bunny girl

20! my freaky mind palace owned by my butch <3

[beemovieerotica]

[rawme-price]

okay guys hear me out on ghost meeting aphid!reader...

it's hard enough being a bug hybrid, many people have certain prejudice against you as-is, but as a hybrid with a "pest" counter-part? you're no stranger to rude and downright mean comments even from peers.

Which is why you're absolutely dumbfounded by ghost of all people approaching you out of nowhere to ask "can I take you on a date?"

You should know better, having been the victim of many 'pranks' in your youth, but something about the open way he says it has you hesitantly agreeing. He's attractive, funny, hopefully nice...it seems like a good idea.

Only for you to end up at a salad bar with a bowl full of leafy greens and fruits while ghost eagerly watches with an untouched plate. He smiles, pushes more towards you "don't be shy, lovie, eat up."

Sure, it's really weird, but not once has he made fun of your antennae or your mouthparts or anything....it's almost...nice?

"Can i try some of your honeydew?" Ghost blurts out in front of your apartment after an eerily silent car ride.

For a second, you're convinced he's joking. You've never met anyone who likes aphid hybrid honeydew, no one. Most don't know what it is. Those piercing brown eyes stay fixed on you unblinkingly, dead serious.

You've never been good at managing impulse, so you chitter happily and tug ghost inside.

Ghost finds a new favorite snack that night, and you find a boyfriend. Nice.

[jezebellesjams]

Would loveeeee to hear more about the month where Trinity was only allowed to use her buttons?!?

and i would love to talk about it so thank you so much for asking (also i love the erika ishii pfp)

(mdni)

trinity likes it a lot more than she ever could have expected. the first time is impromptu, and by nature it couldn’t be as long nor intensive as either girl would have liked. baran’s insistent that they sit and talk before going and further with the idea and trinity knows better than to question baran (unless she’s looking to be punished, which is often but not her intent tonight). so she lets baran pull her out of the scene, allows the older woman to cuddle her and press her face into the crook of her neck. aftercare first, then discussion.

after about an hour trinity sits up and baran walks her through what had happened. she makes sure trinity felt safe during the duration of the scene, checks her face to make sure she’s not lying. but trinity does feel safe with baran, despite herself. she knows that when trinity needs something she’ll do anything to make it so.

it’s different from any of her previous relationships. they’d been fully pleasure-focused, which was nice, but she couldn’t imagine having this much time be spent dedicated to her. not even so they could use her body, just so they know she’s okay.

trinity reaffirms that she does in fact like this, reminds baran that they have safe words for a reason. but baran knows better. she knows how much trinity likes to hold onto those three words, saving them until she’s way too close to breaking than baran wants. she makes trinity explain why she likes it, analyzes it and gets to its very core.

and when she’s sure that trinity really and truly is okay, baran ups the ante. slowly of course, methodically and carefully. first trinity spends an entire day without speaking, and she finds it odd how relieving it feels. how nice it is to only need to know eight words, eight simple words: yes, no, food, pets, cum, bathroom, water, red.

the worst part of it is having to paw at the bathroom button, but trinity adjusts quickly. baran knows better than to make let trinity worry that her needs would be ignored, as tempting as it is to savor those puppydog eyes trinity pulls out when she begs. it's more of a soft-stop than anything, a chance for trinity to be alone for a moment and theoretically free to whisper or mumble. not that she ever does.

so on and so forth. baran is... more sparing with the punishment than trinity would like her to be. for as well as baran thinks she knows trinity she always underestimates one simple fact: it is hard to punish trinity santos. sure, baran gets it in theory. she thinks these "unconventional punishments" are working, but in reality trinity is just biding her time. waiting until the paddles stop stinging the right way and the bruises stop settling in as deeply as trinity needs.

and then trinity pushes. she waits until no one's around at work and kisses her, lets her hands explore the older woman's body when they "accidentally" happen to end up in the bathroom together at the same time.

baran is confident that three days of no-speak will set trinity right. and it does, for those three days, and then trinity goes right back to it. one of her favorite ways to rile baran up is to send her flirty text messages. the older woman is surprisingly easy to fluster, and trinity is great at flustering people. she could draw blood from a stone, so this is child's play.

at 10:00 am trinity is texting baran. simple messages, but baran knows something is up because why is trinity texting her while they're both at work?

by 12:00 pm the photos start rolling in. selfies that baran hearts. then the camera trails lower. baran's finger is shaky as she hearts a photo of trinity in her bra (where the fuck is she even taking these?), and she nearly dies when another one of trinity fully topless comes in.

and then trinity takes her lunch break, and baran manages to excuse herself to the bathroom just in time before trinity sends one final video. she's in her car fucking herself. two fingers stuffed deep in her pussy, and though baran can't turn up the volume to be sure, she swears she sees trinity mouth daddy at least twice.

yeah. that's the limit. she does not heart the video this time, and instead sends a curt We are at work, Santos. and that's when trinity knows she's won.

three days without speaking turns to a full week. it's domestic bliss. all of the stress of the day melts as baran clasps her collar around her neck, and all of a sudden buttons become her favorite "toys" in baran's arsenal.

as soon as trinity can she does the same routine. a text here, a photo there, and finally a full video of trinity cumming in her backseat. first of all, trinity is not supposed to be cumming without her explicit permission, and second of all, as she reminds trinity yet again that We are still at work, Santos.

and then a week turns to two. it's at about day twelve that it hits baran what trinity's been doing, and she's both frustrated and impressed that trinity found a way to get exactly what she wanted. she asks trinity if her hypothesis is true, and the younger woman just whines and paws the yes button.

baran makes a deal with trinity. she'll let her spend a full thirty days like this if she promises never to do that shit at work ever again. and of course, her pretty puppy nods and hits the yes button two or three times.

and so the month goes. trinity requests that they make it at least a weekly habit, or she'd just have to find another way to get what she wants.

[barnesdreamcatcher]

As long as you’re with me

jack abbot x f!reader

summary: you sleep with jack for the first time and discover what it means to be loved gently

cw: smut (mdni, 18+), gentle sex, oral (f rec), referenced p in v, reader uses sex as a coping mechanism and has low self-esteem, light intoxication

wc: 3k

a/n: listen, I do not think that rough sex is necessarily a bad thing, but it can be. I don’t feel like expanding on this 

now playing: Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby – Cigarettes After Sex

Jack can’t take his eyes off you. Not when you look the way you do right now: skin glowing, eyes sparkling, and a truly sincere smile on your face. 

The wine bottle shared between the two of you stands at your feet as his hands snake around your waist, pulling you closer. He tastes the grapes on your tongue when his own slips between your parted lips, mapping out the inside of your mouth slowly. His palm wanders from your side to the small of your back, pressing you flush against him. 

You only pull away when you start to get lightheaded—too little oxygen, too much love. 

Love. 

Neither one of you has said it yet. It’s much too early for that four-letter word, but the idea of it hangs over you as he kisses your cheek instead of your mouth to let you catch your breath. 

Jack tilts his head to meet your gaze and smiles softly. His eyes drift over your face like he’s memorizing every inch. He’s close enough that he could count each individual lash if he wanted to. 

When he lifts his hands to cup your face between his palms, you melt into his touch. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. 

Your skin heats under his hands, blood rushing to your face. The timid smile on your face tugs at Jack’s heartstrings.

“So beautiful,” he repeats tenderly. 

He means it. 

You misinterpret it. 

When you stand on your tiptoes to kiss him again, there’s more heat to it—the kind that leads to places you haven’t been to with him yet.  He keeps you steady, your face still held by him.  His lips fit against yours like two puzzle pieces.

The weight of him leads you towards the couch naturally. He doesn’t guide or force but simply leans in until you sink onto the cushions, him braced above you. 

Your hand drifts down from his chest to his stomach. Through his shirt, you still feel the way his muscles flex under your touch.  He breaks the kiss to look at you, an almost dopey curve to his mouth. 

“You’re ticklin’ me,” he mumbles. 

“That’s on purpose,” you reply. 

He grins, then catches your hands in his own.  “Is that so?” he whispers. “Anything else you want to confess?”

You let a few seconds pass, just for dramatic effect, before you nod.  “Yeah,” you mumble, “I’m also trying to take your shirt off right now.”

Jack chuckles softly.  “You don’t say,” he teases. “Any reason for that?”

You roll your eyes fondly.  “Take a guess.”

A gentle laugh spills from him, originating deep from his chest. You feel the vibration travel through him until it reaches your hand, too. 

“I think I can help out with that.”

He grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it up, then over his head. Your eyes are glued to every inch of sun-kissed skin that’s slowly exposed. For a moment, you hesitate before you reach out to rest your hand on his chest, feeling the heat radiating from him. 

When you’ve had your fill of touching him—though you’re not sure you’ll ever get enough of him—you take off your own shirt. You had planned in advance and worn a black lace bralette, but you hadn’t told Jack, so you could trick him into thinking that you’re always this put together.  The matching panties waited for him under the skirt, which you were eager for him to pull off of you. 

Jack can’t look away—and doesn’t want to. You’re surprised that for once, it doesn’t feel like you’re being ogled. 

No, Jack admires. 

His fingers drift over your breasts up to your neck, then rest on your face. 

“Like I said,” he whispers. “Beautiful.”

Instead of answering, you lean in to kiss him again. As your lips press against his, you reach for his belt buckle and open it. Jack hums into your mouth, a small roll of his hips encouraging you. 

He helps you take off his jeans. Jack talked to you about not wearing his prosthetic at home around you a few days ago, but right now, he still has it on. He seems a little nervous as his pants fall away, and you get a full glance at it for the first time.

You don’t mind at all. 

The next barrier that falls is your skirt. Jack undoes the zipper at the side carefully, then slides the fabric down your legs. He makes a sound you can’t quite categorize when he sees the thin lace panties you picked out for tonight.

“Fuck,” he whispers, “How are you this perfect?”

Again, you forgo an answer with another kiss. 

Jack notices. He cups your face, then pulls away a little just to look at you. His brows knit together slightly. 

“Hey,” he mumbles.

You haven’t been together that long yet, but he knows you well enough to see that you don’t feel like talking about this right now.  Still, for a moment, he chews on his bottom lip in contemplation before he asks, “Wouldn’t you rather take this to the bedroom?”

You shrug softly. “I don’t mind the couch. Whatever you want.”

The divot between his brows deepens.  “But I’m asking you what you want,” he counters. “If… if we’re doing this right now, I want you to be comfortable.”

“I am comfortable,” you reply. 

He nods reluctantly.  “Alright,” he mumbles.

The next kiss feels a little different—not in a bad way, just more careful. Jack waits, lets you chase him instead of taking the lead. So you do. 

You reach behind you to unfasten the clasps of your bra. As the lace falls away, Jack watches with amazement. He almost manages to throw in another compliment for you, but you don’t give him the chance. You stand up from the couch and hook your fingers into your panties, then slowly slip them off.  Jack’s breath hitches. He leans into the back of the couch to watch as you step out of the fabric that fell to your ankles. This time, he truly stares. 

When you step closer, he pulls you in by your hips until you’re seated on his lap. Your bare cunt brushes over the bulge in his boxers, causing both of you to moan. 

You roll against him once, then twice, then kiss him again. The heat between the two of you is unbearable. You don’t understand why he hasn’t taken off his underpants yet and wonder if he maybe just needs a little bit more encouragement, so you grind down against him again. 

Jack hisses at the contact, his fingers tightening on your sides. 

“Fuck, baby,” he mutters. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

“Then let me help you,” you chuckle and reach for the waistband of his boxers. He lifts his hips to help you slip them off—and you swallow hard when you see what you’re working with. The grey happy trail you’ve been eyeing since his shirt came off leads down to his thick cock. The size of the bulge makes more sense now. He’s veiny and flushed a dark red, almost a little purple at the tip. 

“Jesus,” you whisper.

Jack chuckles, maybe even a little self-consciously so. 

“Yeah, it’s um… it’s been a while for me,” he admits. 

Your mouth falls open—you hadn’t expected that. A man with his looks, a doctor at that, too?

“Really?” you ask. “I mean… that’s okay. I don’t mind. Just… tell me what you like.”

He shrugs softly. 

“I like you.” 

His answer is so sappy that it makes you grin. 

“Shut up. No, really, tell me what you like.”

Jack looks at you and pulls you closer again. 

“I’m serious,” he mumbles. “I just want you, however you want. Why? What kinda stuff do the kids like these days?”

Your face warms a little.

“I don’t know,” you mumble. A total lie.  “We can try some stuff, you know?”

“Like what?” he asks. “You want me to tie you up?”  He chuckles like the idea is absurd to him. 

“Would you want to tie me up?” you counter. 

Jack’s brows furrow again. 

“I don’t think that’s my thing,” he says quietly. 

You nod slowly.  “What about…”

Saying it out loud feels, for lack of a better word, cringe, so you take his hand and place it on the base of your throat. 

Jack doesn’t pull away immediately, but his fingers don’t wrap around your neck either. He looks up at you, his jaw set tightly.  Then he shakes his head and cups your face instead. 

“I don’t think so,” he says softly. “How about… we just take things slow and figure it out as we go?”

When you nod, Jack kisses you, and it tastes like relief.  He surprises you when he switches positions with you—you’d have thought he would want you to stay on top.  

Jack braces his weight on his forearms as he hovers above you, his face just inches away from you. Then he lowers his head, but his lips don’t meet yours—they trail down over your chest. His tongue swirls around your nipple, making you gasp as the sensation tingles through you. 

He cups your other breast, squeezing and kneading the flesh gently, then places a kiss on the valley between your breasts before he descends further.  To your ribs… then your navel… then your hipbone. 

Your breath stills completely when his fingers come to rest on your thighs. He doesn’t push them open yet.

“May I?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” you whisper. 

He parts your legs gently, his eyes still focused on you until he lowers his head and—

Your world tilts a little. 

When his tongue drags through your drenched slit, and Jack moans out loud, you arch towards him. He holds your hips in place, fingers digging into the flesh—not hard enough to bruise, but enough to make you feel him. 

“Fuck,” he gasps, “You taste so fucking good, baby.”

He flattens his tongue against your clit, licking upwards until you see stars.

“Jack-“ you moan, trying… you don’t know what you’re trying to say. Your fingers find purchase in his hair, tugging slightly at the grey curls.  He sucks your clit into his mouth, causing you to cry out in pleasure. 

He laps at your cunt like a starved dog, and you can’t believe that “it’s been a while” for him, not when he’s eating you out like that.

“I—oh God,” you sigh dreamily.

Your legs quiver, your hips twitch—your entire body is shaking with pleasure. 

“That’s it, baby,” Jack murmurs, his words muffled. “Fuck—please, just let me make you feel good.”

The sounds of your arousal mixing with his saliva are unholy—a wet overflow of moisture between your thighs. Jack seems to be right where he wants to be. He moans into your flesh, his hips bucking and pressing into the couch below like he is trying to alleviate the ache, the buildup of his own need. 

When you come apart, he guides you through it, not stopping until your brain is overflowing with oxytocin and your thighs won’t stop shaking. 

Both of you are panting when he comes up.  He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and smiles devilishly. 

“God… we’re so doing this again,” he declares softly. 

You’re at a loss for words. You haven’t come like that ever. All you can do is nod and reach for him. 

Jack plants his arms on either side of your head and kisses you deeply. You taste yourself on his tongue, the sweet, tangy flavor erupting in your mouth. 

His leaking cock presses against your tummy as his lips graze yours.

You reach between you and stroke him, making him groan into your mouth. 

“Jesus,” he mutters when he pulls away to look at you. “You—”

He thrusts into your hand instinctively, and you realize just how pent up he is. 

“Your turn,” you whisper. 

Jack tsks softly, half amused, half… something else.  He cups your face and kisses your jaw tenderly. 

“Believe me, that was my turn,” he says lowly. “But if you want to keep going, I’m sure as hell not saying no.”

--

The bliss afterwards is indescribable. But it’s also foreign.

You still sense every press of his hands on your body without feeling tender, every brush of his lips without a single mark on your skin, and every thrust of his hips without that residual feeling of having been used. 

Jack was nothing but gentle. 

And god, it was incredible. 

The sheets underneath you are crumpled and slightly damp with sweat and sex, but you don’t mind. Not when Jack’s arm is wrapped around you, your back pressing against his chest. He kisses the side of your neck where your pulse still flutters with excitement. 

“You were incredible,” he whispers.

It must be so obvious that his words fluster you because he smirks when you hide your face in the sheets. 

“Barely even did anything,” you mumble. 

Jack makes a sound you can’t quite discern. 

“Right,” he chuckles. “Except that thing where you got really tight when you were about to come again or—”

You whip around and press your hand over his mouth, your eyes wide and embarrassed.

“Jack,” you complain, half-serious, half-playful. 

He kisses your palm and smiles. 

“Hey, I’m just teasin’,” he retorts. “But I really meant it. It was really great for me.”

“Yeah, for me, too,” you mumble. 

You’re not used to any kind of pillow talk, so the words feel thick, like they don’t quite want to leave your mouth. 

Jack doesn’t seem to mind. He just pulls you closer against his chest and rests his chin on the top of your head. 

As the minutes pass, he tells you to go pee and promises more cuddles later on. 

In the bathroom, you look at yourself in the mirror. The haphazardly buttoned-up shirt you’re wearing belongs to Jack and falls to your mid-thigh. Your hair is a mess from how often he ran his hands through it. A few hickeys begin to gain color and paint your neck a soft purple.

You can’t help but smile. 

“Hey, sweetheart?” Jack calls out. “Your phone keeps vibrating. I think someone really wants to talk to you!”

“Yeah, just a sec,” you reply. 

When you return to his bedroom, Jack is sitting up, his brows drawn together slightly. Your phone is in his hand, the screen facing up. 

“Sorry,” he says as he passes it to you. “I didn’t mean to spy on you or anything, just wanted to bring it to you.”

You take your phone and glance at the messages—and feel your face heat up.

“Oh.” Your laugh comes out stiff as you quickly shut off your phone. “Sorry, um—they’re joking, of course. Like, uh…”

Jack looks at you quietly, watching as you fumble nervously with the edge of your phone case. There was a light flush to his cheeks now, too. 

“No, no, don’t worry, I shouldn’t have read it anyway, I just looked at it ‘cause it kept… vibrating,” he explains. 

The awkward silence that follows feels detrimental. 

You wonder if you should explain more, or if maybe stammering another apology would make it worse, but then Jack breaks the quiet first. 

“Not to sound my age, but… I assume cracking means… uh… hooking up?”

You press your lips together uncomfortably.

“Yeah,” you mumble. “Like, um… yes.”

He nods once. Then he tilts his head to catch your eyes. 

“It’s not the… nicest word, is it?” he asks. 

“It’s just, like, a TikTok thing,” you answer. 

“Hm,” is all he replies. 

Then he takes your hand and guides you back onto the mattress. You meet his gaze hesitantly. The lines around his eyes are a little deeper, just like the furrow between his brows. He doesn’t seem angry, just serious.

“I… I kind of would prefer it if you didn’t think of what we just did as… “cracking”. It’s not the word I would use,” he says slowly.

“It’s just a word,” you mutter. 

“Not to me,” he argues softly. “It’s… words have meanings. And cracking sounds like… like I’m doing something to you, not with you. I don’t mean to be… all old man and, like, police your language. But… I don’t want you to think of sex with me that way. Or… with anyone else for that matter, even though, ideally, I would like this to be a long-term thing.”

His hazel eyes don’t leave your face for even a single moment, and it’s almost overwhelming—if it weren’t for the sincerity in them. 

“I’m sorry—" you begin, but Jack shushes you.

“No, sweetheart, I don’t- I don’t want you to apologize. I just want you to be comfortable with me. I wanna make sure you… you feel respected by me,” he explains. 

“I do,” you reply quickly. “Really. Like, no one else has ever… been this kind to me.”

Jack’s face falls. 

“Oh, no, I mean, like… you’re a gentleman,” you elaborate.

He shakes his head softly. 

“No, baby, I’m… this is… this is the bare minimum. Christ.”

Jack’s hands find yours, and he leans in to kiss your forehead. Then he wraps his arms around you. 

“At the risk of sounding like your father, I think you kids need to put down your phones and go out in the real world.”

❤︎ just a quick reminder that the best way to support authors on here is to comment and reblog ❤︎ ☆ find my masterlist here ☆

[dearbaes]

cw ; oral, abby is practically making out with your cunt, vibrator used, big clit!abby, overstimulation, multiple orgasms

synopsis ; abby gets off from pleasuring you.

The buzzing of the toy fills the room as Abby holds the vibrator to her own engorged clit—nerves stimulated by the toy’s relentless buzzing. She moves the vibrator up and down on her clit with a shaky hand as her mouth focuses on you.

She’s been eating you out for hours now. You’re exhausted in the best way, your cunt is soaked with her spit and your arousal. You’re twitching, moaning, drooling.

“Abby, I don’t know if I can take anymore,” you say in a meek, small voice.

Abby smirks into your pussy, “you’re gonna take more,” even as she says that, the pleasure makes her own voice crack, but she’s determined.

You grip the sheets when you feel her tongue dipping inside again, tongue-fucking you. Her nose nudges your clit teasingly as her tongue works. She’s good at this, almost way too good. Your legs are faced with a challenge; try not to close around Abby’s head and restrict her oxygen.

You know she’ll like that, but you don’t want her dying face first in your pussy.

She licks up a bold stripe of your vulva. You gasp, your hips pushing off the bed. She pins you back down and kisses your cunt sloppily before driving her tongue back inside your weeping slit.

“Abby, I really don’t think I can take more,” you protest weakly.

Abby looks up, the lower half of her mouth soaked in your juices, “then, don’t think.”

You pout at that and she goes back to kissing your pussy sloppy-style. She’s obsessed with the way you taste. Her fingers hold you open, her other hand focusing on holding the vibrator on her pussy.

You feel her tongue teasing your g-spot again for what feels like the hundredth time. “I’m gonna cum again,” you mewl, holding her there, your fingers tightening in her hair.

Abby doesn’t let the sting of her scalp deter her. She keeps going and—you cum with a loud moan of her name and at the same time—Abby’s pussy walls flutter as a blissful orgasm crashes over her. Her eyes roll back, she pushes her tongue deeper and lets it stay there as she comes down from her high.

“Mm…”

“Are you okay?” You ask softly.

She nods, “want more…”

[letterstotheflre]

right... so your tags on this ... i've been saying this!!!!!! idk how into it you wanna get but like ??? he's such a freak and loves feet!! and he loves them in so many ways like in his mouth when he's fucking you with your ankles on his shoulders, or when your pretty manicured toes rub up against his cock until he's leaking :((( wow what a man

oh sof i wanna get INTO it... and yes yes yes he loves it when you rub your toes over his bulge.. that's how this whole thing starts-- you laying on the couch with your feet on his lap, watching a movie or something and you just.. wiggle your feet a little. just trying to get comfortable. you truly don't mean anything with it. but then you do it again. and again. and then you stretch and press your toes down.

frank grabs your feet a little meanly, fingers wrapping around them tight. "stop it."

"stop what?"you wonder, genuinely curious. you wiggle your feet again, trying to escape frank's grip.

"y'know what," he snarks, squeezing your feet once.

your brows furrow. "m'just stretching." one foot slips from his hold and you stretch it again, toes pointed down. "why are you so--?"

frank let's out a low groan. you look at him properly, noticing the clench in his jaw and the tightness in his throat as he swallows. your eyes sweep down, to the foot he's still holding tight. slowly, you press down again, feeling his bulge harden and twitch beneath his sweats.

you add a little more pressure. frank squeezes your foot, jaw ticking.

"are you seriously hard?" you giggle.

"stop it," he grunts, facing the tv again.

you slide your foot along his cock, pressing down slightly near the tip. frank's eyes fall shut, a quiet "fuck" spilling from his lips before he can manage to bite it down.

you laugh again. "you so are!" your foot keeps moving up and down his bulge. "you're such a freak, of course you have a thing for feet."

"i don't have a thing for fucking feet."

"hey, i'm not the one who's hard right now." your foot leaves his cock and you hold it in the air teasingly, wiggling your toes close to his mouth. "wanna give it a kiss too?"

frank slaps it away, scoffing. he grabs you by the knees and drags you towards him, your shirt riding up. he forces one of your thighs towards your chest and lets your free foot dangle.

he bites down on the arch. you squeal in surprise. "maybe i'll suck your toes a little when i fuck you tonight." he smiles smugly, "don't think i can't see that little wet spot in your underwear right now."

now it's his turn to laugh when you slap his shoulder.

[barnesdreamcatcher]

To Need Somebody

jack abbot x f!reader

summary: Every year, around the anniversary of his wife’s death, Jack starts slipping away from you piece by piece—and this time, the loneliness festering between you finally reaches a breaking point.

cw: angst, smut (mdni, 18+), arguments, misplaced jealousy, insecurities, discussions of death, jack's not doing great, a happy ending

smut warnings: the opening scene involves consensual sex with some internal conflict and hesitation from the reader. there’s no explicit refusal, but there are moments of discomfort and emotional tension, so please read with that in mind.

wc: 5k 

a/n: I’m lying, this fic is 4.9k words. not beta read bc i don't want to

now playing: Renegade – Big Red Machine, Taylor Swift

You have loved Jack long enough to recognize the signs. The fleeting eye contact, the missed dinner reservations, the drifting—he turns into a ghost around this date, like he can’t wait to join the woman he truly yearns for in the afterlife. 

Part of you is aware that he doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings, and that you are hardly being fair in your bitterness, but the jealousy comes and won’t go when you watch him sink into his melancholia. 

You hold your breath and hope that the phase passes, as it always does, and that while it does, your soul stays intact. Despite the vicious covetousness that floods through your every vein, you want him to feel your support—you can’t begin to imagine what it feels like to have lost the love of your life. You only know what it feels like not to be the love of his life.

It’s the early morning, and for once, Jack isn’t coming from his night shift to immediately get himself shot with SWAT. You hear the front door close, then the soft thump of his shoes being placed in the cupboard. Only half asleep, you can picture his after-work routine: a full glass of water downed in one sip, a quick shower, and then a fresh pair of pajamas. Except for the change of clothes and the removal of his prosthetic, none of those things happen before he slips into bed. 

His hands are cold when they find your waist, pulling you close to his chest. You wait for the kiss on your cheek that he usually bestows upon you to greet you, but it never comes. 

“Hi,” you mumble, sleep sticking to your voice. 

He hums a half-answer, not a single word actually discernible. 

You’d blame it on a bad shift if the upcoming Friday wasn’t that date. 

Jack moves a little, and his hands wander up from your side to cross in front of your chest. It’s harder to breathe like this, but you missed him so much you won’t complain. 

Your nipples harden when his fingers brush over your breasts, and heat collects in your lower tummy, along with the slightest bit of discomfort. You would never say it out loud, but you’re terrified he’s imagining her right now. 

He palms you through your camisole, his cool hands gentle but demanding. 

It was one of the first things you noticed about him—how cold his hands always were. He had laughed when you told him and said he was a doctor, that that was just part of the job. And it stayed true to this day; whether he was holding your hand, passing you something, or burying his fingers deep inside you, his skin was always icy enough to make you shiver a little. 

You want to speak up, say something to him, ask him about his day, but the only thing that makes it out of your mouth is a soft moan when he cups your breast and kneads it. 

“Such a pretty sound, baby,” he whispers. His lips brush the outer shell of your ear, chasing goosebumps up and down your arms. His breath ghosts over your face, and your lashes flutter, fighting to stay open as Jack spins his webs of sweet comfort around you. 

He spends so much time working you open and pliant for him—tugging and twisting your nipples until you are writhing right in his arms, desperation turning you into a whining mess. Only then does he move his fingers lower. They drift between the valley of your breasts, then over your belly button, until he meets the edge of your panties. 

“Jack,” you gasp, his name more prayer than anything else. 

He shushes you sweetly, then slips underneath your waistband. You’re warm and wet and gooey, like honey on the stove. His fingers drag through your folds, collecting your arousal that already drenches your underwear. 

“Fuck,” he whispers, “So goddamn wet for me. Missed me that much, hm?”

He has no idea. How much you still miss him even now, while his pointer and middle finger circle your clit, the pressure just gentle enough to keep you eager.

“Jack—yeah, I-I did,” you manage to answer.

With his free hand, he finds your mouth. His thumb swipes across your bottom lip before he tugs it down a little. Your tongue darts out almost instinctively, and he uses that opportunity to press the pad of his finger against the wet muscle. When your lips close around his digit, he moans out loud. 

The pressure in your mouth almost makes you gag, but with his fingers teasing your entrance, all you can think about is how badly you want him. You keep letting your tongue swirl around his finger, sucking him deeper into the hollow of your throat, while his middle and ring finger slip inside of you. 

At first, the fullness is what you’ve been waiting for. Your warm walls stretch for him, accommodating the size of his digits that work their way in and out of you. But when he thrusts his fingers deeper into you, there’s a new coldness introduced, one you wish wouldn’t belong to him.  As he curls his fingers to meet your G-spot, you feel the hard metal of his wedding ring bite against your skin. It’s a sensation you’ve gotten used to, but today, it feels different—just another reminder that there was someone before you, someone Jack would give anything to have again. 

Your jaw grows slack with his thumb still inside your mouth, and part of you wants to tap out, but the heat at the base of your spine grows tighter. The knot unravels as his fingers piston in and out of you, and you cum on his hand with a muffled cry. 

Jack works you through your release until you are shaking from overstimulation and pushing his hands away. 

“That was a good one, huh?” he mutters, and pulls his respective hand from your mouth and cunt.  You are still catching your breath as you nod, tears that won’t spill collecting on your waterline. 

“Yeah,” you whisper. 

Jack hugs you from behind, wrapping his big arms around your middle. You stare at the wall in front of you, waiting for that inherent feeling of sadness to pass. 

“How was work?” you ask.

“Fine,” he answers, then presses a kiss to the back of your neck. “Less busy than usual.”

He clears his throat and tightens his arms around you.  “I’m really tired,” he declares softly.

You swallow hard, the spit in your mouth bitter. 

“You should get some sleep then, my love,” you whisper, “I gotta get up soon anyway.”

--

You’ve learned to only ever cry in the shower when Jack gets like this. It wouldn’t be fair to him to unload your burdens and insecurities on him while he is grieving the life he could have lived. 

As the warm water cascades down your back, and the suds of soap collect at your feet, you let the tears flow until you no longer feel like you are going to choke on them.  The lump in the back of your throat doesn’t exactly go away, but it eases. You breathe a little better, and the tightness in your chest feels more like a memory than an active threat. 

Wrapped in a towel, you stand in front of the mirror and look at yourself. You might look worse than him—dark circles under your eyes, your lips dry and flaky. You pull on the dead skin with your teeth until you bleed, then put on moisturizer and get dressed. 

Jack is asleep, or pretends to be, when you walk into the bedroom. His eyes are shut, his chest rises and falls softly. Your wet hair drips down the back of your neck and drenches your fresh blouse. 

For a moment, you watch your boyfriend. He always looks younger in his sleep, but it is so obvious that this time of the year is tough on him. It’s not that you expect him to just be okay; you’re not that selfish. You simply wish that he would talk to you instead of acting like things were fine. But then again, one might say you are doing the same thing. 

So you keep getting ready for the day and make yourself lunch while this large cloud of things left unsaid hangs over you. 

Work passes by in a blur and drags on simultaneously. It’s a little after 5 pm when you come home, and Jack is up by then. You put your shoes in the cupboard and walk into the kitchen. 

“Hi,” you greet him. 

Jack turns to face you, a tender smile on his lips. He crosses the room slowly, then kisses you briefly.

“Hey,” he answers when he pulls away.  He smells freshly showered, and the tips of his hair are still a little wet. 

As you lean against the counter, he fills up a glass of water and passes it to you. 

“Drink up,” he says. 

The gesture is sweet, but your skin crawls during the entire interaction. Everything feels so utterly performative and unreal that you almost wish he would leave for work early. The word ‘disassociation’ bounces around in your mind, just jumping out of reach every time you try to get a hold of it. 

When you look at Jack, his face doesn’t mirror yours at all. He seems unaware of your emotional turmoil, as if he doesn’t take issue with the situation at all. His face might as well be blank.

Every day, you miss his smug smile, his cheeky remarks, and the way he loves to tease you. All those habits die down every time the date gets closer, and then it takes a few days afterwards until he builds up the courage to slip back into that persona.

Sometimes, you feel like you are being gaslit. Like you’re imagining all these issues, because he just won’t say or show that there is something wrong. 

So you pour a little oil into the fire. 

“Any plans for the weekend?” you ask. “I saw that you’re not working.”

His work schedule hangs on the fridge, this weekend being the only one blank for the entire month.  You watch as Jack freezes in his step, just for a moment, before he fills his mug with tea. 

“Nope, not really,” he answers then. Lie.

“Yeah?” you go on, knowing that you’re treading the line, and leaning dangerously to one side. 

“Yes,” he says, a little sharper than before. His fingers tap against the counter once, twice, before he looks out the window.  “Actually,” he continues, “Maybe I’ll visit the garage with Robby. Check out some bikes with him.” Lie. 

“Oh,” you reply dumbly. 

You watch as the tension builds in his shoulders, and you think you might have him now, but when he turns to face you, Jack is smiling. 

“Yeah, don’t worry, sweetheart, I won’t start riding, too,” he vows quietly.  He holds your chin between his thumb and pointer finger, then kisses you again. There is not an ounce of feeling to it. 

You smile weakly, and he accepts that. 

The hour between your arrival from work and his parting for his shift, you spend in shared discomfort. You start cooking dinner and pack some of it for his ‘break’ that he won’t get, while he hovers in the kitchen like he is scared to leave you alone for too long, but not willing to talk to you either. 

You’re incredibly thankful for the invention of music because you would have fled the house if Jack hadn’t turned on some jazzy playlist to cover the fact that neither one of you had anything to say to the other. 

The second the clock strikes half past six, you pass Jack a Tupperware with his food, then kiss him goodbye.  “Have a good shift,” you mumble when you pull away.  His smile doesn’t reach his eyes as he answers, “Will try.”

The front door falls shut, and dinner tastes like ash. 

--

On Thursday morning, things come to a boil. 

Jack comes home from his shift, the look of death written all over his face. He barely even greets you before he walks straight to the bathroom and locks himself in there for thirty minutes.  You call in sick to work when you hear the water running but never catch him stepping into the bathtub.  Pure fear settles in your stomach, so you pace up and down in front of the bathroom. You know you should tell him you’re there for him and that he can talk to you, but you are too scared to spook him. Your nervous wandering turns into a slow trot before you slide down the bathroom door and sit there in silence. 

It’s almost 10 am when you dare to call out his name.  “Jack?”

You hear a gasp and a soft thump, then his voice follows. “Sweetheart? What- what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work?”

The thick wood of the door makes him sound muffled, but you don’t miss his tone. Jack usually compartmentalizes well, even after a terrible shift, but right now, he sounds like rock bottom is close, and he is holding a shovel. 

“I took the day off,” you reply. 

He stays quiet for a moment. You picture him in the room, sitting on the edge of the bathtub or leaning over the sink with horror etched into his face, memories he’ll never shake replaying in his mind. 

“Wish I had done that,” he murmurs then. The words are so quiet that you barely catch them, but you do. 

You chew on your lip, trying to think of something to say, anything that might soothe his aching soul, but you can’t come up with anything. So you try the next best thing.

“Can you let me in?”

Your choice of words almost makes you laugh—after all, that is all you’ve wanted for the last few days. 

The other side of the door stays quiet for a long while, and you almost give up hope. Until the lock clicks. You scramble to your feet just in time to meet Jack’s eyes. It breaks your heart to see him like this. Faint tear tracks glisten on his cheeks, wiped away hastily until his skin had reddened.

“My love…,” you mumble, and he looks away instantly. 

“Just a bad shift,” he mutters, his eyes trained on the floor. 

You shake your head and take his hand.  “It’s not just that, is it?” 

You know the answer; you knew it before you even asked the question. Jack’s eyes find yours for a second, and your heart drops as you see his expression: there’s anger in his gaze. Just for a moment. Just a millisecond. It fades into sadness, the one you’d do anything to carry for him. But it was there long enough for you to see it. To read it. To file it away and have it gnawing at your already dwindling confidence until the end of your days. 

But now is not the time for your worries and hurt feelings. 

You pull yourself together and lead Jack out of the bathroom. After situating him on the bed, you bring him a fresh pair of sweatpants and a simple black shirt. You watch him change, watch how his skin is exposed and then covered again by cloth. The faint scars, from training and his time overseas, the ones you know by heart, are a little more noticeable today. 

“Let’s get you into bed,” you whisper to Jack as you push back the blanket. He follows your request on autopilot, slipping underneath the covers. Seeing the blank stare, you almost wish he’d go back to being angry at you. 

“Do you want to eat something, my love?” you ask. 

He shakes his head. 

“Can I keep you company?” you continue. 

You hold your breath as you wait for his answer, and he takes his time. The vacant look in his eyes threatens to trigger tears in your own. His lips part once, twice, before he turns his head and looks away.

“I’d like that,” he mutters then. 

His skin is cold beneath your fingers when you find your place next to him on the bed. Your palm comes to rest on his chest, feeling the sturdy beat below. 

You take a deep breath and try to think of the best thing to say. 

“I know tomorrow will be hard for you,” you begin.  Jack’s entire body tenses up, and his head whips to you, the first sign of life flashing across his face. 

“Don’t,” he pleads. “Don’t talk about it.”

Your lips part, uncertainty making it impossible to think properly. His eyebrows draw together as you struggle for the right answer, and you can almost hear his thoughts. 

“Alright,” you whisper against your better judgment. “Just… just get some rest, honey.”

--

Friday morning, you wake up to an empty bed—not the way you’re used to. In the entirety of your relationship, you can practically count the days you woke up in Jack’s arms on both hands, but today, it’s a new loneliness that greets you as the sunlight filters in through the curtains. 

His side on the mattress isn’t even warm anymore, and you wonder just how much time he had even spent asleep. 

As you climb out of bed, you let your eyes drag through the room and find your favorite photo of all time. Your face is half hidden in it, mushed into Jack’s neck, your nose tickled by his slightly unkempt beard, but it is the happiest you’ve ever looked. You still remember the day as clear as if it had been yesterday. 

It had been taken on your six-month anniversary, just you, Jack, and a small boat he barely knew how to commandeer.  As the salty sea water had sprayed your face with its cold droplets, you grinned at Jack, all smiles and teeth and pure unfiltered happiness. 

He had wrapped his arms around you and whispered, “I love it when it’s just us.” With his chest pressed against your back, you had stared out onto the sea, his warm lips pressing against your cheek.  “Me, too,” you had mumbled fondly. 

Now, you wonder how much of that was still true today.  Back then, you had known that he was a widower but hadn’t known the date of his wife’s passing yet.  

You know it’s wrong to be so jealous of a dead woman—and Jack would probably hate you if you knew just how much you despised her on some days.  But as your fingers drift over the cold, empty space in bed next to you, you allow yourself to wallow in your melancholy a little longer. 

Selfishly, you think you wouldn’t want Jack to move on if you were to die. Of course, no part of you wished to see him sink into depression and utter loneliness as he’d mourn you, but your heart constricts at the idea of him finding love after your passing. You wonder if his wife had thought the same thing, or if she had been a much better person than you and hoped for his happiness—or if the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind at all. 

The sound of the front door closing rips you out of your head. You run to the window overlooking your front yard just in time to catch Jack slamming his car door shut and driving off. 

“Fuck,” you whisper to yourself. 

You think of the past years, of all the anniversaries of her death during which you watched from the sidelines, breath bated. 

On the first, you didn’t even know what was happening. Jack had hidden from you all day, keeping his head buried as he worked a double shift. When he came home, all 24 hours of her death day having already passed, he confessed to you what the date meant to him. 

A year later, you thought you were prepared—you were wrong. You bought flowers and made soup and lasagna, the most comforting food you could think of. When Jack came home that morning (—this time around, you had convinced him not to work all day—), he ate a spoonful before he excused himself and cried in the bathroom. His sobs still echo through your head every now and then when the darkest, deepest part of your insecurities comes to life. 

Eleven months after that, you made the biggest mistake to date. You tried to get Jack out of the city for that week. A booked hotel room, couple’s massages, and room service all went down the drain when you tried to surprise Jack with it. He hadn’t screamed at you—it might’ve hurt less if he had. Instead, he had only muttered that he couldn’t believe you’d think he’d want to do something like that on a day like this.

Which is why you didn’t come up with any plans this year. 

But not doing anything at all feels worse than giving yourself to him as an outlet for his pain. 

The day passes like chewing gum stretches. It expands and grows and keeps giving until you think it might snap, but it doesn’t. Solitude clings to you, burying itself in your bones—it practically settles in your lungs to the point where you’re not sure anymore whether you’re still breathing.

You wander around, fulfilling chores and taking care of things that need to be done, but you don’t remember any of it by the time the clock strikes seven pm. 

Jack isn’t home. 

You are. 

He is chasing a ghost you’ll never be able to replace. 

As you get into your car and drive, it’s an obvious guess where he is. 

--

Wind chases goosebumps down your spine when you open the squeaky gate. Its metal looks old, the rust on its surface rough against your palm. The lush greenery all around surprises you—it’s too early in the year for the shrubs to have that color, but you understand the intention. No one wants to grieve their loved ones in a field of grey. 

The graveyard looks well-kept, some of the graves more than others. Shame fills your chest as you catch yourself wondering how much money Jack might spend on the upkeep of his wife’s one per month.  It could be more than your rent, and she’d deserve every penny. 

He is easy to spot. The silver hairs stand out, illuminated by the gentle evening sun just beginning to settle in for the night. He stands awkwardly, most of his weight shifted onto his left leg, and you feel your heart clench. It’s obvious that he is in pain. You don’t know for sure whether he has been here all day, but you assume so as you walk up to him. 

The bouquet you’re holding trembles in your hands. You take a deep breath before you come to a stop just a few meters shy of him. You try to think of something to say, something clever or loving or maybe even funny. 

“Hi,” is all you can manage. 

Jack flinches—and you wish you hadn’t come. You almost wish he had never even met you. 

Seconds that feel like hours pass where neither one of you speaks or moves. One of the petals of the chrysanthemum in your bouquet falls to the ground. 

Jack’s mouth opens and closes twice, but not a single sound comes out. 

“I…”  You stand there in front of him, feeling like a little kid caught up past their bedtime.  “I hope it’s okay that I came,” you mumble then. 

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he glances at the flowers in your hands and clenches his jaw. 

“I’ll come home soon,” he murmurs. His voice is rough from disuse, thick with tears unshed, or maybe they have been shed already, and he has run out. 

Your heart sinks. 

“You don’t have to,” you reply. “You- you can stay here. I can stay here with you.”

“No.”  His answer is final. It’s not cold or disapproving, just desperate—but so are you. 

“Jack, please,” you beg. “Let me stay. Just… let me help you.”

He flinches as if you shot him. One hand raised uncomfortably, like he’s trying to keep you at bay, he stands there as still as a deer in headlights. You’re the car going ninety. 

“My love, please,” you repeat, taking a step towards him. “I… Just talk to me. Tell me- tell me how you feel, or about her—”

“No,” he interrupts. “Jesus Christ, do you really think—”  He stops himself and shakes his head.  Your worst fears unhinge their jaws as they get ready to feast on you.

“Do I really think what?” you prompt bitterly. “Do I really think that I… that I deserve to know her? That I’m the one who could maybe help you a bit through this grief? I don’t know, Jack, you obviously don’t.”

His mouth falls open. 

“What?” he croaks. 

You shrug helplessly.  “You don’t want me here,” you reply.

“No, I don’t,” he replies. “But not… not because I think you don’t deserve to know her, but because… because you don’t deserve this weight on your shoulders. My grief—my fucking… never-ending grief…”

As his words drizzle out into uncertainty, you’re left to stare at him. 

“I… I just don’t want you to see me like this and think… think that I…”  He shakes his head. 

“That you want her instead of me,” you finish for him. 

“That’s not the case,” he says sharply. 

“Isn’t it?” you counter. 

“No,” he hisses. “She’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do to bring her back. You’re here.”

“Yeah, but if you could—”

“But I can’t!”  His shoulders tremble as he fights to keep his voice down.  “She’ll never come back. Never.”

“But you’ll never stop loving her,” you whisper.

“How can I?” he snaps. “I… I vowed to love her until death do us part, and now—now she is dead, and we’re apart, but I’m still here. And I fell for you.”

He takes a deep breath. “Every day, I’m fucking terrified that I make you feel like… like you have to compete for my love with someone who is not here anymore, and obviously, I’ve fucking done that. And you look at me like… like I’m wounded. You treat me like I’m someone to take care of, so I behave like it.”

“But you don’t let me take care of you,” you reply. “You don’t let me in. You don’t let me help.”

“Because if I do, I’ll have to start talking about her to you. I’ll have to tell you how much I love her and that—I can’t fucking do that to you!” he answers.

“But I’m asking you to do that,” you spit out. “I’d rather hear how much love her than live with her fucking ghost looming over us unmentioned. Like that, I don’t even get to feel second best next to her.”

The world grows quiet at your admission. The wind that was blowing before dies down, much like your bravery. You want to take it back. You wish you could rewind time. 

“Fuck, Jack,” you whisper. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes are glassy as he looks at you. 

“You’re not second best,” he mutters. “You matter as deeply to me as she does. I just don’t know how to show you that.”

“Maybe start letting me in,” you whisper. “Treat me like I’m worth your time. Don’t lie to me about how terrible you feel. Help me help you.” You awkwardly shake the flowers in your hands.  “Let me be part of your grief.”

His eyes follow your hands, and he swallows hard. 

“Did you buy them for her?” he asks quietly. 

“Yeah,” you mumble.  As you walk towards him, it feels like crossing a bridge into unknown territory. Maybe you’re overstepping. Maybe you’re being cruel. Maybe you should be more understanding. 

“They’re… I don’t know what kind of flowers she liked, or… if she liked them at all, but they’re chrysanthemums and Peruvian lilies,” you explain. 

“She would’ve liked them,” he answers quickly. “She liked all flowers.”

He reaches out but stops himself.  “Do you… do you want to…”  He motions to the grave and steps aside. Your path is clear. 

Her grave stone is made from smooth limestone, her name engraved in simple, strong letters.  Beloved wife.

You crouch down and lean the flowers against the stone, then stay there for a second. As you glance over your shoulder, you see Jack looking at you. At both of you. 

“I didn’t get her any,” he mumbles. 

You straighten up and return to his side. 

“Why not?” you ask. 

He stays quiet for a moment before he turns to look at you. “It felt disrespectful to you.”

For a second, it’s like he has stolen all the air from you. The pit in your stomach deepens. And then it eases. 

“Jack,” you whisper, “I don’t care if you get her a million flowers—I’ll deliver them here myself. I just want to know that you look at me and see me. Not her, or her… her successor.”

“I do,” he vows, “I do see you.”

in floriography (the language of flowers), chrysanthemums and peruvian lilies stand for honor, respect, and loyalty

❤︎ just a quick reminder that the best way to support authors on here is to comment and reblog ❤︎ ☆ find my masterlist here ☆

[mcybank]

The Space We Stop (2)

part one part two

pairings — jack abbott x fem!reader

summary — Jack has already decided what he can survive losing. You didn’t realize you weren’t on the list until you weren’t. 

content warnings — 8k words. hurt/no comfort, breakups, talk of pregnancies & the decision to have children, partner who doesn’t want children, age gap (reader’s 30, jack’s 50s), power imbalances; reader’s a nurse, jack’s her attending, workplace settings; working with ex, anticipatory grief, mourning a future, references to patient death, five-year-old patient (no serious injuries), pediatric medical case (forehead laceration, suturing, child is okay), blood in medical context, obliquely referenced that jack’s a widower, this is just sad tbh, mentions of eating habits (reader mentions not being able to eat and eating habits)

author’s note — i kind of realllllyy don’t know how i feel about this so i’m sorry if it’s bad 🫤🫤 thank you for so much love though

It was childish, you knew that, to have yourself temporarily placed only on day shifts. The correct protocol would have demanded you go through your attendings, but given that one out of the two attendings was the man you didn’t believe you could’ve stood in the same room as without completely breaking while the other half was his best friend, you took it straight to Dana. 

You’d written it on the back of a discharge instruction sheet because a Post-It felt too informal. You’d written ‘days?’ and crossed it out. You’d written ‘can I be moved to’ and crossed that out too. You’d settled, finally, on ‘days only, for now?’

That was acceptable, for the time being, considering you’d framed it as temporary. If it did end up having to be permanent, for you were sure night shifts would have to be pried away from Jack’s cold, dead hands, then you’d deal with it then.

Dana had not asked. She’d taken the slip of paper you’d written it on—you hadn't been able to say it out loud, you'd written it down at the workstation and handed it to her, like a child passing a note in class—and she had read it and folded it in half and put it into her breastpocket. She clicked her pen twice then set it down then picked it back up. 

“Okay, honey. I’ll see what I can do,” she’d said, and turned back to the assignment board.

You had loved her in that moment with a small, almost dumb, religious gratitude. You had loved her for not asking, You had loved her for the way she had not, in the eleven days since, looked at you any differently than she had looked at you in the years she had been your charge nurse. Except for one morning the previous week where she had passed you in the hall and put her hand on your forearm, briefly, in passing, and squeezed once, and kept walking. You had cried for thirty seconds in the supply closet about it. It was the only crying you had done that week.

You checked the schedule every morning. You did it on your phone, from the wrong bed, in the wrong apartment, the second after the alarm went off and before you’d even sat up. You checked it again on the subway. You checked it again at the workstation by the supply closet when you got in, the monitor you'd come to think of as yours because the rolling chair in front of it had a busted wheel that everybody else avoided. You knew it was pathological, yet you continued to do it. 

The next chart you did was a woman in her seventies with back pain. The next chart was a teenager with a probably-broken thumb. The next chart was a man in his forties who had cut his hand on a can of black beans and was apologetic about being there. You worked. Your hands worked. Your hands had been very good, the last eleven days, at working. You had begun to suspect that your hands had decided to take this one for the team.

At 11:14 a peds laceration came in. You heard it before you saw it. The The father saying that it was okay, over and over, the way fathers said it in waiting rooms, less to the kid than to themselves.

Dana looked at you from across the central desk and you looked at her. You did not know, in that moment, what she was asking. You found out about three seconds later, when she did not, after looking at you, hand the chart to anybody else.

She handed it to you.

You did not check the schedule again, which was the first thing your hand wanted to do. You opened the chart. Female, five, forehead lac from a playground fall. Vitals stable. Father in the room. Mother on her way from work. Tetanus current. No known allergies. Five-year-old's name was Lily.

You walked to the room.

The dad stood up when you came in, which you wished he wouldn’t, because people standing up when nurses or doctors came in always made you want to apologize. You told him it’s okay if he sat, so he did. He had the kind of fleece on that meant he had left the house in a hurry—half-zipped, the inner liner showing—and his phone was face-up on his thigh and the screen was lit and he was not looking at it. The father was almost always in fleece; you couldn’t pinpoint what it was about emergencies that made men reach for fleece, but in the four years, you’d seen it hold.

Lily herself was on the bed with a gauze pad to her forehead by her own small hand, and her tears were slowing down a little, all cried out. Her cheeks were the high red of a child who had been outside in the cold. She was wearing a pink hoodie with a unicorn on the front and the unicorn had a small smear of blood on its horn, and the detail of the smear on the horn was going to live in your chest for a long time. Your first thought, before you could stop it, was that’d need cold water to clean it. Your mother had said to you so many times that it had become, somewhere in your twenties, the only thing you knew how to think when you saw blood on cotton. 

The second thing you noticed was that Lily had a barrette in her hair shaped like a strawberry, hanging on by one clip, and that somebody had put that barrette in this morning, and the somebody was probably the woman currently crying in the hallway, and you were going to have to not think about that for the next forty minutes.

“Hi, Lily,” you said. “I’m your nurse,” and you said your name. You said it the way you said it to children, with your voice pitched a little higher than it sat. It had taken you a year to get it right. You were quietly, stupidly proud of it. It was the kind of thing you'd never told Jack about, because it was the kind of thing that sounded like nothing when you said it out loud, and you understood now that this was probably the category of thing your whole inner life lived in.

Lily’s tears continued to roll down her cheeks but she looked at you, which was a start.

“I’m going to do a couple of things really fast,” you said, “and the doctor’s going to come look at your cut, okay?” 

She nodded. The gauze on her forehead moved when she nodded, and the dad reached forward to hold it for her, but Lily re-pressed the gauze with the exact wrong amount of pressure and your own hand twitched to fix it and you did not fix it, because the holding of one's own gauze was a thing a five-year-old could do for herself and was, in fact, the first task she had been given in the long career of being a patient, and you wanted her to have it.

You took her vitals. You did them the way you did them. Temperature, BP—pediatric cuff, the small one with the cartoon giraffes—pulse ox, the clip on her index finger that she watched with something like interest because the red light fascinated her. Her vitals were good. Her vitals were the vitals of a five-year-old who had fallen off something and was scared but was not, medically, in any trouble. You wrote them down. 

You asked the dad the questions. Tetanus current — yes, he checked his phone for the date of her last well visit and read it off. Allergies — none. What she had been doing: monkey bars. Where she had fallen from: the third bar, he said, and looked stricken, and you said, "That's not high," in the voice that meant please put your face back together, and he did, sort of.

How long ago: twenty minutes maybe. Whether she had hit anything else on the way down: he didn't think so. Whether she had been unconscious: no, she had cried immediately, which he said with the specific relief of a father who had read the same internet article every father had read about head injuries. You wrote it all down. Lily watched you write.

“Okay, kiddo. The doctor’s going to be here any second to come look at it. They’ll probably want to fix it up so it heals nice. Can you keep holding that for me?”

She nodded, and her tears had slowed. 

Dana was at the central desk when you stepped out. “I’ll page,” she said, without looking up as though she could sense your presence.

“Page who?”

“Whoever can cover peds lac in the next five minutes.”

“Okay.”

“Go restock the suture cart.”

You went to restock the suture cart. The suture cart lived in the equipment alcove off the main hallway. You stood in front of it and you opened the drawers and you did the inventory. You counted nylon. You counted prolene. You counted the gauge of the needles. The act of counting was good. The act of counting was the kind of thing your hands could do without your brain. You let your hands count. Your brain did the thing it had been doing intermittently all morning, which was nothing, which was a kind of low gray hum.

You did not check the schedule. You wanted to. You did not. You had decided, sometime around the fourth drawer, that checking the schedule again would be the act of a person who was not okay, and you were going to be okay, you were going to be okay through this shift, you were going to be okay until you got home, you were going to be okay until you could close a door behind yourself and not be okay in private. The not-checking was an act of discipline. The not-checking was the only thing you had control over.

You restocked. You closed the drawers. You walked back to Lily's room with the cart.

You knocked once and pushed the door open with your hip.

He was in the room.

Jack had taken a chair with his weight foot forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loose between them, looking up at Lily on the bed. He had positioned himself so his eyes were a little below the level of hers, a thing he’d clearly done on purpose, because the chair was lower than the bed and he’d wheeled it closer. He made himself, in the structure of the room, small. 

You had not realized, in the moment, that you thought the word ‘father’ until you heard it land somewhere behind your sternum. 

He turned his head when the door moved and saw you. His face went neutral, a deliberate-neutral that he had to will it to be.

“Hey,” he greeted softly, the way an attending greeted a nurse who walked in with a cart in tow. He said it in the voice he used at work, the voice that had nothing to do with you, the voice that was for any nurse who had walked through that door in the last fifteen years. The voice was a mercy. The voice was also a small specific cruelty, the way mercies sometimes were.

“Doctor Abbott,” you said.

You realized, cruelly, that you’d never used his last name since the fifth date. You said it now, flat and professional, the way you’d practiced it in case you ever were in this situation. You were proud of yourself for one second, then you immediately regretted it because Lily was looking at both of you with an alertness only a child can have and make it obvious. 

Jack turned back to Lily. “Alright, kiddo. This is who I was telling you about. She’s gonna help me.” When Lily tilted her head to the side with a small smile, Jack added, “She’s the best we’ve got around here. You’re lucky.”

You wheeled the cart in, parked it, set the tray up. Your hands set the tray up. Your hands knew what tray Jack liked, for they had been setting up trays for Jack for years, since before the dates, since back when he’d been an attending you’d worked with and gone home and thought about more than was appropriate. You set it up the way Jack liked it, with the needle driver on his left because he was right-handed (he liked to grab things cross-body), the forceps angled toward him, the suture spread out so he could see the gauges without rotating the pack. Your hands did all of this arranging and you did not, you realized, have any conscious memory of telling them to do it.

Jack didn’t look at the tray. He had, you suspected, watched it all go together in his peripheral vision in the same way a violinist heard another one tuning. He’d likely registered that the tray was just how he liked it and decided to stay silent about it.

“All right,” he said to Lily. “We’re gonna take a look. You’ve been doing such an amazing job with the gauze. Can you let your dad hold it for a second so I can see?”

Lily looked at her dad who nodded and took the gauze. Jack braced his right hand on the arm of the chair and stood—a motion he had developed, the half-second pause as he settled his weight before he moved—and stepped to the bedside and bent at the waist over Lily to look at the cut.

“Yeah,” he said. “You were having a good time, huh.”

“I fell.” 

“I heard. The third bar, right?”

She nodded.

“I would’ve fallen on the first one,” he said, pressing his lips into a straight line before shaking his head self-depricatingly. “Monkey bars were not my game. I had no upper body strength. I had—what’s the word—noodle arms.”

Lily, despite herself, made a small sound that was almost a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s funny,” Jack said, nodding as his lips spread wide. “I had noodle arms. Your dad probably also had noodle arms.”

“Hey,”  the dad said, with a softness of a man who had just been given permission to be in on a joke.

“Sorry,” Jack said, faux-shrugging.

Lily did a snotty, half-cry, which was a laugh. You stood at the cart with a packet of lidocaine in your hand as you watched a five-year-old laugh at a joke Jack had made. You realized he had built this whole calibration for kids, probably years ago. He’d been carrying it all the time you’d been with him, and you had never once seen it deployed so thoroughly in front of you. Perhaps it came down to the fact that there weren’t many peds cases in the middle of the night, and as luck had it, today, the universe decided to play a cruel joke on you by putting you on one with him. 

You handed him the lidocaine with steady hands. You were so proud of your hands. Your hands were carrying you.

“Okay,” he said to Lily. “I’m going to put a tiny bit of stuff in the edges of the cut. It’s gonna pinch; I’m not gonna lie to you about that, ‘cause I think you can handle the truth. Can you handle the truth?”

She nodded solemnly.

“Good. So it’s gonna pinch. It’s like a bee sting but smaller. You ever been stung by a bee?”

“No.”

“Okay, so this’ll be your first bee. Congratulations. Some people would be good money for a bee this small.”

The dad made a small huff that was almost a laugh.

“Once it pinches, it’s gonna feel cold. And then in about two minutes, you’re forehead’s gonna feel super weird. Like—” He looked up, and you were almost certain he was pretending to think. “—Has your foot ever fallen asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Like that. But on your face. It’s a weird feeling. Some people don’t like it. I want you to tell me if you don’t like it, okay? So we know you’re being honest with us.”

“Okay.”

“And then once the numbing stuff is working, I’m going to clean the cut, and then I’m going to put some stitches in. The stitches are going to feel like pushing, and they’re not gonna feel like pain. If they feel like pain, you tell me right away, and I’ll stop, and we’ll fix it. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Jack blew out a breath, tilting his head to the side. “You are an excellent patient, you know that?” he said. “I had a forty-year-old in here last week who cried more than you, and he was getting a much smaller thing.” 

You couldn’t look at Jack, so you looked at the tray. You looked at the suture pack and the lidocaine vial sitting next to the sharps box. You looked anywhere but at his face, because his face, right now, was doing something you couldn’t afford to look at. 

Jack’s face was being kind and patient. His face was being good at being this; his face was one of a man who would have been an extraordinary father, and the face was standing six-feet from you in a fluorescent-lit ED room with a kid’s blood on the sleeve of his coat. You had to hand him forceps in approximately ninety seconds, and you couldn’t look at that face.

When he gave the lidocaine, Lily flinched and gasped but there were no tears. Jack said, “There it is, that’s the bee. You did so good. You did so good.” 

He capped the needle and handed it back to you. Your fingers brushed when you took it. The brush was less than a second, and neither of you reacted, except for his thumb, which was curled in, briefly, against his palm. 

Lily was hiccuping, and her had had his hand on her ankle. 

Jack stepped back from the bed to let the lidocaine work. He did not sit back down in the chair. He stood at the foot of the bed, one hand resting on the rail, weight on his left, which was his good side, the side he stood on when he had to stand for a while. 

His eyes didn’t find yours while the lidocaine worked. He looked at Lily, asked her about her hoodie. She told him about the unicorn. He asked the unicorn’s name. She said it was Strawberry. He said Strawberry was a great name for a unicorn. He said he had a stuffed animal when he was a kid named Bear, which he admitted was a low-effort name. Lily told him he should’ve named it something better.

The dad had relaxed by degrees watching this, like he realized their kid was going to be okay and he was allowed to stop bracing. He was watching Jack with something that was close to a love born out of appreciation. Parents fell in love with their kid’s doctors in moments like this; it was a small and clean version of love. It came out of realizing their child was being held by someone who could be trusted to hold them. 

You filed it down with the smear of blood on the unicorn’s horn, the muscle in his jaw, and the word ‘father.’

“Okay,” Jack said. “I think we're ready. Let's see if you can feel this.” He took the forceps from your hand — your fingers brushed again, the second time, less than a second, again no reaction. And he touched the closed end of the forceps very lightly to the skin a centimeter from the cut. “Feel that?”

“No,” Lily answered, voice bemused.

“Cool. Cool cool cool. That’s what we want. I’m gonna clean it up and then do the stitches. You can close your eyes if you want; some kids like to close their eyes, some like to watch.”

“Can I watch?”

“Absolutely. I have to warn you, it’s a little gross.”

“I want to watch.”

“Okay, brave girl,” he said, chuckling slightly as he exhaled through his nose. “Girl who’s also potentially a future surgeon, what do I know?”

You handed him saline. You handed him gauze. He blotted. He worked. He talked to Lily the whole time. He told her about the saline. He told her what the irrigation was for. He told her that the cut was going to need four stitches, probably, maybe five, depending on how it sat once he got the first two in. He told her that the stitches would dissolve, eventually, but for now they would look like little blue threads, like tiny pieces of embroidery floss. He told her she could tell people at school she had embroidery in her forehead. He told her, when she asked, that embroidery was a kind of needlework, where you made pictures out of thread on fabric. 

You watched his hands. You watched his hands because watching his hands was your job, because watching his hands was the thing a scrub nurse did, because you had to be ready to hand him the next thing he needed, because watching his hands meant you did not have to watch his face. His hands were the hands you knew. His hands were the hands that had held your hips in the kitchen during one of the worst three weeks of your life. His hands were the hands that had built you a stew thirteen days ago. His hands were the hands you had watched, for three years, do small competent things in your apartment like open jars, fix things, hold a coffee cup, work a buttonhole. His hands were doing small competent things now, on a five-year-old's face, the same hands, the same exact hands, and you watched them work the suture through the skin and you understood that hands were the cruelest organ a person had, because hands kept doing what hands did, regardless. Hands didn't grieve or pause for the convenience of the people watching them. Hands were just hands.

He did four stitches. He did them well. He did them in the time it would have taken a worse doctor to do two. He talked to Lily through every one of them. He told her when the next push was coming. He told her she was doing great. He told her, at one point, that her dad had been very brave to bring her in so fast, which was the kind of gift a doctor sometimes gave a parent in a room and which the dad in the corner accepted by closing his eyes for a second and exhaling.

He cut the last suture and stepped back. “You’re officially repaired. How do you feel?”

“Weird,” Lily said, dragging the word out. 

“Yeah, the numbing stuff is weird. That’ll wear off in sometime. Your forehead’s gonna feel normal again by dinner.”

“What’s for dinner?” the dad asked Lily with a wobbly smile at being handed his kid back.

“Don’t know,” Lily said. “Pasta?”

“Pasta sounds good,” Jack said nodding. “Try to keep her from running around for the rest of the day. She can run around tomorrow,” he said to the dad.

Jack went through the rest of the discharge, and the dad asked one or two questions. Jack was excellent at this. You knew that. You’d known that since the first time you’d met him as a nervous nurse, but this, this he was especially good at. 

You started cleaning up the tray. Your hands did the cleanup. You bagged the sharps. You wiped down the surface. You stacked the unused supplies. You did not look at Jack and Jack did not look at you. You moved around each other in the small room without contact, the way you would have moved around any colleague, the way you had moved around him in this hospital for years before you had ever moved around him in a kitchen, in a bedroom, in the small space between his side of the bed and the wall where you'd had to turn sideways to get past.

“Can I come back?” Lily asked Jack.

“We see you again, it means something bad’s happened. You can bring a drawing or anything you want, though. We put them on the wall.” He pointed to the wall by one of the desks where kids’ drawings were taped up in a gradually growing collage that nobody had ever taken down. “If you want to draw a picture, I’ll put it up.”

“Okay. I’ll draw Strawberry.”

“Send it in!” Jack said, smiling.

As the dad helped Lily down, the dad turned to you and said, “Thank you,” and said your name. 

“You’re welcome, take care.” 

Lily hugged you around the waist, briefly and fiercely, the way kids hugged near-strangers when they had decided in the last twenty minutes that the person was safe. You put your hand on the back of her head. You let her hug you. From the other side of the room, you heard Jack inhale, just once, audibly, like something had landed wrong in him. 

She let go. She took her dad's hand. They left.

You and Jack were alone in the room. You went back to cleaning the tray. There was almost nothing left to clean. You cleaned it anyway. You picked up the empty lidocaine vial and you put it in the sharps box. You picked up the suture wrappers and you put them in the trash. You folded the sterile drape and you put it in the linens bin. Your hands were moving very fast and very precisely. Your hands were doing a week's worth of cleaning in the next forty seconds because if your hands stopped, you didn't know what would happen.

Jack said your name, and your hands paused for a minute. 

You gathered yourself in a millisecond and picked up the cart’s handle to wheel it around. You moved past him to the door.

“Hey—” he said, voice so terribly soft. “Can I—”

You heard Jack stop himself, as he realized it was a question he didn’t have the right to ask. You knew that he realized asking was the cruelest thing he could have done in a room where he had just performed forty minutes of being the father he was choosing not to be, and you heard him try to take it back by going quiet.

You opened the door with your hip and you wheeled the cart out into the hallway and you let the door swing shut behind you and you walked.

You did not run. You walked. You walked at the pace of a nurse who had somewhere to be. You wheeled the cart back to the equipment alcove and you parked it and you did not, this time, restock it. You left it. You walked past the central desk and Dana looked up and Dana looked at you and Dana did not say anything, and you turned the corner past the central desk and you walked down the back hallway to the staff bathroom and you went in and you locked the door behind you.

You stood with your back against the door.

You walked into the far stall and closed the door. You sat down on the lid of the toilet with your scrubs on you and you put your hands flat on your knees and you bent forward at the waist and you put your forehead almost on your knees. It was what they taught you to do in school to do if you thought you were going to faint, the way you had done exactly once before, on your first day, after you’d witnessed your first death.

The sound that came out of you was close to a sob; it was small, it was wet, it was almost a laugh. It came out of you and you put your hand over your mouth and you pressed hard. Then the sob came, and then another.

You cried for the dad in the chair with his phone face-up and the look he had given Jack. You cried for the way Jack had stood at the foot of the bed on his left leg, managing the load. You cried for the muscle in his jaw when Lily said your name. You cried because his hands had been the same hands. You cried because he had said your name behind you, in the empty room, and you had not turned around, and the not-turning-around was the kindest thing you had ever done for him and also the cruelest, and you didn't know yet which one it was going to turn out to be.

You texted Jack before you opened the door to the apartment. The apartment, not yours. Just a thing your sister’s friend had graciously offered while she was out of town. 

You wrote, hey - i need to come by for my passport. You sent the message before you could think twice about it and stood very still before your door as you watched the three dots appear, disappear, then reappear again. You did need your passport, but you also had to have this conversation with Jack. You wished you could live in this limbo state forever, the one where you can still be a tad unsure about what the two of you are, before you get a clean break and there’s no question that it was, truly and completely, over. 

You were going to have to see him on Mondays, or Wednesdays, or whatever other days you were put in the same rotation as him because that was out of your control unless night shift had found a new nurse that was available every night, every day of the week. 

His reply came in eleven seconds. Eleven seconds was, by your count, exactly Jack-fast. It was the speed of a man who had been waiting for the phone to do something and had decided, the moment it did, that he was not going to make you wait the social interval of pretending he hadn't been.

Of course. When works?

You wrote back, 2 PM today?

His response was quicker, the lag almost imperceptible. Yeah. I’ll be home. It seemed he had decided the same thing as you, and that was he was going to stop trying to make it small, because making it small was a thing the two of you had spent three years doing to bigger things, and he was—apparently—done. 

You put your phone down on the kitchen counter that didn’t belong to you. The counter was a butcher block, scarred where your sister’s friend had cut tomatoes directly on it for years. You’d been resenting the butcher’s block since Tuesday. The marble in your apartment with Jack had been wrong in its own ways, but at least it hadn’t been absorbent. You wiped a smear of something off the butcher block with your sleeve, because there was nothing else to do with your hand. You had not eaten since the day before. You had not eaten breakfast or lunch or the kind of in-between snack that would have made not eating breakfast or lunch a manageable thing, and you understood, looking at the butcher block, that the not-eating was going to become a thing you had to address before it became a thing somebody else had to address, but you were not going to address it today.

Jack was in the entryway. He’d been waiting in the entryway near the closet, and his hand was on the closet door, and he had—you understood, taking in the staging—positioned himself so he was doing something when you walked in. You guessed that he landed on which was the same flavor of stagecraft as him being at the sink eleven days ago when he had imagined, that time, you coming in. He had needed a thing to be doing. The closet was the version of the dishcloth.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“You can—come in,” he said. The pause before come in was the size of him deciding whether to say come in or come home or come here. He had said come in. It was the most correct of the three available options and it was also, you understood, a thing he had picked from a menu.

You came in and closed the door behind you. You hadn’t let yourself lock it, because that would’ve meant something different. 

“I kept your passport on the counter,” Jack said, and you almost paused in your footsteps as you stepped through the entryway. Like he’d noticed, he added, “Not to—you know. Just, if you prefer not to—” 

He looked down at his hands, which were still on the closet door, and he took the hands off the closet door and let them fall, and the falling was the thing that told you he had given up on the staging. He had nothing to do with his hands and he had decided, in the half-second of looking down, that he was going to let them be empty.

You walked. You walked past him into the apartment because the walking was easier than the answering, because the answering would have required you to pick which of his unfinished sentences you were responding to, and you could not, in this entryway, pick. You walked. You felt him behind you not following.

You set your bag down on the bench. You set it down without thinking and it was only after the bag had left your hand that you registered the bench, that you understood your body had walked you to there because that was where bags went in this apartment, and three years of muscle memory had walked you to the bench and your brain had not been consulted. 

The bag was on the bench. Your bag. Where his bag had always gone when he came home and put his hands on your hips. You looked at your bag on the bench and you understood, with a small clinical clarity, that this was the last time anything of yours was going to be on this bench, and that the bench was going to keep existing after today, and that he was going to walk past it every morning for some number of years, and that the bench was not going to know.

You took your hand off the bag slowly. You took it off the way you took your hand off a patient's wrist after a pulse check, the careful release of a thing you were not going to be holding anymore.

You’d never let yourself imagine it all too deeply, but the imagining had happened anyway, in the soft margins of your brain where you didn’t keep accounts. Standing in this entryway you were aware of it the way you became aware of a bruise four days after it settled. You had imagined, you understood now, a girl. You had imagined a girl with his hairline and your hands and you imagined her on the bench by the door putting on shoes. You had imagined Jack sitting on one knee to do the laces, because you knew he would crouch even though it hurt him. He was a man who made himself smaller to help at the child’s height; he’d done it for Lily and you knew the small grunt his left knee would make and the way he would brace one hand on her shoulder to stand. 

You had imagined a second one, too, smaller, a boy or girl you hadn’t decided about, somewhere. You had imagined a kitchen—not this kitchen, a different one, somewhere with more light and up the river, a kitchen Jack had said yes to, with a backdoor that opened to something green. You’d imagined him older in that kitchen standing at a counter in that kitchen explaining something patient and slightly too complicated to a kid who was half-listening, and you had imagined yourself watching him do it from a doorway. The watching had been the feeling, and you had thought—when you let yourself think it, which had been rare, late at night, in a warm muzzy place between his arm and pillow—that you would be lucky. 

You had built a future in the warm muzzy place that you had never once dragged out into the kitchen and put on the counter and asked him to look at it. And you had now understood that he, in the same three years, had built a different one, and neither of you had shown the other the blueprint, and the blueprints had been incompatible the whole time, and the incompatibility had been sitting between you on every couch and in every bed and at every table for three years like a third person nobody was introducing.

You weren’t sure when you’d grabbed the passport, but it was in your hand.

“My sister’s going to come down to help me move the stuff next week, if that’s okay?” 

Because it was decided—you’d decided—that you’d be the one to move out. 

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Whatever works for her.”

It came out lower than he’d meant to. You could tell because he heard it come out, and his jaw moved once, a small adjustment, the kind of micro-correction he did when a sentence didn't come out the size he had wanted it to. He cleared his throat again.

“I can be gone, if you—she wants. The whole day. I’ll take a shift, I’ll—yeah. I can not be here.” Then, he added, “Or I can help. If it’s heavy stuff. Some of the boxes from the closet are—”

“I’ll let you know.”

He was nodding too much. He had been holding the nodding to the metered pace of the rest of the conversation and the pace had broken, somewhere in the last three sentences, and the nodding was running ahead of him. He noticed. He stopped. His hand came up to the back of his neck and stayed there.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay.” 

Don’t do this, you were thinking to yourself. Don’t make this any harder than it already is.

“And I’m sorry about the case—Lily. I wasn’t going to take it because you were on it, and it was peds, but Robby was busy—”

You were shaking your head because your eyes had started burning now, at the memory of it. “It’s fine, Jack.”

“I should’ve found someone else. I shouldn’t have walked in there. I knew you were on it and I walked in anyway and I—I am sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

You said it louder the second time than you’d meant to. The loudness almost echoed in the apartment as his lips pressed together to keep himself from saying more, and you stood there with your eyes threatening to spill over and you understood he was apologizing for a case because a case was the only thing he would apologize for. That was the only way he could apologize for any of it, and that letting him do that was a kindness you did not have inside you to give.

You couldn’t let him use a five-year-old with a forehead lac as the vehicle for the thing he actually wanted to say because the thing he actually wanted to say was too large and the vehicle was too small and the gap between them was going to break you if you stood in it any longer.

He kept his hand on the back of his neck. 

“You were good with her,” you said, voice softening an inch. You hadn’t meant to say it. “You were really good with her. That’s not—I’m not saying that because. I’m just saying.”

You weren’t sure if you’d said any words that resembled anything close to a sentence.

“Thank you,” he said, and closed his eyes for a second and held them that way. “I’m sorry I can’t be—that. For us.”

You closed your eyes, too at that, and the pressure caused a small, single stream to ripple down your cheek. Looking at him with his eyes closed without sleeping was a thing you were unequipped for, closing your eyes was the only available form of leaving the room without leaving the room. You stood with your eyes closed and the passport warm in your hand and you let yourself, for two seconds, not be in the entryway.

When you opened them he had opened his.

“Don’t—that’s not—you don’t have to be sorry for that. It’s a thing that—it’s just a thing. Don’t apologize for it.”

He pulled the corners of his cheeks between his lips as he nodded.

“But you should have told me. A long time ago.” Because I don’t know where I’m going now, without you. 

“I’m sorry. I’m—I am sorry,” he said, and his hand had come off his neck and he was fidgeting with the belt loops of his jeans, tugging on them harshly as though that was the place he was redirecting his words to. 

“I should go,” you said.

“Yeah.”

You stepped into him before you could decide to. Your body did it, the way his body had done the half-step at the closet, and you were halfway across the foot of air between you before your brain caught up and registered that you were doing it, and by then it was already done, your forehead was against his collarbone and your hand had found the front of his shirt and the passport was somewhere, you didn't know where, you had stopped holding it.

He stood still for half-a-second. He stood with his arms at his sides and you understood he was not going to assume he was allowed, that even now, even with you in his chest, he was waiting for the permission to be explicit, and so you pressed your forehead harder into his collarbone and that was the permission, and his arms came up.

He held you so carefully, the way you held a thing you had been told you couldn't have but had been given anyway, briefly, for a reason that wasn't going to last. One of his hands found the back of your head. The other one was at your shoulder blade, flat, and you could feel his thumb against you not moving, holding very still, the discipline of a man not allowing the thumb to stroke because stroking would have been taking.

His body shook. It was small. It was one tremor that moved through him from somewhere low in his ribs up through his shoulders, and you felt it because you were against him, and you would not have felt it from a foot away, and you understood that the thing about being held by him right now was that you were the only person in the world who could feel what his body was doing, and that you were never going to feel what his body was doing again after today.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

He whispered it into your hair very quietly. He said it at the same decibel of when he said things in the dark when he thought you were asleep, the small unguarded register he had thought, in those moments, was private, and that you had heard every time, and that you had never told him you had heard.

There was no answer that was the size of what he had just said and so you stayed against him and you let him have the silence.

He held you for a few more seconds.

He pulled back first and gently, with the carefulness of a man undoing a knot he had tied himself, and his hands moved down your back and around to your sides and stopped there, briefly, before one of them—his right— came up to your face, his own twisting slightly as he warred with himself over whether or not he was allowed to touch you this way. He put his palm against your cheek and cupped it. His thumb went under your eye where the tear had been earlier and was now dry, and he brushed the dryness with a shaky thumb, and it stayed there for a second longer than it needed to.

“I know you’ll find the right person.”

His voice had come back to almost level. He had spent the moment on the shake and the whisper and now he was using the last of the discipline he had to deliver this line, and you watched him deliver it, and you understood that he had been saving it. He had decided some time in the twelve days that this was the line he was going to give you on the way out, and he had practiced the steadiness of it, and the steadiness was working, and the steadiness was the gift.

You couldn't imagine loving anyone but him.

You were going to be thirty-one in three months and you were going to live in apartments that were not this apartment and you were going to walk past men on the street and on the train and at work and none of them were going to be him, and the not-being-him was going to be the central fact about every man you met for some long time you could not yet measure. You knew this with a clinical clarity that you kept to yourself. Voicing it would do nothing.

“You too, Jack.”

He smiled softly, like he knew you were offering him a kindness you couldn’t promise, a kindness he himself believed not to be true. His jaw set, the half-second readjustment that told you he had heard the lie and was not going to correct it. He was going to receive the lie the same way he was receiving the hug, carefully, gratefully, knowing he was not supposed to have it.

“Okay.”

His hand came down from your face and you stepped away, because being there any longer, in his arms, you knew, was not right for you. You grabbed your bag and cleared your throat before you said, “I’ll text you about the move.”

“Okay.”

“Probably Tuesday.”

You had walked into the apartment in your shoes and you were going to walk out in them and the not-taking-off-of-shoes was, you understood, a thing the version of you who had come through this door at 2 PM had decided about, the small protective instinct of a woman who had known she was not going to be staying.

You put your hand on the doorknob.

You turned around.

He was where you had left him. He had not moved. His hands were at his sides again, the kitchen-position, the position they had remembered. He was looking at you with his face mostly held but not entirely held. 

You let yourself look at him for a half-second longer than you had meant to, because the half-second was the last one you were going to have with him being someone you could love before he became your attending and just that; you wanted to know what he looked like at the end of it so you would remember the right face later.

Jack had decided that he wanted to let you leave clean, not prolong it any further. He’d given himself that opportunity for three years, and he’d let you leave cleanly now, with the small consistent excellence of a man who had decided what the standard was and was going to meet it. 

You were going to spend the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, and the night, and possibly the rest of your life, hating him for being good at it even now.

“Bye, Jack,” you said as you opened the door.

You couldn’t bear to turn around, but you heard a hitch in his breath as he said, “Bye.”

Jack had been the love of your twenties. He was never going to be able to tell you you were the last love he would have.

tags: @sirens-and-moonflowers @scream4mami @eternalseeker999 @itsporcelain36 @graciiiaciii @blacpiink @prettyflowerlily @falloutgirl-219

[mcybank]

The Space We Stop

part one part two

pairings — jack abbott x fem!reader

summary — Jack has already decided what he can survive losing. You didn’t realize you weren’t on the list until you weren’t. 

content warnings — 4.3k words. hurt/no comfort (in this part), discussions of pregnancy, fertility, the decision to have children, mention of vasectomy, mention of menstruation, breakup-esque conversation, age gap, jack’s a doctor and reader’s a nurse, references to patient death, grief, lots of anticipatory grief

author’s note — first pitt fic!!!! not sure if i should do a part 2 super open to suggestions

The invitation was tucked between an electricity bill and a postcard from your dentist’s assistant reminding you it had been six months, which it hadn’t (it had been eight), and you felt briefly seen by whoever was controlling your fate, called out by a piece of glossy cardstock with a cartoon molar on it. You dropped the bill on the counter; you stuck the dentist postcard to the fridge under the magnet shaped like a tomato that Jack had brought back from a conference three Septembers ago. He’d given it to you with a straight face and said it made him think of you and it made you laugh so hard you cried, because it was the ugliest object you'd ever seen. 

You saved the invitation for last. It was a heavy, cream cardstock. It had gold foiling along the edge that caught the late afternoon light coming through the window over the sink. Margaret and David are expecting, it read in a font either Margaret or David had paid a little extra for. Please join us in celebrating baby Carter. You stood at the counter and read it twice. You were the kind of person who read things twice. Jack teased you for it. Slow learner, he'd say, into your hair, when he caught you rereading the back of a cereal box.

You heard the front door open followed by the soft thunks of his bag hitting the bench in the entryway. 

“Hey, you,” he said before you saw him. His voice was sanded down at the edges, lower than it sat before he’d left for his shift. You understood why the nurses gossiped about the rasp of his voice in the breakroom, given you’d been one of those nurses once (and still are). 

His hands came to your hips first, the heels of his palms slotting in the bones there, and then his forehead lowered to the crown of your head. He stood there for a second, breathing you in like he always did when a shift had been difficult. He smelled like the hospital — that ghost of antiseptic that never quite came out of his collar — and underneath it, him. The cedar of whatever soap he kept buying. The faint salt of skin.

“Long one?” you asked.

“Mhm.” His mouth found the side of your neck, just under your ear, and stayed there. The warmth of his breath ghosted over your skin as he said, “Tell me something good.”

He'd come home wrecked and ask you for something good, and you'd give him the smallest thing you could find — the lady at the bodega had a new cat, the tomatoes were finally ripe, you'd seen a kid on the train wearing a tiny tuxedo for no apparent reason — and he'd close his eyes and let you wash whatever it was off him. You were good at it. You'd gotten good at it. Three years of practice.

“Marge is pregnant,” you said.

You felt him smile against your throat before you heard it. “Haven’t heard her name since her going-away party. That one?”

“The same.” You smiled as you let your hand rest over his. 

“Woah.” He laughed, and you felt it move through your back where his chest was pressed against you, tired and fond. “Good for her. I think. Is it good for her?”

“I’m sure it is.” 

His thumb had found the strip of skin where your shirt had ridden up, and he was tracing absent circles into your hip. “When’s the shower?” He peeked over your shoulder to look at the invitation. 

“Three weeks. On Saturday.”

“You going?”

“I have to.”

“Mm.” He hummed against your skin. “Want me to come?”

“You have a shift.”

“I can switch.” 

“It’s alright.” You leaned back into him without meaning to, as though your body had been built with a notch for his sternum. “I’ll bring you cake.”

“My hero.” He pressed a kiss to the hinge of your jaw, slow, and then another, lower, and your hand came up automatically to the back of his neck, your fingers finding the short hair at his nape, and you felt him exhale. 

He looked back down at the invitation. “God, can you imagine?”

You opened your mouth.

You didn't know, in that exact second, what you were going to say. You could’ve laughed. Maybe you were going to say something else. Something that had been sitting low in your chest, unnamed, for longer than you'd realized.

You didn't get the chance to find out.

Because he was already shaking his head, already moving on, already pulling you back into him by the small of your back like the thought had been so passing it didn't even need a landing. He pressed his mouth to your temple. You could feel him smiling against your hairline.

"No," he said, into your hair. "Thank god."

--

Jack had the night off, and you woke up at 4:11 in the morning. He was asleep on his stomach, face mashed into the pillow, one arm flung across your waist, the other folded up under his chest like he was bracing for something. The sheet had ridden down to the small of his back, and there was a constellation of tiny scars across his shoulder blade you’d mapped. 

Sometimes, you’d lie in the dark and let your half-asleep mind look at him and feel like you’d gotten away with something. 

His hand was warm against your hip. You’d noticed he always ran a degree hotter than you. In the winter you used him like a furnace and he complained about it lovingly and let you. 

‘Cold-blooded little thing,’ he’d mutter into the back of your neck. ‘Got me out here heating the whole bed.’ 

You stared at the ceiling and, without meaning to, you started thinking about everything you had missed. 

It had been the second Christmas with Jack. His brother’s kid, on FaceTime, a four-year-old obsessed with a stuffed giraffe she kept showing to the camera. You'd been on the couch with him, your feet in his lap, and he'd been good with her. 

He was patient, asking her the giraffe's name, asking what the giraffe ate for breakfast. 

After the call, Jack had set the phone face-down on the coffee table and exhaled and said, “God, she's cute for about eleven minutes and then I am tapped.” 

He'd said it with warmth. He was laughing as he squeezed your ankle. You had laughed too because it was funny, because four-year-olds were exhausting, because you were twenty-five and not thinking about it, because you were in love with a man who said funny, tired things about his niece and that was a personality, that was a bit, that was Jack.

You never believed that memory would ever resurface, at least not as anything that held so much fucking weight.

Then there was the vasectomy consultation. You’d been dating six months.

You'd been sitting on his kitchen counter in his apartment, before you'd moved in,and he'd been making you eggs, and he'd said, casually, his back to you, “Oh, I had a consultation last week.” 

You'd said, “For what?” 

He'd said, “Vasectomy.”

He'd said it so simply, as though he were a man ordering a sandwich. He'd said, “Just exploring options. You know how it is,” and flipped the eggs. 

You had been twenty-five and six months in love and you had said, “Yeah, totally,” because you didn't want to be the woman who made it weird at six months.

The wedding last summer, his cousin's, where his aunt had cornered you by the bar and said, “Honey, don't wait too long, you know what they say. The clock.”

And Jack had appeared at your elbow with a glass of wine for you and steered you away with his hand at the small of your back, and on the dance floor, swaying, his mouth at your ear, he'd said, “Sorry, she's a menace,” and then, “Don't listen to her, by the way,”

You’d said, “what do you mean?”

“The clock thing. don't let anybody put that on you. you've got time.”

Not we. You.

--

You waited eleven days from the afternoon you received the invitation. 

On day four you got your period and stood in the bathroom and cried. You weren’t trying, you weren’t even sure you were ready. But the first thing you felt, looking down, was relief. And you didn't know when relief had become the shape of your body's answer to that question. You didn't know who'd taught you that. You had a guess.

You washed your hands. You went back to bed. Jack was asleep on his stomach and you got in next to him and he made the small sound he made in his sleep when you came back and put his hand on your hip without waking up, and you cried about that too, quietly, into the pillow, because his hand was so warm and because you understood, dimly, that this was the kind of thing you were going to miss.

Eleven dinners you didn’t bring it up at; eleven walks home you didn’t bring it up at; of one Sunday morning where you’d opened your mouth and he’d put a piece of bacon in it instead, laughing, and you’d let him, and you hated yourself for the laugh that came around the bacon. 

He steered you towards the dining table and told you to eat the stew, his voice bossy and tender all at once. You’d eaten, and the stew had been good. He’d told you a story about the upstairs neighbour, and now it was nine-thirty and the dishes were done. He was leaning against the counter drinking the last of his wine, probably before he switched to beer, and 

He'd been off all day. He'd done the things he did when he was off. He'd gone for a run, he'd read on the couch, he'd made a stew that filled the apartment with the smell of bay leaves and red wine. You'd come in from your shift at seven and he'd kissed you at the door and handed you a glass of something and told you to eat in a voice that was bossy and tender at once, and you had eaten, and the stew had been good, and you had laughed at something he'd said about the upstairs neighbor, and now it was nine-thirty and the dishes were done and he was leaning against the counter drinking the last of his wine and you were standing at the other end of the kitchen island with your hands flat on the marble. 

You could feel his gaze plastered onto you, it had been for the last few minutes. He’d been watching you, you realized, for the better part of the evening. He’d been stealing glances for the last hour or so, as if he believed something was off and he wanted to find out what. You’d never been good at being discreet; you were surprised you’d managed to be for the last eleven days. 

“What?” he said, finally, breaking the unintentional silence. 

“Nothing,” you lied. 

“Mm?” His hum picked up at the end, a corner of his lip twitching down as he tried to read your thoughts right out of your brain. 

Because he never pushed you, he took another sip of his wine and set the glass down.

You stared at the marble. You’d picked it together, though it had been more than you. You’d gone to the stone yard in Long Island on a Saturday and walked through aisles of slabs and he’d asked you to pick. You picked this one. You weren’t even sure what it was called, this white marble with gray veins that looked like rivers on a map. Three months later, it’d been installed in the kitchen in the apartment you’d moved into because he’d asked you to. 

You’d thought—when he asked—the marble meant something. You were realizing you thought a lot of things meant something. 

“Do you ever—” You cleared your throat, because something had lodged inside it making your voice thick. “Do you ever think about the future?” 

You continued staring at the marble.

“What do you mean?” he asked after a minute of silence. His voice was unnervingly careful. 

“I mean,” you said. The words were coming out on their own. You had not, after eleven days of rehearsal, prepared this version “Do you think about where we go?”

“Where we go?” You could practically hear his head tilt to the side, like a puppy when it heard a new sound. 

Except Jack was not a puppy, and a part of you knew that this wasn’t new, had likely crossed his mind at least once.

“Yes.”

“I think we’re going pretty good,” he said. “Are you not—”

“I don’t mean—I’m not saying—Jack…”

You turned to face him now. He was looking at you with his arms folded and his face so neutral you were almost insulted. Except for his neck, for there was a tendon standing out on the side of it. You watched it and realized he knew what you were about to ask, and he was only figuring out how to answer now. 

Your chest went cold, like someone had put a coin right under your sternum.

“I mean, do you think about—kids.” The word slipped out of your mouth like a snap of a rubberband. 

“Baby,” he said.

You felt the rest of the sentence assemble itself in the air between you before he said it. You knew the shape of it. You'd nursed long enough to know the cadence of a doctor about to tell a family something they didn't want to hear; there was a soft entry word, a pause, a lowering of the chin half an inch.

You'd watched him do it. You'd watched him do it to mothers, to husbands, to the daughter of the man in 4B who'd come in with chest pain and not gone home. You'd stood at the foot of the bed and handed people tissues afterward and thought that he is so kind, that he is so good.

You understood, now, that you were the family.

“Don’t—please don’t do that. Just answer.”

He looked at you for what felt like a very long time. The refrigerator hummed behind the two of you. 

“No.”

The same word he'd said into your hair three weeks ago in this same kitchen, with his mouth at your temple, no, thank god. Except now there was no thank god. Now there was just the no, naked, with no padding around it, and you understood—you understood in your spine, in the soles of your feet, in the place behind your eyes where you kept the things you couldn't afford to know—that he had taken the padding off on purpose. He had taken it off because he had decided, in the silence between your question and his answer, that this was a conversation that needed the padding off.

“Ever?” you said, and hated how it came out choked.

“Ever.”

“You’ve never—”

“Not once.” When you stayed silent, he added, “I’m sorry.”

“Jack,” you said, and your voice was almost pleading.

“I’m not going to do that to you,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have to think about it. You asked me a real question, and I want to give you a real answer.”

“So you’ve—” Your throat clamped up. Again. “You’ve thought about it?” 

“Of course, I’ve thought about it,” he said, voice going lower. “I’ve thought about it the whole time.”

The kitchen, you noticed, had developed an echo. Or maybe your ears had. There was a small ringing somewhere behind your jaw. You put your hand on the marble. The marble was cold. You concentrated on the cold.

“So when—” You had to stop  to find your voice. You found it lower than you'd put it down. “Since when?”

“Since always.”

“With me.”

He looked down at the same marble you were staring at, then looked back up at you. “The second date.”

You laughed. It came out wrong, a small dry laugh, like something breaking inside a wall. You hadn't been prepared for the second date. You remembered the second date. It had been a Thai place on 9th. He had ordered for both of you because you'd let him. He'd walked you home in the rain under his coat held over both your heads and you'd thought, ‘this one. this is the one.’

He had been deciding something else. 

“You told me about your sister’s kid and—yeah,” he said.

“I told you about Joey and you went home and decided—?”

“I didn’t decide anything that night,” he said. “I already knew. You told me about Joey and I—I watched your face and I thought oh. That's all. I thought you were going to want that. And I thought I should tell you, and I didn't.”

There was a small high ringing somewhere behind your jaw. You got those when you stood up too fast. “And the vasectomy consult—”

He paused, eyebrows pushing in together. He hadn’t expected that one.

“I didn’t do it.” He pushed off the counter finally. He came around the island, slow, the way he moved toward a patient he didn't want to spook. He stopped a foot away from you. He didn't touch you. Three years of him not being able to walk past you in a kitchen without putting a hand on your hip, and he stopped a foot away and held his hands at his sides like a man at a wake.

“I didn't do it because I met you and I thought—I thought I should talk to you first, and then I didn't, because I didn't want to scare you, and then time went by and it seemed—cruel.”

You laughed. It came out of you like a cough. You didn't know your face had done anything until you saw his face change in response to yours.

“Don’t do that.” He shook his head, tongue running over the inside of his mouth. 

“You thought it was cruel?”

“To bring it up out of nowhere. Six months in. Eight months in. Whenever. There was never a—never a moment. There was—what was I going to do? Sit you down at a restaurant and tell you my reproductive plans? At a year? Two? When?”

“Any of those times, Jack. Any of them.” 

“What would you have done if I had sat you down at fourteen months and said, hey, just so you know, never? What would you have done?

The answer was that at fourteen months you were so in love with him you would have eaten glass for him. The answer was that at fourteen months you would have said that's okay and meant it, or thought you meant it, which was the same thing. The answer was that he was right, which was, you understood now, the thing about him that was going to end you. He was right about you. He had always been right about you. He had clocked you, somewhere in the first year, as the kind of woman who would talk herself into it, and he had been correct, and he had let you, and now you were in your kitchen at thirty years old with your hand on the cold marble and he was telling you, gently that he had known.

“You should have told me,” you said, and it came out a whisper. 

“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “Maybe.”

Your mouth opened, but no words came out.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I should’ve done. I’m not—” He ran a hand down his face. He looked tired. He looked, for the first time in the conversation, like himself. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m not good at this. I’m sorry—I am sorry.”

“Jack.”

“I am.”

“You’re saying never. That there’s—there’s no version of this where—”

“No.”

“Where you and I—”

“No, sweetheart.”

“Jack.”

“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “I'm not going to do that. I love you. I'm not going to lie to you. I love—”

And the worst part — the part you would not, later, be able to forgive yourself for—was that your chest did the thing. The small lift. The half-second of Jack is here, the way a dog's head comes up when it hears its name. Three years of him saying it and your body learning to lean toward the sound. Your hand, you noticed, had twitched a quarter-inch toward him on the marble. You had not told it to.

You hated it. You hated your hand. You hated the dog of you. You hated that some part of you was going to want him tomorrow, and next month, and probably — the thought arrived whole, terrible—for the rest of your life, because three years was a long time to teach a body something and you did not know how to make a body unlearn.

“That’s not enough, Jack.” 

You were crying. You hadn't noticed. Your hand was still on the marble and your face was wet and he was a foot away from you and not touching you, which was the part you would remember later, which was the part that would, in the small hours, be the thing you couldn't get past — that he had not, in this moment, reached for you. That he had read the room and known better.

"I would be a bad father," he said.

"Don't."

"I would. I — "

"Don't do that. Don't make this a — don't make it about you being noble. Don't."

He stopped.

He looked at you. He looked at you for a long second and you watched something you had not, in three years, seen happen in his face, a small private collapsing, a giving up of a position he had been holding for so long he had forgotten he was holding it.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay."

“Okay. Then — yeah. I don't want them. I have never wanted them. I'm fifty-four years old and I have been a doctor for almost thirty of those years and I have watched what happens to people who have kids in this job and I have made my peace with not having that life. I made my peace with it before I met you. I should have told you. I didn't tell you because I — “

He stopped.

“Why?” 

He looked at you. “Because—you—” He shook his head, like the words were physically painful to say.

“Because I wanted you,” he said. “And I knew if I said it you'd go. I thought if I was good enough at the rest of it you wouldn't notice the shape of the thing that wasn't there. And then a year went by and I thought you haven’t asked, maybe you don’t—" He stopped. He didn't let himself finish that one. "I knew you did. I knew you did the whole time. I watched you with—I watched you with the kids that came in and I knew. I just—I wanted one more month. And then I wanted one more. That's all it ever was. One more month.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

You stood there with your hand on the marble and your face wet and your chest doing a thing that wasn't crying anymore, that had moved past crying into some other room, and you looked at him across the foot of air between you and you understood, finally, that he had done this on purpose.

Not the cruelty. He hadn't been cruel on purpose. He'd been cruel by accident, the way honest men are cruel.

But the choice. The choice to let you stay. The choice, three years ago, to look at a twenty-seven-year-old woman who wanted things and to decide that he wanted her more than he wanted to be the kind of man who told her the truth on time. That he had done on purpose. That he had known about. That he had been carrying, all this time, in the part of himself he didn't show you, and he had carried it well, he had carried it so well you had not, in three years, suspected the weight.

You said, "Wow."

It came out small. It came out almost amused. He flinched, finally, at that one. You watched it move through him. You filed it away. You thought, in some cool clean part of your mind, you would need to hear that flinch in your mind a hundred times over so you could forget how you felt right now. 

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what."

"Don't — wow me."

"Jack."

“I love you. I'm not — I'm not going to defend it. I'm not going to — yeah. I wanted you around. I knew what I was doing. I knew — yes.”

You took your hand off the marble. You looked at your hand. Your hand was shaking, which surprised you. Your hand had not, until this moment, been a hand that shook.

You said, “I have to—”

You didn't finish the sentence, because you’d already started walking out of the kitchen.

You walked out of the kitchen.

He didn't follow you.

That was the other part you would remember. Not that he had let you walk away—men let women walk away all the time—but that he had known, in the heat of the moment, that the kindest thing he could do for you was to not make you ask him to stay back. He had clocked it. He had given it to you. It was the last gift he would ever give you and he gave it correctly and you hated him, briefly, with a clean white hatred, for being good at it even now.

[thatfanficstuff]

Horrible Day - Jack Abbot

Jack Abbot x Reader

synopsis: you have a horrible day and Jack just makes it worse.

warnings/notes: written to fulfill a request from @orphanbird95. was not intending to write this yet, but here we are. Flangst, my favorite. My language in this one is worse than usual. Sorry.

wc: 3.1k

It had been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

You could blame the heat you supposed. The fact you were working days for the week when you were used to nights. Or perhaps, it was just the simple fact you seemed to encounter every asshole in the city of Pittsburgh throughout the day.

You hadn’t even made it through chairs before someone grabbed your ass. One ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ later, and he’d been escorted out by security. Every patient you dealt with was short tempered, half of your co-workers as well. You thought some of the snappy words sent your way had been teasing, but you couldn’t be sure. You weren’t used to these people that lived in the daytime. They were weird. By the time noon came around, you wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with Jack and forget about the rest of the world.

You were more than aware that part of the problem came from the fact you’d barely seen your boyfriend all week. You were used to working with him, spending your time outside of the hospital with him. For the last five days you’d only gotten to see him for a few minutes at work during shift change. You were never agreeing to cover days again no matter how much Dana and Robby both begged.

You headed to the hub to check on some lab results Langdon had asked you to keep an eye out for. You’d checked half an hour ago then got pulled into taking care of patients.

“Hey!” someone called out as you walked past a room. You stopped and stepped backward. “Finally,” the man in the bed said when you met his eye. “Get me some water.”

“I’ll have someone get right back to you, sir,” you said. He wasn’t your patient and you didn’t have time to look up if he was NPO or not.

“No, you get it, you fucking bitch!” he practically screamed.

Your brows rose as you just stared at him. “Okay.” You walked off, leaving him shouting behind you.

Dana stood a short distance away looking between you and the room you’d never entered. She stepped into the doorway. “Sir, you need to stop right now or I will have you escorted out of the hospital. Do you understand?”

“You can’t just fucking—”

“Hey,” she snapped, cutting him off. “Shut it. You’re NPO anyway. No water, no food.”

With that she left the room, her eyes searching for you. She knew you’d been having a horrible day and that you were missing Jack on top of it. She found you talking to Emma and smiled softly. The young nurse had taken a liking to you. Emma smiled at whatever you’d said and nodded before hurrying off. Dana headed toward you but before she could reach you, Langdon suddenly appeared, a scowl on his face. “I thought I told you to keep an eye out for the labs on Reynolds. This says they’ve been back for twenty minutes.”

You sighed and turned to face the resident. “I was just going to check. I do have other tasks to see to, Dr. Langdon.”

Frank stepped closer, trying to make himself look taller. “When I tell you to do something, you do it.”

Dana was ready to intervene but realized she didn’t need to. Not with you.

You scoffed and crossed your arms over your chest. “Who do you think you are? I’m a nurse and a damn good one. I am not your lackey or your slave. You want something done? You ask. Nicely. If that’s all, I’ve got shit to do.”

Her gaze trailed you as you walked over to the hub. Jesse walked by and Dana reached out and grasped his wrist to halt his steps. “Langdon’s on the list.”

Jesse’s brows shot up in surprise. “How long?”

Dana shrugged. “Rest of the day at least. We’ll see if he learns his lesson.”

He turned to eye the doctor in question then followed Dana’s gaze to you. “What’d he do?”

“When I tell you to do something, you do it,” she said mimicking Frank.

Jesse blew out a breath. “God, he’s an idiot. I’ll spread the word. You gonna tell Robby?”

She hummed in agreement and nodded. “Abbot, too. Kid will be on triage for a week.”

Knowing things would be taken care of, Dana finally got the chance to make her way to you. She rubbed your shoulder. “How you doing, sweetheart?”

You glanced at her and leaned back in your chair. “This has been the absolute worst day, Dana.”

She smiled. “Yeah. It has. Why don’t you take a break and call Jack?”

You shook your head. “No. He hasn’t been sleeping well with us on opposite shifts.” You shrugged. “He manages just fine when we sleep at our own places so I don’t know what the problem is.”

“Uh huh. And before this week when was the last time you did that?”

The longer it took you to answer, the bigger Dana’s smile got.

“Oh, shut up,” you finally said before heading to check on a patient.

Robby appeared at the hub, grabbing a tablet. “I’m gonna be sorry to see her go back to nights, but I will be thrilled to not have to listen to Jack bitch about it anymore.”

Dana chuckled as she slipped on her glasses to look at something on the computer. “Oh, by the way,” she said casually. “Langdon’s on the list.”

Robby blinked several times. “Who did he piss off?”

She looked pointedly in the direction where you had just disappeared.

“He didn’t.”

Dana nodded.

Robby ran a hand down his face and sighed. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t think he was that stupid.”

Hours passed and with them came more bitchy patients and cranky coworkers. Frank was half losing his mind as none of the nurses would do anything for him that he was fully capable of doing himself. Patient care was never compromised, but if he wanted labs checked on or a sandwich fetched, all the nurses were suddenly otherwise occupied. It made you chuckle every time you saw it. Idiot.

When he’d tried to complain to Robby, he found himself redirected to triage to ‘consider his life choices’. He kept walking through the department to see if there were any cases he could jump on, which turned out to be fortunate for you.

“When am I going to get something else for my pain?” Leonard Smith grumbled from the bed. He was in for abdominal pain and waiting on test results.

You checked his chart then the time. “You’re not due for another dose quite yet. I’ll check with the doctor and see if there’s something else we can give you.”

He huffed and rolled his eyes. You frowned as his blood pressure displayed then you realized the cuff was out of place. You moved over to fix it so you could get an accurate reading. As soon as you’d finished, a hand wrapped around your wrist. His hold wasn’t tight. Not yet.

“Let go of me.”

“Get me some more pain meds. This fucking hurts.”

You tried to pull your hand from his grip but he only tightened it.

“Hul—” was all you managed to get out before he jerked you forward with all of his considerable strength and your side collided with the bed rail, forcing all the air from your lungs with a grunt.

Pain flared through you and before you could suck in a good breath, Frank ran into the room shouting, “Hula hoop in five” over his shoulder.

“Release her. Right now,” he demanded as he grabbed both of the man’s wrists, but the patient only seemed to hold onto you more tightly. People poured into the room as your eyes flooded with tears. You jerked your arm just as Langdon got Smith to let go and your elbow flew back and hit the asshole in the nose. His howl of pain cut through the air but you ignored it.

Hands found your arms and steered you from the room. It took a moment for you to realize Dana and Robby were talking to you as they led you into a different room. You sucked in a breath and willed yourself to focus, to calm down.

“You’re okay,” Robby said as he helped you sit on the edge of the bed. “Breathe for me, sweetheart.”

You followed the breathing pattern he was doing, shaky but better than you had been. Seeing you’d calmed somewhat, Robby looked at Dana. “Call Jack.”

“No,” you said instantly.

Both of them looked at you with lifted brows and wide eyes.

You shook your head. “He’s slept like shit all week, Robby. I’m not bleeding. No head injury. It can wait.”

Robby huffed as he pressed his lips together. “He would want to know about this.”

“And I’ll tell him. Later.”

Robby shook his head and you could tell he wanted to argue but thankfully he didn’t. “What exactly happened?”

You went through the story as quickly and precisely as you could. When you finished he looked first at your already bruising wrist then at your ribs. He pressed gently and you hissed as pain flared. “Get the portable x-ray in here for these ribs. Might as well do the wrist just to be sure,” he instructed.

“That’s not necessary, Robby. My wrist is fine and even if the ribs are broken, it’s minor. The treatment will be the same.”

He straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “If they’re broken, you’re going to need more than the three days I’m already making you take.”

“Robby—”

“You can get the scans or I can call Jack. Your choice.”

You said nothing, just gave him a disgruntled expression which you supposed was answer enough. He left after telling Dana to let him know when the x-rays were done. Dana shook her head as she typed on the computer. “You’re as stubborn as that man of yours. You know he’s gonna be pissed you didn’t call.”

“I’ll handle it. I’m just ready for this day to be over.”

“Well, you’re in luck because once your workup is finished you’re going home,” Dana said turning to you.

“No, Dana,” you pleaded. “If Robby’s making me take three days off, I need the money. I’ll work on admin stuff or something. Please.”

She sighed. “Let’s see what the scans say first.”

Jack was in a mood when he arrived three hours early for his shift. He knew it, but there didn’t seem much he could do about it. He hadn’t seen you for more than a few minutes at a time all week and it was driving him insane. On top of that, he was only catching a couple hours of sleep at a time. He’d come in early just to get a chance to spend some time with you, even if you were working.

He didn’t even have the opportunity to find you before he was pulled into a trauma, passing his bag off to a nurse. His gaze kept finding the door as he worked to save a middle schooler that had been hit by a car. He was used to working with you, to the rhythm the two of you had when you worked together. As everything he tried failed, he couldn’t help but think maybe, just maybe, things would have been different if you were there with him.

They spent forty-five minutes working on the boy before they called it. Jack stripped his PPE and tossed it in the bin before walking out of the room. His ear immediately picked up the sound of your quiet laughter as you sat at a computer at the hub, Perlah leaning on the counter in front of you telling you something.

He’d been trying to save the life of a child and you’d been here just…what? Gossiping? Irritation slithered up Jack’s spine and as soon as Perlah stepped away, he strode straight to you. He ignored the way your eyes lit up when you saw him as he took in the granola bar in your hand and the juice box at your elbow. Were you fucking serious?

“Jack—”

He cut you off with a scowl. “I’m glad you have time to sit on your fucking ass and have a snack while patients are fucking dying. We could have used your help in there. I could have used your help in there, but don’t let me fucking interrupt.”

As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to take them back. When he saw the tears in your eyes and the tremble in your bottom lip, he wanted to fall at your feet and beg forgiveness. “Honey—”

“Don’t you honey her, you asshole. Fuck off, Abbot,” Dana snapped, resting a hand on your shoulder. When he hesitated, she pointed down the hallway. “You heard me. Go.”

He did as ordered, shoulders slumped and head bowed. God, he was a fucking idiot.

He waited for an hour before circling back to the hub, hoping he could find you or Dana would at least not bite his head off for looking for you. Robby arrived at the same time, glancing around before looking at Dana and asking where you were. Jack grabbed a tablet and pretended he wasn’t listening. “Did you finally get her to go home?”

At that, Jack’s head snapped up. “Why would she need to go home?”

Robby’s brow furrowed as he frowned. “She didn’t tell you?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly give her the chance, did you, Jack?” Dana said, turning to face him.

Robby looked between the two of them. “What did I miss?”

“Abbot here decided to yell at her for taking a break as soon as he saw her.” Dana’s voice was flat and distinctly unimpressed.

Robby ran a hand down his face. “Of all the days…”

“Okay, I fucked up. I get it. Now can someone please tell me what the hell is going on with my girlfriend?”

So, Dana filled him in on your day, starting with the asshole groping you in chairs, to the bitchy patients, to Frank, Robby adding in his two cents occasionally.

And Jack hated that you’d had such an awful day, more that he’d added to it, but it still didn’t answer his question. “That doesn’t explain why she went home.”

Robby and Dana exchanged a look before Robby sighed. “There was an incident with a patient. He grabbed her, pulled her into the bedrail.” Jack froze. “She sprained her wrist and bruised three, maybe four, ribs on her right side.”

“Why the fuck didn’t someone call me?” he asked, feeling nauseous as he pulled out his phone to text Shen.

Dana stared at him with an arched brow. “Because she begged us not to. Said you needed your sleep.”

Jesus, he was an asshole.

You laid on your side on your couch, stretched out due to your ribs when normally you’d curl into a ball. One of your softest blankets was wrapped around your shoulders as you cried. You wiped at your cheeks and sniffed into your tissue. You’d cry for a while then think you were finished, only to start up all over again. And the sobbing hurt your sore ribs. Which only made you cry more.

You didn’t hear your front door opening though it must have because the next thing you knew, Jack was kneeling on the floor in front of you. “Oh, baby.” His hand rested on your cheek and you jerked backward, biting back a wince.

Your hands hastily wiped at your cheeks as you pushed yourself upright. You cleared your throat but didn’t look at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Shen’s covering for me.” He moved closer, only for you to press yourself into the corner of the couch. He stopped and sighed. “Baby, I am so sorry. I came to work early so I could see you. Instead, I got pulled into a trauma and the whole time I just kept thinking if you were there maybe we could save him. Then we lost him and I heard you laughing with Perlah and…I’m a dick”

“Why are you here, Jack?” You were so done with this day and didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to reassure your boyfriend that you didn’t hate him.

“Because I love you and I’m sorry. I went to find you to apologize and found out you’d gone home. Dana and Robby filled me in on everything that happened today.”

“Are you actually sorry or do you just feel guilty?”

He pushed himself up to sit on the couch beside you, leaving just enough space between you that he wasn’t touching you. “I am so fucking sorry. I was in a foul mood and took it out on you, the absolute last person I should be doing that to. Please forgive me?”

You could see the sincerity in his eyes and hear it in his tone. And frankly, you just wanted to cuddle with your boyfriend and forget this day ever happened. “How are you going to make it up to me?”

Tension visibly flowed from him as he scooted closer taking your hands in his. He kissed the back of each one before kissing the bruises ringing your wrist. “First, we’re going to get changed into more comfortable clothing and while we do that, I’m going to look at those ribs.”

“They’re fine, Jack. Robby cleared me,” you insisted.

“Yeah, well, Robby’s not me.” He leaned forward to kiss first one cheek, then the other before kissing your forehead and taking a deep breath. He pulled back to look at you again. “I’m going to check your ribs, then we’ll order food and curl up on the couch together while we watch whatever you want. Sound good?”

“That sounds kind of perfect actually.”

“I really am sorry, baby. It kills me that I made you cry.”

You cupped the side of his face with your hand, tracing your thumb across his skin. “It wasn’t just you. It was the whole day. All I wanted was you and then…” You sucked in a breath as a sob threatened. You did not want to cry anymore than you already had.

Jack shushed you and shifted the two of you so he could wrap an arm around you. “It’s okay, baby. I’m here. I won’t be an asshole anymore.”

You huffed a laugh. “I find that hard to believe.”

“If you weren’t hurt, I would pinch your side for that one. I won’t be an asshole anymore today. How’s that?”

“That I’ll believe.” You nuzzled into his side. “I love you, Jack.”

“I love you too, baby. So fucking much.”

Jack Abbot Masterlist

[mcybank]

Body Keeps Score

pairing — jack abbott x fem!reader

summary — jack used to press his thumb inside of your wrist, just to feel your pulse. he’s been thinking that lately. he’s been thinking about that a lot.

content / trigger warnings — 12.6k words. angst, heavy, heavyyy angst, emotional neglect, reader leaves jack, no explicit breakup scene, hurt/no comfort, medical setting, pulmonary embolism, pulmonary embolism most likely presented inaccurately based on what i could find on wikipedia, reader is unconscious, references to ptsd/ptsd implied, jack’s past military service mentioned, insomnia, crying, lots of themes of loneliness, dissociation compared to being a fugue state, grief, pining, jack not being the very best at this relationship so maybe ooc?

author’s note — yes i have no range all i can write is a yearning man after he massively messes up; i wanna try being more versatile though so send in requests so i can make an attempt at being a Little more creative. i wanted to get this out because i started writing it while season 2 was coming out

The coffee maker had been broken for three days because the carafe wouldn’t click into place anymore, so if you didn’t press down on it while it brewed, the coffee pooled around the base and ran out onto the counter. You’d been meaning to tell Jack. You kept forgetting. Or maybe you kept remembering at the wrong times—when he was asleep, when he was in the shower, when he was already halfway out the door—and so for three days you’d been holding the carafe down while scrolling on your phone with the other. The kitchen did permanently smell of burnt coffee because some of it still got under there and cooked against the warmer. Nobody had complained, though.

You were holding the carafe down now. 

It was 6:47 in the morning. The light through the kitchen window was the same shade as weak tea. You’d forgotten your socks again, so your feet were going cold against the tile. You’d pulled the cuffs of your sleep shorts down as far as they’d go. You hadn’t slept. You’d gone to bed at eleven and lain in the dark for a while, just to get up at two and read on the couch. You’d ate a piece of toast at four.

He was meant to be home at six-thirty. It was 6:48 now. You checked the clock on the microwave, the clock on the stove, and the clock on your phone, all of which disagreed by between thirty seconds and two minutes, and none of which mattered because the only clock that mattered was the sound of his key in the lock, and you hadn't heard it yet.

You kept thinking about the fucking carafe. 

You kept thinking if you told him, if when he came in that you had to hold the thing down, he’d put his hand over yours and it would become a thing. A small, but real thing. You'd been living on smaller ones lately. The other night he'd touched the back of your neck when he passed you in the hallway and you'd thought about it for two days.

The coffee finished. You let go of the carafe. You poured two mugs—his first, the one with the chip on the rim that he insisted he liked because it made the coffee taste better, which wasn't true but was the kind of thing he said sometimes, the kind of thing that used to make you laugh—and then yours, the one your sister had given you for your twenty-eighth birthday, the one with the hairline crack that had been there so long you'd stopped worrying it would split. You put two sugars in his. You put nothing in yours. You stood at the counter holding both mugs by their handles and you waited.

You’d been putting two sugars in Jack’s coffee for almost three years that you’d started doing it without thinking. You thought, briefly, about not putting sugar in his, about making his coffee wrong. You thought about whether he’d notice. You wanted him to notice. No, you didn’t want him to notice. You put the two sugars in, and stirred them with the small spoon you always used. The wrong coffee would have been a test, you realized, and you weren’t ready to give a test you already knew the answer to. 

6:53.

You set the mugs down. You picked them up. You set them down again. You went to the window and looked out at the parking lot like you were sixteen and waiting for a boy to pull up, except you were thirty-one and you lived with him and there was no reason to be standing at the window except that you couldn't sit down. Sitting down would mean admitting you were waiting. Standing was a thing you happened to be doing in the kitchen near the window. It wasn't the same.

You heard the key jangle at 7:04. 

Your body reacted the same way it had been reacting for three years now. There was an involuntary lift in your chest, this small gladness, and the fleeting, euphoric thought of oh good, Jack’s here. It happened milliseconds before you could decide whether you were allowed to feel it anymore; it happened in the half-second between the key turning and the door opening. You hated that it still happened. You hated that you were unsure whether you hated it. 

He came in. He looked at you. He eyed the mugs on the counter. He looked back at you.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” you said. 

He left his jacket on and held onto his bag. He stood in the doorway like a man who’d come into the wrong apartment and was figuring out how to exit without being mean about it. His hair was flat on one side from where he’d been pushing his locks through it. There was something on the cuff of his scrubs, a dried, dark spot. He—like always—smelled like the hospital, and underneath that he smelled like himself, and underneath that, faintly, he smelled like coffee that wasn’t yours.

He’d stopped somewhere on his way home.

You filed that thought away into this ever-growing compartment of Jack your subconscious mind had started months ago, and your conscious mind was just catching on. You were getting good at filing things away. You had a whole drawer of them now, in your head, organized chronologically: the night he hadn't come to bed; the morning he'd left without saying goodbye; the Tuesday he'd told you he was too tired to talk and then you'd heard him on the phone in the bathroom, laughing, low, at something somebody else had said. You didn't open the drawer. You just kept putting things in it. You'd open it later. You'd open it when you were ready.

“I made coffee,” you said, because that was how it was supposed to go. That was how it always went. 

“I had some,” he said.

“Okay.”

He was looking past you, at the cabinet behind your head, at nothing, you realized. He’d hadn’t met your eyes since he came in, and you were realizing you had stopped considering it avoiding, because to avoid would mean he was putting in the effort to. When had this become the nature of it all? You couldn’t remember the last time he looked at you. You were going to remember the not remembering later. When had you become a thing his eyes had learned to skip over?

“Long night?” you asked.

“Yeah.”

You waited with bated breath. There used to be a ‘yeah,’ then a story. There used to be a ‘yeah, this guy came in, you won’t believe what he did to his hand.’ He’d sit at the counter and tell you, gesturing with his coffee, and you’d put your chin on your palm and listen with both ears. Sometimes you’d laugh and sometimes you wouldn’t and once you’d cried. He’d reached across the counter and put his thumb under your eye and say, “Hey. Hey. Come here.” And then you’d go around the corner and he’d hold you for a long time without saying anything. 

You waited.

“I’m gonna shower,” he said. 

“Okay.” 

He moved past you without touching you. There was a moment—a half-second, less, the time it took for him to pass behind you in the narrow space between the counter and the table—when you felt the air shift. The possible moment he could have put a hand on your hip, on the small of your back, on the top of your head; when he could have done any of the small unthinking touches he used to do without thinking. But he moved through the space like you were a piece of furniture he was navigating around. You heard the bathroom door close. You heard the shower turn on.

You stood at the counter for a while.

You picked up his mug, the one with the chipped rim, and you held it with both hands. It was still warm. The two sugars hadn't dissolved all the way; you could feel the grit at the bottom when you tilted it. You thought about pouring it out. You thought about drinking it yourself. You thought about a lot of things.

You set it down.

You sat at the table. You hadn't sat down all morning. Your hands were colder than they should've been. You put them between your thighs to warm them up. You looked at the chip on the rim of his mug, the small white triangle of it where the ceramic had broken away two years ago—you'd done it, actually, you'd been washing dishes and you'd knocked it against the faucet and you'd stood there holding it and almost cried because it was his favorite, and he'd come up behind you and looked at it and laughed and said ‘Baby, it's a mug, it's fine, I like it better now,’ and he'd kissed the top of your head and taken it out of your hands and put it back in the cabinet—and a thought came unbidden to you, one of those with clarity that came in the morning after a night of no sleep. 

He doesn’t love me anymore. 

You hadn’t decided the thought. It arrived, came through the kitchen window like a weak-tea light and the scent of burnt coffee. The thought sat across the table from you with folded arms as it waited for you to say something back.

You sat there for a long time, listening to the shower run, and somewhere far away you could hear a car door slamming and a dog barking and the building above you starting to wake up, all of it the wrong sounds for this hour, all of it the sounds of a day beginning, and you sat at your kitchen table in your sleep shorts with your cold feet on the tile and you thought, okay.

The shower kept running. You got up to hold the carafe down for the second pot.

It was for you because the act of making coffee was the only thing your hands knew how to do at the moment, and your hands needed something to do or you were going to start crying at the kitchen table, and you weren't going to start crying at the kitchen table because if he came out of the shower and found you crying you would have to explain it, and you didn't have an explanation that would fit in the space he was willing to give you.

‘You don’t love me anymore,’ it’s not a sentence you could say out loud to Jack. It was a sentence you could barely say to yourself. You'd thought it once and now it was in the room and you needed to do something with your hands.

You filled the carafe at the sink. The water ran cold over your wrist and you watched the little bones move under your skin and you thought about how he used to take your hand sometimes and turn it over and press his thumb to the inside of your wrist, just there, where the pulse was, and hold it, like he was checking and making sure. You used to ask him what he was doing and he’d always say, ‘Nothing.’ Then, he’d add, ‘I just like knowing.’

You hadn't felt his thumb on your wrist in—you didn't know. You couldn't remember the last time. That was the thing about the things he used to do. They stopped happening and you didn't notice on the day they stopped, you noticed three weeks later when you reached for the memory of the last time and it wasn't where you'd left it.

You poured the water into the machine. You pressed the button. You held the carafe down.

The shower was still running. The shower had been running for twenty-two minutes.

The coffee maker beeped.

You let go of the carafe. You poured. You added milk—too much, your hand slipped, you didn't bother to fix it—and you took the mug to the table and sat down and you didn't drink it, you just put your hands around it and held on.

You thought about your sister.

You thought about your sister, the phone call you’d had with her four months ago in October. You’d been on a walk and she’d asked how Jack was and you’d said he was good.

She’d been quiet on the other line for a second too long, which meant she'd already heard the answer in your voice and was just giving you the chance to say it out loud. You’d told her you were fine, you were fine. You’d meant it. You were fine in October. You'd been worried about him but you'd been fine. And she'd let it go, because she was good like that, because she didn't push, and you'd gotten off the phone and kept walking and not thought about it again.

You were thinking about it now because you realized she knew before you did. 

You were thinking about how lonely had been a slow leak. How you couldn't point to a day. How if someone asked you, later, about when it started, you wouldn’t have an answer that would satisfy them, you'd just have a list of small things and the dawning understanding that the small things had been a shape that had been apparent to everyone but you. 

The shower stopped.

You looked up.

The silence after the shower was always loud, for the apartment adjusted, the pipes ticked, the bathroom fan still spun. You heard him moving around in there. The squeak of his palm on the foggy mirror. The click of the cabinet. The small domestic sounds of a man getting ready to come out and face his life. You sat at the table with your hands around your mug and you thought, very clearly, very calmly to not ask him.

Don't ask him what's wrong. Don't ask him if he's okay. Don't ask him if he still wants this. Don't ask him anything. If you ask him he will tell you and you cannot un-hear what he tells you and you are not ready, you are not ready, you are not ready.

He came out in sweatpants and a t-shirt, toweling his hair, as he balanced on his crutches. The steam came out with him in a soft cloud, and for one half-second—the half-second before he saw you sitting there—his face was open. Tired. Wrecked. Human. You saw him. You saw the man you'd loved for almost three years, the man who'd stood at this counter in October and pressed his mouth to the top of your head and asked, rhetorically, what he would do without you. The man who you were pretty sure you would have married if he'd asked, the man you'd been so quietly, stupidly, completely sure of that you'd never even let yourself worry he might not be sure of you.

He saw you and his face closed.

It was the smallest thing. It was a thing you'd seen happen maybe a hundred times in the last few months and never quite let yourself name. It was like a door shut behind his eyes. The towel kept moving in his hand but something in his shoulders went still, the way an animal goes still when it sees you coming.

He stood there with the towel around his neck. He was looking at the floor between you. He had a tan line on the back of his neck from his work badge lanyard, you'd noticed it last week, a small pale stripe. You'd thought about pointing it out to him and you hadn't, because you weren't sure anymore which kinds of small noticings were welcome.

You opened your mouth.

You were sitting at the table with your hands around your mug and you'd made yourself a promise eleven seconds ago and you opened your mouth anyway because some part of you was already past being careful, some part of you was already at the bottom of the hill and rolling, some part of you had decided it would rather know than keep not-knowing, and you opened your mouth and you spoke, “Jack.”

His gaze was still fixed to the floor. “What?”

“Are we okay?”

The towel stopped moving. The kitchen got very quiet. You could hear your own heartbeat in your ears in the slow heavy way it did when you were about to be told something that was going to rearrange you, and you sat very still at the table with your hands around your mug and you watched him decide.

He took a long time to decide, enough that you understood what the answer was going to be. He was giving you mercy, you supposed, to prepare your body. You felt your shoulders settle. You felt your jaw loosen. You felt the very small private animal of yourself curl up tight somewhere behind your ribs and go quiet, the way it did before bad news, the way it had done in the doctor's office when you were nineteen, the way it had done at your grandfather's bedside, the way it had done—once, years ago, in a different life—when a different man had told you a different version of the same thing. You knew this feeling. Your body knew this feeling. Your body was already mourning.

He pulled the towel off of his neck and held it beside the crutches.

“I don’t know.”

You waited, eyes fixated on him. 

“I don’t—” He started, then stopped. “I’m tired. I’m really tired. Can we not do this right now?”

“Okay,” you said. 

“I just got off a fourteen-hour—”

“Okay.” 

“Don’t—Please don’t ‘okay’ me that way.”

“What way?”

“Like that. Like you’re—” He lifted his free hand up from the hold on his crutch and gestured vaguely in your direction. “Like you’ve decided what I’m gonna say.”

“Have you?”

“What?”

“Decided.”

He looked at you for the first time since he’d come home. His eyes were on your face as opposed to something past it, and you almost flinched, because you'd forgotten what it felt like to be seen by him and the remembering hurt worse than the forgetting had. His eyes were red. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, even though he'd slept yesterday, you'd watched him sleep yesterday, you'd brought the blackout curtain closed all the way like you always did and you'd put a glass of water on his nightstand like you always did and he'd slept for six hours and woken up and gone to work and now he was standing in your kitchen looking like he hadn't slept in a year.

“Don’t,” he said, voice quiet. “Don’t push this on me right now. Not right this second.”

“When, then? Tomorrow? Next week? March?” Your voice was very even, you were almost impressed by it. “Just tell me when, Jack. I’ll write it down. I’ll wait.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head as he turned away. He was going to walk out. He was going to walk into the bedroom and close the door and you were going to sit at this table for another hour and then go to work and come home and find him gone again and the whole thing would go on, the whole thing would keep going, the slow leak, the quiet drawer, the small white triangle on the rim of the mug.

“I just—” he started, stopping at the threshold of the bedroom. He had his back to you. “I just don’t know how to do this anymore.”

You did not move an inch. You did not move and you did not move and you did not move. You sat at the table with your hands around your mug, watching the back of his head, for he had said it without facing you. He’d hadn’t been brave enough to say it to your face, even though that was the truest sentence he’d said in a month, he’d said it to a doorframe.

You set your mug down on the table.

The sound it made was very small. A soft tock. You'd set it down a thousand times before. You'd set it down this morning. The mug didn't know anything had changed. The mug was a mug. You looked at it. You looked at the small ring of moisture it had left on the wood. You looked at your hands on either side of it, palms-up, empty.

“Okay,” you said.

You went to work that day. You weren’t sure what happened, what you wore, who you talked to, whether you ate lunch, and you won’t be able to. The day will be a white space in your head. A fugue state boiled down to its lowest, least harmful level. Your body had gone to work and answered emails and sat in a meeting and microwaved something for lunch and your mind had been at the kitchen table in your apartment, hands around a mug, listening to Jack’s words like a bruise that keeps being a bruise even after you stop pressing it.

You'd sat in the parking lot of your building for eleven minutes before you'd made yourself get out of the car. You'd looked up at your window—third floor, second from the left, the one with the plant on the sill that you'd bought him for his birthday last year, a stupid little succulent he'd named Gerald for reasons he'd never adequately explained—and you'd seen that the blackout curtain was still closed, which meant he was still asleep. You had maybe forty minutes before he got up for his shift, and you'd thought about driving away. You'd actually thought about it. You'd thought about driving to your sister's, two hours north, and walking into her kitchen and sitting down at her table and letting her ask you what was wrong. You'd thought about it long enough that your hands had moved to the gear shift. And then you hadn't done it, because some part of you was still hoping, standing at the kitchen counter at six-forty-seven in the morning holding two mugs of coffee. Some part of you was going to keep standing there until he told you, in plain words, to stop.

His mug from the morning was still on the counter. The coffee in it had a film on top now, a dull skin you could break with the tip of your finger. 

You sat on the couch in the living room and he got up at six-fifteen. You heard the alarm first—the soft one he'd set when you started staying over because the regular one had made you flinch—and then the rustle of the sheets and the soft thud of his feet on the floor and the particular small sound he made every morning when he stood up, a half-grunt, the huh of a man whose body had been disagreeing with him for years and who'd made peace with it. You'd loved that sound. You'd loved being the only person who knew it. 

He came out.

He was dressed for work — black t-shirt, scrubs slung over his shoulder, hair still wet from the shower he must have just taken, the second one in twelve hours — and he stopped when he saw you on the couch.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“You’re home.”

“Yeah.”

He stood there for a second like he was going to say something. You watched him consider it, as though there were random english words bouncing in his mind he was trying to piece together to get what he wanted. You didn’t know what. Or you did know what. You weren’t sure. 

“You want me to turn on the light?” he asked.

“It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

He went into the kitchen. You heard him open the fridge. You heard him close it without taking anything out. You heard him fill a glass of water at the sink and drink it and set the glass down on the counter—on the counter, where you'd find it later and wash it and put it away—and then he came back into the living room and he stood in the doorway and he looked at you.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” he said.

You looked at him, trying to force your lips to not turn downwards from the corner. “Are you?”

Your question came out sharper than you wanted it to. The edge had been put on it by the part of you that had been awake for more than a day and had realized, in its wake, that Jack had unlearned how to meet your eyes.

A muscle moved in his jaw. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry—yeah.”

“What are you sorry for, Jack?” Your voice still had that even thing in it, that surprising calm thing, like someone else was operating you from inside. “What part are you sorry for?”

“I don’t—” he said, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

You shrugged stiffly. “What you’re sorry for.”

“I’m sorry I was short with you. I was tired. I shouldn’t have—”

“You told me you didn’t know how to do this anymore.” 

He closed his eyes, and you could see the way his face twisted at the action. “That’s not what I meant. I can’t think straight when I haven’t slept and you’re—” 

You cleared your throat. “Did you mean it?”

He didn't answer for long enough that you understood he was going to lie about it, and he understood that you understood, and you both sat in that mutual understanding for a second, in the gray light, in the quiet apartment, and you watched him choose.

“I meant I was tired.”

It was the worst possible answer. It was the answer of a man who knew that yes would end the conversation and no would be a lie he couldn't make himself tell, and so he'd found a third door and walked through it, and you stood on the other side of the door and you looked at it and you thought, oh.

Oh. He’s a coward.

This was not a thought you had ever had about him. You had thought he was a lot of things. You had thought he was guarded and tired and weighed down and difficult; you had thought he was kind, in a private way, in a way most people didn't get to see; you had thought he was the smartest person in most rooms and you had thought he knew it and didn't care; you had thought, sometimes, when he was sleeping with his hand on your stomach, that he was the love of your life. You had never thought he was a coward. You had never thought he was the kind of man who would refuse to answer a yes-or-no question from a woman who had loved him because answering would cost him something he wasn't willing to pay.

You were thinking it and you were watching your face not show it and you were watching him relax, fractionally, because he thought he'd gotten away with it, because you hadn't pushed and he thought the conversation was ending in the same manner the conversations had been ending for months now, with both of you agreeing not to look directly at the thing in the middle of the room. And some terrible new part of you—a part that had been born this morning at the kitchen table, a part you didn't recognize and weren't sure you liked—wanted to let him think it. You wanted to let him walk out the door thinking he'd managed it. You wanted to give him this one last small dishonest peace before you took everything else away. 

“Okay.”

He looked mildly surprised, but he hardly showed it. “Are you okay? Are we good?”

“Yeah, Jack.”

He looked at you for a long second and you held his gaze, and his face flickered—a part of him that knew that your yes was one with a stone in it—and he chose, once again, to not ask. He chose, again, to be tired.

“Okay,” he said. “I gotta go. I’m gonna be late.” Then, he added, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

You nodded. 

He started coming towards the couch. You hadn’t expected that. You'd been bracing for him to just leave, to grab his bag and go, and instead he came over to the couch and he stood in front of you and he leaned down and he kissed the top of your head—like he was your father, like he was your friend, like he was anyone but the man who used to kiss you on the mouth at any opportunity he received—nd his hand brushed the back of your neck, briefly, and he smelled like soap and like him and like the faint trace of the antiseptic that never really came off him.

He said into your hair, quietly, “Get some rest, baby.”

He hadn’t called you that in seven weeks. You had not meant to keep count. You had become aware, somewhere around the fifth week, that you were keeping count in the back of your head, the small ruthless math of being unloved by someone who used to love you. You were certain he was saying goodbye.

He didn't know he was saying it. He thought he was being kind. He thought he was patching it. He thought he was leaving for his shift and he'd come home in the morning and the two of you would keep doing what you'd been doing, the slow leak and the quiet drawer.

He had no idea, but your body knew. Your body had known since the kitchen this morning. Your body had been ahead of you all day. Your body was, even now, in the small private dark of itself, already at the door, already in the car, already three exits down the freeway with one suitcase and the mug from your sister already gone, already gone, already gone. 

“You too, Jack.”

He pulled back and looked at you. You saw the whole man, you saw the version of him that loved you and the version of him that didn't know how to and the version of him that was about to lose you and didn't know it yet, all of him stacked up in one face for one stupid second in the gray February light of your living room, and you almost said it.

Don’t go. I’m going to leave you. I’m going to leave you tonight, while you’re at work. I’m going to be gone when you come home. This is our last chance. Look at me. Tell me to stay. 

You let him go. 

He picked up his bag from the chair by the door. He picked up his keys from the bowl. He paused, very briefly, with his hand on the doorknob—you knew you would lie awake and replay that pause and try to decide if it had meant anything, if he had almost turned around, if he had felt the thing you were feeling and chosen against it the way he chose against everything now— and then he opened the door and he went out and he closed it behind him.

It came up through your stomach. It came up through your chest. It came out of your eyes without your permission and without any of the sounds you'd been expecting, like a quiet steady leaking, the way a faucet leaked, the way a roof leaked, a small humiliating involuntary grief of a body that had been holding still for fourteen hours and couldn't hold still anymore. You sat on the couch and you cried and you didn't wipe your face, because there was no one to see, because the apartment was empty

Because the man who used to put his thumb under your eye and say ‘Hey. Hey. Come here’ was on the freeway going to the hospital and he was never going to do that again.

When you stood up. Your legs were stiff. You went to the bathroom and you washed your face with cold water and you looked at yourself in the mirror —your eyes were red, your mouth was doing a thing—and you decided to go to the closet. 

You grabbed the suitcase and set it on the bed. It still had the tag from the August trip on the handle. Some hotel in Vermont. You'd gone for a long weekend. He'd held your hand on the walk to dinner the first night and you'd thought this was it, the thing you wanted for the rest of your life. 

The tag had your handwriting on it, with his name and the hotel address as the contact—you'd filled it out for him at the airport because he'd been on the phone with the hospital—and you stood looking at the tag with your own handwriting saying JACK ABBOTT in your slightly-too-loopy capitals. 

You took the tag off the handle. You set it on the dresser. You did not throw it away. You weren't ready to throw things away yet. You were ready to take things out of the closet and put them in a suitcase. You'd worry about throwing things away later.

The kid wouldn’t stop crying. Jack didn’t blame the kid. The kid was four and he had a piece of LEGO lodged so far up his left nostril that it was going to need a procedure room, and the mother was crying when she came in, and he knew she’d have to explain to everyone later it was only ninety seconds on the phone. Jack put his hand on her shoulder to stop her from crying, and she didn’t. So, for about thirty minutes, the kid and his mother were like a background noise that nobody had asked for. 

He was washing his hands now. He'd gotten the LEGO out—it had been a small red one, a 1x2, and he’d held it up in the forceps so the kid could see, and joked that he’d grown a LEGO, and the kid had laughed once through the snot and then started crying again, and Jack had handed the LEGO to the mother in a specimen cup and told her she could keep it as a souvenir, which had been a joke, which she had taken seriously, and she had thanked him three times on the way out. He was thinking about whether he could get away with eating the second half of his sandwich before the next chart hit.

It was 10:47. The board was light for a Tuesday, which meant the q-word wasn't allowed out loud, which meant he was thinking it in his head, which counted, which meant somewhere in the city right now someone was about to do something dumb with a ladder. He'd been doing this long enough to know better. He kept thinking about it anyway. The board was light. He was going to eat his sandwich.

“You owe me twenty bucks.”

Dana, who’d decided this was her twice-in-a-blue-moon night shift, behind him.

“For what?”

“LEGO. I had a LEGO.”

“You bet on a LEGO? In a four-year-old’s nose?”

“Mateo had a marble. Shen took penny. Ellis took battery.” 

He dried his hands. He turned around. 

“Eat the sandwich,” Dana said.

“Mhm.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna eat it, Dana.” 

He went to the break room. The sandwich was where he'd left it on top of his locker—turkey on rye, the rye going a little stale at the edges, made by him—and he took it back out to the desk and ate it standing up.

He got two bites in before Ellis called from the desk, “Abbott.”

“Hm?”

“Pittsburgh General called. They’ve got a transfer they want to send us.”

“Why?”

“They’re full.”

“Liars.”

“They say they’re full.”

“Tell ‘em to go cry about it.”

“I told them you said that.”

“Really,” Jack drawled.

“I told them we had capacity. Female, early-thirties, came in two hours ago with shortness of breath, chest pain, hemoptysis. Clots in her lungs. Both sides. PE. She passed out in triage. They had to put a tube in to help her breathe and they started her on blood thinners but she's getting worse, not better. They want her transferred.”

Jack chewed. “How bad?”

“They’re scared her heart can’t keep up. They don't know if they need to push the clot-busters or just keep her supported and pray. They want a second set of eyes before they pull the trigger, and we’ve got the beds.”

He swallowed. “Fine. ETA?”

“Twenty minutes. They’re loading her now.”

“Bay?”

“Two.”

“Tell Mateo to set up. I want the ultrasound at the bedside before she rolls in, not after.”

“Already did.”

“You’re showing off.”

“I’m always showing off, Doctor.”

He took another bite of his sandwich. He set the sandwich down. He knew the sandwich would go unfinished. He knew it moment Ellis had opened her mouth, which was a thing he should have learned by now and somehow kept not learning. He looked at it for a second. He picked it up. He took one more bite for the road. He chewed it on the way to bay 2.

Bay 2 was ready. Mateo had the ultrasound at the head of the bed and a tray of intubation supplies on the side table and a runner had hung two bags of saline on the IV pole and the monitor was on, blank and waiting, and the overhead was at the low setting, which Jack liked, which he had asked for once two years ago and which had become a thing that just happened now when he was running the bay, the kind of small institutional accommodation a department made for an attending it had decided to keep.

“You good?” he said to Mateo.

“Always.”

Jack pulled a gown off the rack and shrugged it on over his scrubs. He pulled gloves out of the box on the wall and he stood at the head of the bed and he waited.

He liked the waiting.

This was something he had figured out about himself a long time ago, in a different uniform, in a different country. He liked the minute before. The minute when you knew something was coming and didn't yet know what it was going to ask of you. Other people hated that minute. Other people filled it with chatter or with checking their phones or with the small fidgeting of a body that didn't know what to do with itself. He liked it. He stood very still and he let his hands hang at his sides and he ran the algorithm in his head—bilateral PEs, borderline pressures, tachy to the one-thirties, possible RV strain—and he felt the small clean focus of his brain narrowing down to the work, and underneath the focus, almost imperceptible, the thing he wasn't going to look at directly, the small persistent low-grade hum that lived in his chest now and that he had stopped trying to name.

“Two minutes out,” Ellis called from the desk.

“Copy.”

He pulled his mask up over his nose. He flexed his fingers in the gloves. He looked at the empty gurney space at the foot of the bed and he waited.

The doors banged open at 11:04.

EMS came through first, two of them. The gurney they were pushing had a person on it and the person had a tube coming out of her mouth and her chest was rising in the small mechanical way of a chest being ventilated by someone else, and Jack stepped forward to the head of the bed and he said, ‘gimme the report,’ and the medic at the head said, “Thirty-three-year-old female, history per General is unremarkable, presented to them at twenty-one hundred with two hours of progressive shortness of breath, syncopal episode in triage—”

Jack was examining her chart. He usually took the chart in one hand and he scanned the top line for the name, DOB, the allergies, and that was his muscle memory. His hands started it before his eyes did. His eyes did it before his brain did. His eyes landed on the name on the top of the chart and his brain—

His brain stopped.

His brain stopped like a needle lifted off mid-song. The whole bay went very quiet, which it wasn’t, for it was full of sound—monitors pinging, the medics still talking, Mateo on the other side of the bed saying something—but inside Jack’s head, it was very, very quiet. It was a sort of quiet he hadn’t heard in a long time; it came before bad things, as a result of the absence of his own thoughts.

He looked at the name on the chart. He looked at it for what he would later think was a long time and was actually about a second and a half.

He looked up, and he looked at the face. The ace had a tube taped to the corner of your mouth. Your hair was—someone had pulled it back at General and tied it off with those rubber things they kept in the jar at every ER—

Your face. Your face was your face.

Your face was the face he had—your face was the face that had—your face. 

Your face was older.

That was the first thing his brain managed to think after it had finished stopping. Your face was older by two and a half years. There were small things that were different. There was a barely-there line between your eyebrows that had not been there. There was a small softness around your mouth he was trying to name, but failing. Your hair was a slightly different color by a few shades. Maybe you’d stopped getting the highlights you used to. Maybe you’d started getting something different. Jack was clueless what you’d started to do differently, but he knew that you had.

Two and a half years had happened to your face without him, and his brain started taking a clinical inventory of the years he had not been allowed to see. His brain—for the first time in much too long—understood that time had been real. He’d understood time had happened, and you’d been alive for it. That you’d aged, and he’d not been there. 

His eyes went down to your throat. He’d made an involuntary decision to look. There was a thin gold chain resting there he didn’t recognize. It was small and the kind of chain you’d buy for yourself or have given it to you from someone else. This chain, Jack realized, had been on your neck for an unknown amount of time, in some unknown place, during unknown evenings he couldn’t be a part of. 

His eyes went down further. To your hand on the sheet. To your right thumb. The cuticle was bitten. The cuticle was bitten down to the bed of the nail, the way you used to bite it when you were anxious about something, the way you bit it the night before a big work meeting or the morning of a doctor's appointment or the time you were waiting to hear back from the bone scan on your aunt. The cuticle had been bitten recently. You had been anxious recently. He did not know what about. He did not get to know what about.

“Dr. Abbott?” Mateo called from across the bed, and it sounded like his voice came through a long tunnel. “Dr. Abbot, everything good?”

His hands were on the chart. His hands were still on the chart, and his eyes were on your face, and his mouth was not doing anything. His mouth was a part of his body he had forgotten about. He could feel his pulse in his neck. He could feel his pulse in his hands. He could feel the small mean drop of his stomach that he hadn't felt in two and a half years and that he recognized immediately, the way you recognized a smell from a place you used to live.

“Get me Dana,” he said to Mateo. His voice was the voice he used in the ER. His voice was a small miracle. He didn't know how his voice was doing that.

“Doctor—”

“Now. Please.”

Mateo scrambled off. Jack looked back down at you. 

You were—the color was bad. He could see that without looking at the monitor. Your face was the wrong color, it was the exact one of someone whose heart was not pushing blood the way it was supposed to, and your chest was rising in the wrong way, because it was one that was being made to breathe. There was a small patch of dried blood at the corner of your mouth where the tube must have nicked you on its way in, and your eyelashes—Jesus fucking Christ.

Your eyelashes. He had not—there had not been a single day in the last two and a half years when he had not thought about your eyelashes, not specifically, not the small fact of their existence, the fact that they sat on your cheeks when your eyelids were closed, the small fringe of them, the small fringe of them that he had—that he used to—

He stepped back from the gurney, his prosthetic causing him to stumble back slightly. He didn’t mean to, his body had done it. His body had taken one step away from you and his body was, right now, his body was making a series of very small decisions about him without consulting him, his body was the only thing in the room with any sense, his body was controlling him because his brain was haywire.

“Jack,” Dana said firmly at his elbow.

He couldn’t look at her.

“Jack. Look at me.”

He looked at Dana.

Dana had her hand on his elbow. Dana was looking at his face. And Dana. Dana was a woman who had known him for a long time and who was looking at his face and Dana's own face did a thing, did a small terrible quick thing, and then it didn't do the thing anymore, and her hand was on his elbow and her voice was very low and very even and she was saying, “Step out.”

“No.”

“Jack.”

“No, Dana.”

“You can’t—”

“I know. I know what I can’t. Get Ellis. Ellis runs it. I want eyes on. I am not leaving.”

“Jack.”

“I am not leaving, Dana.”

She looked at him for a second that felt like a year, the small assessing look of a woman who had run more codes than most cardiologists and who was, right now, doing math, fast math, the kind of math that took into account him and her and the patient on the gurney and the resident across the bed and the medical board of Pennsylvania and whatever the fuck else lived in Dana’s marvelous head, and then she nodded. 

“Stand at the head. Do not touch her. Tell Ellis everything you know.”

“I don’t—don’t anymore—”

“You know her, Jack. That’s what you know. Tell Ellis what you know about her medically. Allergies. Meds. History. Anything you have. Then you stand at the head and you keep your hands behind your back.”

He nodded, because words were foreign to him right now. So, he nodded. 

Dana squeezed his elbow once and let go and turned for Ellis, and Ellis came at a jog from the desk. Jack moved up to the head of the bed and he stood there and he put his hands behind his back like Dana had said and he looked down at her face and he thought about the kitchen.

He thought about the kitchen for one second, the kitchen at six-fifty-three in the morning, the cold coffee on the counter and the key beside it and the small tag on the suitcase handle in the closet that he hadn't found until two days later when he was looking for something else, the small tag with her handwriting on it and his name on it.

He thought don’t. Not now. Don’t. 

He looked at your face.

He cleared his throat quickly and said, “No allergies. NKDA. She—sulfa makes her stomach hurt but it’s not a real allergy; she’ll say it is because it’s easier. But write down sulfa. She—she was on a dose of OCP a couple years ago, but I don’t know if she still is. I don’t know what she’s on now. I don’t—”

His voice cracked, a little glitch it had not done in a long time. He cleared his throat again.

“She gets migraines, maybe twice a year, with aura. She used to take excedrin for them. I don’t know what she takes now. I don’t know what she takes. No surgeries. Tonsils when she was eleven. That’s it. Non-smoker, was. Is. Drinks socially.”

Ellis nodded. “Got it.”

“She’s—there’s family history. Her mom had a—fuck, she had a—a clotting thing. After her second pregnancy. She was on heparin for a while. Her sister got tested; she got tested. They were both negative. But it’s in the chart somewhere. It should be in the chart.”

“Okay.”

“It is in the chart, Parker. I’m telling you.”

“I believe you, Jack. We’ll look.”

“There’s—she’s got a thing. She said she doesn’t like the idea of being intubated in front of strangers. She’s scared of it. She told me she didn’t want it. If she can hear us, if there’s any way, I know she can’t, but if she can, somebody should tell her she’s safe.”

Ellis looked at him for a moment. “I’ll tell her.”

He nodded and made himself stop. He could feel the next thing he was going to say lining up behind his teeth and he made himself not say it. 

‘She sleeps on her left side. She can’t sleep on her back, it gives her bad dreams. If you have to put her flat for any reason, she’s going to wake up panicking. Just—be ready for it.’ He could feel the small careful instruction-manual of you that he had been keeping in his head for two and a half years, the small useful nothings. ‘She likes the room cold when she sleeps and she gets cold hands when she’s scared. She wants water but never says yes to it, so just put it next to her. She always wants water.’ 

He understood, standing at the head of your bed with his hands behind his back, that none of this was medical. None of that was his to give. None of it belonged in Ellis’s notes about you. Ellis was looking at him for something useful, and the only thing he could think of was that you like the room cold. He could not say it, though what he would not give to be able to spill his guts about you, talk about you to anyone who listened until the sun came up and his throat was raw.

“She’s healthy,” he said. “She—from last time I—she’s healthy.”

“Thanks, Jack,” Ellis nodded again gently and looked at him.

She looked at him with a face he was going to think about later, as she understood in real time, and Ellis, to her enormous credit, the credit of a doctor he was going to think about with gratitude for the rest of his life, did not say anything about it. Ellis took the report from the medic and started moving.

“Okay, let’s get a repeat set of vitals,” she said, turning back to your bed. “Bedside echo, second large-bore IV if she doesn't have one, and someone get me the chart from General, the actual chart, not the summary. Mateo, walk me through the heparin dose.”

Jack stood at the head of the bed with his hands behind his back and he looked down at your face and he did not touch you and he watched your chest rise on the ventilator and he watched the small dried patch of blood at the corner of her mouth and he watched your eyelashes on her cheek and he thought, please.

He stood at the head of your bed with his hands behind his back like a man at a funeral and he thought please, baby and he watched the ventilator breathe for you, and somewhere out at the desk a phone was ringing, and somewhere down the hall a kid with no LEGO in his nose was being discharged with a sticker, and the clock on the wall said 11:07, and Jack Abbott did not move and did not move and did not move.

He thought about how Ellis was good. He’d always known it. He had a file in his head about her, and it was filled it words like competent, fast, doesn’t panic, asks the right questions, and that file was being updated in real time tonight now. Because Ellis, right now, in this bay, with this patient, being the doctor Jack would have wanted in this room for someone he loved if he had been able to choose, which he had not been and could not be, and the choice was Ellis. And Ellis was good, and Jack stood at the head of the bed with his hands behind his back and he watched Collins work and he tried not to be grateful in a way that would make his face do anything.

Mateo gave the probe to Ellis. She took it. She gelled it. She tucked the sheet down off your chest in the small careful way she would for any patient and Jack looked at the ceiling for a half-second because he could not look at your chest under fluorescent light with a stranger's hand moving across it, even Ellis’s hand, even the hand of a doctor he trusted. He looked at the ceiling. The ceiling tile above bay 2 had a small water stain in the shape of nothing, really. The shape of a stain. He had stood under this water stain before. He had stood under it last month and the month before and probably a hundred times. He had never seen it before in his life.

He had the algorithm in his head. He could feel it running. He could feel the part of him that was a doctor doing the thing it did, the small clean calculation of everything to do medically. And underneath, he could feel the other part of him. He could feel the man who had once watched you sleep next to him for six-hundred-and-forty-three nights, and that part was making a sound he could not hear out loud, a small high frantic sound, the sound of a thing being held under water.

“What do you want to do?” Ellis asked.

He realized she knew what to do. Ellis knew exactly what to do. She was asking him because he was the senior attending and because asking him kept him in the room, kept his hands attached to a function, kept him from being a man standing at the head of a gurney watching the love of his life turn the wrong color under fluorescent light. She was throwing him a rope. She was throwing it casually, the way you would throw a rope to someone who didn't yet know they were drowning, and Jack looked at Collins and Collins looked back at him and Collins did not blink and Jack thought, Parker Ellis. Parker Ellis, you good and decent woman. I am going to remember this.

“Half-dose.”

“You sure?”

“She’s young. Full dose risks the bleed. We watch.”

“Agree.”

“Get the Radiology in case.”

“Already paged.”

“You’re showing off again, Ellis.”

“You’re slow tonight, Doctor Abott.”

They looked at each other, and the exchange was the closest thing to mercy he was going to get for a while, and they both understood it, and they both let it pass without naming it, and Ellis turned back to your bed and started working and Jack stayed where he was, at the head, with his hands behind his back, and he watched.

This was a thing he had observed about himself in difficult moments before, mostly in a different uniform in a different country; his perception narrowed in stages. First, the room got smaller; the room got quieter; the room developed a kind of underwater quality, where sound came to him on a small delay, where people's mouths moved a half-second before the words got to him. His own pulse was the loudest thing he could hear. He was at the underwater stage now. He had not been at the underwater stage in a long time. He had forgotten how it was almost peaceful, almost, the small mean peace of a brain that had decided it could not handle the regular speed of things and had slowed everything down.

Your hand was on the gurney with the palm turned up. Someone — the medic, probably, at General, hours ago — had put a pulse ox on your index finger and the small red light of it was glowing through the pad of your finger, and your hand was slack and pale on the white sheet and your fingers were curled in the soft way of a hand whose owner was not currently making decisions about it, and Jack looked at your hand and he thought to make himself stop thinking. 

He could feel his thoughts coming behind him like waves, and he tried to brace and he tried to think don't hard enough that the memory would go around him instead of through him, and it didn't work, it never worked, he had been trying not to think about specific memories of you for two and a half years and he had not once succeeded in not thinking about a memory once it had decided to arrive, and the memory arrived like a crash.

It was a Sunday morning a long time ago, in his apartment, in the bed that had been his apartment's bed before it had been your apartment's bed before it had been his apartment's bed again, and you had been asleep on your side facing him and he had been lying on his side facing you, awake, watching you, in the way he sometimes did and never told you about, and your hand had been on the pillow between your faces with the palm turned up, the way it was turned up now, the small slack curl of your fingers, and he had reached out very slowly so he didn't wake you and he had pressed his thumb to the inside of your wrist, just there, where the pulse was, and he had felt it, the small steady beat of you, and he had thought ‘thank you.’

He had thought it as a sentence with no addressee. He had thought it the way men in foxholes thought it. He had thought thank you, and you had not woken up, and he had taken his thumb off your wrist after a while and you had slept on, and he had lain there for another hour watching you sleep, and that had been a Sunday in — he didn't know. He didn't know what Sunday it had been. He had a lot of Sundays like that one filed away and he had stopped, at some point, trying to keep them in order.

He was at the head of your bed and he wasn’t allowed to touch you. 

Your hand was on the sheet with the palm turned up and the small red light of the pulse ox was glowing through the pad of your index finger and your pulse was being read by a machine instead of by him and Jack stood at the head of the bed and he did not move and he did not move and he did not move.

When the tPA went in, Jack knew it went in and it went around and it found the clot and it started to break it up, and you started to get better the way ice melted, slowly, in increments you couldn't see while you were watching, only in the aggregate, only when you looked away and looked back. 

So the next twenty minutes were a vigil. The next twenty minutes were Jack and Ellis and Mateo and other people standing around your bed and watching the monitor and watching your chest and watching your color, and the monitor pinged in its small mechanical way and your blood pressure stayed at eighty-six and your heart rate stayed at one-forty and Jack stood at the head of the bed and breathed through his nose and counted, in his head, very quietly, because he had nothing else to do with his hands and his mouth and his eyes.

He counted to a hundred.

He counted to a hundred again. 

He was on four hundred when his blood pressure went up by four points. 

“Pressure’s coming up,” Mateo said. “Ninety over fifty-six. Heart rate one-thirty-five.”

When Jack didn’t move, Mateo called his name. 

“I see it, Mateo.”

“Sorry. Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir.”

“Sorry.”

Jack looked at the monitor; he watched your blood pressure. He watched your blood pressure sit at ninety for a few seconds and then go to ninety-two. He watched your heart rate come down from one-thirty-five to one-thirty-two. He watched the numbers and he did not let himself feel anything about the numbers and he stood at the head of the bed and the small slow tide of the room came back up around his ankles and, even though he didn’t, felt like he had one, healthy breath he could take instead of the shallow ones he’d been taking.

He thought, okay. He thought it the way you’d said it that morning. He thought it in your voice, he heard it in your voice, and he stood at the head of the bed and kept repeating the word and he watched the numbers and they kept on being good.

Ellis exhaled. Jack hadn’t even realized Ellis had been holding her breath, and the only reason he noticed it was because she let it out. Ellis shook her head once, very small, and said, “Okay. We’re getting somewhere.” Then, she looked at Jack and said, “Abbott, sit down.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said, not missing a beat.

“You’re gray, Abbott.”

Jack stayed silent because, frankly, he had no idea what color his face was. He had no information about his face—he didn’t care about his face—because it was somewhere far above him being operated by remote. But Ellis was looking at him with a look he’d never seen on her, at least directed on him, and Jack thought he really must’ve looked bad.

“Five minutes,” Ellis said. “Go sit down. Drink some water. I won’t leave her. I’ll call you if anything moves.”

“Please—”

“Five minutes.” 

Jack looked at Ellis, then he looked at you. He was not going to win this one and that the smartest thing he could do was to take the five minutes she was offering and come back functional.

He walked through the bay doors and past the desk and past Dana, who did not look up from the phone, who knew not to look up, who was a woman of great and terrible mercies, and he walked down the hall to the supply closet on the left, and he opened the supply closet and he went in and he closed the door behind him and he stood in the dark for a second and then he turned the light on and he leaned against the metal shelving with the gauze and the saline and the small disposable speculums on it and he put his hands over his face.

Jack hadn’t cried in a long, long time. He wasn’t sure if he still could. The mechanism was there, somewhere, but he had not, since the morning he had come back home and seen your key on the counter and the cold, day-old coffee mug beside it, made it work. He’d come close. He had come close a number of times. He’d stood at his own kitchen counter for too long, his weight foot had gotten sore because of how much pressure he was putting on it, and the tears had not come. The only thing that accompanied him was this tug at his chest that started dull, then grew into this feeling of thousands of tiny knives stabbing into his ribcage. 

He stood with his hands over his face and his back against the shelving and he breathed for a count of four in and a count of six out, which was a thing he had been taught a long time ago by a therapist with a kind face whose name he could not currently remember. He breathed and breathed, but all his brain could conjure up was the trip the two of you never made it on.

The cabin, the one you were supposed to be going to in June, only months after you left. You’d booked it in October, and you’d been excited about it. Jack had been so, so excited about it. You had a running list of things you wanted to do—a hike, a swim in a strange place, a restaurant with things neither of you had heard of—and you’d emailed him the list with the subject line, “june???” and he’d emailed back, “yes ma’am,” and that was that.

He’d gone to the cabin alone four months after you’d left. He’d taken the time off he’d already booked, gotten in his car, and drove four hours to the cabin. He’d checked in under his own name and the receptionist asked if there had been a change to the reservation, because there were two names on it. He knew it was downright silly to have expected you there; he hadn’t run into you in Pittsburgh, so there was no possibility you would have shown up here. He said no, the other person couldn’t make it. The woman at the front desk had nodded politely and given him the keys.

He’d done none of the things on your list. He had sat on the dock and looked at the lake and thought about you. He’d thought about whether you knew the dates of the trip you’d planned. Were you also thinking about the dates? He had thought about whether you were thinking about him thinking about you. He had eaten badly. He had slept badly. 

On the third day, he had walked into the woods behind the cabin and he had sat down on a fallen log and he had stayed on it for an hour as his chest felt like it was caving in. The light had changed while he was on the log. The light had gone from the late afternoon kind to the early evening kind, and at some point he had registered that the light had changed, and he had gotten up off the log and walked back to the cabin, and he had checked out the next day a day early. He had driven home. He had not told anyone he had gone.

He took his hands off his face.

He looked at the ceiling of the supply closet. He turned the light off. He opened the door. He walked back down the hall. He walked past the desk. Dana, again, did not look up. He went back into bay 2.

Ellis looked at him and nodded, which he returned. 

Your blood pressure was ninety-six over sixty. Your heart rate was one-twenty-eight. Your color, under the fluorescents, was — your color was a fraction less wrong than it had been five minutes ago. The ventilator was breathing for you in the same small mechanical way. Ellis started charting at the foot of the bed. The new nurse was checking the IV.

Jack went back to the head of the bed and put his hands behind his back. 

He didn't know how long he stood there because he had stopped looking at the clock — there was a clock above the door of bay 2 and he had stopped letting his eyes go to it, because every time he looked at it less time had passed than he thought, every time he looked at it the small mean math of the clock told him that the universe was running slow tonight on purpose, and he had decided at some point that he was not going to look at the clock anymore.

“Jack?” Dana’s voice called.

“Mm?”

“Her sister’s here.”

He stood at the head of the bed and he looked at you and he held very still and he thought about something. He thought about the suitcase tag. He thought about your hand on the pillow on a Sunday morning a long time ago. 

He thought about the small dried patch of blood at the corner of your mouth where the tube must have nicked you on the way in and which someone, at some point, was going to have to wipe off, and he thought, very clearly, with the small clean clarity of a man in a supply closet, that he wanted to be the one who wiped it off.

He wasn’t allowed.

“You don’t have to, Jack,” Dana said when he didn’t respond.

“I’m going, it’s okay.”

Dana looked at him for a long second with the look she had, the look he had earned over years, the look that said that while she is, in fact, his nurse, she could be his friend or his mother or his nurse, if he needed her to be any of those for the next ten minutes. He looked back at her and he didn't say anything. She nodded, once, and she stepped aside.

He walked out of bay 2.

He could see your sister, standing at the desk, in a coat that was too thin for the weather, with her purse on her shoulder and her phone in her hand and her hair pulled back from her face, which he had only ever seen her do twice, the first time when your father had been in the hospital four years ago and the second time when she had come to yours and Jack’s apartment for Thanksgiving and burned the rolls and cried about it in the kitchen and let him hand her a glass of wine. 

She had a wedding band on, which she had not the last time he’d seen her. The ring was a thin gold band. She had a small gold charm on a chain around her neck. 

He knew her face. He knew the way she held her phone. 

He knew, even from down the hall, that she had been crying in the car on the way over and had stopped before she came in, because that was the kind of thing your sister did, that was a specific habit she had, and he had liked her very much, once, and she had liked him very much, once. It was a kind of likeness that came from knowing the other person loved their mutual person right.

The last thing she had ever said to him out loud had been “She's okay. I just wanted you to know she's okay,” on a phone call four months after you’d left, and she had hung up before he could say anything back. She was the closest he could get to you without getting to you, because the one time he’d tried calling you, it rang five times before he, in the most honest words he could put it, chickened out.

When she turned and saw him, there was the flash of recognition. Then, he could practically hear her think ‘of course it’s you, of course it had to be you.’ Then her face did the thing he had been bracing for, the polite hard face of a woman who had not forgiven him and was not going to and was, right now, going to have to talk to him anyway because her sister was on a ventilator. She stood at the desk with her phone in her hand and she watched him walk toward her.

He put them in the pockets of his scrubs. He took them out. He put them behind his back. He took them out again. He let them hang at his sides.

“Hi,” he said.

She looked at him and seemed like she wanted to frown. “Hi, Jack.” 

Jack had been bracing for cruelty. It was then he realized she was choosing to be kind to him. Why, he wasn’t sure. But the only conclusion he could come to was that she wouldn’t punish him for what he’d done, and instead let the world do it. The world was doing a fine job.

“She’s stable.” He cleared his throat because it sounded too heavy again. “She’s gonna—she’s gonna be okay. We're moving her to ICU in a little while. She's gonna be okay.”

She looked at him and Jack watched her eyes fill up. Your sister was, like you, a person who did not cry in front of people if she could help it. He stood there and watched her not cry, and he understood, with the clarity of a man who loved you and could not stop doing so, that she didn’t cry in front of people because you didn’t cry in front of people. Because the two of you had learned it from the same kitchen, the same mother, the same childhood with the same set of rules about what was and was not allowed to be done in a room with witnesses. 

She let her eyes fill up and she looked at the ceiling for a second and she breathed through her nose and she looked back at him and she said, very quietly, “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”

“I didn’t—Doctor Ellis ran most—”

“Thank you, Jack.”

He gave her one jerky nod. Then, he looked at the floor and nodded again and he stood there. 

“Can I—” he started, then stopped himself because he wasn’t sure what he was asking. 

Your sister hummed, slightly urging him to continue.

“Can I see her? Once she’s in the ICU. Can I—I don’t have to go in. I just, I would really like to. Once, if that’s okay.”

This woman had stood in your kitchen one Sunday afternoon a long time ago and watched him put his hand on the back of your neck while you laughed at something the neighbor’s dog had done and who had thought, in that moment, that, yes, Jack is the one for her sister. This woman had also, four months later, sat with you on the phone while you cried in a parking lot in a different city. The look she gave him contained both of those things. It was a look that contained more than Jack could parse, and he stood in the hallway of his ER and he looked at your sister and he waited.

“I don’t know, Jack,” she said.

He nodded, and it was more unstable than before.

“I don’t know if she’d want that.”

“I know,” Jack said, and this time, there was no denying the shakiness accompanying his voice. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I’ll think about it, okay?” Jack was nodding along to whatever she said now, because this, this, he’d have to make peace with. “I’ll see how she feels, and maybe I can bring it up—?”

He nodded and he could not say anything and he stepped back from the desk. Before he could turn around, another question slipped from his mouth, “Was—is she okay? In the last while, was she taking care of herself? Happy? Sleeping?”

He was making a mess of it. He could feel his face doing the thing it did when he was making a mess of it.

“She’s been okay, Jack.”

He nodded and nodded and nodded. 

Your sister picked up her purse from where it had slid down her arm and she adjusted her coat and she looked at him one more time and she said, “It’s nice to see you, Jack.”

She said it like a small kindness she was giving him because she had decided, in these past few minutes, that she was going to give him this one thing. Like giving a stranger directions to a place you knew they probably weren't going to find. She said it and she meant it and she also did not mean it, and Jack stood as he watched your sister walk past him toward bay 2, where Dana was waiting to take her in, and he stood there until she was gone, and then he stood there a little longer.

[richeeduvie]

When Jack takes off his prosthetic, he has no time to prepare himself for how his daughter looks at the most complicated part of his body with her toddler curiosity.

Chubby has seen her father without his leg before, obviously. There are only so many ways to preserve mystery when she doesn’t believe in closed doors, and Jack’s routine of (slight and tight) relaxation involves removing Leggy, his prosthetic. Leggy is her friend, and sometimes it needs cleaning. She gets to put stickers on the thing and tries feeding it yogurt. 

But even with all the familiarity she has with her dad’s lack of leg, you and Jack should’ve expected the question to be asked at some point.

“Chubs, c’mon. You need your pajamas.”

“No pee-jams. No!”

Sitting on your bed in her diaper, Chubby keeps escaping your attempts to pull pajamas over her head. 

“You’re naked.”

She looks down at herself, considering your accusation. 

“I get diaper. Not naked.”

…Well. She got you there. 

“She got you there—”

“I know, Jack.”

Jack sits at the edge of the bed as he unfastens his prosthetic, and you glare at him. He pulls it free. 

“She sleeps between us half the time. The body heat of two parents and enough blankets to suffocate a horse works well to keep her warm. But sweetheart, listen to your mother—”

When he sets his prosthetic against the nightstand, Chubby stops trying to crawl away. She sits between the pillows and looks at Jack’s residual limb. The sudden stillness gets your attention first. 

When Jack notices, his hand moves to rest over the end of his thigh, as if there’s something indecent about her seeing too much of the part of him that she has literally helped you clean before. 

She tilts her head. 

“Dada, where leg go?”

Jack glances at his prosthetic, propped up. “Right there.”

“No. That’s Leggy. Other leg. Where it go?”

You lower her pajama shirt into your lap as you know Jack too well to understand that the muscles in his jaw settle in a way that tells you he doesn’t want to answer the question. That he’s arranging his body around her question, and you can’t stop him. 

Even if you could, you wouldn’t, because if you know your daughter well enough, too, she’ll know how to charm the hurt into something beautiful. 

“I don’t have it anymore. I lost it. You know that.”

He’s been better than good about his leg long before you. He’s let Chubby knock on the socket like it was a door.

...He pretended to answer. But this ain’t a joke. His daughter is looking at him and realizing that his body is different. 

He goes still, but he doesn’t stop her when she reaches out and presses a hand to his thigh. 

“Does it hurt?”

“No, not right now.”

She plops down next to him, criss-cross-applesauce style. Jack looks at you, but not to plead, which is obvious. He’d probably chew off his other leg rather than ask to be rescued from a conversation with his little girl. But…you see the clear uncertainty, because you’re so good at making big things fit inside small, soft words. 

You just nod. 

Go on. Tell her there was a world where you existed without either of us and almost stopped existing altogether. Maybe leave the parts that still visit you in your dreams for when she’s older. All she knows is that you kiss me too much and sometimes uses a scary voice when I accidentally leave the door unlocked. 

“My leg got hurt pretty badly.”

“Mommy fix with Leggy?”

Oh. That’s a heartkiller. Jack looks at you again, swallowing. 

“No, baby. I didn’t know Mommy yet.”

Chubby turns to stare at you. She’s disturbed by this. You understand totally. A world in which you and Jack did not know each other feels unreal to you, too.

“Mommy not there? Who fix you?”

“Doctors helped me. They tried to fix the hurt leg, but it was hurt too badly. So they had to take it away to help the rest of me get better.”

Chubby stares down at the rounded end of his thigh, her small fingers curling into his shirt.

“You were sick like me? Like Mommy when she cough?”

“Sicker than that. I was in the hospital for a while.”

“You cry?”

…Oop. That is also a heartkiller, the way she says it. The way Jack sighs.

“Probably.” 

“You were scared?”

Jack lowers his eyes at Chubby’s question. He feels as much as he feels he should lie. He could easily…well, not easily, but he could tell her that Dada knew everything would be okay and that he was brave. 

But she deserves more than that. She may be too small for the truth of fear, but she doesn’t deserve some false version of her dad. That’ll make the truth harder to take down the line. He doesn’t know if he could handle that. 

“Yeah, I was scared.”

Chubby’s face goes blank before it twists at the fact she’s just learned that her father can hurt. Of course, you should expect a tantrum or a wail for her dada, the immovable object of her life. The broad chest runs into, and the deep voice that makes the monsters beneath her bed dumb for even trying. 

Her eyes begin to tear up. Her lips begin to pout. You instinctively shift closer, but Jack rubs her back first. 

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

Anyway, Jack should think it beautiful and flattering that his being scared is harder for her to understand than his having one leg…considering it’s the most his heart can do before it dies on itself at her cries. 

…The way yours is right now. 

“Dada scared!”

“I was, but that was a long time ago.”

Her lip trembles as she sniffles.

“Your leg gone, you almost gone?”

…You’re not sure if Chubby even knows what she’s asking. Gone to her usually means work, or when you have to use the bathroom, and she can’t handle it. Or when she throws bun-bun under the couch. 

But, apparently, she’s put enough of the pieces together, and when you look at Jack, you think he’s the man that must’ve been in that hospital bed. 

You lay your hand over his before your tearducts can follow your daughter’s.

“I’m here now, baby—”

“No! Don’t go Dada! No Dada go!”

Chubby scrambles into him and locks her arms around his neck. Jack hugs her, which is too easy considering how tiny she is. 

“I’m right here, baby.”

“No go.”

“I’m not going anywhere right now.”

You hear the care he takes with the last two words, because Jack never promises forever, not with the future that he watches like a hawk. And as annoying as it is, you understand his point. 

But when your baby girl lifts her head and looks into his eyes, you understand the way he breaks in on himself. 

“Stay, Dada.”

And jeez, how can he not at that? You, though? Breaking inward—silently, that’s not your style. 

“...Dada’s not going anywhere. Can’t. I’ve got two girls to take care of.”

You sputter, rather.

[barnesdreamcatcher]

Nothing’s quite enough

jack abbot x f!reader

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 ☆

[pinkandblueblurbs]

18+ mdni

newest scenario stuck in my head is casual dominance with rabbot and bratty reader… she talks to jack in ways she would never dream of talking to robby because jack is so easy on her

he finally realizes it’s gone too far when he’s sitting on the couch with robby, having a beer and watching the game, and you waltz right up to him and hold out your hand.

“Gimme your keys.”

Jack looks at you, then looks at Robby, baffled. Robby’s brows had shot up at your tone, and he just shakes his head and looks back at the TV, a clear nonverbal ‘not my problem’

“I’m sorry,” Jack eyes you. “Was that an order or a request?”

You huff and roll your eyes. “I’m meeting my friends.” You mumble. “Can I have your keys?”

“Uh uh.” Jack’s unimpressed. “Why don’t you try that again. Louder this time. And nicer couldn’t hurt.”

You purse your lips, stubborn. Stare at him for a while. You wait for him to give in and hand them over, don’t expect him to just raise a brow.

“Well?”

“May I please have the keys to your truck so I can go see my friends?” You drone flatly. Robby fails to stifle a chuckle. Jack nods.

“Gettin’ closer.”

You groan, throw your head back dramatically. “I just want—“

“Whining isn’t gonna do it either.” Jack warns. “I know you’ve got manners in there somewhere, sweetheart. I’ve heard you use ‘em.”

“Why are you making this so difficult?” You complain.

Robby outright laughs now, mutters “jesus christ” and takes a swig of his beer. He can’t comprehend how Jack’s staying so calm.

“I’m not the one who’s being difficult.” His voice is even, but has a sterner edge than usual that compels you to pause for a second. You inhale slowly, a big, calming breath. Jack nods. “Yeah, attagirl.”

“I’m sorry.” You say softly. “That was rude. Can I please borrow your truck for the night?” You sound earnest this time, though your cheeks flush warmly as you ask. “I’d really appreciate it. I wanna go meet my friends.”

Jack grins at you, reaches out to pat your hip approvingly. “There she is.” He nods towards the door. “Keys are in my coat pocket.”

“Thank you!” You scamper away.

Robby scoffs, looks at jack dubiously. “That all there is to it?”

Jack shrugs, takes a swig of his beer. “I’ll give ‘er another reminder tonight.”

[pinkandblueblurbs]

kinda on the separation anxiety wave- reader being homesick at mr abbots house and they fuck for Robby on FaceTime :,(

18+ mdni hnnggh omg staying at jack’s bc robby and frank are both out of town for a few days at the same time :(( nightmare!! you’re having a blast w mr abbot the first couple days but on day 3 you’re starting to feel all out of sorts….

jack’s fucking you that night, trying his damndest to make you feel better, but your brows are still in a distraught furrow and a sad little pout is on your lips and your heart doesn’t seem in it. “Pumpkin,” jack cups your face, his own expression contorted in sympathy “Do you wanna stop?—“

“No.”

“Okay, alright.” Jack’s thrusts have slowed to a steady, deep, easy rhythm. “Why don’t you rub your clit, babygirl. Make yourself feel good for me.”

You shake your head, and Jack’s brows shoot up, at a loss. “No? Why not— do you want me t-“

“Daddy doesn’t let me unless I ask him.” You whimper. Jack can see the shiny start of tears pooling in your eyes, and he coos.

“Oh, honey.” He pauses for a moment. “Why don’t we ask him then, huh? You wanna talk to your daddy?” you nod furiously, swiping away the tears that threaten to spill past your waterline. “Yeah. Attagirl.”

jack grabs his phone and calls robby

robby picks up on the third ring. he sounds a bit tired when he greets “Hey, brother. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine— a certain someone’s just missing you.”

“Daddy,” you whine.

“Hi, sweetheart.” Robby keeps his voice low and steady to soothe you. “You behaving yourself?”

“Yes” You murmur. Your hands grapple for the phone and take it from Jack’s hands as Robby’s deep, familiar chuckle sounds over the line.

you whine at the screen that greets you, fingers fumbling to switch to a facetime. Robby’s faint grunt picks up as he deciphers the prompt on his screen before his face finally appears.

“There’s my girl.” Robby smiles, and when you smile back Jack feels a surge of relief. “Look at you— you in bed? Are you—“ he laughs as he processes your subtle rocking movements— “Is Jack fucking you right now?”

Your smile morphs into a bashful grin, your lower lip caught between your teeth. robby groans. “Fuck, sweetheart. You missed me that bad even with Jack’s cock inside you?”

“Yes,” you whimper. Now that he knows, Robby can hear it in your voice clear as day— the breathiness, the little choked gasps as jack buries himself to the hilt.

“She’s been such a brave girl about it, Mike.” Jack murmurs, his hand coming up to grope your tit. Robby curses as he watches. “But I think it finally caught up to her.”

Robby hums. “Well I’m right here, baby. Why don’t you show me that little pussy- let me see how well Jack’s taking care of you.”

[pinkandblueblurbs]

Lil somno idea with previous consent of course! What about reader who's still feeling needy after multiple rounds. And Frank and Robby are both fast asleep in the bed w her (exhausted from their shift and fucking reader), but she just can't fall asleep :3. So she decides to ease the feeling by touching herself but it doesn't feel as good as their fingers. So in that fucked up, needy state she takes Robby's hand (maybe even Frank's) and starts touching herself w his calloused fingers....

Ps: I looove your writing. Please never stop🥹

18+ mdni somno! (i def imagine frank/reader/robby having a preestablished free-use dynamic…. it just makes sense) PLEASEEE PLEAAASE I LOVE THIS NONNY!!

you do it with frank’s bc they happen to be closer, his arm is thrown haphazardly over your hip n his fingers are already resting against your lower tummy…. you take his hand and guide it low, swipe his fingertips through your soaked swollen lips n barely stifle a whimper at the feeling…. you rub your clit w the pads of his pointer and middle fingers, your own resting atop his n puppetting his movements hnggghh

when he first wakes up he doesnt even say anything. his lids flutter open n he just lays back and observes for a while as you swipe rushed needy circles on your clit with his fingers. when you finally tug his wrist lower and start to push his fingers inside you like they’re some crude little dildo he finally speaks up— “Fuck, baby, you’re such a pervert.”

You yelp and look at him in surprise and can just barely make out the white of his teeth as he grins in the darkness. “Frankie,” you whimper. “Needed more— please.”

“Yeah? Need me to help you, pretty girl?” He coos as he starts curling his fingers inside you himself, just the way you like. He kisses your temple as you moan breathily n your hips start to rock. “Just couldn’t do it yourself, could you. Not the same when it’s your own little fingers, huh?”

You grind on his fingers while he totally indulges you— because of course he does, you’re so sleepy n needy and frank can never fucking resist you when you’re like this…

but he also cant resist being mean about it. “shit, princess, you’re insatiable. what’s next? we gonna wake up to you pulling out daddy’s soft cock n trying to shove that inside your greedy little pussy?

[tojisteddy]

Divorcée!Simon Riley just hates when he hears his ex wife!Reader is going on a date.

It was all supposed to go perfectly. Your friend had set you on date for Friday night, Simon had the kids at his place because it was his weekend. Kelela blaring from your speakers as you fixed your makeup in the mirror, large rollers in your hair, a nice dress freshly ironed layed on the bed.

Simon absolutely ruined it.

Petty argument that was laced with every bit of jealousy, spiraling into you on your hands and knees, getting your back blown out by your massive ex husband who was stretching you desperate spasming pussy out in the sluttiest way imaginable.

Your slick dripping onto fabric of the dress who worked hard to buy. Sobbing at how good you felt while Simon railed into, using your hips as leverage, practically bruising them. He grunts, “This what you’re doin now? Hm? Hah- thinkin about cheatin

“Fuck- fuck you- mmmph- we’re not- aangh- were nooot-“ you can’t even finish your own sentence, broken moans escaping your mouth, your head falling and toes curling as your ass kept rippling against his pelvis every time Simon bottomed out.

“-We’re not wot? Huh? Wot was tha again?” He cocks an eyebrow at you, slamming his hips into your harder, only earning more keens of his name and curses. You walls quivering around his hefty girth, tears burning your eyes. Then you feel the sting of his hand come down on your rear end, “I’m expecting words from you, that brain on?”

No- probably not- all you knew it was so much- a good much- taking over your entire body. Your hands grinned the headboard of the bed, trying to wiggle your way out of his hold.

“Awww,” the blonde condescendingly croons, dragging your hips down to the base of his member, “Mama can’t take ‘er husbands cock.” He hikes himself deeper inside you, hissing as your nails vlaw as his thigh. “Can help you remember swee’art, ‘s what ‘m ‘ere for.” His arm snakes around your neck, calloused hand around your neck and guiding your hips back into his, the filthy smack, smack, smack! filling the bedroom with every pound of his cock into you.

Simon has you cumming and cumming, endless as a car pulls into your driveway. Simons eyes are nodded over, holding you so close and tight as he grinds into you, “My dear wife,” the military man’s stomach tightens, jaw clenched as he rests his head on your shoulder, sloppy thrust after sloppy thrust in your your oozing pussy, slowing filling with your mix of cum. “pretty fuckin wife, love you so- shit- sooo much dovie” he slurs out, leaving more little bruises up your neck, breathless and sucking your ear as he empties his creamy load into your perfect cunt, “where else would I be without you, baby, bloody hell-“

It’s those screams you’re letting out that has your date thinking your calling out bloody murder that makes the guy rush in your unlocked house. The noises are louder with every step he man makes up the steps the bed threatening to break with every brutal thrust. And you’re there, on the bed, legs over Simons broad shoulders, while he pistons into your slipper pussy, balls smacking against your ass. Your ex husband is pushing you down by your plush thighs, feet flat on the bed and drilling into you without a care in the world. Simon whips his head around, the stranger gobsmacked in horror.

A sinister smirk grows on Simons face, “Guest ‘f honor is ‘ere dovie, don’t you wanna great ‘em?”

Your heat only clenches, only thinking about your husband- the father of your kids, love of your life— Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon-

“So cockdrunk yer speakin out loud,” he lowly snickers, pushing your knees up to your earlobes, smooshing his strawberry cockhead against your cervix, pushing his fingers in your mouth for you to shut up, but you only moan at the sensations he’s giving you. Both mouths stuffed, both set of puffy lips drooling in delight.

Simon cracks his neck, staring holes into your ex date, “If you could close the door on your way out, her husbands taking care of ‘er now.”

a/n: he holds me in his big arms, drunk and I am seeing stars, this is all I think of