized the boring walls and empty shelves made his house look hollow. You took it upon yourself to print some photos at Walgreens and frame them around the house. It was cute little ones you'd taken of him and Nate on your digital point and shoot, some of Nate from your phone, and maybe a few of you and Sammy snuck in.
He, of course, noticed. Sammy took it upon himself to do a gallery walk around the house. Nate in his arms, he pointed out each photo, giving a story and applauding the artist.
"Who's that?" Sammy asked Nate, pointing at the photo of you and him on your four-month anniversary.
You two had gone to a steakhouse, but after, you really wanted a milkshake for some reason. Like any good man, Sammy took you to your favourite diner to grab one. Since you were dressed up, you pleaded the waiter to take a photo of the two of you. You were pressed together in a booth, milkshake with two straws in front of you, and Sammy smiling at you instead of the camera.
"Mama!" Nate squealed, clapping his hands together.
"No..." You shook your head, squeezing the fat of Nate's leg between your fingers. "Nate, not mama."
Sammy smiled at you with a shrug.
"Mama!" Nate repeated pointing from the photo to you.
That night in bed, Sammy couldn't stop peppering your face in kisses. He'd tell you how much he lovessssssss you while pressing his hands all over your body.
"Love our new pictures, baby." He mumbled with his face pushed into your neck. His hips rocked against you, catching each deep stroke with the next. "Our living room looks so good."
A week later, you were a plumber.
It went the same direction as the lights, but this time Nate was your assistant. It was rare you got full alone time with Nate, but Tammi dropped him off haphazardly, mumbling something about Ojai with a scowl to your direction.
Strangely, you had a lot of fun with Nate, asking him questions he definitely didn't know the answers to. Which wrench? Am I supposed to turn this off? Do you think Spielberg is past his prime? He'd just nod and smile, babbling words he didn't understand either.
After fixing the pipes, you were taking Nate to his room for his nap when you realized how plain his room had been. Awhile back, you bought him a Bartholomew Bear Jellycat, and that was the only thing on his plain grey sheets. The paint had also been somewhat peeling at the walls, meaning Nate was chipping at it.
As Nate went down for his nap, you ordered a nice red plaid duvet cover and new sheets for him. You also scoured the garage for the paint Sammy used in the room.
Later into the evening, your phone rang in your pocket. Sammy's smile next to the Malibu waves greeted you on the screen.
“Hi, hun, you comin’ home soon?” You put the phone on speaker as Nate beamed.
“On my way right now.” A smile grew on his face, you could hear it in his voice. “Just wanted to see if my girl wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner.”
“Sammy,” you whined, “we don’t have to. I can order in some pizza, we can watch a movie.”
As much as you loved going out with Sammy, you were in Nate's room, covered in paint. Your hair was greased with sweat and you were in no state to leave the house. You weren't really sure how it happened, given you were only patching up a few spaces of the wall.
“C’mon, baby, I wanna treat you. We can take Nate for ice cream after too." He suggested.
You looked at Nate, who had (kid safe!) paint all over his hands and overalls. You were matching, paint on yours and little hand prints on your leg. He felt left out when you were painting, so you gave him fingerpaint, a blank roll of craft paper, and a dream.
"Dada." Nate's mouth went agape as yours did. Looking down at the multicoloured mess on himself, he said, "Uh, oh."
"What's uh oh?" Sammy's voice raised in concern.
"Nothing." You shook your head at Nate and sighed, "How far out are you?"
"Like 15 minutes." His voice kept the stressed tone, "What's uh oh?!"
"Don't worry about it. See you later. Love you."
"Love you...? What is uh oh!?" You hung up before he could question you more.
Nate was staring at you dumbfounded. Purple-handed, he stared like he didn’t know what happened.
"You made a damn mess, dude." You shook your head, picking Nate up from the floor.
"Damn mess." Nate repeated, shaking his head as you brought him off to the bathroom.
Upon coming home, Sammy rushed up the stairs. Swiftly turning the corner, he found you in your paint-decorated overalls and Nate sitting on his bed in clean clothes. You were picking up the paint supplies from the floor.
"Oh, honey," Sammy sighed, relief in his voice, "i could've done this."
He came towards you, arm wrapping around you middle as he pressed a kiss into your temple. You placed a hand on his chest, melting into his embrace.
"We had fun, didn't we, Nate?" You smiled at Nate, tapping your hand on Sammy’s chest.
Sammy moved to the bed and took him onto his lap. “What’s with the little art project?” Sammy gestured to the rainbow that was the hem of your pant legs.
“Your son’s a little Matisse.” You handed him the big sheet Nate was painting on.
It was splotches of paints that became half-remembered versions of the beach hike you all went on last weekend. Plants were all the same shade of green, and the ocean and the sun were all wrong proportions. You were a blue blob and Sammy was red. In between, Nate was a collection of purple thumbprints.
“Look as this.” Sammy’s eyes widened, as did his smile, and he held the sheet up in front of Nate. “We have to get this framed.” He looked at you, softness coating his face. You nodded, admiring the image of him and Nate smiling at you. He bounced Nate on his knee, looking at him, “What was uh oh, bud?"
"Damn mess, dude." Nate shook his head at Sammy, pressing his hand onto his chest.
"You gotta watch your language around him." Sammy said with no bite, a smile on his lips. "Mama's been teaching you crazy stuff, huh, Nate?"
"Don't enable him." You rolled your eyes playfully as you placed all the stuff on Nate's play table.
"Phone home." Nate said to Sammy. Sammy quirked an eyebrow at you.
“Man loves E.T.” You shrugged with a smile. "Can you please put this all away while I wash up?" You asked, wiping your foreheard with the back of your hand. “We can go to, like, Chili’s or something.”
“Baby, you deserve better than Chili’s…” Sammy sighed.
Attempting to keep it laid-back, the three of you ended up at slightly nicer chain restaurant. Your sweet tooth had rubbed off on Nate, sharing a baked cookie à la mode for dessert. With Nate’s mouth covered in vanilla and chocolate chips, Sammy smiled at the image of you treating Nate as your own.
At the end of the night, you found yourself in the kitchen with Sammy again. Nate had fallen asleep in the car, then absolutely knocked out after brushing his teeth. In pyjamas and bare feet, you drank a glass of water while perched on the counter.
"You ready for the social worker visit?" You asked.
Sammy was settled in between your legs, sharing your glass of water. Placing it on the counter beside you, he put his hands on your hips.
“Yeah, now that the house is all done-up.” He smiled, pressing a kiss to your cheek. “Tammi’s trying to psych me out about it, though. I think she’s telling the workers some bad things about me.”
“Really doesn’t help that Nate thinks I’m his mama either.” You joked, locking a leg around his waist.
“Does it bother you, baby?” He asked quietly, squeezing the plush of your thighs as he scooted in closer.
“No, no, not really. I just…” You shook your head, rubbing his shoulders. “Tammi is his mom, and it’s not like she’s completely detached. I love Nate, but is it fucked up for his development that I’m around so much?”
“Hey, hey… Don’t worry about that, angel.” Sammy ran a hand through your hair. “If you ask me, that’s probably much better for my case… and me.”
You smiled, pressing a soft kiss against his lips. He wrapped his arms around you, bringing his body against yours. The ritual you two slipped into, the fact that the house started becoming yours, he could get used to this.
sammy bryant, who takes his gf to a pool party and gets lots of jeers along the lines of "do you know what to do with all that?" from his coworkers as she lays out in a lounge chair in a cute little bikini.
yes anon. YES! such a lovely idea i hope i brought it to life properly <3
thinking about how sammy bryant and everyone else thinks you’re way out of his league.
it started with the obvious, you were the most beautiful person he’d ever laid eyes on. sammy was all nervous and tongue tied around you from the moment you came into the department as an important witness for one of his cases. it took about three months of coming around for questioning and also just stopping by to ‘stay updated’ before you had to be embarrassingly direct. “sammy? are you ever gonna ask me out or should i stop with the muffin and coffee visits?” he had been absolutely baffled that you wanted to date him.
and so was everyone else at the station. you started coming around more often, no longer a witness but as his girlfriend. you charmed everyone instantly with your sweet personality, bubbly conversations, and of course… you’re hot at shit. all the detectives can’t keep their eyes off you when you prance into the department in a tiny skirt and lunch that you made for sammy.
and they especially can’t look away right now. in the backyard of one of the detectives houses as you sit in the cutest little bikini with bows on it. you’re stretched out on one of the lounge chairs giggling and getting to know to the other girlfriends and wives of sammy’s coworkers. sammy is at the grill with all the other guys, uncomfortably flipping burgers while they all jeer at him.
they start off strong with their taunts. “you payin’ her sammy?” and “how much prison time did ya threaten her with if she didn’t date you?”. sammy is beet red at this point. he’s about to snap and pull up the sex tape the two of you made last night where you were sobbing from how good he made you feel, when the new rookie chimes in. “yeah bryant. do you even know what to do with all that?”
“of course i do!” his angry yell rings out through the backyard. everyone turns their head at the noise. sammy looks around sheepishly at the wide eyes he gets. he finds yours that are filled with concern “everything okay sammy?”. he nods once, then turns back to the grill as the other detectives double over in laughter.
little do they know, on the other side of the pool you’re telling the other women that sammy bryant knows exactly what to do with ‘all that’.
"you've seriously gotten a noise complaint!?" one of the wives asks you. you giggle through your response, probs too tipsy and oversharing. "we've gotten so many i stopped keeping track! what can i say? he always makes me scream." all jaws drop to the floor, mascara'd eyes blowing wide at your words. "really?" a blonde asks you in disbelief. you scoff and shrug casually as if what you're about to say is the bare minimum. “big time. it’s because he makes sure i come at least twice before he even tries to have sex. never settles ladies." all female eyes curiously trail across the yard to your boyfriend with a newfound respect for the man that apparently keeps you more than satisfied.
you're feeling wayyy too comfortable at this point, so you're a little glad when you hear sammy's voice cut through your next admission. "oh and! he does this thing with his tongue that makes me literally black out right when he-" "baby?" your head snaps to your boyfriend who is now only a few feet away. he has a plate of food put together for you of everything you like without you even having to ask. all the women clock it, then glare at their partners who are already eating at the outdoor table. sammy looks very flushed as he hands it to you, most definitely from hearing your words.
actually, all of the detectives hear your words. but not from you. nope, sammys coworkers got an earful about your amazing sex life later that night at home from their spouses. the next day at the station, they all stare at sammy as if they've never seen him before.
sammy's instantly flustered and heavily confused at the almost astonished looks he's receiving. it isn't until the same rookie who had questioned his abilities the previous night comes up to him and says, "hey man... if you're ever um- givin' out any tips for... y'know- i would uh, appreciate it." that he understands that everyone now knows exactly how he gets a girl like you to date him.
John Tucker x CulinaryStudent!reader || Mini-series sneak peak
Title: TBD
Mini summary: On top of his spot on the hockey team, Tucker declared a double major in business and hospitality pretty soon after arriving to Briar U. Not five minutes into his first culinary class, he gained his campus rival. Now it’s Junior year, nearly two years later, and you're still the only person that's ever made "Sweet Tuck" genuinely contemplate murder.
Tucker was suddenly stilled, your smile now dangerously closer than before. If you leaned in just an inch more, your chin would be resting on his shoulder.
It lasted for maybe thirty seconds, his breath faltering and all thoughts of whisking long gone.
Then, you tipped your chin down, glancing into his pot. “Your roux’s burnt.”
Tucker whipped his head to where you were looking, eyes wide in panic. “Wha—stop distracting me.”
You were completely unfazed, if not impishly amused. “Just saying, maybe you’d wanna start over.”
His nose scrunched, eyes narrowed and scrutinizing. “I don’t have time to start over. It’s fine. Mind your own station.”
“Okay, cowboy,” you chuckled, going back to the cutting board with a grin. “Your kitchen, your rules.”
Ten second passed, if that.
“At least it’s better than our Mother Sauces day, that béchamel tasted like straight raw flour—”
“That’s it—Logan, whisk duty. Now.” The metal whisk clanking against the pot as Tucker stormed off, high tailing it for the bathroom.
As much as he’d like to throw you out of that kitchen—or better yet, the entire house—he knew he needed your help. With half of the group gone last minute, completely throttling the plan, all hands were on deck. Worse yet, Birdie and Logan were somehow his sous chefs.
Birdie and Logan. The same two who dry scooped pre-workout and sustained off bottled protein shakes when Tuck was gone.
To say he needed your help was an understatement...and it just about drove him mad—but that wasn’t new with you. You driving him crazy was a constant, probably from the second you’d met in class.
He was sweet, southern boy Tucker. Everyone liked him, and he liked everyone. But being nice was not easy around you—unlike every other human being on the entire goddamn planet. Just something about you really rubbed him wrong. Maybe it was the way you purposefully set him off every time, or maybe it was how you visibly relished in his eye-twitching reactions of barely muzzled restraint. Either way, it certainly did its job.
Thank God Dean wasn’t here to narrate the interactions between the two of you. If that'd been the case, Tucker would've just stuck his head in the oven along with the biscuits.
summary. You think guys that cook are hot.
pairing. John Tucker x Reader
tags. Fluff, crack-ish?
note. I did giggle while writing this at 1am.
ice time. 1.8k
You think that guys that cook are hot.
That’s basically the number one thing on your list of standards for a guy.
And if you add in, John Tucker, #46 of the Briar U hockey team, who not only cooks but does it wearing a pink apron with the kind of earnest, unbothered pride that should not be as attractive as it is — you can therefore conclude that Tucker is hot and totally your type.
Hannah and Allie are 100% aware of this fact, considering that they were there when you started massively crushing on the hockey player back in sophomore year, and were the ones who listened to you ramble about said hockey player early into the year when you found out he could cook.
Unfortunately, your two friends learning about this fact while also actively dating two guys in Tucker’s own friend group meant that you were now in the unique and deeply unfortunate position of being perceived. Specifically, being perceived by people who knew Tucker, liked Tucker, and had absolutely zero reason to keep your little crush under wraps.
Allie, bless her heart, had lasted approximately three weeks before she'd accidentally let it slip in front of Dean that you thought Tucker was, quote, "disgustingly attractive and it's all because of the cooking thing." Dean, being Dean, had found this information deeply funny and had done absolutely nothing responsible with it, ultimately teasing you every time you and Tucker were in the same vicinity of each other, although thanks to Allie, had really did keep the teasing to just you. You still found the whole situation deeply mortifying.
The only thing keeping you from burying yourself in gravel and suffocating was the knowledge that Tucker, as far as you knew, had not been told. Yet.
You were choosing to believe the "yet" was still working in your favor.
It mostly meant that whenever Tucker showed up places that Hannah or Allie also happened to be, you developed an immediate and urgent need to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Bathroom. Kitchen. The parking lot. You were adaptable. Very much so.
"You're not even being subtle about avoiding him anymore," Hannah had told you once, watching you physically reverse direction in the hallway when you spotted Tucker heading your way. "Like. At all."
"I'm being incredibly subtle."
"You walked into a trash can."
"I meant to do that."
She had given you a look that said, very clearly, that she did not believe you. You had chosen to ignore it on account of self-preservation.
The problem was that Tucker kept showing up. Outside the dorms when you'd come to hang out with Hannah and Allie. At the coffee shop near campus. At Malones — because you worked there and that was literally where the group hung out. At the rink when you'd come to watch a game and hadn't factored in post-game corridor hangouts. And every time, without fail, he was easy to talk to and warm and sincere in that genuine, unguarded way he had, the kind that felt less like a personality and more like a reflex — like being kind was just the thing he defaulted to, same as breathing.
It was even more annoying because he was always like that. Like the teasing from his teammates rolled right off him, and he just kept showing up with food and a good attitude and that small, steady presence that made you feel like whatever room he was in got a little calmer.
It was fine. You were fine. Everything was completely fine.
Which brings you here, to Hannah and Allie's kitchen, helping set up for a casual get-together that you had been assured would be small. Just a few people. Chill. Relaxed.
They were currently hosting eight people and counting, and Tucker's jacket was by the door when you arrived. Hannah had neglected to mention this when she'd asked you to come early and help with the food, even when you asked about the paper bag on the counter, which you later on learned was brought by none other than Tucker.
You were starting to think your friends were not entirely on your side, because the moment you arrived, Allie and Hannah started teasing you increasingly.
The thing is, you didn't know exactly when the conversation in the kitchen shifted to types in men (again), and your crush on Tucker. Which you tried very hard to keep his name as lowkey as possible. They find it amusing. You don’t.
Allie hands you the tablecloth then heads to the sink to wash the dishes left.
Allie hands you the tablecloth then heads to the sink to wash the dishes left, humming something under her breath like she isn't the reason you're currently in this situation.
"So," she says, turning on the tap. "Hannah was telling me you nearly bolted out of the rink last week when Tucker walked into the corridor."
"I didn't nearly bolt. I had somewhere to be."
"You told us you had to go check on your laundry," Hannah calls from across the kitchen, not even bothering to look up from where she's arranging the snack bowls. "At eleven at night."
"Laundry doesn't have a curfew."
Allie snorts. You smooth the tablecloth aggressively.
"Can we not do this tonight?" you ask, with as much dignity as you could muster. "There are guests."
"There are guests because we invited them," Allie says pleasantly. "Including Tucker, who brought ingredients and is currently grabbing something else and will be back in a few, which I know you clocked the second you walked in."
You had, in fact, clocked it the second you walked in. You say nothing.
Hannah finally looks up, the picture of innocence. "You know, it's kind of impressive how much energy you spend avoiding someone you claim to just have a small crush on."
"It's a normal-sized crush."
"You once left through a fire exit."
"The regular door was blocked."
"By Tucker saying hi to you."
A pause. You smooth an already-smooth section of tablecloth. "It was a crowded hallway."
Allie turns off the tap, reaching for the dish towel with the serene expression of someone who is deeply enjoying herself. "All we're saying is that it might be time to, I don't know, exist in the same room as him for more than four consecutive minutes."
"I exist in the same room as him all the time."
"Without a planned escape route," Hannah amends.
You open your mouth. Close it. The tablecloth is extremely smooth at this point. You are doing a great job with the tablecloth.
"My type," you say finally, pivoting with what you feel is remarkable, amazing, grace, "is simply guys who can cook. That is a completely reasonable standard."
Hannah rolls her eyes at you, turning to set down a bowl of snacks while you finish wiping the counter. "Your type is guys that can cook."
“And? I think cooking is hot.” You miss the way Hannah’s eyes drift past you to someone behind you, busy wiping down the counter as you shrug. Your increasing embarrassment had made your tongue loose, and you had in fact given up on being vague. “Why else do you think I like Tucker?”
“Oh?” The voice behind you makes you freeze. Your hand stiffens on the tablecloth, eyes widening as you’re now suddenly acutely aware of the warmth behind you. “Is that so?”
You look up, and Hannah has a hand over her mouth, amusement dancing in her eyes as she speaks to you through your head.
"Hannah. Help me."
"Nah, girl. You got this. Go you."
Fingers gripping the tablecloth, you plaster a smile on your face and slowly turn.
Behind you stands Tucker, his eyes crinkling as he smiles at you. "Hey, Name."
Your cheeks warm. You are pretty sure that you are the definition of a tomato at this point as you clear your throat in an attempt to be nonchalant. "Heeey, Tuck."
His grin only widens, arms crossing over his chest. "So." His brow lifts, and you swallow. "You think I'm hot?"
You open your mouth. Close it. Open it again.
"I think," you say carefully, in the measured tone of someone carefully disarming a bomb, "that the cooking thing is hot. Objectively. As a concept."
"Uh huh." He doesn't look even remotely convinced, which is deeply unfair considering he's the one who snuck up on you. "And I cook."
"Lots of people cook, Tucker."
"Do they cook as well as me?"
You pause. And the horrible, traitorous, honest part of your brain supplies: no, actually, because you'd had his cooking twice now, once at a team dinner Allie had dragged you to and once when he'd brought food to the apartment for no stated reason, and both times it had been genuinely, annoyingly, unfairly good.
"That's not the point," you say.
His smile tips into something a little softer, a little more knowing, and somehow that's worse than the teasing. He takes one step closer, enough that you would have to actively crane your neck to look away from him, and doesn't say anything for a beat.
"I'll cook for you sometime," he says finally, like it's easy. Like he's offering to lend you a pen. "If that's what it takes."
You stare at him.
From somewhere behind Tucker, you hear Allie make a noise that she unconvincingly tries to smother with a cough. Hannah, you suspect, is still standing at the counter with that same hand over her mouth.
"That," you say slowly, "is the most confident thing anyone has ever said to me."
Tucker shrugs, that easy grin back in place. "I'm a confident guy."
"You're a menace."
"You think I'm hot."
"I think your cooking is hot."
Tucker laughs, saying your name in a way that makes your stomach flip as he tilts his head, and there's something warm in his expression underneath all the amusement. "Same thing."
You look at him for a long moment. He looks back, patient, like he has all night and fully intends to use it.
"Fine," you say, because apparently self-preservation has fully left the building. Your face feels like a furnace, and you are hyper aware of every little sound Allie and Hannah makes behind you, plus thawing Tucker this close to you. "Yeah. Okay. I think you're hot."
The smile that breaks across his face is, genuinely, a little devastating.
"Cool," Tucker says. "I'll text you about dinner. This week?"
You're pretty sure your soul briefly vacates your body.
"This week," you hear yourself agree.
He nods, satisfied, like that's settled then. He glances over his shoulder at Hannah and Allie, who are both staring with the barely-contained energy of two people who have been waiting for this for approximately two years. "Ladies." Then, back to you, quieter, "Talk to you later?"
"Yeah. Yep. Sure." you say, a little helplessly.
Tucker smiles. Then he's heading back toward the living room, and you are left standing in the kitchen, gripping the tablecloth, staring at the middle distance, smiling widely.
A beat of silence.
"Look at you!” Hannah says loudly, while Allie rounds the counter to throw her arms around you, giggling at your still flushed face.
"I hate both of you," you tell them, but the smile on your face doesn’t fade.
Summary: You break up with Tucker because you are tired of being a secret, but when another guy hits on you at Malone's, he snaps and publicly claims you in front of his entire team.
Angst to fluff? But definitely Angst
Warnings: spoiler alert if you didn't read the books!, cursing, violence
A/N: Well, this would probably fit book Tucker rather than TV Show Tucker, buuuut. Truth is we didn't really see much of Tuck this season. Anyway, I hope you like it. Feedback is much appreciated! Take care of yourselves xx also, @airgoddess maybe you can enjoy this in the meantime
Words: 2.6k
Gif
It was never supposed to be this fucking complicated.
John Tucker, Briar U's laidback forward was the kind of guy who took everything in stride. He had a heart of gold, infinite patience, and a Texas drawl that could melt the panties off a saint. But his life had recently become a massive, tangled wreck. Earlier in the year, a brief hookup with Sabrina James had resulted in an unexpected pregnancy. Tucker, being the thoroughly decent, stand-up guy he was, stepped up immediately, vowing to support Sabrina and the baby every step of the way.
But then, he fell in love with you.
Because of the fragile situation with Sabrina, you and Tucker had decided to keep your relationship off the radar. You didn’t want to add to her panic, nor did you want to deal with the relentless, vicious gossip of the Briar campus. But what started as a temporary protective measure had morphed into a heavy, suffocating weight. You were sick of hiding. Sick of slipping out the back door of the hockey house before his roommates could catch you doing the walk of shame. You were tired of feeling like a dirty little secret, and the brutal strain had caused a constant, underlying friction between you two.
Which led to the explosive argument in his bedroom just hours before the team’s victory party.
You were pacing the length of his floor, your arms crossed tightly over your chest, while he sat on the edge of his neatly made bed. He was watching you with those heavy-lidded, deep brown eyes, his large hands resting loosely on his spread knees. His unnatural stillness only fueled the anxious, clawing fire burning in your chest.
"I can't do this anymore, Tuck," you said, your voice trembling as you snatched your jacket off his desk chair. "I'm fucking done. We're done."
He went utterly, terrifyingly still.
"Come here, darlin'," Tucker commanded, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that usually turned your knees to absolute water.
"No." You zipped up your jacket with shaking fingers, refusing to look at him because you knew if you met his gaze, your resolve would snap in half. "I mean it this time. I am so fucking exhausted. I feel like a ghost in my own relationship."
Tucker pushed himself off the bed. His massive, muscular frame seemed to swallow the small space of the room as he stepped directly in front of his closed door, effectively trapping you inside. His dark auburn hair was a messy halo, and beneath his calm exterior, his warm brown eyes were flashing with a dangerous mix of panic and pure, unadulterated male stubbornness.
"We are not doing this, Y/N," he said slowly, his Texas drawl thick with absolute refusal. "We are not breaking up."
"I am the goddamn side piece in my own relationship!" you yelled, the frustration boiling over as hot tears finally spilled down your cheeks. "I know you have to be there for Sabrina and the baby. I want you to be there for them. You're a good man, Tuck, the best I know. But I can't be your hidden fuck-buddy anymore. I can't watch you rush out of the room to take her calls, or drop my hand the second we step outside because someone might see us. It hurts too much. It's tearing me apart."
A muscle feathered in his tight jaw. Tucker closed the distance between you in two long strides. You tried to step back, but his large, callused hands gripped your shoulders, hauling you gently but firmly against the hard wall of his chest. You were instantly grounded in his signature scent of sandalwood and citrus, a scent that felt so much like home it made a broken sob rip from your throat.
"You listen to me," he rasped, his voice vibrating against your collarbone as he lowered his head to look you dead in the eye. "You are not second place. You are never second place. You are everything to me."
"Tuck, please—"
"No, you're going to let me speak." He brought one of his large hands up to cup your cheek, his rough thumb catching a tear before it could fall. "I know it's hard. I know I'm asking a hell of a lot of you to wait for me to sort this mess out. I hate that I'm the goddamn reason you're crying right now. But I am a patient man, Y/N. I will wait out any storm to keep you."
You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head as you pressed your hands against his chest, trying to physically push away the one thing you wanted most in the world. Beneath your palms, his heart was hammering wildly against his ribs.
"You have to," you whispered, your voice cracking. "Go figure out your life. Be a dad. Do what you have to do without worrying about keeping me happy in the shadows."
You pulled out of his grip, intentionally ignoring the raw, devastated look that flashed across his handsome face. You reached around him, your hand wrapping tightly around the cool metal of the doorknob.
"I'm going to be at Malone's tonight," you said, your voice remarkably steady despite the fact that your heart was breaking into a million jagged pieces. "I promised Allie and Hannah I'd celebrate the win with them. But don't look for me, I need space."
You slipped past him, yanking the door open. You left him standing there in the middle of his bedroom, his jaw clenched tight and his broad chest heaving, his heart full of absolute, uncompromising refusal to accept that this was the end.
By the time you pushed your way into Malone's, your hands were still shaking.
And the absolute worst part of being best friends with Allie and Hannah? It meant you were automatically dragged into the Briar hockey team's inner circle.
They had commandeered the massive, wraparound leather booth in the back corner, and you were squished right into the middle of the loud, rowdy chaos. Garrett, Dean, Logan, and Fitzy were practically shouting over the music, toasting their shutout win and passing around pitchers of beer.
And sitting directly across the wooden table from you was John Tucker.
He hadn't said a single word since you sat down. He just sat rigidly on the cracked vinyl cushion, a half-empty bottle of Miller gripped in his large hand. For Tucker, the booming bass of the jukebox and the chaotic crowd seemed to fade entirely into white noise. The only thing in sharp focus was you. Every time you dared to glance up, those heavy-lidded, dark brown eyes were already locked on you, burning with a heavy, volatile intensity that made it impossible for you to draw a full breath.
You felt like you were bleeding out invisibly. You’d done it. You’d looked him in the eye, told him you were done being his dirty little secret, and walked away. Now, forced to sit so close to him, it felt like you’d carved out your own heart with a dull knife.
Hannah nudged your shoulder, shoving a shot of cheap tequila into your hand. "Drink up! You look like you're at a funeral, Y/N/N, not a party."
Allie leaned in over Dean's shoulder, her blonde hair catching the harsh neon light. "Seriously, what's going on with you? You've been miserable all week."
You forced a smile that didn't reach your eyes and downed the shot. The liquor clawed down your throat, "Just tired. Let's go dance."
You dragged them out of the booth and shoved your way onto the small, packed dance floor near the jukebox. The music was deafening, the heavy bass vibrating through the soles of your shoes and rattling your ribs. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting yourself get lost in the chaotic, grinding rhythm of the crowd. You laughed loudly with Allie and Hannah, desperately trying to project the image of a girl having the time of her life. But all you were really doing was trying to ignore the heavy, scorching gaze you could feel burning into your skin from across the room.
Tucker was watching you.
Usually, he was the anchor of his friend group—observant, laidback, the quiet guy who kept his head and his temper when everyone else lost theirs. Tonight, he felt like a coiled spring pulled back so tight it was about to snap.
Every breath he took felt like inhaling broken glass. You’d told him you were done. You’d looked at him with tears in your beautiful eyes and told him you couldn't be his second-place secret anymore. And the worst, most agonizing part? He knew you were absolutely right.
His eyes tracked your every movement through the strobe lights. You looked fucking breathtaking—flushed, wild, and utterly out of his reach—and he wasn't the only one who noticed.
A tall guy from the lacrosse team slid up behind you on the dance floor, his hands hovering dangerously close to your hips. Another guy, some frat bro in a backward cap, was trying to catch your eye, shouting some garbage pickup line over the loud music.
Tucker’s jaw locked so hard his teeth ground together. A dark, ugly possessiveness flared in his chest, incinerating every ounce of his southern patience.
They saw a beautiful, single girl looking to get wrecked and have a good time. They didn't know you belonged to him. They didn't know the soft, needy sounds you made when he sucked marks into your neck, or how perfectly your body bowed up to meet his. And it was his own damn fault they didn't know. He had kept you in the shadows to protect Sabrina's privacy and manage the baby drama, but in doing so, he had left you completely unprotected. He’d made you feel like you didn't matter. He'd practically served you up on a silver platter to every thirsty dirtbag in Malone's.
He watched, every thick muscle in his massive frame going violently tense, as the lacrosse player leaned in, his mouth entirely too close to your ear. Tucker saw you politely step back, your posture stiffening in clear discomfort, but the guy persisted. The asshole actually closed the distance again, flashing a cocky grin and reaching out to boldly wrap a hand around your waist.
That was it. Patience was officially dead.
Tucker’s grip on his beer bottle tightened until his knuckles turned stark white, the thick glass groaning dangerously under the pressure. With a harsh, ragged exhale, he slammed the bottle down on the sticky wooden table so hard the remaining liquid foamed over the top.
"Whoa, Tuck, where are you going?" Garrett asked, looking completely startled by the sudden, aggressive movement from the calmest guy on the roster.
Tucker didn't answer. He didn't even look at his captain. He was already moving, his broad shoulders cutting through the crowded bar, his dark eyes locked dead on the man touching what was his.
He parted the sweaty, grinding crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, his massive frame shoving through the bodies without a single apology. The rational, endlessly patient part of his brain—the part that always played the long game, the part that had agreed to keep this relationship off the radar to deal with Sabrina's baby drama—was dead and buried.
Fuck the secret. Fuck the gossip. Tucker didn't care about the whispers, the rumors, or the stares that were bound to follow. He only cared about the fact that the woman he was completely, irrevocably in love with was slipping through his fingers, and half the bar was trying to swoop in and take his place.
You spun around, desperate to step away from the persistent lacrosse player whose hands were getting way too bold, but before you could tell the guy to back off, a blur of black and silver stepped into your line of vision.
You gasped as the lacrosse player was suddenly violently ripped away from you.
Tucker’s massive, callused hand was fisted in the collar of the guy’s shirt, lifting him nearly off his feet.
"Hey, what the hell, man?" the lacrosse player sputtered, throwing his hands up. He puffed out his chest, trying to look tough.
The words had barely left the guy's mouth before Tucker’s fist cracked across his jaw.
The sickening thud cut through the immediate vicinity of the dance floor. The lacrosse player stumbled backward, crashing into a nearby table and taking a couple of empty beer bottles down with him. The crowd gasped, forming an immediate, wide circle around you, but Tucker didn't even flinch. He stood over the groaning guy, his broad chest heaving, his fists clenched tight at his sides.
"Stay the fuck away from my girl," Tucker growled, his voice dropping to a low, lethal vibration.
The guy scrambled back, holding his bleeding jaw, and frantically nodded before disappearing into the crowd.
Tucker didn't spare him a second glance. He turned to you, the violence in his frame immediately shifting into a raw, desperate need. Large, familiar hands instantly gripped your hips, hauling you flush against his hard chest.
"Tuck—" you breathed, your heart doing a wild, violent somersault against your ribs.
"Mine," he murmured fiercely.
He pulled you seamlessly into the heavy rhythm of the music. His hands slid from your hips to trail possessively up your spine, sending a shiver of blistering heat straight to your core. He spun you around, pressing your back flat against his broad chest, his thick arms wrapping securely around your waist as he swayed with you.
He could feel you trembling, feel the exact moment the adrenaline bled out of your muscles and you melted against him. This was where you belonged. Not hiding in the shadows. Not sneaking out the back door of the hockey house. It was an undeniably intimate, blatantly sexual claim, loud and clear for the entire fucking bar to see.
Over by the booths, the reaction was instantaneous. Dean’s jaw practically unhinged, his drink freezing halfway to his mouth. Garrett actually choked on his beer, coughing violently while Logan thumped him on the back. Hannah and Allie exchanged wide-eyed, completely stunned looks. John Tucker, the quietest, most reserved guy on the roster, had just knocked a guy out and put on a very public, very unapologetic show.
Tucker spun you back around to face him, completely oblivious to the shocked stares of his teammates. He brought one hand up to cup your cheek, his rough thumb brushing over your trembling bottom lip, parting it slightly.
"I don't care who sees," Tucker said, his voice fierce, unwavering, and laced with absolute certainty. "I don't care how complicated it is. I am not hiding you anymore, Y/N. And I am sure as hell not letting you break up with me."
Before you could formulate a response—before your brain could even process the magnitude of what he had just done—he dipped his head and captured your lips in a searing, breathless kiss.
It wasn't a gentle, hidden kiss in the dark. It was a bold, desperate, world-stopping declaration. He kissed you like a starving man, his tongue parting your lips and claiming your mouth with a consuming, dominant heat that made your knees buckle. He caught your weight effortlessly, pulling your hips flush against the hard ridge of his arousal, showing his teammates, your friends, and everyone else in Malone's exactly who you belonged to.
When he finally pulled back, you were both breathless, your chests heaving together in the smoky air.
"You're my girl," he whispered fiercely, resting his forehead against yours. His brown eyes locked onto yours to make sure you understood every single word. "And nobody is going to steal you away from me."
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