♡ synopsis: when a med student accidentally sticks you with an anesthetic intended for a patient, jack sits with you until its effects wear off to ensure you don't have an allergic reaction. while under the effects of the drug, you make many confessions which he finds to be both entertaining and endearing.
♡ content: pining!robby, medical inaccuracies, reader being under the influence of anesthetics, jack gets handsy on the roof, ogilvie is on night shift for this one bc i say so
♡ a/n: based on this request by @styx03, ty!
Allowing a med student to sedate a patient was clearly not the right course of action. You're not even sure who gave them the order to, or if they just heard a command for an anesthetic to be administered and chose to take it upon theirself to be the one for the job, but either way... You've now become the patient because of their eagerness to impress.
Stumbling back on your feet, your vision swims and the room tilts while raised voices yell. You think one is Jack's. You want to tell Ogilvie that it's okay, because accidents happen and you're sure you'll be fine. Hopefully. Instead, however, your attempted words slur into something incomprehensible while your eyes cross. Just as you descend toward the floor, a strong pair of arms catch you.
Jack most assuredly ripped Ogilvie a new one. He's never been so enraged here at work, since he's a man who prides himself on the trained ability to keep his cool under duress. After all, if he could bark orders while bullets rained down on his unit overseas, then an ED would and has been a cakewalk in comparison.
Until you came along, apple of his eye.
You'd been so shy initially—presumedly because you felt intimidated—but intent on seeking you out, Jack refused to let you slip from his grasp. So he tutored you in field medicine (maybe to show his skills off, even a little), gifted you a beautiful hardback copy of Gray's Anatomy, a fancy carrying case for your stethoscope, and this year for your birthday, a $200 prepaid Visa gift card to spend as you pleased. A present you'd been insistent on giving back, until he threatened to up the amount to $300 if you didn't accept it.
The more you bonded, the more the scales tipped from teacher and student to something else that he didn't really have the words for. What is it the kids call it nowadays? He heard it from one of the residents before... Situationship. Obnoxious, but he supposes appropriate.
What else is he meant to call it when he barely even calls you by your name anymore—instead opting for sweetheart, darlin', honey, baby doll, pumpkin; any and all pet names that he can come up with which earn him a sweet, bashful smile in return?
When the two of you are on a case together, he's always at your back or side to supervise your actions and decision making while showering you in quiet praise all the while. And anytime you have a particularly hard day? Jack gathers you in his arms and holds you suffocatingly close while insisting on taking you to a quiet dinner after... Or breakfast. Whatever you wish is his command.
But it's not all heaviness and burnout. It's also joking around by snapping rubber bands at your ass and tickling you until you're begging for a reprieve—lest you wet yourself—because your smile is his favorite sight, and your musical laugh or joyous cackle his favorite sounds.
He's waiting for the day HR comes down on his head like a hammer, but he's also aware that PTMC can't exactly afford to lose his expertise, so he feels pretty comfortable in toeing the line here and there.
So when your body went stumbling back because of Ogilvie acting first and hardly thinking at all, he hit the roof.
A gurney was unnecessary when he cradled you against his chest and carried you into a private room before lying you back on a hospital bed so he could wait at your side for the medication to wear off.
He continually took your vitals every handful of minutes, afraid the substance would wreak havoc on your system. With him being unaware of any possible allergies you may or may not have, sitting idly by while watching the clock simply wasn't an option. He needed to make himself of use somehow.
While running a soothing hand over your forehead is when you finally stir and blink up at Jack from beneath drooping lids.
Loosing a long, ragged breath of relief, the tightness in Jack's chest dissipates. "Hey, sweetheart," he coos quietly. "How you feelin'?"
Your tautly drawn features quickly morph into that of a scrunched nose and a toothy grin. "You're s'handsome," you slur while lifting a wobbly hand toward his cheek.
Practically slapping it against the stubbled skin, you giggle, which is then followed by your eyes suddenly widening to the size of saucers while your lips form a perfect O. "Are you my husband?" you inquire breathlessly.
Are you taking the piss or is the injection still wearing off?
"Honey—"
You toss your head back. "Jus' kidding," you drawl. "Never be that lucky," you mumble with a pout.
Waving your hand floppily that he should lean in closer, he does so with an amused smirk.
"I think 'm in love with you," you murmur while fisting the neck of his shirt and tugging him toward you.
Suddenly pulled out of his seat, Jack stumbles forward and barely manages to catch himself by planting a hand on your hip before you guide his lips down to your own.
Thank God he pulled the curtain around to give you a bit of privacy, because if anybody caught him in such a compromising position?
He jolts when you slip your tongue in his mouth and moan lustfully while exploring the warm, wet lay of it. Not a man to take advantage, though, especially of you, Jack breaks away reluctantly. A gesture which is met with a long, drawn out No from you.
Seating himself again, he tries literally to wipe the smirk from his face by scrubbing a hand from his cheekbones to jawline, but it does him little good.
"You're s'posed to say it baaack," you whine between chattering teeth.
With a sigh, Abbot shakes his head, then reaches over you to grab the remote for the electric blanket he draped over you just incase, until you lift your head and chomp down on his forearm.
Your lips recede into a smile while you nibble on the skin between your teeth.
He barks a laugh, then slips the limb from your mouth while turning the blanket to high heat. "You're somethin' else," he commentates while tucking the edges securely around your shivering form.
"But you love me," you whisper before your eyes flutter closed.
Cupping your cheek in his hand, he smiles softly. "If only you knew how much."
When you come-to, you feel groggy and ran through. Your memory pretty well begins and ends with you passing out just after being injected with something you shouldn't have been.
You've seen the videos—funny little snippets where people divulge hilarious admittances and embarrassing secrets while under the influence—so you of course begin to panic a little when your eyes slowly draw open. What if you said or did something? Maybe you were left alone to recuperate on your own?
When your head lulls to the side, that hope is quickly shot dead at the sight of Robby leaned back in a chair with an iPad held at a bit of a distance.
"Got my test results on there?" you ask quietly.
Lowering the device, the daytime attending studies you from over the rim of his glasses. Robby sets the tablet aside, then leans forward and caresses your cheek with a smile. "How you feeling?"
You blink sleepy eyes. "Tired. Which I shouldn't be if I slept long enough for you to get here."
He snorts quietly. "Being under anesthesia is hardly the same as sleeping. You know that."
You roll your eyes. "It's called sarcasm," you groan while sitting up.
"Easy," Robby mutters while settlings his hands over the crowns of your shoulders to keep you steady.
Hanging your head in exhaustion, you sigh. "Was anybody in here when you clocked in?"
"Abbot."
You wince. "Did I...do or say anything?"
His lips twitch into a smile. "If you did, he didn't tell me as much. Just asked me to sit with you so he could get back to it before his shift ended."
You lift your head. "You don't have to waste your time in here—"
He clicks his tongue while giving your chin a gentle, affectionate tap. "I'd never call it that." Robby slides a hand down the back of your head after standing. "Watching you sleep was the most peace I've gotten in..." he shakes his head while turning and pulling the curtain aside. "Too long," he mutters.
"Could have that all the time if I could only get you to come onto the dayshift with me," Robby states while turning around with hands on his hips. "Might do you some good to see a bit of daylight every once in awhile."
You grin while swinging your feet. "Are you trying to poach me from Abbot's team?"
He meets your smile. "Always." Robby walks over and grabs the iPad again. "It'd give me a reason to look forward to coming in here again every day at least."
Robby offers you a hand, which you take. Once you're standing on two feet again, you take a moment to catch your bearings.
Sliding an arm around your shoulders, Robby slowly leads you toward the door. "You're not just Abbot's favorite, you know?"
You glance up to him. "Oh?"
He presses a kiss to your brow before swinging open the door and holding it for you. "Just something for you to consider. Incase the nights ever get too long."
With your shift at an end, you decide to head in the direction of your locker to gather your things before heading home. A long soak in the tub, followed by plenty of rest sounds pretty nice. Maybe some Chinese takeout while you're at it. Or Thai.
"Robby tells me that you seem to be feeling better."
Clicking your locker shut, you turn and smile at the sight of Jack standing just a few feet away with an easy grin playing on his lips, matched by hands stuck in his pockets.
"Think so," you reply with a quiet, casual shrug.
"You heading home?" he asks while ambling closer.
"Planning on it."
Slipping your bag from your shoulder, he hefts it onto his instead. "How about," Jack begins while leading you in the direction of the elevators with your hand held in his, "You come up on the roof with me now that you're awake and let me watch you for a bit to make sure there's no residual effects."
You huff dramatically. "Jack, I really do feel fine."
Pressing the button that'll lead the two of you up, he cups the crown of your shoulder in his hand and brings you in close. "That is to still be determined."
The elevator dings and steel doors slide apart, inviting the two of you into an empty chamber.
"By me," he concludes while ushering you inside with an encouraging push.
With one arm wrapped around yourself, you settle the other over your mouth to suppress a laugh of disbelief. "Of course you and Robby have folding chairs up here," you remark with a giggle.
Popping one open, Jack nods to it, indicating it as your designated seat. "Could always look into a tent," he states while settling the other beside it. "If it meant getting you snuggled up next to me in a sleeping bag."
Plopping down in the offered chair, you rest an elbow on the fabric arm and your chin in your palm.
Jack tugs off his prosthetic, then leans back with a sigh. "That feels better."
"Maybe we get an extra big one. Or a blow-up mattress," you quip happily.
Jack clasps his hands over his belly. "Why's that, pumpkin?"
You flash a grin. "Maybe Robby can join us."
Hanging his head back, he shakes it from side to side. "Don't tell me he was making moves on my girl while I was busy saving lives this morning."
You shrug while wiggling your brows playfully.
"So..." You begin while picking nervously at your nails. "Did I say anything?"
"To me or Robby?" Jack asks while massaging his leg.
You roll your eyes. "Apart from me asking Robby to take his shirt off," you remark sarcastically.
Jack snickers and his mouth curves into a lopsided grin. "Without me there to see it?"
You remain silent as you wait for him to fess up.
"You, uh..." he trails off, then barks a laugh.
Oh no...
Jack glances at you. "You might've bit me," he says while cringing mischievously in an attempt to downplay things.
"I what?!" you cry while leaning toward him in shock.
Jack throws himself back against the chair and lies his arms palm face up. "Well, after you got done harping on my good looks, you got cold, so I went to switch on the heated blanket that I put you under and you just chomped down," he explains whole gesturing toward his right forearm with his hand drawn into the shape of a claw. "It was more like a nibble, though." He shrugs and bestows a reassuring smile. "You didn't break skin, so don't worry about it."
Burying your face in your hands, you shake your head. "Oh, this is mortifying." Dropping them into your lap, you stare at the skyline. "I'm so sorry."
Studying him from beneath your lashes, you nervously chew your lip. "Anything else?"
Please say no, please say no.
He smiles warmly—almost bashfully, in fact. "Asked if I was your husband. Then you broke character, and let me know you were just kidding."
It can't get any worse, surely.
Doubling over, you rest your elbows on your knees, then press your forehead against the heels of your palms. "Please tell me that's it."
He should let it go—leave things as they are. But Jack can't help it: wanting to hear that it wasn't just because you were high as a kite.
That feelings are mutual, and always have been.
When the sound of silence descends, you raise your head. "Jack?"
He sighs. "I just want you to know that I know it was strictly because you were out of it." Jack turns fully toward you. "That you didn't mean it."
"The more you talk, the more worried I'm getting," you reply with searching eyes.
Clasping his hands together, Jack leans forward slightly. "You..." he sighs. "You told me that you were in love with me."
His eyes flit to yours—attempting to gauge from expression alone whether it was a true utterance, or mere sarcasm. "And then you kissed me."
Your eyes pop wide open. "I—" You clam up.
Is this it? The defining moment that either makes or breaks your and Jack's...situation?
"You know how they say drunk words are sober thoughts?" you ask quietly and with a pattering heart that leaves you short of breath.
Jack's chin wobbles, but only slightly. "Yeah?"
You nod, and a sob breaks last your watery smile.
"C'mere, honey," he commands with a wave of his hand.
Rising from your seat, Jack guides your hips until you're seated on his generous lap. "Can you say it again?" he asks quietly while smoothing a hand across your brow.
You press your forehead to his and hum from the feeling of the rising sun warming your back. "I love you," you whisper while winding soft, gentle hands around his neck. "Jack."
Cupping his own around the curve of your neck, he guides your lips down to his this time. "'Bout damn time we got that outta the way," he murmurs before kissing you the way he's meant to so many times.
Jack teases your tongue with a wet, pointed tip which he slides along the underside of your own.
"How about," he pants. "I take you home just to be safe." A calloused palm scratches its way along the polyester that covers your inner thigh.
"Y-Yours or mine?" you whimper.
Squeezing your hip temptingly, he nips at your chin. "Better take you to mine to keep an eye on you. Help you in the shower," he drawls with a bored shrug. "I have a chair in there. It'll make things more comfortable when I help. Then I can fix you dinner before we go to bed. Together."
Carefully, he prods at the heat which radiates from between your thighs. "Would you like that, sweetpea?"
"Pretty dizzy all of a sudden," you sigh.
"Let me get my leg back on and I'll take you home, baby."
Rising from his lap, you stand to the side and wait for him to store he and Robby's chairs back away before following excitedly along so he can take you home for further eventful flirtations.
pairing: strawberry shortcake x jack abbot. first part.
summary: after matching with your attending on tinder, you now have to spend an entire shift trying to avoid him. everything is going (almost) well until you get trapped in an elevator with him.
tags: fluff, joy is part of the night shift, langdon kinda too, er setting, workplace romance, age gap, coworkers to lovers, protective jack abbot, she falls first, he falls harder.
authors note: this is short and silly I KNOW. i just wanted to portray abbot the way I perceive him after that scene (in the gif). ALSO thank you so much for the reblogs and for asking to be added to the tag list. i never thought that was possible!! don't forget to reblog if you enjoyed it, please. 🙏🏻
@melissa66orion @rathatosy
The doors to the ER slid open once again, but this time you wished you could've stayed home.
You'd barely slept. Four hours at most, and ever since you woke up, you hadn't been able to think about anything except the mistake you made with your attending. You wondered if he'd slept well, probably he was sitting at home right now drinking coffee like nothing happened.
And here you were.
Technically your shift didn't start for another two hours, but the anxiety had dragged you back into the pitt anyway, which was funny because ten minutes ago you were seriously considering giving up and starting a new life somewhere in Alaska.
Your stomach twisted again just thinking about having to see him today.
Everything seemed calmer than usual, which honestly felt suspicious. You didn't even want to think too hard about it before you jinxed it. At this point you were convinced you personally carried bad luck around with you.
You nervously adjusted the sleeves of your oversized pink hoodie while scanning the station looking for the girls, and Whitaker.
It wasn't difficult to find Trinity. She was sitting beside Whitaker, aggressively stabbing at the computer keyboard before dramatically letting her head fall onto it. She quickly lifted her head again when Dennis touched her shoulder and pointed toward you with his head.
The second she saw you, her eyebrows pulled together in confusion.
"Why are you here?"
Not even a hello.
"What room is free?" You asked immediately.
"Okay… not even a coffee first?" Whitaker joked.
"This is serious."
Something in your expression must've looked genuinely unstable because Whitaker's smile disappeared almost instantly.
Both of them stood up immediately and started walking through the hallway looking for an empty room. Luckily you nearly ran straight into Victoria on the way there. She gave you a confused look but smiled anyway, though the second she noticed Trinity and Whitaker walking in front of you like bodyguards, she silently followed behind.
The moment they found an empty trauma room, they closed the door behind you. The silence didn't last long, but all you could hear was your own heartbeat while trying to figure out how to even begin explaining what happened.
"Are you dating Abbot?" Whitaker asked slowly, crossing his arms.
You stared at him with a deeply what the fuck expression before dramatically looking between all three of them and pacing once across the room. "This MUST stay here."
"Sure." Trinity answered casually.
"I mean it." You took a deep breath, trying to find the exact words. "I matched with Abbot on Tinder." You said it quietly, but loud enough for everyone to hear.
None of them spoke. Whitaker's jaw dropped slightly, Trinity closed her eyes like she was physically trying to process the information, while Victoria made a noise so high pitched it sounded almost dangerous.
"No you didn't." Santos whispered.
"YES I DID." A nervous laugh escaped you the second you heard yourself say it out loud. "It was an accident tho."
"Oh my GOD." Javadi grabbed your shoulders violently. "OH MY GOD."
Meanwhile Trinity was still staring at you suspiciously. "How is that an accident?"
"My phone slipped." You admitted embarrassed, rubbing your forehead while remembering the exact moment it happened.
"Wait, hold on." Santos started pacing too now. "So you swiped right and the match appeared immediately?"
"...Yes?"
Trinity slowly nodded while Javadi continued looking excited like she was personally watching the greatest romantic comedy of her life unfold in front of her. Meanwhile all you wanted was for somebody to tell you how you were supposed to continue existing after this.
"That wasn't even all of it... He texted me immediately after." You pulled your phone out and handed it to them.
Santos grabbed it instantly, holding it where all three of them could see the screen at once. While she scrolled through the messages, the only thing you could focus on were their reactions.
"No, because this is actually insane." Trinity finally said while handing the phone back.
You buried your face into your hands, already regretting everything that happened this morning.
Because it was insane.
Even though he'd always taken care of you, you'd never let yourself believe it could mean something else. That was exactly why having a crush on him always felt stupid and childish. Sure, he made your shifts better. Sure, your stomach flipped every time he looked at you too long. But it had always stayed harmless inside your own head.
Jack Abbot was supposed to stay safely inside your brain as your painfully attractive work crush. He was not supposed to flirt back, he was definitely not supposed to remember your favorite snacks, ask if you'd slept, or look at you like you personally softened something inside him every single shift.
"Why are we acting like this is a funeral?" Javadi asked, smiling. "He likes you. That's a good thing."
Her smile slowly disappeared when she noticed you still looked seconds away from cardiac arrest.
Honestly, you still couldn't process any of it correctly, and now you knew it was only a matter of hours before you had to see him again.
"Oh my god." You suddenly stopped pacing. "What if I say I feel sick and then pretend to faint, and you say you're coming with me so we can both clock out early?"
"That would be... amazing." Trinity admitted. "But no."
You genuinely considered throwing yourself through the nearest window. Or maybe walking outside and waiting in the ambulance bay long enough for somebody to accidentally hit you. But before you could answer, or even move, you heard Whitaker quietly go "Oh" then Dana saying hello to someone outside.
You could've died right there because the second you turned around, you saw Jack Abbot walking toward the nurses station. Coffee in one hand and backpack hanging from his shoulder, looking unfairly attractive for somebody who hadn't even finished his twelve hours of rest.
Maybe he was feeling the same way you were.
And almost like he sensed it, his eyes lifted immediately toward the trauma room. Toward you.
You were still wearing the bright pink hoodie that was impossible to miss but out of everything happening around him, you still couldn't believe the very first thing he noticed was you.
Abbot's expression shifted slightly with confusion when he noticed all four of you suspiciously crowded inside the trauma room. One eyebrow lifted with visible amusement before the corner of his mouth pulled into a small grin. It was subtle but you knew him well enough to know he wasn't stupid.
Your eyes followed him automatically as he got closer, and suddenly you completely forgot how breathing worked. Once he passed by the room, he lightly tapped two fingers against the trauma room window in greeting without even slowing down. Then he kept walking toward the lockers like absolutely nothing had happened.
The second he disappeared down the hallway, Victoria's mouth dropped open.
"This is the worst day of my life." You whispered weakly, still staring at the hallway where Abbot had disappeared.
"And your shift hasn't even started yet." Trinity replied while walking out of the room.
Not helping at all.
This was it now. There was no avoiding it anymore.
If luck was somehow still slightly on your side (which you seriously doubted) maybe this was just the calm before the storm. Maybe suddenly the ER would completely explode with emergencies and you'd spend the next twelve hours separated on opposite sides of the hospital. Maybe you'd get stuck in triage all shift and never have to leave it. But the second you clocked in, it felt like Jack Abbot was suddenly everywhere.
Every hallway, the bay, even somehow leaving the bathroom exactly when you were walking past it.
Maybe this had always happened and you'd just never noticed before. But now that you knew there was tension between you, real tension and not platonic, everything felt different. Worse.
And to make it even more unbearable, he clearly enjoyed it.
Every chance he got, he somehow ended up beside you. Like he was curious to see how nervous he could make you before you completely short circuited.
The first time happened barely twenty minutes later. You were restocking supplies into the tiny cabinet in triage, trying desperately to think about literally anything except him, when someone suddenly stepped beside you.
"You came in early."
The second you heard his voice, your entire body jumped, making a few gauze packets fall straight onto the floor. God, are you serious?
You crouched immediately to grab them while he casually leaned against the litter beside you, coffee still in hand, looking entirely too relaxed for somebody currently ruining your nervous system.
His eyes never left you. That was the problem with Jack Abbot, he looked at people too confidently, like he already knew exactly what effect he had on them and unfortunately for you, he was right.
You could feel his gaze following every movement while you picked up the gauze, and something about seeing him standing over you like that made heat crawl embarrassingly fast up your neck, making you quickly shook your head, trying to physically force the thoughts away before they got worse.
You didn't exactly have experience with this kind of thing. Honestly, you barely had experience with men at all. Most of your past attempts at flirting usually ended with you avoiding eye contact until the other person gave up and none of those guys had ever looked like that. None of them had been older either, which somehow made this whole thing feel even more dangerous.
"Are you okay?" He asked before taking another slow sip of coffee.
"Mhm."
"You sure, Shortcake?" One of his eyebrows lifted slightly.
Your head snapped toward him instantly at the nickname, and that little grin on his face widened just enough for you to realize that he knew exactly what he was doing. You stood up quickly nearly smashing your head directly into the metal shelf hanging from the wall but before you could hit it, Abbot's hand moved instantly above your head, stopping you from colliding with the sharp edge.
The gesture was small, almost automatic. Which somehow made it worse. He'd always been like that, like protecting you came naturally to him.
"Careful." He said softly.
Your eyes lifted toward him for half a second too long and the moment they met his, something in his expression shifted almost invisibly. Like he was watching every single nervous reaction cross your face in real time.
"Oh my god." You whispered under your breath before immediately escaping the room and leaving him standing there alone.
Within the next two hours, the entire ER somehow realized something was deeply wrong with you.
You dropped your pens constantly. Forgot to give the patients their stickers. Nearly handed someone the wrong chart. At some point you stress ate every single candy left in your pocket without even noticing.
"You dropped the blood pressure cuff three times." Shen whispered while walking beside you. "Is everything okay?"
"I'm just tired."
"Abbot said you came in early."
You stopped walking so abruptly Shen almost bumped into you. "I need to quit."
"You need a psychiatric."
Ellis suddenly appeared beside both of you like she'd materialized out of thin air. "What's wrong with the boss today?" She asked casually.
Shen shrugged, clearly not understanding what she meant, while you immediately kept walking before either of them could continue the conversation.
It was weird. Because it genuinely felt like something had suddenly snapped into place overnight. Like you'd become painfully aware of the invisible string that had apparently always existed between you and Jack Abbot.
And the worst part? Now that you knew it, you couldn't stop noticing it. Especially because he clearly wasn't helping.
If anything, he kept finding excuses to stay close to you. Whenever he handed you the tablet, his fingers brushed yours briefly before pulling away. Whenever he squeezed past you in crowded hallways, his hand would settle lightly against your back for just a second longer than necessary, guiding you forward while acting completely casual about it.
And every single time you looked at him, he was already looking at you first.
The hours dragged by painfully slow, each one bringing you closer to finally going home and sleep for ten consecutive years.
At least you were doing a decent job avoiding him until around five in the morning. That was when Lena sent both of you upstairs to pediatrics to deal with some transfer issue.
The second you heard your name attached to his, a long exhausted sigh escaped your body before you could stop it.
Jack appeared beside you a moment later, adjusting the stethoscope. Of course he looked good doing that too.
The two of you walked toward the elevators together in silence. Oddly enough, it wasn't awkward. Maybe both of you were too exhausted at this point to put actual energy into whatever this thing was becoming. Still, even without looking directly at him, you could feel him behind you constantly.
The elevator dinged open.
Jack stepped aside slightly and gestured for you to enter first with one lazy movement of his hand, just enough to make your stomach flip embarrassingly fast.
You stepped inside while he followed right behind you a second later, and the moment the elevator doors slid shut, your heart immediately started beating harder.
Suddenly you were very aware of the situation you were currently trapped in.
Small elevator. Jack Abbot standing directly beside you.
You focused aggressively on the glowing floor numbers above the doors instead of the man next to you, trying to force your brain to think about literally anything else.
The silence stretched for a few seconds. From the corner of your eye, you saw him open his mouth once like he was about to say something before stopping himself.
"Why are you avoiding me?" He finally asked, turning his head toward you.
"I'm not."
"You are." You could hear the grin in his voice before you even looked at him.
"I'm just tired."
"You can't even look at me." He said with a quiet laugh. Which unfortunately was true. "Did I do something wrong?"
"I did something wrong."
"You did?" He asked confused.
"You're my attending."
"Is that so?" He said, tilting his head. "I swiped right first, so..."
The elevator suddenly felt ten degrees hotter. You stared even harder at the floor numbers, silently begging for the doors to open already.
Jack leaned casually against the elevator wall beside you, arms crossed loosely now. Meanwhile you were one bad heartbeat away from passing out.
"Don't blame yourself." He said softly.
And against your better judgment, you finally looked at him properly. Huge mistake. Because he was already watching you with that same warm, entertained expression from earlier. Like he could practically see how flustered you were becoming and didn't mind it one bit. Maybe even liked it and somehow that made your entire face burn hotter.
You weren't used to this. You weren't used to men who flirted this confidently. While Jack Abbot looked at you like he already knew exactly what would happen if he got any closer.
The elevator suddenly jerked violently, both of you stumbled slightly before everything stopped completely. The lights flickered once and then the elevator went still.
Jack slowly looked up toward the ceiling and your stomach dropped instantly.
For a second, neither of you moved.
The soft hum of the emergency lights filled the elevator while your own heartbeat pounded so loudly you were convinced he could hear it too.
Nope. Absolutely not. You refused to get trapped inside a tiny elevator with Jack looking like that.
"This is actually my personal hell." You whispered, staring at the closed doors.
"You're being dramatic." A quiet laugh left him.
"I'm trapped in a metal box with my attending after accidentally matching with him on Tinder. I think I'm reacting appropriately."
That made him smile properly this time. You hated how much that worked on you.
He pushed himself off the elevator wall and reached toward the emergency panel, pressing the call button.
"Maintenance will reset it in a minute." He said casually.
Of course he sounded relaxed. Meanwhile you felt like your nervous system was slowly shutting down.
You crossed your arms tightly over your chest, trying to ignore how small the elevator suddenly felt. Or how good he smelled standing this close. Your eyes squeezed shut for a second and, for some reason, your brain immediately thought about that Trisha Paytas picture where she's choking herself.
That was literally you at that moment.
"You okay, Shortcake?" He asked again, quieter this time.
Jack was already looking at you again, like he was trying to read every reaction on your face until he finally got the truth out of you.
"Please stop calling me that."
"Why?" One side of his mouth lifted slightly. "You like it."
"I do not like it."
"Are you sure?" His voice dropped softer. "Every time I say it, I see something in your eyes."
You looked away immediately before he noticed the effect he was having on you.
Unfortunately for you, he definitely noticed.
His laugh slipped out again, low and tired and way too attractive for five in the morning.
Jack stepped a little closer then. Not enough to make you uncomfortable, but enough for your entire body to immediately become aware of it.
"You know." He said lightly. "Langdon told me you love it when I call you that."
"He told you that?" Your eyes snapped toward him in horror.
That cocky expression appeared again instantly, and the corner of his mouth twitched when he realized he got exactly the reaction he wanted from you.
You genuinely wanted the elevator to crush you alive.
He looked way too pleased with himself now, arms crossed too while watching you completely unravel in front of him. And the worst part was that your nervousness seemed genuinely cute to him. He clearly wasn't used to girls reacting like this around him. Most women probably flirted back confidently, meanwhile you could barely maintain basic eye contact.
"I hate you." You muttered weakly.
"No you don't."
The confidence in his voice should've annoyed you. Instead it made heat spread through places it absolutely shouldn't.
The elevator stayed silent around both of you for another moment. Neither of you looked away this time.
Your brain kept screaming at you to say something normal. Something professional. Anything.
But then his eyes dropped to your mouth. And the second you realized you were looking at his lips too, the tension inside the elevator shifted so hard it almost felt physical.
Jack's expression softened slightly, like he was thinking about it too now. About how close he was standing and the fact that there was nobody else around.
Your stomach twisted nervously when his gaze slowly lifted back to yours again, like he was silently trying to figure out if you wanted this as much as he did.
And for one horrible second, you genuinely thought he was about to kiss you.
Both of you breathing heavier now, like the air inside the elevator had suddenly disappeared. Your pulse was probably completely tachycardic at this point, which honestly felt embarrassing considering all he was doing was looking at you.
Then he took another small step closer.
Your breath caught instantly.
With his head tilted slightly down now, he searched for your eyes again before his gaze dropped back to your lips for half a second. And without even realizing it, you nervously licked your own lips.
The effect that had on him was immediate.
You stopped hearing everything around you for a moment. There was only him. Until the elevator doors suddenly slammed open with a loud mechanical ding.
Both of you pulled apart slowly, almost reluctantly, like it took actual effort to force distance back between you.
Joy and Shen stood outside the elevator staring at both of you in confusion.
"Oh, okay." Joy said slowly.
You immediately walked out so fast it almost counted as fleeing. Meanwhile behind you, Jack cleared his throat once before casually following after you like absolutely nothing had happened at all.
jack abbot x reader
thinking only about his freckled biceps...
warnings: chokehold, fluff, flirting, playfighting
It all starts with you figuring out that he’s ticklish.
You had both been laying on the couch, watching who knows what at this hour of the night. You shifted to find the remote to turn up the volume when you accidentally jab his side.
Jack’s not just a little bit ticklish. His entire body convulses and every muscle tenses when your elbow lodges into his side.
His eyes widen when he sees yours squint devilishly with this new discovery.
“You’re… ticklish?” You smile, leaning back for a brief moment, almost in disbelief.
“Oh no,” he groans, before you practically tackle him, hands flying towards his sides. He instantly recoils.
But then his laugh escapes, loud and deep, completely uncontrollable. You giggle in response, watching him squirm under your touch, an unfamiliar dynamic, opposite to what you both are used to.
Suddenly he twists away from your reach, and in one swift movement, he’s got both of your wrists trapped in his calloused hands. He pulls them away from himself while trying to catch his breath, and nothing but the sound of both your huffing fills the room.
“I had no idea…” you wheeze, your face beginning to hurt from smiling.
“Don’t you ever tickle me again,” he warns.
“Or what?”
Jack lifts your arms above his head, and shifts them into one grip.
Oh no…
“Or I’ll have to do this,” he says, tracing his free hand down to your side before digging his fingers into the spot between your hips and ribs.
Your scream turns into cackling as he tickles you back. Between the laughter ringing out from both of you, you manage to slip free of his grip, and now it’s a full-on fight, discovering new places on each other that get a reaction.
It gets hard for Jack to breathe from laughing, but he refuses to surrender. In one swift motion, he pushes you sideways off the couch and you yelp, startled enough to stop your hands from reaching for him again.
Before you can tumble to the ground, Jack rises off the couch and catches you, pulling you against him.
You’re about to turn around and retaliate when he says, “Oh no, you don’t.”
In one swift motion, his arm slides around your neck from behind and locks you in a chokehold. It’s probably one that he’s practiced from when he served in the military. He squeezes his bicep, tight while his other arm snakes around your waist, pinning you against his body
“Hey!” you wheeze.
He leans down, his breath brushing against your ear. “I warned you once. Don’t make me warn you again,” he murmurs.
But from this position, he fails to see the smug expression spreading across your face.
I dunnoooo you guysss im thinking about Jack unintentionally and unconsciously healing your daddy issues because hes just that good of a boyfriend.
Him tucking you in at night as a little joke cos he stuffs the blankets so far under you that he tickles you, giggling along with your squeals and when you kick your feet around, messing up the blankets he gives you this faux shocked face and says "well now I gotta do it allllll over again," with a little smirk before hes tickling you again.
Or him kissing your forehead whenever he can. Him ruffling the top of your hair when he walks by wherever youre sitting.
Him pulling you by the arm when you pass him and his friends at a little BBQ you two are hosting in his backyard. He pulls you into his chest and holds you there, your back soft against his firm chest, a forearm thrown over your collar as he sips a beer and continues on conversation. He'll even slip some stuff in about things you've been doing, how proud he is of you, and just doesnt even include you in the convo, he just wants you to know hes proud of you.
He'll also feed you sometimes, its rare but he does it when its been a long day. You're sitting on the couch watching tv to decompress and he'll start to feed you bites of cut up banana and strawberry from his bowl.
Or I'm thinking about him moving you into his house only two months into dating cos he "wants to keep an eye on you." And its true!!! He wants to make sure you're eating enough, sleeping enough, getting out of the house enough. The dynamic keeps both of you steady.
Other times he'll really encourage communication from you. Its taken you a long while to get really comfortable with him and knowing he's not planning on abandoning you. He didn't know much about your past or anything for that matter regarding past relationships or your relationship with your father but one day it all just comes crashing down and you're sobbing in his lap while he rocks you gently, shushing and cooing to you telling you "s'okay, baby. S'okay. M'here. Tell daddy what you need."
He's taken a lot of time to get to understand how your mind works!! Whats okay to say and puts you at ease, what not to say cos it makes you anxious, what makes you a little too sensitive for his liking and what puts you in a warm honeyed headspace where all the anxiety melts away and he can just take care of you the way he needs to.
But sometimes you just need a reminder that everything's okay!! Feelings can be overwhelming and Jack — being much older, mature, and more relaxed.
So he'll place a warm, grounding hand on your shaky thigh, squeezing and circling his thumb over your soft but tense skin until he feels you relax under him.
He doesn't really acknowledge it but he will say something like "that's it," all soft under his breath before pulling your legs up into his lap and tucking you close to his chest, whispering "y'okay?" Into your hair, humming and pressing a kiss to the top of your head when you nod 'yes.'
this is literally younggf!reader and jack abbot after he picks you up at the end of your work day, only a few hours before the beginning of his night shift, so you two can do your routines together.
doing your post-work, his pre-work shower together (it takes longer than any other shower because he’s still dealing with “morning” wood and you’ve been salivating since the car ride when he showed up with sleep-messy hair and plaid pajama pants) brushing your teeth in the mirror besides each other. taking off your makeup and doing your skincare, forcing him to stand still as you apply it to him too, even as he grumbles about his face feeling sticky. putting on sleepwear while he lounges in his boxers because he doesn’t have to get dressed for at least another 45 minutes. him putting his old man reading glasses on as he lays beside you in bed, playing solitaire on his phone with only his pointer finger, all while you eat whatever he picked up for you on the way home and watch a tv show he swears is stupid but lowkey is so invested in that when he readies to leave, he says, “tell me what i missed in the morning”
Summary: Abbot’s mildly annoyed when he doesn’t seem to be his favorite resident’s favorite attending — he’s pissed when he finds out she’s considering leaving the Pitt.
Warnings: general medical things, mentions of a past MCI (not detailed), did Some Research for this but I’m sure it’s still all wrong
Author’s note: Long live Shen and his dunks!!! 🥤hooah!
—
It starts the way things on night shift at the PTMC emergency department often do — with Dunkin’ Donuts.
Dr. Jack Abbot is speaking to an MS3 who’d just arrived for his first rotation when he sees the other attending on shift, Dr. John Shen, stroll in through the ambulance bay doors with his usual pre-shift coffee.
It’s hardly a rare sight at the Pitt, and Abbot only nods in greeting as he goes back to running the new kid, Wells, through what to expect on his first night shift.
What does surprise him, however, enough that he almost doesn’t hear what Wells asks him next as he head snaps back in the direction of the bay, is that you’re smiling at Shen’s side, a matching pink and orange cup in hand.
“Dr. Abbot?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jack says, shaking his head, back to the task at hand. “Sorry, dude, what’d you ask?”
“Will it be a while before handoff?”
Jack checks his watch. “Probably. We get started when all of the residents are here. Have you done any rotations in an ED before?”
“This is my first. I just got done with derm, IM and peds,” he says, then smiles. “Love peds.”
“Well, you’re very lucky to be learning from all of these guys. But you’ll probably be overwhelmed,” Jack says, honest. He almost can’t believe they sent a first-timer to nights; it must be a busy rotation. “Try to keep up best you can, eat whenever you have a millisecond. Let me or any of the residents know if you need help.”
Wells nods, looking serious suddenly. “Yes, sir.”
Jack opens his mouth to tell him to cut that shit out immediately, almost forgetting what had called his attention only a few seconds ago until it appears at his side.
“You and me tonight, Jack?” Shen says, shattering that illusion as he sips from his coffee. “And who’s this?”
“Dr. Shen and Dr. Y/l/n, this is Student Doctor Wells joining us on his first emergency med rotation,” he says. “Dr. Shen is the other attending on shift, and Dr. Y/l/n is our senior resident tonight.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” you say, immediately shaking his hand. Jack saw your eyes light up the moment you heard there was a new student on shift. You loved working with the new kids. “Welcome to the Pitt.”
“Thanks,” he says, shaking Shen’s hand enthusiastically s well. “Aw man, Dunkies? That’s such a good idea.”
Jack rolls his eyes outright, feeling his mouth screw to the side in annoyance while you sip from your cup.
“Dr. Shen bought donuts for everyone, too. They’re in the break room,” you say, checking your watch, a strand of hair falling out of your ponytail with the motion. “C’mon. I can show you before we start handoff.”
Wells looks at Abbot, who shrugs. “Like I said, eat when you can.”
You laugh at that, before your eyes find Wells again, tipping your head in the general direction of the break room. “He’s right. Let’s go.”
Abbot watches the two of you leave before directing his attention back to the chart of the patient he’s taking over from Robby in Trauma 2, familiarizing himself with the results from the tests they’ve been running on day shift.
He hears Shen put down his coffee, the offending cup bound to leave a ring of water on Jack’s preferred charting station at the central hub. It’s never bothered him before — the ED is messy enough as it is — but everything about it is pissing him off tonight.
“Is that something I need to know about?” he asks quietly.
“What?”
Jack looks up. “You and Y/l/n. Coming in here holding hands after a coffee date.”
Shen glitches for a second, frozen where his backpack is halfway off his shoulders.
Then he scoffs.
“It was not a coffee date,” he says. There’s amusement in his eyes.
“Hm,” Abbot says, holding onto his stethoscope while he rolls out his neck, tablet forgotten on the desk. “If you say so.”
“Uh, I do,” Shen insists, still entertained.
“I’m just saying, I’d rather know now, y’know, before upstairs buries us in paperwork,” he says, sniffing, glancing around his department. Robby beckons him from Trauma 2. “See how we can get ahead with admin. That’s all.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack,” his co-attending laughs. “Nobody is doing any paperwork. She just wanted to talk about, like, career stuff.”
Jack’s eyebrows furrow. “Career stuff?”
Shen shrugs, tugging a few pens out of his bag, clipping his badge onto his scrub pants. “She’s applying for fellowships right now — you know this. She just wanted some advice. She’s going around to all the attendings — I’m sure you’re on the list somewhere, dude. Chill.”
“Abbot. Shen,” Robby calls. “I’d really love to leave before puck drop.”
“Coming!” Jack says, before turning back to Shen. “I am chill. I just wanted to know if — hold on. She’s going around to everyone, and you somehow beat me in the order?”
Shen grins around his straw, already bitten beyond practical use, as slimy condensation ring on the desk right next to Jack’s phone. Then he shrugs. “I probably just give off better mentor energy than you do.”
“Right now, I need you to give off attending energy for this handoff,” Jack bites. “Can you do that?”
Shen laughs again, passing Jack on his way to Trauma 2. “You’re on one tonight, old man. Wells better stay out of the way.”
—
A pediatric broken arm comes in only half an hour into your shift.
You grab Wells, who follows you obediently while Olive wheels the 8-year-old to the room number Lena calls out, speaking with her mom about the injury.
The child’s cries are awful, and you briefly doubt if this was something to bring a med student in on so quickly. Kids were hard for you at first.
“What’s this?” Dr. Abbot says from behind the central desk.
“Broken arm. Playground,” you say over your shoulder.
“Wells stay on it. I’ll be in there to check in a few,” he says, nodding at you. You nod back, pursing your lips in the absence of a smile given the scenario, feeling reassured all the same.
“We are a teaching hospital, Mrs…” you trail off, waiting for mom to supply her name as Wells and Olive help her daughter onto the bed in Central 11.
“Redford,” she says. “You can call me June, though. This is Penny.”
“And what’s your name?” you say to the younger boy who’d been clutching his mother’s hand the entire time, tucked behind one of her legs. You crouch to his level.
“Aaron,” he says, his eyes bloodshot.
“Nice to meet you, Aaron. I’m Dr. Y/l/n and this is Student Doctor Wells. We’re going to take real good care of your sister, okay?” you ask.
He nods, sniffling into his mother’s Lycra pants.
“Okay,” you say, standing back up. “Like I was saying, this is a teaching hospital, so I’ll have my med student here with me today, if that’s alright with you, Mom.”
“Sure,” she says, smiling tightly at Wells, her worry still evident, nodding nonetheless. “Is it broken?”
Turning your attention back to Penny, her left arm is lying limp and awkward. “We won’t know for sure until we do some imaging, but we’ll give her something for the pain and bump her as far up the list as we can if she needs an x-ray, okay?”
Mrs. Redford breathes. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Sound good, Penny?” you ask. She nods.
You speak with Olive about starting ibuprofen and an order for an x-ray. Wells seems to be doing okay at Penny’s bedside, his eyes already scanning her injury.
“What would we do next?” you ask, joining him bedside.
“After pain management, X-ray?” he asks.
“We could,” you say, smiling at both Penny and her mom as you both turn away slightly to deliberate. You look at him expectantly. “But pediatric fractures are also a great candidate for…?”
Wells is still locked in on her arm, but then he looks up for a second, a look of recognition passing on his face.
“Ultrasound,” he says. “Of course.”
“Right,” you say, smiling again. “Good job. Didn’t wanna spoil it, but Olive probably already sent for a machine.”
“Nurses, man,” he says, appreciative.
You finally settle on the stool at Penny’s bedside, getting a closer look.
“What happened?” you ask, looking between both of them.
“I fell from the monkey bars,” she says.
“The monkey bars?” Wells asks, his tone light and happy. He did say he had some peds in him. “Oh no! Were you racing your brother?”
You roll to the side as Wells keeps talking to Penny, and her mom directs her attention to you. “I was watching them, I swear I was, but her dad called, and she’s just so fast—”
“It’s alright,” you say immediately. You weren’t at all worried about this case from a social perspective — both children presented clothed, well-fed and clean, and mom was caring and cooperative to start. You could keep an eye out through the rest of the exam, and you catch Wells’ eye when she’s not looking.
But with Penny comfortable and the room calmed down slightly, Aaron sitting at the end of her bed, you let June know she could take her son to the family room if she wanted.
“No, that’s okay. We’ll stay with her at least until her father is here,” she says.
“Okay,” you nod, watching Olive pull back the curtain to wheel in the ultrasound machine.
A blur of movement and an audible commotion near the hub catches your ear, but you and Wells remain focused on the task at hand.
Olive is leading him through the set up of the ultrasound, so you keep your ears open, staying aware of your surroundings, noting already where Dr. Abbot’s standing in front of the board at the central hub.
Then it’s Lena’s voice, followed by a man’s.
“Sir, you can’t just barge back here—”
“My daughter’s back here! June? Penny?”
A man enters the bay suddenly, his chest heaving and eyes wild, pushing past Olive on his way to Penny’s opposite bedside. Father.
“Oh, Pen,” he sighs, shrugging off his suit jacket. “What happened?”
“I fell off the monkey bars,” she says, a fresh round of tears springing.
“Is it broken? Has she been for an x-ray?” he asks, shifting his attention to you.
“Hi, Mr. Redford,” you start, nodding for Wells to begin smoothing the gel over Penny’s arm. “We’re beginning the ultrasound now. I’m Dr. Y/l/n, and this is—”
“Ultrasound?” he says, his face screwing up immediately. His suit jacket discarded in his wife’s lap at some point, he loosens his tie. “Isn’t that for babies? Her arm is fucking broken.”
The atmosphere in the room changes on a dime, you feel Wells still beside you, and Olive freezes, too, where she’s checking Penny’s chart at the monitor again.
“We suspect so,” you say, taking a measured breath. You make sure Wells has a good enough view of the monitor, handing him the wand with a reassuring nod. “We’re doing the ultrasound to see what kind of break it is so we can properly set it, then recommend her a cast or a brace depending.”
“How long has she been waiting here in pain while you guys are fiddling with this machine?” he asks. He turns to his wife, who has also fallen silent at this exchange. “Babe, why didn’t you push for an x-ray?”
June looks to you, suddenly helpless. “Well, she said—”
“No, no,” Mr. Redford cuts her off, his eyes squinting at you. “I want a different doctor in here right now.”
Wells, to his credit, is focused completely on the machine, moving the wand over her arm. You lean in closer.
“Keep going. Try to identify the type of fracture,” you say softly, before turning your attention back to the father.
“Mr. Redford, on fractures such as your daughter’s, an ultrasound gives us a quicker diagnosis, and then we don’t have to expose her to radiation,” you explain. “On injuries like this, where the hand goes out to catch the fall, ultrasounds are very common.”
But you see this all the time. Tensions run high enough in the ED, way before a kid is involved. You can tell nothing you’ve said has carried any weight as his frustration grows.
Abbot is still visible over his shoulder, now focused on a chart on his tablet but inched a few feet down the counter at the central hub, marginally closer to the bay you’re in.
“What is this place?” Mr. Redford says, his volume growing. Olive looks to you, a question in her eyes, and you nod. “My wife rushed my daughter here an hour ago and she’s still not in a fucking cast?”
“We’ll get her in a cast as soon as Student Doctor Wells and I—”
“And you’re letting a student touch my daughter?”
“Greenstick,” Wells says quietly. You pull your attention away, checking the monitor, and nod at him.
“Good. We’ll want Ortho down here to be sure,” you say.
“Hey!” the father shouts suddenly. Your eyes shoot to both of his children, their faces scared. His wife is standing at his side, a hand on his arm, pleading, but he surges on. “I’m fucking talking to—”
“S’there a problem here?”
Jack appears with Olive behind him, his jaw set as he looks around the room. His eyes don’t go to Mr. Redford first, but to you. He glances at Wells, too, who still has his head down, even if at some point he had moved himself slightly in front of you, in between you and the father.
Only then does Dr. Abbot speak, pointing at Mr. Redford. “Dad, out here with me. Now.”
Mr. Redford scoffs. “Oh, are you in charge? Do you want to explain to me why you’re letting college kids run rampant around your ER?”
“Buddy, I wasn’t asking,” Jack says. “Or I can get security involved if I need to. How’s that sound?”
That seems to register with the man, who finally detaches himself from the beside, stalking over to where Dr. Abbot grips the bay curtain. Which is promptly shut as soon as he’s on the other side, but not before he meets your eyes one last time.
“You need to calm down. You’re scaring your daughter, and your son, too, for that matter,” you hear him say.
“I’ll calm down when she’s been properly seen—”
But Jack cuts him off. “Your daughter is in the care of a very talented, knowledgeable and experienced senior resident, and your wife consented to a student doctor on the case.”
“I didn’t consent to that.”
“But you weren’t here, and that’s none of my business,” Jack says. “What is my business, is my ED and my staff. And you cannot talk to my staff that way unless you want to be removed. Got it?”
Silence for a bit longer, and then the curtain wooshes open again. Dr. Abbot lingers, hands tucked behind his back, as Mr. Redford returns to his daughter’s bedside, looking dejected.
Jack nods at you.
“Okay,” you sigh, a smile on your face again, trying to breathe a bit a life back into the room. June is beet red. “Olive, can you please call an Ortho consult?”
“I did earlier,” she says. “They’re sending Park.”
You whistle. “Lucky you, Wells, meeting Park the Shark your first day.”
—
After you explain the next steps to both parents, Dr. Park arrives to assess the fracture, fist bumping Dr. Abbot, who then takes his leave, one more nod at you. You wave him off.
Park ultimately agrees with Wells’ diagnosis, telling him not to get too excited over a simple pediatric greenstick under his breath when Wells smiles at you proudly.
Park orders Penny moved up to Ortho to cast her, noting that the swelling isn’t too severe and that she can go home with a new cast tonight. And that yes, that she can pick whatever color she wants.
Kids always bring out a a different side of even the most intimidating doctors, and you smile when Park promises to have the pink options set out for her.
“See ya, bottom dwellers,” he says, snapping his gloves into the trash once Penny and her family have been moved out of the room and sent upstairs.
“Thanks,” you say sarcastically. “That one is all yours. Dad’s a lot. You were warned.”
When he leaves, you check in with Wells, who seems a bit overwhelmed by everything that just occurred as you both sanitize.
“Is that kind of thing normal?” he asks. “You were so… calm.”
“Sadly,” you say. “Yeah, it is. You just have to focus on the patient. Escalate if you need. You’ll learn.”
He follows you to the board, brand new Hokas squeaking along the floor. “Dude’s a badass.”
“Who, Park?” you laugh. “Yeah. He knows it, too.”
But Wells shakes his head as he joins at your side. “No, Abbot.”
You quirk a brow, thinking back to the scene, hating that you have to force yourself to relive it to remember the details so quickly, because you’re that used to those kinds of things happening to you.
You’ve gotten so good at packing it up and picking up the next patient, to the point that it almost scares you sometimes.
Maybe not the exact wording you’d choose, but Dr. Jack Abbot is a badass.
Because it’s true, that you’d sought his reassurance on bringing Wells into the room almost as soon as you’d decided to do it.
That when a man entered the picture with a raised voice, aggressive posture and foul language, you ran through escalation procedures in your head and looked around for anyone who could help, but your eyes were really only looking for him.
That when Olive had raised her eyebrows at you, you knew she was silently asking if you needed Dr. Abbot, not anyone else, and that you were nodding before you could even properly consider it.
That when he did arrive, seconds later, you felt steady once again, properly able to focus on treating Penny as quickly as possible while still letting Wells learn when it was appropriate.
That when Abbot called you talented and knowledgeable, it wasn’t even the first time you’d heard it from him — because he was usually saying it to your face — but hearing it for the benefit of someone else had doubled its impact on you.
And that when Jack lingered until Park arrived from Ortho, caught your eyes one last time while you began presenting to the surgeon, you felt yourself trying not to preen.
And most of all, that all of these things point to one irrefutable fact that you’ve spent weeks, months trying to ignore, white knuckling your way through brushed shoulders, reassuring words and touches to the small of your back, only feeling like you can breathe again when it’s time for your next elective elsewhere — which is that you have the biggest, most inconvenient, unprofessional and distracting crush on one of your attendings.
“Yeah, he’s — he has our backs,” you say, considering your next words carefully. “So does Shen.”
“He just came in there all ‘you, with me, now,’” Wells imitates, which succeeds in making you laugh, forgetting your grief momentarily. “Shut him up real quick. So sick.”
“Yeah,” you sigh, rubbing a hand over your face, looking back to the board for the newest arrival waiting for a doctor. “So… so sick.”
—
Hours later, Jack finds you finishing up charts at your favorite desk, on the north side by the family room. You hadn’t seemed rattled earlier by any means, but he still had to check on his resident.
“Hi,” he says softly, tapping his fingers on your desk as he approaches.
“Hi, Dr. Abbot,” you smile. You stretch your arms over your head, your scrubs exposing a strip of skin as you lean back.
He looks away, pretending to suddenly study the chart on his tablet, clearing his throat. “How are you? How’s the kid doing?”
“Penny?”
“No,” he laughs. “Sorry. Our MS3.”
“Oh. Wells is doing good. Great on peds. We’ve been needing that on nights,” you say, your smile growing. “He was with me and Shen on that MVC, and now I think Parker has him with her on scut.”
Jack nods. “Good. I’m gonna tell him to stick with you, if that’s alright.”
You nod enthusiastically before you go back to typing and he keeps looking at his own charts, a beat of silence shared between you two before he speaks again.
“You handled that really well earlier.”
Your smile from earlier diminishes as you sigh.
“Thanks, I guess. He didn’t leave us alone until the big scary attending came in.”
“Men like that don’t always tend to respond to receiving expert medical advice,” he says. “You know that. But you sent for help and kept the exam rolling, keeping the rest of the family calm and making sure your student got some time. You did everything right.”
Your smile is back, and he feels his own face fit to match yours against his better judgement. The feeling evaporates when you reach for your Dunkin’ cup only seconds later.
It’s quiet for another moment as you sip and tap away at your keyboard, Jack still fiddling with his tablet, beginning to think about handoff. He’d really love to be able to admit both cases in BH upstairs before Robby gets in.
“You still thinking of that pediatrics fellowship?” he asks, setting his tablet down, resting his hip on the desk. “You know there’s an attending offer coming.”
“I don’t know,” you say, swiveling in your chair to face him. “Kids are great, but parents are… I think I might be too soft.”
“You are not soft. Did someone tell you that? Who told you that?”
You look surprised, and Jack wonders if he’s said the wrong thing or came across as overbearing — just as soon, he realizes he doesn’t care.
But you just shrug, tucking a leg under you in your chair. “Nobody said anything. Fellowship’s still on the table. I’ve just got a lot to think about.”
“Again. That offer is coming,” he reminds you. “If you’re sick of school.”
He expects a quip back. Maybe ‘never’ with an offended face.
But you just nod seriously, logging out of the computer. “Yeah. That’s a whole other thing to think about.”
“Hey. Let me know how I can help, yeah?” he asks, tracking your movements, the way you wipe your hands on your pants as you stand.
“Thanks Dr. Abbot,” you say, reaching for your tablet. “I’m sure I’ll come knocking for a letter of rec or two.”
“Right,” he says, still stuck at your desk, even as you walk past him, heading toward the nurse’s station. But you stop, his hand reaching out for your shoulder before he can decide on a better tactic.
You pause, looking up at him, no idea how fired up he is over that coffee.
“If you ever wanna just, like, talk. I’m here for that, too,” he says, hoping it comes across nonchalant, laid-back. The exact opposite of how he feels saying it.
But you don’t say anything, just nodding with a slightly confused expression as you leave him, his hand falling from your shoulder as he tries not to turn and watch you go.
“Oh, that was painful to watch.”
Jack whips his head toward Shen, who’d supposedly been watching the interaction from the nurse’s station, with that stupid coffee still in hand.
Jack had skipped the box of donuts in the break room earlier purely on principle.
“Will you finish that fucking coffee already? It’s been hours.”
—
The next blow is arguably worse, because it comes from his best friend.
“I had coffee with your resident over the weekend,” Robby says offhandedly, just a footnote at the end of sign-out.
Jack raises his eyebrows. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Robby laughs, tucking his glasses into his jacket pocket and slinging his backpack over his shoulder, handing the tablet he was carrying over to Jack. “You supervise how many residents and you’re not even gonna ask me who?”
“I know who,” Jack grumbles lowly.
Robby grins tiredly. “She said she was asking all of the attendings, some of the seniors — talking with other specialities, too.”
Jack feels his jaw tick, glad you were requested for a follow-up at triage first thing and aren’t anywhere near this desk right now.
“Jack,” Robby says.
“What?” he bites out, frustrated. Why couldn’t his resident just fucking talk to him?
“I didn’t know she was considering other fellowships,” Robby says.
Jack shakes his head. “If she does one, it’s peds. We talked about it last week.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Robby says, sucking his lips to his teeth, his knees bending. He feels awkward.
Abbot looks up from his tablet, not saying anything.
Robby continues quietly, “Ultrasound. She even threw out crit care. And I told her she should ask Langdon about education.”
Jack sets the tablet down on the hub with a thunk, collecting his thoughts silently for a second, his eyes not leaving Robby’s.
“We don’t have any of those here.”
“No,” Robby says slowly. “But Presby has ultrasound and education.”
Three years at the Pitt, an attending offer with your name on it, and you wanted to go to Presby?
Jack sniffs, turning away as he looks back at the tablet. “Well that’s news to me. Who even has crit care? Westbridge?”
Robby shakes his head.
“Oh,” Jack says in realization, his attempt at looking at his charts useless.
Not PTMC, not Presby or Westbridge.
Not Pittsburgh at all.
“Brother, I hope you know what you’re doing with that one,” Robby sighs.
“I can assure you that I fucking don’t,” Jack says lowly. “I don’t get why she won’t just come talk to me.”
Robby shakes his head. “You’ll figure it out.”
As he watches Robby leave, a pitying smile on his face, he catches him nodding in greeting to you near the Chairs entrance, your hand thankfully free of the offending Dunkin’ cup tonight.
But as welcome of a sight as you are, it does nothing to quiet the voice in his head telling him that in a few short months you might not even be here. That he might not be treated to the sight that he’s come to realize is more than half of what gets him out of bed at 5pm every day.
His dilemma — teetering so hard toward the personal that he’s beginning to forget it was ever professional in the first place — all fades away as soon as Jack sees you talking with another man, recognizing him immediately as the agitated father from the pediatric broken arm the other day.
Someone, he hasn’t the faintest idea who, tries to get his attention behind him. “Dr. Abbot—”
“One sec,” he says, already pushing his way past nurses, his steps quick to the other side of the central desk.
The closer he gets, he sees that the daughter is with him, too, and he slows his pace. Everything looks calm, but he waits near the edge of the hub.
“Penny was hoping her doctors would sign her cast,” Mr. Redford says. “Her doctor upstairs said you guys would be back around this time.”
Jack busies himself reassigning charts to night shift on the station he’d ended up in front of, busy work that he can do while still listening, unable to remember if he’d given the stomach pain in South 18 to Parker or Nazely as he listens to your every word, his fingers slipping while he splits his attention between his monitor and your interaction.
“We’d love to!” you say, bending partially out of his sight in order to sign her cast. “I love the color you chose. Very pretty. Wow! You got Dr. Park sign, too?”
Jack makes eye contact with Mr. Redford while you’re distracted talking to Penny, who’s in much better shape than she was last week. To his minor, minuscule credit, the man looks sheepish.
“And also,” he says, looking back to you and clearing his throat. “I wanted to apologize. To you and your student, if he’s around. The way I acted was unacceptable.”
“Oh,” you say, and Jack hears the surprise in your voice, watching you tuck Penny out of the way as a gurney comes racing by. “Thank you for saying so. It happens. It’s scary to be in here for your kiddo.”
Don’t dismiss it, Jack thinks. Don’t let him off.
“I’m really sorry,” he says again, his hands back on his daughter’s shoulders. Nowhere near you.
Jack breathes.
“I hope you can remember this in the future, whenever you interact with healthcare workers,” you say, so quiet that Jack can barely catch it over the noise in the ED. Probably so Penny can’t hear. But it’s firm, and your voice doesn’t waver. “This is a very stressful system, but we all just want what’s best for the patient.”
Jack hears you direct the man and his daughter toward where Wells should be, and fully locks back into what he’s been pretending to to be doing for the entire interaction.
He definitely assigned that stomach pain to Henderson, now that he thinks about it.
“You saw that, right?” you ask, peeking over the front of the desk, bringing a whoosh of your perfume over his senses.
“I saw,” Jack nods, clearing his throat before taking his time looking up at you fully.
When he does, you’re almost breathless, beaming with pride, your nails tapping on his desk.
He’d sooner die than let that smile go to Presby.
“Told you,” he says, weighted. He shakes his head. “You’re not soft.”
—
“You’ll definitely get in.”
“Yeah?” Crus says, pressing the crosswalk sign, the two of you slowing to a stop as you wait for the signal. The air’s nippy for April, your fleece pulled tight around your shoulders. Your hand freezes where it’s clutched around a plastic cup of cold brew. You’d never give up your iced drinks, weather be damned.
You’d asked Henderson for coffee before tonight’s shift, and he’d recommended meeting at his favorite spot that was walking distance from the hospital. The coffee was alright, but the cinnamon buns were just as good as he said.
“I appreciate that,” he continues. “I’d miss this place, though. What about you?”
You sigh, rolling your neck out as you see the top floors of the Pitt over the trees, a chill going down your spine, and not from the weather. “Million-dollar question these days, isn’t it?”
“I thought you wanted peds. You thinking of going straight to community?” Crus asks, his expression curious.
“Not really,” you admit. “I could. But I still want to do something else. I just don’t know what anymore.”
“So not peds, then?” he presses.
“Peds is… I love it. But it’s so hard sometimes,” you sigh, your lip worried between your teeth. You don’t need to speak the reasons why out loud — it’s obvious. Crus has been by your side since you started, and he’s been gloved up with you for some of your worst cases. “So I just wanted to look around.”
“What else are you thinking, then?” he asks, eyeing you suspiciously — like it’s absurd that Dr. Y/l/n could land anywhere but at PTMC’s emergency pediatrics fellowship next year.
“Well, you’ve fully tanked my ultrasound chances at Presby,” you joke. “But that’s okay. I’ve thought about critical care, too.”
“I don’t know. I heard you were coming for my spot on that broken arm a few weeks back,” Crus laughs, the two of you finally making your way across the street once the walk sign flashes on.
“I learned that from you.”
“We learned that. From Abbot,” he corrects.
You don’t respond, the two of you quietly walking lockstep down the ramp to the public entrance. You revel in the last few moments of normalcy before everything starts to scream at you for the next 12 hours.
“I’m surprised you haven’t considered emergency med education,” Crus says. “You couldn’t do it here, but. We’d see each other around at Presby, I’m sure.”
You look up at him as he holds open the door for you. “Yeah?”
“Wherever we go, co-res. I hope we stay in touch,” he smiles. You feel a surge of fondness for him — feeling slightly less anxious after everything you’ve discussed. That was the point of these talks, anyway, to hear from the people who know you, who’ve taught you everything or learned alongside you these years.
There’s just one you know you can’t bother with, even if it kills you.
You both flash your badges toward security as you bypass the line, and you smile at your favorite guard working the screening today.
“I would miss this place, too,” you say.
“Can you imagine us ever saying that on our first day here?” he asks.
You think back to yours and Henderson’s first day as interns. You’d been a ball of nerves, fresh out of med school in Virginia. If he was as nervous as you, he didn’t show it.
“Hm. Would it have been before the debridement or after the MCI?”
He winks.
“We better head in. Abbot’s gonna be all over me if I make you late,” he says, waiting for you to scan your badge into the ED before he does. “Shen said he gave him a hard time the other day.”
You stop walking at his words, hugging the wall just inside the doors, suddenly nervous to even catch a glimpse of the aforementioned attending now. “What do you mean?”
Crus chucks his empty coffee in the trash and crosses his arms, his voice dropping low around his next words. It’s not hard to go unheard in a room this loud and busy, but it’s just as easy to accidentally be overheard. You lean closer.
“You could talk to him, y’know,” Crus says. “He knows you the best. He could tell you what he thinks.”
You shake your head, the idea impossible. “I already know what he thinks. He wants me here.”
“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” Crus mutters.
You have no time to ask him to expand, unsure if you’d even want to, your stomach so turned over at every underlying implication. You hadn’t eaten enough before shift and you were starting to get shaky from the caffeine, your hands clammy.
“All this coffee coming in these days, and yet nobody is asking for my order.”
The source of your anxiety had arrived through the ambulance bay doors at some point, his backpack slung over his shoulder as he stands staring between you and Crus, his eyes trained on your cup, before he looks to your face, eyebrows raised.
His scrubs don’t even match today, and he’s gone and worn the top that’s just a bit too big for your liking — the one that doesn’t accentuate his arms like they deserve. Maybe that’s a godsend today. Your eyes trail over his freckled forearms anyway — it’s useless.
“They don’t serve break room sludge at my spot,” Henderson says, before turning back to you. “Y/n/n, think about what I said.”
Crus walks off, and you smile tightly at Jack as you attempt to walk past him as well, but he starts to trail just a pace behind you.
“What’d he say?” he asks.
“Just helping me talk through some fellowship apps,” you answer, stopping at the central hub to glance at the board. He stops too, leaning his arm on the desk.
“Yeah? How’s that going?”
“It’s… fine,” you nod, hiking your own bag up higher on your shoulder. “Finishing up soon. Hopefully.”
“Good,” he says. “That’s good. Deadlines coming up, right?”
“You keeping an eye out?” you joke, but your hand twitches around your cup.
“You’ve just been… drinking a lot of coffee lately,” he accuses.
Your mouth falls open in protest. “What do you —”
“You’d let me know, right?” he asks, turning to you. “If you needed any help? And I don’t just mean a letter, Y/l/n. Seriously, anything.”
You’re nodding on autopilot, even if his words have hit you in the deepest part of your chest. His words so earnest, you’re attending so unaware of the impact he’s even having on you because that’s just who Jack Abbot is. He looks out for everyone in his department no matter how long he’s known them, and he gives his heart over and over to patients until he has nothing left in him but a trip to the roof at daybreak.
It’s ironic, in a sad way, that watching him all of these years has made you unable to even let him in like he’s asking you to. Because he just doesn’t know what it means to you, and he never will.
“I know, Dr. Abbot,” you say. “Thank you.”
If he’s convinced by your answer he doesn’t look it, and he sighs as he unzips his backpack. “Go drop your stuff. Sign-out is in five.”
Dismissed, you toss your half-full cup of coffee in the trash on your way to the lockers. Your nerves are shot enough.
—
Abbot is overseeing you, along with your now near-permanent sidekick in Wells, on a traumatic amputation later that night. Motorcycle accident turned nearly deadly — he files a mental note to sign this patient out to Robby.
He lingers where he usually does when you’re leading on a patient, hands tucked behind his back near the doors, in a paper gown that you’d tied on for him in case he needed to hop in, even if he knew he wouldn’t. Once Ortho had come down for a consult, he felt even less of a need to be actively involved. You could do this in your sleep.
“You a third year?” Park asks, watching Wells flush the limb with saline.
Wells looks bewildered. “Who? Me?”
“I’m looking at you, aren’t I?” he spits.
“Yeah, I am, um — is this not…” he gestures toward the limb, shaky. “I’ve never done a saline flush before.”
Park nods. “It’s fine. Come back for an ortho elective next year.”
Jack watched as Wells looks over to you immediately, and you just raise your eyebrows at him, nodding. Jack can practically feel the pride emanating from you like a force field around the kid.
“Uh, yeah,” Wells says, turning back to Park, then back to the limb. Back to Park again. “I hadn’t thought about it. But I will.”
“You stealing my med students, Park?” Jack quips, hands on his hips. “Arm’s not even reattached yet.”
“Your residents, too,” Park grins, before turning to you. “We still on for — what’d we say, tomorrow?”
Jack’s stomach sinks.
You sigh, still holding your gloved hands up. “Uh, shoot. Can we do Thursday instead?”
Park cocks his head. “Before nights? Sure.”
“I was thinking we could just hit the caf? It’s easiest, especially if we’re already coming in earlier,” you say.
“Re-attachment’s favorable,” he tells one of the OR nurses who appears in the room, ready to bring the patient up. “Can you call up and book the OR they were holding? Wells, you coming up?”
“Hell yeah,” he says, standing quickly, the stool he’s sitting on skidding into the wall behind him. You stifle a giggle, and Jack can feel you turn to him, but he can’t bring himself to share in your amusement.
“Okay, well make sure you bring that,” Park says, pointing at the arm. He turns back to you. “I’m not doing the caf. Get my number before you leave in the morning and we’ll figure it out.”
Jack doesn’t hear the rest, shedding his PPE into the corner bin and shouldering the trauma door open with force, muttering an excuse toward one of the OR nurses that’s inadvertently stood in his way, aggressively rubbing sanitizer into his hands as he stalks back to the central desk.
He stares at the board as new arrivals filter in, but he can’t process any of it.
Because — fucking Park? It sits in his stomach like a rock — the knowledge that you’d sooner turn to an attending on a different floor, in a completely different speciality, than you’d come to him for anything.
Robby and Shen had hurt, too. Henderson he didn’t even mind — he was glad his residents had a close relationship, happy that you had an equal to turn to. Because Jack prided himself on his mentorship. It’s been one of the most rewarding things of working at this hospital, the never-ending parade of new kids coming to check a box for med school that ended up discovering their passion. It was few who’d actually have the chops to stay.
But you were always supposed to be one of them. From the day he’d met you, he knew he wanted you to want to stay. He’d held his breath every time you came back from an elective, bright-eyed, explaining everything you’d learned with a new-found enthusiasm he was worried the Pitt had long ago stolen from you. And then he’d feel selfish, realizing his biggest fear is that you’d fall in love with something else and leave him and this place behind, when he knew he should just want you to be the best doctor you can be.
So Park feels like a slap in the face, like ice-cold water poured over him in the middle of Trauma 2.
Jack had spent three years watching over you — he knew your tells. He knew you were stressed the last few months, your anxiety not impacting your performance, but definitely his own mood. Maybe it made him feel inadequate as a leader that his resident was clearly struggling and wouldn’t talk to him about it. Or maybe it just worried him in a way that he’d realized long ago that he shouldn’t be worrying for you.
—
Nearing the end of his rotation, Wells had become a presence you realize you’ll miss having around. But you have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be back.
“How’d you feel last weekend?” you ask, walking with him toward the break room.
“Oh,” he says holding the door once you swing it open. “Yeah. That sucked.”
“Did you end up getting to talk to your niece?” you ask him quietly, the two of you loitering at the coffee pot now. Not really enough time to sit down, but just enough to duck away for a second after walking him through some sutures.
“Mhm.”
“Did it help?” you ask.
He shrugs, titling his head side to side. “Maybe? I think a little.”
“Good,” you nod. “It’s good to have people you can reach out to outside of all of this that remind you why. Even if we’re here for you, too.”
Wells talks about his next rotation, in psych — which he’s told you many times by now he’s not particularly excited for. But you told him it might surprise him; you remember enjoying it back in your MS4 year, after you’d avoided it as long as possible.
“You’re coming back for that Ortho elective though, aren’t you?” you say, idle chatter.
The NP that had been taking their lunch leaves, and it’s just the two of you after a while. Wells immediately angles his body toward you.
“Listen. I have a question. It’s kinda embarrassing,” he starts.
“Oh?” you blink, shaking away the cobwebs that crowd your mind in the dead hours of this shift. The microwave tells you it’s almost 6am.
“What are the moral implications of me asking out a nurse? Even if she’s on day shift?”
You can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of you.
“Is it that bad?” Wells asks, distressed.
But you cover your mouth, clearing your throat to stop your laugh but unable to fight your smile. “It’s Emma, isn’t it?”
“How’d you know?”
“I have eyes.”
His cheeks flame red, a feat considering how pale he’d just been. “Well, yeah. It is her. Is that, like, kosher? Is there a policy?”
You pat his shoulder. “Oh, Wells. If a doctor got in trouble every time he hit on a nurse around here we’d be a skeleton crew.”
“So it’s fine?” he says, his tone hopeful.
“Sure. Some personal advice, though,” you wince, thinking back to an elective last year when an EMT asked you out your first day. You’d avoided the ambulance bay for four straight weeks after you’d kindly rejected him. He was cute, built in the way that a lot of EMTs are, and he never held it against you. Your heart was just a little locked up at your home hospital. “Wait ‘til after your rotation ends.”
He nods seriously. “Got it.”
“C’mon, loverboy, we should go,” you tell him, reaching for the door handle as you make for the exit.
“Thanks, Dr. Y/l/n. I figured you’d know.”
You pause, your hand releasing, letting the door shut again as you turn back to him, skeptical. “Why?”
Wells tilts his head down at you, his eyebrows furrowed. “‘Cause you’re… dating an attending?”
Your heart begins to hammer in your chest. He hadn’t specified, but you know who he’s talking about. And if an MS3 can clock you after a few weeks on shift, you were worse off than you’d thought.
“I’m not dating anyone,” you say, simple denial that you hope he’ll buy.
You curse the casual relationship you’d built with Wells over the last few weeks, because he knew by now nothing was out of bounds. He knew he could talk to you — something you’d have been proud of an hour ago. Something you were proud of when he asked you about hospital dating policy.
“Wait, so you and Abbot aren’t…”
“Wells,” you say quietly. “No.”
“I’m sorry!” he whisper-shouts, his eyes wide. “I’m so sorry, I just figured — the way people talk about it, I just — ”
Your body goes cold, your back finding the wall of the break room. “What do they say?”
“Uh,” he says sheepish. “Just that — ”
But you raise your hand, cutting him off when Shen walks in, nodding to you both on his way to the fridge.
“Actually, no. Um,” you clear your throat, trying to collect your thoughts, painfully cognizant of the other attending who’s now within ear shot of your on-set panic. “Anyway. Like I said, wait until you rotate. Or don’t. You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”
You’ve probably gone as pale as you feel, as pale as he’d been at the beginning of this conversation, because Wells looks concerned. “Dr. Y/l/n?”
“I’m gonna step out for just a sec,” you mutter, avoiding eye contact with Shen, who now seems curious over Wells’ shoulder. “Check back in on our South patients. Then Shen can take you. Or find Ellis.”
“Y/l/n,” Shen calls. “You good?”
“Just gonna get some air,” you say over your shoulder, opening the door again, not waiting for Wells or, god forbid, Shen to follow you out as you let it swing shut, hoping more than anything you can make it up to the roof without running into Jack Abbot.
—
You manage to avoid him, even if you almost barrel full-speed into Crus on the floor and are forced to share an elevator with Park on your way up to the roof, mad at your past self for just trying to make connections with your coworkers, who can now recognize when you’re in the middle of an existential crisis and horrifyingly both ask if you’re alright.
It’s cold on the roof, even as the sun rises in pink and orange tones. You don’t cry yet, but you feel it coming, your elbows resting on the railing, palms pressed into your eyes. You think you might need to sit down soon.
When the door squeaks open a few moments later, you don’t turn, but you recognize the gait of the footsteps before they’re even halfway to joining you at the railing.
“I’d ask you what’s wrong,” Jack starts, and his tone is steeped in frustration. “But would you even want my help?”
You’re bewildered, lowering your hands, turning to see him, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest with one of his eyebrows raised. “What?”
“Nothing,” he shrugs. “Just feels like my senior resident has gone around to every doctor in this hospital before coming to me even once.”
“Dr. Abbot—”
“You know I begged Robby to let me have you on nights?”
You’re slow to stand up straight. “What?”
“You came to me as an intern, Y/n,” Jack says. “I saw what you were capable of the first time you swung shifts.”
“But I—”
“Night shift is hard,” he continues. “Pacing is weird. Patients are weirder. It’s not for everyone. But I watched you, and I just — I knew you could find your place here.”
It’s a streak of pride, you realize, underlying all of that tension.
“And you have. So what I can’t work out is why you’re going to leave Pittsburgh without even talking to me about it, when you and I both know…” he continues, he tears his eyes from the sunrise, looking unsure suddenly, finally meeting your eyes. “You know you have a place here with us, don’t you?”
He’d made that clear enough since you started your third year. Unfortunately for you, that was right around the time the line had started to blur.
“But that’s it, Jack, I don’t — I don’t know anything anymore. Because this place is — it’s you,” you accuse. “I’ve tried so hard to make my own lane and you’re just all over it.”
He balks at that. “It’s my fuckin’ shift. I brought you on it so you could make that lane. And you have.”
“But you’re my attending,” you say, begging him to understand. If Wells could read between the lines after four weeks, surely Jack had, too. Maybe he had been doing that all along if the hospital really was abuzz about it. You cringe, thinking about him discussing this with anyone else.
“Right. So you come to me when you need help,” he says, his hands on his chest. “Not Robby. Not Shen. Surely not fucking Park.”
“I can’t,” you plead, feeling tears brim at the back of your eyes. “You know I can’t.”
“Why not?” he says, moving closer. You wish he wouldn’t — you wish he’d go downstairs and just let you freak out like you’d been needing to for weeks.
You wish above all that you didn’t have to leave the place you loved so much because you love the man in front of you more.
“Why?” he repeats, his hand reaching for you. Your breathing stops, your eyes finding his again. His eyes are dark as his hand rests on the side of your jaw, making sure your gaze doesn’t stray again. “Just talk to me for once. Please.”
You feel a giant tear leaking out of your eye, racing a hot path toward his calloused palm. He catches it with the side of his thumb.
“I always thought that I’d move right back to Texas after residency. And then I came here,” you admit. His left hand finds the other side of your face, and you realize you’re fully crying only by the movement of his fingers. “And I met you.”
Realization across his face, his brow unfurling, his lips parted — to be quickly followed by his touch gone from you, you’d assume. Maybe an awkwardly offered tissue and a promise to forget all of this. Another reminder about getting a letter of rec before the door swings open and closed again.
But the whipping cold doesn’t bite at your cheeks. You actually only get warmer as his body moves closer, your chest touching his; you’re worried he’ll feel your heartbeat soon if he presses any closer.
“Y/n,” he says slowly.
“I love this place, Jack,” you continue, swallowing around a new set of hot, ugly tears that fall anyway. He tracks the movement of your throat. “It breaks my heart every single day but I love it. And I looked up one day and realized I hadn’t even considered a program outside of Pittsburgh in years.”
“No. Don’t bullshit me anymore,” he says, shaking his head. “Robby said you wanted to leave.”
“Because of you, Jack,” you whimper. “Because—”
“No,” he says again, shaking his head with more vigor. “No. You take me out it. Now.”
“What?”
“I’m here. I’ll be right here after you’re done,” he says, his voice steady and his words precise, like he’s walking you through a procedure or explaining to a patient their options. “I’m yours, whether you stay here or not. Wherever you go. I’ll be here.”
“Jack,” you breathe. “What are you doing?”
He moves closer, his breath fanning over your face; the warmth welcomed as the cold cools your tears. His hands tilt your head up slightly.
“You still need me to spell it out for you sometimes,” he asks, not an ounce of mirth or amusement, not longer just asking. Begging. “Don’t you?”
You nod.
“You’re an amazing doctor,” he says with conviction. “I don’t know if this is gonna help your situation or not. But…”
His nose nudges against yours, and his ribcage heaves against your chest. Your eyes flicker to his lips, and you don’t know if this will help you either.
“Please,” you say anyway.
Jack Abbot is a bit of an asshole — the edge to his personality that he needs in order to run a place like this bleeds through on some nights more than others. He can be stern, more stubborn in the midnight hours.
And he kisses you just the same. You pull away after a moment, somehow finding the mental space to be worried people will notice you’re both gone.
“Jack,” you breathe into his mouth, your head spinning. “We should—”
“Nuh-uh,” he speaks through spit-slicked lips, his mouth finding yours again quickly. “Come here.”
—
“You’re not getting out of a coffee chat with me. You know that, right?”
Jack watches you freeze where you’re digging through his dresser, your hands paused on an olive green t-shirt. You hold it up to him in question and he nods.
“What do you mean?” you ask, pulling it over your body, kneeing your way back up the bed, settling back at his side. Your hand finds where his is outstretched.
He checks his watch where he’d discarded it on his night table after shift, your PTMC badge right next to it. “Coffee pot’ll go off in like two minutes. And then you’re gonna talk to me about your fellowships.”
“Yeah? That’s what this all was?” you ask, your eyes trained on where your fingers trail up the inside of his forearm, tracing the lines of his veins. He grabs your hand when it’s back within his reach.
“Talk me through it,” he says.
You rejoin him in bed minutes later, carrying two cups of coffee from his kitchen. You’d asked him how he liked it before you went down the hall, wrinkling your nose when he says black with a little sugar from the tin on the counter. He’d enjoyed the view anyway as you sauntered down his hallway, bare except for his old ARMY shirt.
“No almond milk for me?” you accuse.
“I’ll add it to my list for next time,” he says, sitting up against his headboard, accepting the cup offered to him. You hand him your cup too, which he sets to the side with confusion.
He notices then the black leather notebook tucked under your arm, that you must have grabbed from the bag you’d discarded in his entryway last night.
“What is that?”
“Where I keep all my notes,” you say, bashful, flipping it open, a PTMC waiting room pen jammed between its pages. “From talking to people.”
He’s silent for a moment.
“What? You said—”
“No. Go ahead,” he says. “You’re so hot right now.”
He bends his leg, which you immediately lean on, hiding your smile in his knee. “Stop.”
“Go.”
You sigh, flipping through your pages, biting the pen between your teeth. “Ultrasound at Presby is out. Crus’ll get that for sure.”
“Nope. I haven’t finished his letter of rec yet,” Jack says. “I’ll tank his chances if you say the word.”
“I didn’t even want it,” you admit with a one-armed shrug. “It’d be really cool, but…”
“Not your thing,” he finishes. You nod.
“Then, I talked to Park about peds,” you say. “I knew he did a peds fellowship. For ortho, obviously. At PTMC, too.”
“What’d he say?”
“That I’d be stupid not to do it,” you deadpan.
Jack grumbles. “He’s right.”
You flip to the next page, giggling. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“Trust me. He will never hear it in my ED.”
A glint in your eyes, like you see right through him. You remember that interaction that had knocked him off-kilter a few days ago. You see it differently now.
“And then, oh — Robby, Shen and Crus all talked to me about emergency med education,” you say. “Robby’d write my letter.”
“I already wrote your letter,” Jack admits. “I’ve been waiting for you to bring that fellowship up for weeks.”
Your pen falls to the pages, your mouth twisted in confusion as you tear your eyes away to look at him. “Why didn’t you?”
“You’re smart enough. And I knew you’d love peds just as much,” he says, tugging your notebook out of your grip, the pen, too. He tosses it aside. “But only one of them is at my hospital. And I didn’t wanna… It’s all yours for the taking, baby. Anything you want.”
He sees your eyes trail his bare chest, the skin of his legs where his thighs are peeking out from beneath his boxers, still tangled up in the sheets. “All of it?”
“You mean me?”
You nod.
“For a long time now, Y/n,” he says. “And you don’t need to write that down.”
“Why?” you ask, rising up to your knees, his free hand finding the back of your thigh, helping you swing it over his lap.
“‘Cause I’ll never let you forget it,” he promises, tilting his head up to you.
“Put your coffee down,” you command, settling in his lap, your hands finding his cheeks.
“Why?”
“‘Cause I’m gonna spill it,” you warn.
He turns his head, nudging your discarded phone out of the way with his mug to make room. Your things all intermixed with his so naturally, he feels silly thinking back to how this all even started. “How does my wisdom measure up to the other—”
You cut him off mid-sentence, your lips slotting over his open mouth. You taste like his toothpaste and the shitty coffee he buys pre-ground at the grocery store. The skin on the back of your thighs is so damn soft, but he already knew that. Your jeans are in his living room.
“They don’t even compare,” you murmur.
“No?”
You shake your head, before eyeing the cups of coffee on the side table. Your face twists.
“But we have to get you a new machine, Jack. What the fuck are you drinking?”
—
A few weeks later, you walk into work with Jack, a cold brew with almond milk in your hand and a drip coffee with one raw sugar packet in his.
The closing baristas had already memorized your pre-shift orders at the shop you’d found near Jack’s place that has quickly become his favorite spot — not Crus’, Robby’s or Park’s.
And for the love of god, not Dunkin’.
The matching logos leave no room for mistakes to be made by anyone who’s paying attention — and as Jack had recently discovered, they’re all paying attention.
You leave him at the central hub for the lockers, just a smile in parting. You were professional enough. And you’d already kissed him enough in his car, his lips still tasting like coffee and your coconut lip balm.
You received two fellowship offers earlier that morning, only a few hours after shift. Peds at PTMC or education at Presby.
Both in Pittsburgh.
But the choice was yours, which he made sure you knew before he helped you celebrate properly.
“Is that something I need to know about?”
Jack looks up from where he’d been yanking pens out of his bag, depositing them into his scrub top pocket. Your pen had somehow made it into his backpack; he could tell from the bite marks.
Shen is leaning against the back of the central desk, slurping the remnants of his coffee through his straw loudly. Lena is pretending, very poorly, not to listen.
“What do you mean?” Abbot says, unamused.
He takes another much-needed sip of his own coffee — you were so far proving detrimental to his post-shift sleep schedule.
He turns his head from Shen to find you across the room at West 12, already seated bedside, nodding along to whatever Langdon is saying about the patient present.
You catch Jack’s eye, your lips pulling up around your words, and he decides he’ll be fine even if that smile goes to Presby.
Because it’s still coming home to him.
“It’s just,” Shen continues, waving his cup around, his grin mischevious as Jack turns back. “I just seem to recall there being a concern about — what was it, being buried by paperwork?”
you lose your bikini top and decide to use jack as a human shield
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ interested in how the pitt crew got approved for a week in greece? the original invitation is still posted
PAIRING: jack abbot x reader
WARNINGS: fem!reader, reader is topless, nipple mention, flirting, sexual tension, partial nudity, alcohol mention, both jack and r are tipsy, kissing!!
PROMPT: here!
WC: 1.2k
“You made me lose it.”
The complaint is half-swallowed against the wet skin of Jack’s back and the dull crash of the waves.
You cling tighter as Jack wades through the surf, arms hooked around his neck, cheek pressed between his shoulder blades where the sea has left him slick and gold and gleaming.
Every step moves you against him, your body sliding closer, nipples flattening to the hard line of him, and when he laughs, the sound moves under your skin before it reaches your ears.
A small, private earthquake.
He turns his head just enough that water slides off the edge of his jaw. “I did not make you do anything. You did that all on your own to avoid my excellent points about tiger sharks.”
“That’s not a true recollection of the events and they only sounded excellent because you were saying them in your stupid doctor voice,” you grumble, chin now hooked over his shoulder while the waterline drops lower and lower around his legs, the drag of the tide giving up on both of you inch by inch. Near the shore he slows, more careful now, one hand firm beneath your thigh while his prosthetic sinks a little into the uneven sand before he shifts and steadies and steps again. “You were supposed to agree with me.”
Jack smiles.
“I’ll try to remember that next time.” He steps out of the water, dragging both of you into the moonlit shallows. “Agree with you first. Correct the shark misinformation second. Recover the missing bikini top…never.”
He puts emphasis on the misinformation part.
You roll yours eyes and cinch your arms tighter around his neck.
The second you clear the waterline you seem to realize the ocean was doing more for you than you gave it credit for. In the water, at least, there had been plausible visual confusion. Distortion.
Out here there is only the moon, a waxing gibbous tonight, and your own bad luck.
Your bikini top had not come off in any glamorous way either.
A wave basically clotheslined you mid-argument, you went under still debating your point, and by the time you surfaced your top had been ripped clean off.
You had crossed both arms over your chest and stared at Jack with horror.
He, to his credit, or maybe to his deep private enjoyment, had just turned around so you could climb onto his back and use him as a human wall and shield.
“Convenient,” you murmur. “I’m starting to think you have a vested interest in the bikini top staying missing.”
“Trust me,” he says, voice dry, “if I had a vested interest in seeing you topless, I’d prefer it happen under circumstances that involved fewer opportunities for you to drown.”
You glance toward the vacant stripe of shoreline, suddenly grateful for the hour. Almost midnight. No passing strangers, no coworkers smoking in little clusters on the sand, no one to witness you wrapped around your attending in wet bikini bottoms and not much else besides nerve.
Lucky. Because this whole thing seemed like a very good idea twenty minutes ago and now feels a little less airtight.
You’re both tipsy, brined with salt and that strange vacation logic that makes every bad idea glow with intrigue. This was not among the more sensible things either of you had ever done.
But you had tilted your glass toward him, smiled over the rim, and said please in that sweetly loaded voice that seems to dissolve whatever remains of his better judgment on impact.
Cause and effect. Something you love to keep in your back pocket for emergencies.
You bite back a grin. “Jack, are you trying to tell me there are circumstances under which you’d find this whole situation acceptable?”
The beach house looms closer with each step. Most of it is dark now, but one light still burns upstairs. His room, you think.
Jack lets out a low, quiet laugh and hikes you a little higher on his back.
“Yes,” he says simply. “Ideally somewhere private. Dry. Preferably with you in my bed.”
A little startled giggle escapes you before you can stop it. You press your face at once in the curve of his neck. You’re not sure you can believe he’d say something like that so plainly.
As if that was the most ordinary thing in the world to tell you.
“Oh.”
Entire vocabulary gone. Reduced to a single syllable by one middle-aged man with a good mouth and a bad attitude.
“That’s all you’ve got?” he asks, dry amusement curling through the words. “Interesting. You seemed a lot more talkative in the ocean.”
“I was talkative because we were discussing facts,” you mumble. “Tiger sharks are mostly found in tropical and subtropical water, yes, but sharks generally can end up in weird places sometimes, so I feel like I was making a broader point about ocean unpredictability, which was valid.”
“Uh-huh.”
The sound is mild, but dismissive enough to make it clear he is not entertaining your argument as anything but cute deflection.
By then the porch is beneath him, old boards washed pale under a flickering lamp to the right of his shoulder. You worry about splinters on his bare foot.
He lowers you carefully from his back, slowly enough that your hands trail over him in stages, shoulder to arm to chest, your palms smoothing there as though your body is reluctant to stop touching his.
He doesn’t let it.
Instead of setting you down and stepping away, he catches you before your balance can settle, your feet coming to rest over his, your toes tucked against the tops of them so you never quite have to meet the porch at all.
You stay suspended against him, your naked chest pressed to the front of him, every chilled inch of skin suddenly aware of where he is warm.
Your nipples tighten into points almost immediately.
“You get shy when I’m direct,” he says, eyes on your face like he’s studying something newly confirmed. “That’s useful information.”
“Why? Do you like making me nervous? I don’t know what that says about you.”Your fingers flex once against his chest.
He tilts his head.
“I think I like knowing I can,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
“And what exactly are you planning to do with that information now that you have it?”
Jack’s eyes flick once to your mouth, then back up.
“Depends. How cooperative are you feeling?”
It is a ridiculous question, considering your current position, considering the fact that you’re still practically draped over him, and maybe that’s why you don’t answer fast enough — because he takes the pause as permission and closes the distance himself.
His mouth is warm and salt-touched and far too certain, and when he kisses you it feels less like a question than a decision, one he’s been circling for a while and has finally chosen to act on.
For one strange second you forget every single thing you’ve ever known, including your own name, the year, and the fact that human beings typically continue breathing through moments like this.
Then the air comes back all at once and you pull in a startled breath against his lips.
When he draws back, his forehead stays close to yours.
You can still feel the shape of the kiss still in your lips, in your throat, in the pit of your stomach where everything has gone loose and sparkling.
“Oh, that’s horrible,” you say.
Jack’s brow lifts in surprise. “Horrible?”
“Yes. Very manipulative.” His hands slide up and down your bare sides. “You lured me into a vulnerable conversational position and then took advantage of the pause.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s one interpretation.”
“It’s the correct interpretation.”
He laughs again, hand shifting higher on your back, feeling the goosebumps there.
“C’mon,” he says. “You can keep telling me how wrong I am inside.”
“Good,” you mutter, ignoring the impulse to reach up and kiss him again. “Because I was planning to.”
“I know.”
this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!
SUMMARY: Jack Abbot is not an overly-neighborly person. He has secret nicknames in his head for most of the people on his floor and actively avoids any and all types of neighbor politics. However, he can’t deny his growing fondness for the single mom and toddler in apartment seventeen. (Nor his burning hatred for your baby daddy).
WARNINGS: this series includes a very chaotic reader with an even more chaotic toddler, mentions of abandonment, Jack's inability to consider anything good and worthwhile for himself, eventual smut, friends to lovers, mentions of previous abusive relationships, mentions of mental health struggles, miscommunication, age gap (reader is around 27 and Jack is in his 40's), medical inaccuracies and more.
A/N: I am very very excited to share this series and bring it to life. It started as a very random idea that quickly transpired into a huge story in my head within a matter of minutes. It does touch on some potentially triggering topics but warnings will be given in each chapter!
PAIRING: Jack Abbot x Single Mom!Reader
STATUS: Ongoing
─── ⋆ CHAPTERS ⋆
PART ONE 𖤓♡ — Jack Abbot values his routine and structure. Work, SWAT, gym... and for the past six weeks, spending his Sunday mornings admiring the enigmatic single mom who's apartment balcony sits across from his. [3k]
PART TWO 𖤓♡ — A scuffle in the hall causes Jack to accidentally take Phoebe’s wallet to work instead of his. He gains himself a new nickname amongst the Pitt and finally learns a thing or two about you and your daughter. [7.3k]
PART THREE 𖤓 — A trip to the ED, a retirement meal, and a phone call with Robby. One leaves you up close and personal with your neighbor, one has Phoebe spilling secrets like it's an Olympic sport, and another has Jack realizing he's got a fucking crush on the single mom in apartment seventeen. [7.1k]
PART FOUR 𖤓♡ — Phoebe's birthday party consists of four sets of eyes ogling Jack from the second he enters your apartment, screaming children, your mom noticing something rather interesting, and a night on the balcony that changes the trajectory of everything. [8.7k]
⤷ PART 4.5 𖤓 — You don't hear from Jack for three days after the kiss. But despite being swamped at the hospital, after he reaches out via text, he doesn't stop. [SMAU]
PART FIVE 𖤓★ — When Jack offers his company in the form of a date to celebrate your book release, he gets to understand the inner workings of your mind a bit more. Unfortunately, it does leave him with an ache he has to tend to using nothing but his own imagination. [7.8k]
PART SIX 𖤓★— June 15th
PART SEVEN 𖤓★ — June 20th
PART EIGHT 𖤓♡ — June 25th
PART NINE 𖤓 — June 30th
─── ⋆ EXTRAS ⋆
#APT.17 (a tag for anything related to this series)
SUNDAY FUNK DAY SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
Tag list for this series has grown way too big for me to keep up with so it’s unfortunately CLOSED. You can however follow the #apt.17 tag instead for updates on the series!
when your suitcase gets lost on the way to greece, jack abbot lends you clothes to get by. between nosy coworkers, spilled wine, and jack's teasing, the situation becomes much harder to survive than it should be.
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ interested in how the pitt crew got approved for a week in greece? the original invitation is still posted
PAIRING: jack abbot x reader
WARNINGS: fluffity fluff, borrowed clothes, coworkers to something, public embarrassment, flustered reader, teasing, mild jealousy implications, suggestive dialogue, sexual rumors / assumptions, wine spilling, santos being ur number 1 opp and number 1 supporter at the same time, flirting!!! lots and lots of flirting
PROMPT: here!
WC: 1.8k
There are, you feel, worse fates than ending up marooned in Santorini wearing Jack Abbot’s clothes.
A plague of locusts, for one. Stepping on a lego barefoot perhaps. Or, in what may in fact be the cellar floor of human suffering, finally getting your suitcase back only to unzip it and find nothing inside but hideous hospital scrubs and lonely, misshapen shocks instead of your cute little outfits and your even cuter, very tiny bikinis you were supposed to be wearing on this trip.
And honestly that’s not entirely outside of the realm of possibility.
You packed at two in the morning with the executive function of a feral raccoon rifling through a gas station dumpster, so really the universe would be well within its rights to punish you.
This, then, was fine. More than fine. A salvageable situation. A win, even, if you angled your head and refused to inspect it too closely.
Except for the microscopic issue that his clothes smell like him.
Which you understood in a distant, theoretical way you know rain is wet or fire is hot or men’s clothes tend to smell like the men wearing them.
But now you understand it in that immediate, full-body way of a person trapped inside the atmosphere of a man she is trying, with only moderate success, not to be weird about.
Tobacco. Leather. Something dry and woodsy underneath, oak maybe, something warm and stern and impossible to separate from him now that you’ve noticed it.
It smells like competence. Like an almost-choice. Like the split second before you do something you already know you’ll have to lie about later.
And now it’s all over you. In the collar. In the cuffs. In every breath you take like your lungs have joined the opposition.
You huff it in like an addict and make your way into the living room.
Rain taps steadily at the tall glass windows, turning the whole house dim and silver at the edges.
Most of the group has collapsed into the couch in various stages of damp-haired, wine-soft sprawl, limbs overlapping without much regard for ownership, all of them fixed on some black-and-white film flickering across the tv screen.
The kitchen counter is crowded with wine glasses in varying stages of neglect, some nearly full, some reduced to lipstick ghosts and shallow red smears at the bottom, and you decide this is as good a moment as any to acquire one of your own.
You deserve it, after all.
You grab an unused glass and pour a generous amount.
From the end of the couch nearest to the kitchen, Victoria looks up from her phone, takes one look at you, and arches a brow.
“Nice sweatshirt,” she remarks. “Should we be thanking you for your service?”
Your eyes drop to the enormous ARMY stamped across your chest, which, in hindsight, does feel a touch less subtle than you might have hoped. Not understated, exactly. More like a public service announcement.
“Lost suitcase,” you say, heat climbing to your face as you fuss with a sleeve that falls halfway over your hand. “Jack let me borrow something, so… blame the airline.”
Santos lets out a sharp little laugh from beside her, all pleased with herself before she’s even opened her mouth. Never a promising sign.
“That’s a new one. Usually people skip straight to admitting they’re sleeping with him.”
You sputter around a mouthful of wine, swallowing too fast, too badly, eyes watering as you whip around to glare at her over the rim of your glass.
“Trinity,” you stage-whisper, eyes huge. “Jesus Christ.”
“Who’s sleeping with who?”
Jack’s voice lands from somewhere directly behind you.
You turn and there he is.
Grey sweatpants riding low on his hips, black t-shirt skimming a chest and shoulders broad enough to make the whole rest of the room look underbuilt, all of him calm and self-contained in a way that makes you feel, by contrast, like a person assembled in a rush from spare parts.
You force your eyes upward with considerable effort and bite your tongue hard enough to keep from openly staring.
Santos is dead. Santos is dead and, before she dies, you are taking every single one of her beach towels. Let her drip-dry for the rest of the trip. Let her know hardship.
“Nobody,” you say quickly, then quicker, before somehow the first version had not been convincing enough. “No one is sleeping with anybody. There’s no sleeping happening. That is not a thing that is, um, happening.”
Jack gives you a quizzical look at that. You imagine he might be considering have you checked out.
Then his mouth tips at one corner. “Shame. For a second there it sounded interesting.”
Before you can scrape together anything remotely usable in reply, Jack is already moving past you, one hand catching lightly at your waist as he goes, casual, thoughtless, the absent sort of touch that means nothing to him and enough to shave several fiscal years off your life.
He heads straight for the couch, dropping into it.
Santos leans toward Victoria and mutters, in a voice carrying all the discretion of a car alarm, “Yeah. Real shame.”
You choose, with great maturity, not to acknowledge her. Which is easier to commit to in theory than in practice, especially when you turn toward the choice and realize your choices have narrowed to two.
One, the far corner, between Robby and the intern under a blanket that is doing a pathetic job of concealing whatever the hell is going on beneath it.
Or two, the open seat beside Jack.
You cross the room and lower yourself into the space next to him, careful to leave what you hope reads as a normal, socially unremarkable amount of distance between you.
He doesn’t look away from the movie.
“No need to get that defensive about your love life, kid,” he murmurs. “We’re all adults here.”
“I was not defensive,” you whisper back, which, admittedly, sounds suspiciously like the sort of thing a defensive person would say. You take a sip of wine. “It was a misunderstanding. That’s all.”
At that, Jack finally turns his head and looks at you properly. “So you are sleeping with someone?”
Dana’s eyes flick up from the movie, sharp and curious for exactly one second too long.
“Will you keep your voice down?” you hiss, then immediately drop yours lower still, because apparently hypocrisy is one more thing you’ll be sampling tonight. “No. I am not sleeping with anyone. And even if I were, that would be none of your business.”
He lifts both hands in surrender.
“Fair enough. Not my business,” he agrees. You exhale, which turns out to be premature, because then, after a beat, he adds, “Could’ve fooled the room. They seem to think everyone about you is my business.”
Your fingers twitch, and the wine makes its move, sloshing clean over the rim and splattering across the front of your — his sweatshirt in one dark, awful splash.
“Shit,” you blurt, already half setting the glass down, reaching for the hem in a burst of useless panic, like maybe if you rub at it fast enough you can bully time into reversing itself. “Jack, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I just, you said that and I…”
“Hey,” he says, catching at your wrist before you can make the stain worse. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not,” you say, mortified. “I just spilled red wine all over your sweatshirt.”
“You spilled red wine on an old sweatshirt,” he corrects.
Before you can launch into a fresh round of apology, he leans in and lays a hand flat over the stained part of the sweatshirt like he’s assessing damage. Entirely practical. Entirely innocent. A normal thing to do when something has been spilled on his clothes.
Your body reacts like it has never encountered human contact before, going warm and taut all at once, every nerve abruptly standing at attention.
You become excruciatingly aware of the space between you, which is to say there almost isn’t any.
“It’ll wash out,” he concludes, drawing his hand away.
You swallow, still staring at the stain because the stain is safer to look at than his face. “I feel awful.”
“You look awful.”
Your head flies up so fast your neck nearly protests. He catches the horror on your face and, finally, there it is, the quick flicker of amusement.
“Upset, I mean. More upset than I am.”
“Of course I’m upset. You were nice enough to let me borrow your clothes and within, what, an hour, I’ve turned one of them into a crime scene.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“It’s merlot on gray cotton. I ruined it.”
“It’s not ruined,” he says, easy as anything. “And even if it was, I’ve got more.” His eyes flick briefly to the sweatshirt. “I was going to let you keep it anyway.”
Your brain, already functioning at reduced capacity, latches onto I was going to let you keep it anyway and immediately begins behaving like it has never encountered a normal sentence before. Which is ridiculous. It is a sweatshirt. People loan each other sweatshirts all the time. Probably. In very casual, emotionally neutral circumstances. None of which feel remotely relevant here.
“This is exactly the kind of thing that happens,” you murmur, “when the airline loses your entire life. Murphy’s law ans all that.”
He laughs softly through his nose.
“What all was in the suitcase?”
“Everything,” you say. “Clothes, makeup, skincare, my will to live.” Then, because apparently embarrassment has made you reckless, you add, “My bikinis too, which was kind of the point of coming to Santorini in the first place.”
He is quiet for a second.
“Too bad,” he says. “Would’ve liked to see those.”
Santos lifts her head from the couch like a shark catching blood in the water.
“Gross,” she says. “Can you two either make out or shut up? Some of us are trying to watch sad people chain-smoke in peace.”
A quiet laugh ripples through the room. Dana hides hers behind her wineglass. Victoria doesn’t look up from her phone, but the corner of her mouth gives her away.
You lock your eyes on the television with the rigid focus of a person trying not to burst into flame in public.
Your face is hot enough to qualify as an environmental hazard. A flare-up risk. One loose spark away from requiring intervention.
Beside you, Jack shifts back into the couch, looking unbothered.
“Good movie,” he murmurs.
You take a long sip of wine and decide, not for the first time, that the airline owes you financial compensation, emotional damages, and possibly a public apology.
this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!
