supergraphicultramoderngirl

she/her 20 🇵🇭 / estel

[itevilhag]

⋆. 𐙚˚࿔ THE PITT ARCHIVES 𝜗𝜚˚⋆ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ Welcome to the Archives! ⋆⭒˚.⋆ Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (dr. robby x doctor!reader masterlist!) A Slice of Life Anthology: Hold me, Console me light angst/fluff Dr. Professor fluff Da-da (whether you like it or not) fluff Held close all the time, knowing I'm half of you ANGST (new fic!) Dinner, makeup remover, and a ring I bought for you months ago (upcoming...)

── ⋆⋅more incoming⋅⋆ ──

Frank Langdon (dr. langdon x doctor!reader masterlist!) I've seen it (upcoming...)

── ⋆⋅more incoming⋅⋆ ──

Jack Abbot (dr. jack abbot x doctor!reader masterlist!) Batman and Robin (a medical mystery) fluff/humor

── ⋆⋅more incoming⋅⋆ ──

divider by: @cursed-carmine

[itevilhag]

okay, i've been awol these past few days bc of you guessed it- college! and i feel bad, so here's a sneak peek for the frank langdon ficccc

[leclerc-hs]

the prince of monaco - cl16

pairing: prince! charles leclerc x fem!reader summary: in which a sad prince and a common girl cross paths or charles and you find yourself in a forbidden romance warnings: ANGST, smut, language!!! idk what else I'm missing. ANGST ANGST ANGST. not proofread. word count: 5.4k authors note: SURPRISEEEEEE! FIRST CHARLES FIC OF THE YEAR FINALLY. i hope you guys like it & i know you might haaate my guts after but it had to be done LOL. let me know what you think!! love hearing from y’all ALWAYS. xoxo

The palace was too quiet at night. Not peaceful. Hollow.

A kind of silence that rang in your ears and made your own breath sound wrong.

Marble floors stretched beneath Charles’s bare feet. Cold and gleaming under the dozens of antique chandeliers. He wandered like a ghost…aimless, invisible, half-dead. Like he was trapped in a golden cage. A prince draped in silk robes, walking around for a kingdom he no longer wanted.

Every corridor smelled like old money. Every portrait he passed stared down with painted eyes. Kings and queens carved from duty, immortalized in oil and expectation.

But Charles wasn’t thinking of them.

His mind was across the city, far from the manicured courtyards and diplomatic smiles. He was with you.

In that cramped little room above Le Vieux Lion, where the wallpaper peeled and the sheets smelled like your perfume.

Where the sea didn’t sparkle for tourists, it slapped the dock with rage. Where the nights weren’t silent, they breathed. They lived.

Where he remembered what it felt like to be wanted, not needed.

He hadn’t seen you in a week. Not since the news.

His father, Sovereign Prince of Monaco, had announced the engagement over dinner, voice as calm as a guillotine dropping.

An alliance. A family legacy. A strategic merger in the form of a wedding.

His mother didn’t blink, just reached for her wine. His sister, seated to his left, squeezed his hand beneath the table…the only rebellion anyone dared to offer.

Charles didn’t say a word.

Not when they showed him the ring.

Not when the date was set.

Not even when the royal tailor measured him for the suit he’d wear to sign away the rest of his life.

He waited. Watched. Swallowed it all.

And then he left.

He didn’t take the servant’s route. Didn’t don a disguise.

He walked straight out the east wing, through the marble archway, silk robe replaced by a hoodie. Soft, frayed, yours.

He pulled it tight around himself like armor and slipped into the black car waiting at the edge of the drive. No driver asked where he was going. The guards didn’t move. They knew better than to ask.

-

Two Years Earlier

The night air was warm and heavy. Smelling of the ocean. One of those late summer nights where the heat stuck to your skin like another layer.

And inside the bar, the ceiling fan creaked in slow, useless circles. Twirling nothing but stale smoke of cigarettes/cigars and the lingering bitterness of spilled liquor.

You were standing behind the bar. With your sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back, and fingers aching from a double shift. The radio played some old French dude, droning on about heartbreak and cigarettes. A few regulars lingered. Quiet...slumped.

That’s when the door creaked open, and he walked in.

Not stumbled, walked. Like he owned the damn place. Like Monaco wasn’t five miles of tight streets and old money and marble prisons, and he wasn’t one of the poor bastards with a crown stitched into his skin.

He looked wrong....but in the best way.

Dark jeans, leather jacket that probably cost more than your rent. Hair slightly messy like he wanted it to look like he hadn’t just stepped out of a car worth six figures. And that face…familiar in the way a storm cloud is familiar. Y'know it’s going to ruin you before it even arrives.

He had that smile. The kind women warn their friends about. Lazy. Expensive. Designed for headlines.

“Got anything that won’t kill me?” He asked, voice smooth like old bourbon, like he already knew you’d give him what he wanted.

You didn’t even glance up. Just kept wiping down the bar with a rag that had fought too many battles.

“That depends,” you said flatly. “Y'allergic to alcohol, or just fragile?”

The silence that followed was sharp, then broken by a laugh. Low. Rich. Surprised. Like no one had spoken to him like that in years.

“I like you already,” he said.

“Tragic,” you muttered, finally giving him a look. “I already want you to leave.”

He blinked. A little caught off guard by your tone. And then his grin widened.

“What’s your name?” He asked, eyes flicking down, then back up. Slow, deliberate, like he was cataloguing you.

You raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “What’s yours?”

“Charles,” he said smoothly, like the name should mean something.

You gave him a slow, unimpressed once-over. “Charles. No last name? No title? Y'forgot the part where you tell me you’re a libra and looking for a real connection.”

He leaned forward on his elbows, mouth tugging into a smirk. “I am a libra, actually.”

You rolled your eyes so hard it hurt.

“Of course you are.” You turned, grabbing the cleanest glass you could fine, and poured something sharp and unmerciful into it. “Here. Drink. Leave, Or don’t. Just don’t flirt with me like I’m stupid.”

He took the glass, eyes still on you. Sipped. Winced, just slightly, not used to the burn, but didn’t complain.

He liked it.

You could tell.

You were already walking away when he said it, voice low but clear:

“You still didn’t tell me your name.”

You didn’t stop. Just threw a look over your shoulder, that half-smirk you saved for people who thought they were too clever.

“If you come back tomorrow,” you said, “maybe I’ll lie and give you one.”

He stayed until close.

-

The door opened with a soft groan. Like it always did. But this time, it was different. The air changed. And you felt it before you saw him.

The hum of the bar dimmed. Glasses clinked. Someone laughed near the back. But your hands paused, just briefly, over the half-dried wine glass in your fingers.

And then, there he was. In the doorway.

He leaned against the frame like he had all the time in the world...even wearing the same leather jacket. But tonight it was zipped halfway down, revealing a black shirt that clung just enough to his chest to make your stomach tighten. His hair was even messier than last time. Like he ran his fingers through it too many times. Or maybe he wanted it to look like someone else had.

His eyes found you instantly. No scan of the room. No pretense. Just direct, deliberate contact. Like he’d been thinking about you all day and came to see if the memory lived up to the real thing.

It did.

You didn’t look away. Didn’t smile. Just raised a brow and went back to your glass.

He crossed the room slowly. Like he knew the weight of every step. Like he was aware that people were watching him but didn’t care.

Or maybe he liked it. Maybe he liked knowing he could have anyone in the room. Except the only one he wanted still hadn’t given him her name.

He slid into the same stool as the night before. Elbows on the bar, and that same annoying smirk curling at the corners of his mouth.

“I came back,” he said. Voice low, warm. Like a promise you shouldn’t believe.

“I noticed,” you replied, not looking at him as you reached for a fresh glass. “Didn’t expect Monaco’s golden boy to slum it two nights in a row.”

He chuckled…and God, the sound was dangerous.

“Slumming it,” he echoed. “That what y'think this is?”

You finally looked at him…fully, openly. And it hit you like a slow, burning wave. He was too close. Too handsome. Too confident.

“This isn’t your world,” you said quietly. “You don’t belong here.”

He leaned in a little. Not enough to touch. Just enough that your breath caught.

“No,” he murmured. “But it’s yours.”

Your heart stuttered. You hated the way he said it. Like it was a confession wrapped in silk. Like he didn’t mean to mean it, but he did.

You slid the drink in front of him, fingers brushing his just barely…and even that felt like too much.

“You being here is a bad idea.” You whispered.

His eyes were on your mouth now. His smile was gone. “Then stop me.”

You didn’t stop him.

And he didn’t leave.

- 

He kept coming back.

Not with fanfare. Not like royalty. 

But quietly. Always late, always alone.

There were no photographers waiting outside, no clipped palace escorts, no watchful guards trailing behind him. He wore anonymity like armor. Hood pulled low, hands in pockets, head slightly down like he didn’t want the world to recognize him. Or maybe he didn’t care if it did.

He came as Charles. Not as a prince. Not as a future king. Just…Charles.

His worn leather jacket. A soft hoodie. Shadows visible beneath his eyes.

And the kind of smile that looked like it had forgotten how to be whole.

And every time he looked at you, it would felt like you were being read, not watched. Like he saw every layer you tried to keep hidden behind sarcasm and smoke. 

You hated how much you liked it.

-

At first, he would sit at the bar.

Always in the same stool, hands cradling a chipped glass of whiskey. Which he nursed more for the comfort than the taste. He didn’t flirt. Not outright.

He asked about your night, the music, the bar fights you’d broken up over that week. Would laugh softly at your answers. Would raise an eyebrow at your insults. Said your name like he was trying to memorize the way it felt.

You tried not to care.

Tried not to notice the way he leaned in, just slightly, whenever you spoke.

Tried not to wonder why a man with the world at his feet kept choosing your tiny corner of it.

But he did.

-

Then, one night, you turned around and he was behind the bar.

On your side of the bar.

Leaned casually against the shelves like he belonged there. Like he hadn’t just crossed the invisible line. The one that kept your world's separate.

“What the hell do y'think you’re doing?” You asked, arms crossed. Not bothering to hide the irritation...or the pulse suddenly burning your ears.

He held up a wine glass and a dish rag with a crooked grin. “Thought I’d lend a hand.”

“You’re holding that like it insulted you.”

“Could be worse,” he said, examining the stem with mock seriousness. “Could be holding my dignity. But I think I left that back at the palace.”

You snorted despite yourself. “You’re useless.”

He leaned in closer, voice lowering just enough to stir something under your ribs. “And yet…y'haven’t told me to leave.”

You said nothing. But your silence felt like permission.

-

He started coming earlier. Staying later.

He’d drift in before your shift ended, slip through the back door like he belonged there. Sometimes he brought pastries, sometimes coffee. Once, inexplicably, a worn book littered with his handwriting on the pages.

“Though you might like this one,” he’d said with a shrug.

He’d sit in your space like it was second nature. Perching on the edge of the counter. Watching you work. And making commentary on your music taste.

“You play the same six songs,” he’d mutter, clicking through your ancient playlist.

“They’re classics.”

“They’re depressing.”

You glanced at him. “So are you.”

He smiled softly. “That’s probably why I keep coming back here.”

-

He asked you questions no one else dared.

Not the polite kind. Not surface things. He wanted the bones. The quiet hurts. The dreams you hadn’t spoken out loud before. Sometimes you answered. Sometimes you didn’t.

But you never once, told him to stop asking.

And in return, he gave you pieces of himself. The kind they didn’t print in the magazines.

“I hate the palace,” he confessed once, voice so soft it almost didn’t reach you. “Every room echoes. You start to wonder if you exist as all, or if you’re just…noise in a marble tomb.”

You didn’t reply. You just glanced at him until he did that thing with his jaw, the clench, like he’d said too much. Like he was scared of how much he wanted you to hear it.

-

There were moments when it felt like something would snap.

His hand brushing yours when you passed him a glass…not on accident, not anymore. His fingers would linger a second too long. Enoughto let your pulse stutter. Just enough to make you feel it later...alone in the dark.

The way he leaned in when he spoke, low and close. Breath grazing your neck, your jaw, the corner of your lips.

You stopped hearing his words. You only felt them.

You knew the shape of his mouth now. The way his bottom lip curved when he was trying not to smile. The faint pink of it after a drink. The way it moved when he said your name, like it was something he wanted, no needed, to taste.

And you hated it. 

How much you wanted him to.

-

One night, while you were closing up. When the lights were low, the doors were locked... it was just you and the hum of the city outside.

And you caught him watching you.

Really watching.

He stood behind the bar, hands in his pockets, posture casual. But his eyes were anything bit.

They followed you like he was hungry. Like he was memorizing the way your limbs moved. The way your fingers gripped the edge of the counter. The way your lips parted whenever you sighed without meaning to.

He looked at you like he didn’t know how to stop.

You leaned on the bar, trying to keep your voice steady, playful. “Y'always this much of a romantic?”

He didn’t smirk. Didn’t even blink. Just stared, his gaze flicking to your mouth, then back to your eyes. It was so fast that you could’ve missed it. But you didn’t.

“No,” he said. His voice rougher than usual. “Just with you.”

Your breath caught. Just for a second. 

Your lips parted, something sharp and stupid rising. A comeback, a deflection. But nothing came out.

Your lips moved, then stopped.

And he looked away, jaw tight.

Not because he didn’t want to see what you were about to say. But because he already knew. And he couldn’t bear it.

-

The bar was emptier than usual.

Only the hum of the cooler and the occasional creak of the old wood floor was heard. Rain tapped softly against the windows. Light rain...more of a mist.

You should’ve been locking up. Should’ve told him to go.

But he was sitting at the bar again, legs swinging slowly, drink untouched, eyes on you like he was waiting for something neither of you could name.

And you weren’t moving. Not really.

You were pretending to count the bottles behind the counter. Taking inventory. Pretending your hands weren’t shaking just a little bit. Pretending you didn’t feel the way the air between you hadn’t changed since the other night.

Thicker now. Heavier. Laced with heat.

“I think about you,” he said suddenly. His voice lower than usual. Like he hadn’t even meant to speak but couldn’t hold it back anymore.

Your fingers pause over a single bottle.

“In meetings. In cars. In rooms where I’m supposed to be someone I don’t even recognize anymore.” His voice dipped, softening. Unraveling. “I think about this bar. About you.”

You swallowed hard. “Charles...“

"I know,” he cut in. “Don’t say it. Don’t say we shouldn’t.”

He slid off the bar in one fluid movement and stepped around it…slow, deliberate, as if trying to give you every chance to stop him. You didn’t.

Now he was standing in front of you. Too close.

You could feel the heat of him. Brushing against your skin.

His hand hovered between you. Not touching. Just hanging there in the space that ached for more.

“Just…let me look at you.” He mutters, eyes sad.

You didn’t speak. Didn’t even breathe.

His fingers rose slowly, the knuckles of fingers brushed your jaw. Barely. Like even that felt too intimate. Too much.

But it wasn’t enough. God, it wasn’t even close to enough.

His hand turned, fingertips now tracing the line of your cheekbones. Featherlight. The kind of touch that wasn’t claiming, just asking.

He steps closer, close enough that your chests are nearly pressed together with every breath of air.

His thumb slips under your jaw. Tilting your face up. And his eyes were fire...and something devastatingly gentle all at once. Like he wanted to memorize you the way people memorize the lyrics of their favorite song. The way they memorize prayers said in church.

His lips part and your heart nearly stops.

Then, he pulls back. Just an inch.

Just enough to break the spell. He stared at you like he hated himself for stopping.

His hand drops to his side.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?” You whisper.

He sighs, like your words physically pain him. 

“Because if I do,” he says, voice wrecked. “I won’t stop.”

-

It was the first time in weeks you’d let yourself be seen.

You didn’t know if it was the dress; midnight black, backless, clinging to you like it had been painted on, or the third drink warming your veins, but for the first time in what felt like forever, you weren’t thinking about him.

Or at least, you were trying not to.

The music was loud. Friends circled you, dancing and laughing, pulling you toward the edge of the dance floor. You let them. You let yourself move. Let yourself laugh. Let your head tilt back when that guy James said something cocky but charming into your ear.

His hand found your hip, just light enough to feel like suggestion, not possession. And you let him keep it there.

Because Charles wasn’t here.

Because tonight, you weren’t the girl in the back of the run-down bar. Tonight, you weren't aching for something...or someone...you couldn't have.

You were fun. You were untouchable. You were free.

And then, you felt it.

The shift in the room was subtle at first. You felt it in your spine. In the way the air thickened. In the sudden awareness that someone was looking a you.

You turned. Slowly.

And there he was.

Charles.

Backlit by golden light, framed by the glint of glass and sweat and movement, he looked like something that didn’t belong here. Or maybe something that the room had been waiting for.

Black shirt open at the collar, sleeves pushed to his elbows, hair falling just wrong over his forehead. Jaw tight, mouth set in something between a smirk and a snarl. Like he wanted to smile but didn’t trust himself to do it.

He looked like sin. Like power on the edge of unraveling. 

And his eyes. Locked on you.

Not the room.

Not the crowd.

Not even James.

Just you.

And when his gaze dropped. To the hand on your waist, the fingertips sprawled against your waist, to the way James leaned in a little too close. Something dark flickered across his face.

Something in him burned. You saw it. Felt it.

Like a wire snapped behind his ribs and now he couldn’t breathe.

His jaw locked. His chest rose once, slow and sharp, like even breathing had become too dangerous. Like just standing there and not touching you took every ounce of control he had left.

The heat in his stare could’ve burned a hole through you.

James leaned in closer. “You okay?”

You blinked and swallowed. Tried to smile. “Yeah,” you said. “Just—“

Your eyes flicked back to the bar. He was still there. Still watching. Still not moving.

James turned to follow your gaze. “I can’t believe he’s here. That’s so cool”

“Yeah…me either.”

People moved out of his way without realizing they had. They parted instinctively, like water bending around stone. Like the room itself knew who he was.

They didn’t see the crown. They felt the weight of it.

Royalty cloaked in rage and want, striding toward the storm.

Toward you.

-

The air was hot. Suffocated with perfume and alcohol. And the sound of people trying too hard to feel something. The lights were chaotic. They were too fast. Too bright.

He didn’t want to be here. But anywhere was better than the palace.

He spotted her instantly. As if his body already knew where to look before his eyes did. The same way it always did when you were near.

You stood near the edge of the dance floor. Black dress hugging you so tight...it was like a second layer of skin.

And beside you. Another man.

The hand on your waist, the smug, lazy confidence of someone who didn’t know how precious what he was touching actually was.

The way he leaned in, lips grazing the shell of your ear, like your body was already his to own.

Like your heart didn’t already belong to someone else. Him.

Charles stopped breathing.

The sound around him faded. Hands curled into fists in his pockets. Nails biting into the skin of his palms.

Something sharp twisted, low in his tummy.

Jealousy wasn’t the word for it.

This was grief. This was rage. This was how dare you.

How dare you let someone touch you where he should’ve touched you.

How dare you pretend you’ve forgotten what it’s like to stand one breath from kissing.

-

The club was still pushing behind you, the laughter and sweat and lights bleeding through the walls…but here, in this narrow, dim corridor, it was just the two of you.

Too close. Too quiet.

Too dangerous.

He’d pulled you through the curtain without a word. Fingers laced with yours like a vice...dragging you past confused glances and stunned silence.

You’d followed, furious, breathless, burning.

And now...you were pressed against the wall. Back flush to the cold stone, your heart thundering like it wanted to jump out of your chest.

And he was standing in front of you. Pacing. Seething. Unraveling.

“What the fuck was that?” He hissed, his voice low and sharp enough to draw blood. “Letting him touch y'like that…was that supposed to hurt me? Was that the point?”

You huff, folding your arms to keep from grabbing him by the collar. “Y'don’t get to ask me that.”

He stopped pacing. His head turned slowly. His jaw tight.

“Y'think I don’t see it?” He growled. “The way y'look at me? Like you’re still waiting for something to happen....even though y'know it can’t?”

Another step. His body inches from yours.

“You really shouldn’t have worn that dress.”

Your voice shook. “And you shouldn’t have come here.”

“I know.”

His hand slams against the wall beside your head, not to scare you, just to steady himself.

His face was too close now. Eyes searching yours, wild and desperate and so goddamn full of want that it hurt.

“You’re not his,” he whispered.

You stalled. “Im not yours, either.”

He leaned in closer, mouth nearly touching yours.

“Say that again,” he dared.

You couldn’t. Not with the way he was looking at you.

“I hate you,” you breathed.

“I know,” he said, voice breaking.

And then he kissed you. 

Hard. Desperate. Starving.

His hands cradle your jaw like he’d dreamt of this a hundred times and never thought he’d actually get to feel it.

Your fingers tangled in his shirt, yanking him closer.

It wasn’t soft.

It wasn’t even polite.

It was heat and fury and I’ve wanted this for so long tangled in every brush of lips, every muffled groan, every helpless moan he pulled from your throat.

He kissed you like it hurt.

Like he couldn’t stop even if he tried.

-

You don’t remember the walk to your apartment. Just the quiet tension between you. The warmth of his hand brushing yours but never holding it. The warmth in your chest that hadn’t gone away since he kissed you.

You unlocked the door with shaky fingers. Left the light off. You didn’t need to see the room. You needed to feel him.

You tugged at his shirt, breath hitching as your fingertips brushed skin. His hands were all over you now, like he couldn’t decide where he wanted them. Your back, your hips, your jaw, gentle and desperate at once.

He knew he shouldn’t be here. Not in your apartment. Not in your bed. Not looking down at you like you were something he’d prayed for and never dared to ask.

But he was. And he couldn’t stop if he tried.

You were under him, lips swollen, pupils blown wide, your breath catching every time his fingers traced skin. And all he could think. Over and over....was mine.

You arched into him. And he groaned at the feeling.

Every inch of you was familiar. Like his hands memorized your body before even touching it. Your thighs wrapped around his hips, nails dragged down his back. 

He groaned into your skin, forehead pressed to your collarbone.

“Are you sure?”

She nods, breathless. “You’re already here.” 

It was more than permission. It was a confession.

And when he sank into you slowly, carefully, the world full on stopped.

It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t rushed.

It was slow. Intimate. Almost painful in how good it felt, like every thirst was peeling back layers they’d spent building.

Moans swallowed into kisses. Skin against skin. Fingers tangled. Whispers like promises neither of them could keep.

“Y'look so good like this,” he murmurs. Voice thick and laced with heat.

His lips trailed along the line of your jaw. Slow open-mouthed kisses dragging fire across your skin.

He wasn’t in a rush. No...he wanted to taste every inch of you. To savor.

You gasped softly when he reached the skin beneath your ear.

He felt everything.

The sharp intake of breath. The way your body arched. The flutter of your pulse under his tongue.

His hand slid along your waist, fingers pressing into the skin of your hip.

Head lifted just enough to look at you.

Your eyes were heavy, glazed with want, lips parted and trembling.

And he couldn’t help it. He smiled. Not his royal smile. Not the careful, curated one they taught him to wear.

This one was raw. Private.

Just for you.

“Y'have no idea what you’re doing to me,” he whispered. Nose brushing against yours.

Your fingers reached up. Slipping into his hair. Pulling him back down. Kissed him like he was yours.

And Charles, normally composed, trained, restrained. Melted.

Right there, into your mouth. Into your body. Into you.

-

Present Day

You’re pacing now, your bare feet silent on the floor that suddenly feels too cold, too clean, and your hands are shaking. Not violently or visibly, but enough that you can feel your pulse throb between your fingers.

“You should’ve told me,” you say, your voice not quite a scream but not quiet. 

You turn to face him and he’s just standing there. Standing in the middle of your living room like he doesn’t belong to any part of it, like he’s not the reason everything in your body burns and aches.

“You should’ve looked me in the eye,” you breath is shaking now, “and told me you were going to marry her before I had to read it on a fucking television screen.”

He winces. But he doesn’t argue.

Of course he fucking doesn’t.

He never fights when it counts. He just lets things happen.

“I was going to tell you,” he says quietly. As if saying it softer will make it less cruel.

“Oh,” you laugh now. It’s sharp and ugly. “You were goingto?”

You arms fold across your chest because you need something. Anything. To hold on to.

“When?” You ask. Its a quiet kind of fury, tighter and more precise. “After the ring was on her finger? After the palace sent out save-the-dates? Or were you planning to do it after your wedding night, when you needed someone else to fuck.”

His eyes flash and there’s something wild there now. Wounded....maybe defensive?

“You don’t get to do this,” your voice trembles. “You don’t get to kiss me, hold me, say things to me like they meant something, and then just leave.”

His jaw tightens but his hands are clenched at his sides. He won’t interrupt you and it only makes you angrier. Because he’s so calm. So composed.

“You were never a detour,” he says. Finally. 

“Then what was I?” You ask, and your voice breaks. “What the fuck was I to you?”

His voice rises now, like he’s been holding it in for hours, for years.

“I didn’t want this!” He shouts. “Do you think I wanted to fall in love with you? To walk into a bar and meet someone who made me question everything I’ve spent my whole life being told I have to be?”

You blink.

“Then why are you still choosing her?” Your voice softer. “Why are you marrying someone you don’t love?”

He looks at you like he’s bleeding. “Because I don’t have a choice. Because if I don’t marry her, everything I’ve spent my entire life preparing for. The crown, the country, the people. It all falls apart.”

“No,” You say, eyes locked on him. “It doesn’t fall apart. You’re just afraid.”

He doesn’t deny it.

“God,” you laugh. “You’re a fucking coward.”

He’s still just standing there. Looking at you like he’s drowning. Like he knows what he’s about to do will haunt him forever.

But he’s going to do it anyways.

That’s what love looks like.

A crown. A cage. And the person you would burn for walking away because the fire scares them.

“You don’t get to look at me like that.”

His brows furrow, “Like what?”

“Like I’m the one breaking your heart.”

He flinches. Just barely.

But you see it. You always do.

You walk to the sink, turning away from him, and turn the faucet on just to do something. “I hope she’s worth it.”

Charles swallows hard. “Don’t do that.”

You spin, your hands still dripping with water. “Don’t what? Don’t act like I’m the one being unreasonable while you walk away from the only thing that ever made you feel something?”

“I feel everything with you!” He yells, words bursting from his throat. “Every time I’m with you, I can’t fucking breathe. I can’t think. I can’t fucking sleep. I walk into the palace and I feel your hands on me like they’re branded there. I see your face in every goddamn crowd. I dream about you when I have to lie next to her, and I hate myself for it.”

You blink. Staggered. But he’s not done. 

“You think this is easy for me?” His voice breaks now. “You think I don’t want to choose you? That I haven’t stopped and stood in front of almost every mirror rehearsing how I’d say the words I’m done? That I haven’t imagined running, just running, until I could crawl into your bed and never leave?”

“Then do it,” you cry. “Fucking do it!”

He stares at you, breath heaving, soaked in silence.

And then softly he says, too softly. “I'm not brave enough.”

And that’s what finally does it. Your heart breaks in full. Like a dam giving way.

You let out a harsh sob that tastes like surrender. You push past him, hand over your mouth, body shaking as you try to hold yourself together.

But he follows.

“Don’t,” you say. “Please don’t—“

But his hands are already on you. Not to claim, not to kiss. Just to hold. To feel you.

His arms wrap around your back like he doesn’t know what to do. His face buries into your neck, and you feel it. His breath hitching, his shoulders trembling.

He’s crying.

“I love you,” he says, muffled. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

And you sob harder. Because that’s what makes it worse. 

Because he means it. And it’s still not enough.

[satellite-evans]

hula hoop

Pairing: Jack Abbot x reader

Summary: After a violent patient attack leaves you critically injured, Jack is forced to confront what it means to almost lose the person he loves.

Word count: 12k+

Warnings: patience violence, severe injury, angst, fluff

A/N:

read part 2 here

hey guys !! i’m genuinely so excited to finally post my first jack abbot fic, and i’m so excited for you guys to read it 😭

because tumblr hates me and this fic apparently exceeded the block limit, i had to split it into two parts <3 but i really hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed emotionally ruining myself while writing it.

anyways !!! thank you so much for reading, and please be nice this is my first time writing for the pitt/jack hahahah. if i used any medical terms wrong, my apologies 🫶

English is not my first language, so I apologize if I made any (grammar) mistakes. Feedback, requests, talks, vents, recommendations or just simple questions are always welcome.

Happy reading xxx

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site.

The rain had started sometime before dawn.

By the time you merged onto the interstate, the entire city looked washed out and miserable beneath sheets of gray rain and smeared headlights reflecting across wet pavement. Your windshield wipers moved at full speed and still barely kept up with the storm. The coffee sitting untouched in your cupholder had gone cold nearly an hour ago, though you were honestly too exhausted to care anymore.

The overnight shift had turned into fifteen hours instead of eight after two trauma admissions arrived back-to-back near the end of the night, and now every muscle in your body ached with the kind of exhaustion that settled deep into your bones. You genuinely could not remember the last time you slept more than four uninterrupted hours.

Traffic slowed suddenly ahead of you.

At first you assumed construction or flooding because of the weather, but then smoke curled upward through the rain and your stomach dropped immediately.

Cars sat mangled across three lanes of traffic at impossible angles. One SUV had spun into the median while another sedan looked almost folded around the back of a delivery truck, its front end crushed so badly it barely resembled a vehicle anymore. Hazard lights blinked weakly through the storm while people stumbled across the interstate in shock.

Your body moved before your brain fully caught up.

“Oh my God.”

You were already unbuckling your seatbelt before the car completely stopped.

Adrenaline sliced straight through your exhaustion hard enough to make your hands shake as you reached for the trauma bag in the passenger seat. Rain hit you instantly the second you shoved the door open, cold water soaking through your clothes within seconds while distant screaming echoed somewhere through the storm.

Someone yelled that a driver was trapped.

Another voice screamed for a medic.

A woman near the shoulder sobbed hard enough she could barely breathe, blood running down the side of her forehead while a man beside her stood completely frozen, staring blankly at the wreckage like his brain had stopped processing reality altogether.

You were already running.

“I’m a doctor,” you shouted over the rain. “Move back and give me some room.”

People listened immediately.

The trapped driver looked somewhere in his forties, pinned awkwardly behind the wheel of the crushed sedan. Blood streamed from a scalp laceration down the side of his face while the airbags hung deflated around him. His breathing came too fast beneath the sound of rain hammering against twisted metal, panic beginning to sharpen around the edges of every inhale.

You crouched carefully beside the shattered driver’s side window, ignoring the glass biting through your scrub pants into your knees.

“Hey,” you said, forcing calmness into your voice despite the adrenaline roaring through your chest. “Can you hear me?”

The man blinked slowly toward you, dazed. “Think so.”

“Good. That’s good.” You adjusted the flashlight between your fingers while quickly checking his pupils. “What’s your name?”

“Leon.”

“Okay, Leon. I’m Dr. Y/L/N.” Your voice stayed steady automatically, years of emergency medicine taking over before panic had a chance to settle in. “Don’t move your neck for me, alright?”

A shaky breath of laughter escaped him. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Despite everything, you smiled a little.

“You’re doing great,” you assured him quietly. “Stay with me.”

And he did.

His eyes kept finding yours every few seconds like you were the only stable thing left in the middle of the chaos.

Your hands moved automatically after that.

Pressure against the head wound. Monitoring responsiveness. Keeping him conscious and talking while you assessed what you could from outside the vehicle. Rainwater mixed with blood beneath your fingers while traffic backed up for what looked like miles behind you, headlights glowing dimly through the storm.

Leon kept looking at you every few seconds like you were the only stable thing left in the middle of the chaos.

“You work at the PTMC?” he asked weakly after spotting the hospital logo embroidered onto your soaked jacket.

“Unfortunately.”

That got a real laugh out of him, brief and pained but enough that relief loosened slightly in your chest.

“You always this calm when you see a car crash?”

You let out a tired breath through your nose. “No. I’m panicking beautifully internally.”

That made him laugh again.

Patients relaxed faster once they laughed. It was something you learned early in residency, fear loosened the second people felt human again instead of helpless.

So you stayed with him.

Even after the paramedics arrived.

Even after they started finishing the extrication, peeling back what remained of the driver’s side door while rain poured endlessly over the wreckage.

You stayed crouched beside him talking him through every step because shock was already creeping in around the edges of his expression, and every time panic threatened to overwhelm him again, his eyes found yours immediately.

“You’re okay,” you kept saying quietly. “Stay with me. You’re okay.”

The interstate blurred around you in streaks of red brake lights and flashing hazards. Rain soaked through your jacket and scrubs completely now, damp fabric clinging uncomfortably to your skin while your hair stuck to the back of your neck. The adrenaline that had carried you through the crash scene was already fading, leaving behind an exhaustion so heavy it felt physical.

An EMT looked up from the stretcher and did a double take.

“Dr. Y/L/N?”

You snapped back into focus automatically.

“Male, approximately forty-two. Restrained driver. Brief LOC reported by witnesses. GCS fifteen currently. Complaining of left-sided rib pain. Possible concussion. Neuro status intact for now, but keep an eye on him.”

The EMT nodded once while adjusting the cervical collar. “Got it.”

They moved quickly after that, securing straps, checking vitals, loading equipment through the rain while Leon tracked every movement with the wide-eyed focus of someone trying very hard not to think too much about what had almost happened.

Your knees ached from kneeling on broken glass. Your hands had started trembling slightly now that nobody urgently needed anything from you anymore.

But you stayed beside him anyway.

Leon caught your wrist weakly just before the paramedics closed the ambulance doors.

“Hey.”

You looked up immediately.

His face looked pale beneath the blood and rainwater, eyes glassy with pain and adrenaline, but there was something steadier there too.

Gratitude maybe.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

The words landed somewhere deeper than they should have.

You swallowed hard before giving his hand one quick squeeze.

“Yeah,” you said softly. “Of course.”

For a second, you just stood there breathing.

The interstate still smelled like gasoline and smoke. Somewhere farther down the road another paramedic shouted instructions while tow trucks crawled through the rain toward the wreckage. Traffic in the opposite lanes slowed almost to a stop as people stared through fogged windows at what was left of the crash.

“You riding in with us?” one of the EMTs asked.

You glanced once toward your abandoned car still trapped in unmoving traffic nearly half a mile behind the accident scene. The thought of trying to get back to it right now felt impossible.

“Yeah,” you answered tiredly.

The ambulance doors shut behind you a second later, sealing you inside with the sharp smell of antiseptic, wet clothing, and adrenaline.

Leon talked for almost the entire ride to the hospital.

Nervous talking.

The kind trauma patients did when they were scared enough to fill every silence because silence meant thinking too hard about how close they came to dying. You’d seen it hundreds of times before. Some people cried. Some got angry. Some went terrifyingly quiet.

Leon talked.

So you let him.

He rambled about his job, about his daughter’s soccer game this weekend, about how his wife was going to kill him for wrecking the car because they still hadn’t finished paying it off. Every few sentences his voice shook slightly before he forced another joke out anyway.

You stayed beside him the whole ride, monitoring pupils and vitals while keeping him talking just enough to assess mental status without making it obvious you were doing it.

“You always pick up patients on the highway on your day off?” he asked weakly at one point.

You let out a tired breath of laughter. “Only the lucky ones.”

That earned another shaky smile from him.

The ambulance doors burst open, paramedics already rolling the stretcher down the bay entrance while rainwater dripped steadily from the wheels onto the floor.

By the time the ambulance rolled through the bay doors at The Pitt, you were freezing hard enough your teeth almost hurt. Your scrubs were soaked completely through, your shoes squelching against the floor while trauma staff moved around you in organized chaos.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Santos called across the ER the second she spotted you climbing out of the ambulance bay. “Always a pleasure seeing you this early, Iron Woman.”

You groaned immediately.

You earned the nickname after accidentally mistaking a patient for Robert Downey Jr. during a twenty-hour shift.

To be fair, the goatee had been identical.

“Dana,” you called immediately, falling into step beside the stretcher. “What’s open?”

Dana barely looked up from the nurses’ station. “Trauma Two’s clear.”

“Perfect.” You pushed damp hair back from your face before glancing toward the department. “Whitaker, Javadi, you’re with me. Perlah, can you help set up Two?”

Perlah nodded immediately and disappeared ahead of the group while Whitaker grabbed gloves from the wall dispenser on his way past.

“You look cold,” Whitaker informed you conversationally.

“Thank you,” you replied flatly.

Javadi appeared beside the stretcher while all of you pushed through the trauma bay doors together. “What happened?”

“Restrained driver, approximately forty-two,” you answered automatically. “High-speed MVA during the storm. Brief LOC reported by witnesses. GCS fifteen on arrival, complaining of left-sided rib pain and worsening headache. Possible concussion.”

“Vitals stable en route,” one of the paramedics added while helping transfer Leon onto the trauma bed.

Whitaker immediately started attaching monitors while Javadi pulled supplies from cabinets with the frantic efficiency of someone still trying very hard to look calmer than she actually felt.

Then Jack looked up from the computer station.

And somehow, in the middle of the packed emergency department, everything softened slightly around the edges.

You caught the exact moment recognition crossed his face. The exhaustion behind his eyes shifted immediately into concern as his gaze moved slowly over you. Soaked scrubs, blood smeared across your gloves, rainwater dripping steadily from your hair onto the floor beneath you.

Jack crossed the trauma bay almost immediately.

“You okay?” he asked quietly. “What happened? I thought you went home.”

His voice grounded you in a way almost nothing else could anymore.

Maybe it was because he always sounded calm even during chaos. Maybe it was because after years together your body recognized him before your brain consciously caught up. Or maybe it was simply that exhaustion hit harder the second somebody else arrived to help carry it.

“I’m fine,” you answered automatically while stripping off your soaked gloves and replacing them with clean ones. “Probably need a head CT.”

Jack’s expression tightened instantly.

“For you?”

You blinked at him before realizing what you’d said. “What? No. For the patient.”

Behind you, Perlah had already started cutting away Leon’s soaked shirt while Whitaker attached cardiac leads to his chest.

“BP’s holding,” Whitaker called.

“Sinus tach at one-ten,” Javadi added while checking another monitor. “Probably pain and adrenaline.”

“Good,” you answered automatically before stepping back beside the bed.

“Where’s Robby?”

“Overdose in Four,” Dana answered from the doorway.

You nodded once and reached for your penlight again, checking Leon’s pupils carefully while rain continued tapping faintly against the ambulance bay doors behind you.

Santos wandered into Trauma Two looking personally offended. “Why does huckleberry and crash get invited? I can help.”

“You can stand there and look pretty while actual doctors save lives,” you shot back immediately.

Santos gasped dramatically. “Dr. Abbot, your girlfriend is bullying me again.”

“She bullies everybody,” Jack muttered.

But there was no heat behind it.

His eyes lingered on you a second too long.

You knew that look by now.

Jack had spent years in emergency medicine learning how to bury concern beneath sarcasm and exhaustion, but you still caught it every time. He noticed the dark circles under your eyes. The slight tremor beginning in your hands now that the adrenaline was wearing off. The way your shoulders sagged whenever you thought nobody was looking.

“You’re freezing,” he said quietly.

“You are correct. I am freezing.”

Without another word, Jack pulled his hoodie off the back of the nurses’ station chair and draped it carefully around your shoulders before you could protest. It was still warm from him, smelling faintly like coffee, antiseptic, and the cologne he only remembered to wear maybe twice a month.

Something in your chest tightened stupidly at the gesture.

Behind him, Santos gagged theatrically. “Oh my God. Romance in the trauma bay. I’m going to throw up.”

“Go chart something,” Jack said flatly.

Whitaker looked up from the monitor leads. “Actually, I think it's very sweet."

“You’re all miserable,” you informed them while pulling the hoodie tighter around yourself.

“No,” Javadi corrected while checking Leon’s blood pressure. “You two are just aggressively in love in public.”

Jack looked genuinely offended. “Aggressively? I don't get it."

Despite yourself, you laughed softly while stepping back toward Leon’s bedside.

Leon noticed the interaction immediately.

“That your boyfriend?” he asked weakly from the trauma bed.

“Husband to the emergency department,” you corrected while snapping fresh gloves on. “Boyfriend in real life.”

Jack rolled his eyes while typing orders into the computer. “Don’t encourage her, Leon.”

Leon grinned despite the pain. “You guys are disgustingly cute.”

Under the brighter trauma lights, bruising had already started blooming dark purple across his ribs beneath the rain-soaked skin.

“Headache worse?” you asked while checking his pupils again.

“A little.”

“You nauseous?”

“Not yet.”

“Good,” you answered. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Javadi palpated carefully along his left side while Whitaker adjusted the blood pressure cuff.

“There’s something strangely comforting about you people,” Leon admitted weakly after a moment.

“You say that now,” Javadi muttered.

That earned another tired laugh from him before he winced sharply afterward.

“There it is,” you said softly. “Still joking. Good sign, buddy.”

There was something oddly comforting about patients who stayed conversational. After years in emergency medicine, you learned to appreciate moments where humanity still existed between procedures and bloodwork and trauma assessments.

Sometimes those tiny conversations mattered almost as much as the medicine itself.

Jack stepped beside you while reviewing Leon’s vitals, his shoulder brushing yours briefly in the cramped trauma bay. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, damp fabric, and rainwater now that Leon’s soaked clothing had finally been cut away.

“You should change,” Jack murmured quietly while adjusting one of the monitor leads. “I got this, baby.”

You barely glanced at him, still focused on the chart. “Don’t worry. I’ll survive.”

A tired look crossed his face immediately.

“That’s usually what people say right before passing out.”

You shot him a look over your shoulder, though exhaustion dulled most of the energy behind it. “You’re dramatic.”

“You’ve been awake how long now?”

“Eighteen hours.”

Jack stared at you flatly. “That’s not comforting.”

“You stopped at a major accident scene after an eighteen-hour shift?” Javadi asked incredulously.

You shrugged slightly.

And that alone made Jack’s jaw tighten, because that was exactly the kind of thing you always did.

The adrenaline carrying you through the crash scene had almost completely faded now, leaving behind exhaustion so heavy it felt physical. Your wet clothes clung coldly to your skin beneath Jack’s hoodie while every muscle in your body ached now that the immediate crisis had passed.

Jack exhaled softly through his nose before lowering his voice.

“You don’t always have to run yourself into the ground trying to save everybody.”

The words landed harder than they should have.

You focused instead on adjusting Leon’s blanket over his chest, smoothing the fabric carefully just to give your hands something else to do.

Jack knew you too well by now to push after saying something like that.

That was part of what made loving him dangerous sometimes. He noticed things you worked very hard to hide from everybody else.

He noticed the way your hands trembled after bad trauma calls once the adrenaline wore off. How you skipped meals without realizing it during difficult shifts. How every patient death stayed with you longer than you ever admitted aloud.

Jack had spent years in emergency medicine learning how to compartmentalize just enough to survive it, which somehow only made him better at recognizing when you weren’t doing the same.

His hand brushed briefly against the small of your back as he moved toward the monitors again.

“Don’t worry, Leon,” Jack said easily while checking the cardiac tracing. “You’re in good hands.”

Leon looked toward him before his gaze drifted back to you.

“I figured that out already,” he said softly. “She stopped on the interstate for me.”

You glanced up from the chart, slightly surprised by how steady his voice sounded now despite everything.

“You didn’t have to do all that,” Leon continued quietly.

You shrugged lightly, pushing damp hair away from your face. “Part of the job.”

“Maybe,” he answered softly, still watching you carefully. “But most people would’ve kept driving.”

Something warm and uncomfortable settled low in your chest at that.

Most patients never saw the moments in between all of this. They saw calm voices and steady hands. They saw competence because that was what they needed from you in moments like these.

They never saw the aftermath.

The exhaustion. The panic doctors swallowed in real time just to keep functioning. The way people occasionally locked themselves in supply closets for thirty seconds after bad cases just to breathe before walking back out like nothing happened.

But Leon had seen you kneeling beside twisted metal in freezing rain with blood on your hands while traffic screamed past only feet away.

He’d seen the human part too.

And somehow that felt far more exposing than expected.

Before you could answer, something shifted.

Subtle.

Small enough most people in the room probably would have missed it entirely.

But after years in emergency medicine, your body noticed changes before your brain consciously caught up.

Leon’s breathing changed.

One second it was slow and uneven with postictal exhaustion.

The next it caught strangely in his chest.

His eyes lost focus somewhere over your shoulder while every muscle in his body tightened beneath the blankets all at once.

Your stomach dropped instantly.

“Leon?”

Jack looked up from the monitor station at the exact same moment Leon’s entire body stiffened violently against the mattress.

“He’s seizing!”

Everything exploded into motion.

The seizure hit hard and fast, violent enough that the entire trauma bed rattled beneath him. His back arched sharply while his arms convulsed uncontrollably, knocking equipment sideways as monitors erupted into sharp screaming alarms throughout the room.

“Clock started,” Perlah called immediately.

“Two minutes on the seizure pads,” Whitaker added while grabbing suction.

“Turn him,” you ordered.

You and Javadi moved together automatically, carefully rolling Leon onto his side while his body continued jerking violently beneath your hands. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth where he’d bitten through his tongue while every breath came in horrible choking gasps between convulsions.

“Airway’s clear,” Javadi said quickly, though her voice still sounded tight with adrenaline.

Across the room Jack was already pulling medication from the crash cart while Dana called CT from the doorway ahead of transport.

Then finally, slowly, the seizure broke.

Leon’s body slumped heavily back against the mattress drenched in sweat while ragged breaths tore unevenly from his chest. The room fell briefly into that strange silence that always followed emergencies, where everybody still moved quickly even though the worst part had passed.

For now.

“Let’s get a CT stat,” Jack said immediately.

You nodded once, trying to ignore the tremor beginning in your hands now that the adrenaline spike was crashing again.

“I’ll stay with him until transport.”

Jack hesitated.

Only briefly, but long enough for you to notice.

Something unreadable crossed his expression while his eyes flicked from Leon back toward you.

Concern maybe.

The same quiet tension he always carried after particularly violent trauma cases.

“You sure?” he asked softly.

You frowned slightly. “Yeah.”

Whitaker glanced briefly between both of you like he noticed something too, but before he could say anything Dana appeared in the doorway again.

“Trauma Three needs help now.”

Jack’s jaw tightened.

His fingers brushed briefly against your wrist before he stepped away toward the hallway, disappearing almost immediately back into the noise and chaos outside the trauma bay.

The room quieted afterward.

Machines beeped steadily while rain tapped faintly against distant ER windows somewhere down the hall. Whitaker and Javadi had already been pulled into another room, leaving you alone beside Leon while he lay motionless in exhausted postictal confusion.

You dimmed the overhead light slightly before adjusting the blanket higher over his chest.

“Hey,” you said gently when you noticed him beginning to stir. “You’re okay. You had a seizure.”

No response.

His eyes stayed fixed upward, unfocused and confused.

Postictal.

You had seen it hundreds of times before. Disorientation. Confusion. Agitation sometimes. Patients waking terrified because their brains had not fully caught up to reality yet.

Your shoulder ached dully now that exhaustion was settling deeper into your body again. You reached absentmindedly for the chart at the foot of the bed, mentally running through differentials and imaging priorities while waiting for CT to call back.

You missed the shift in him by less than a second.

One moment Leon lay motionless against the mattress, the next his eyes sharpened violently.

Not recognition.

Fear.

Pure terrified instinct.

Your stomach dropped.

“Leon—”

He surged upright before you could finish the sentence.

His hand closed around your throat with terrifying force, slamming you backward into the cabinet hard enough to knock the air violently from your lungs. Pain exploded across the back of your skull as your head cracked sharply against metal.

“Leon!”

The sound came out broken and strangled.

But he wasn’t seeing you.

That was the horrifying part.

His eyes looked completely wild now—unfocused, terrified, empty all at once. Pure neurological panic stripped entirely of recognition.

For one terrible second, training overrode fear.

“Leon,” you gasped desperately, grabbing his wrists instinctively instead of striking him. “Listen to me. You’re in the hospital. You’re safe.”

Nothing reached him.

His grip tightened harder around your throat.

Air stopped.

Panic slammed through you instantly now, sharp and animal and overwhelming in a way you almost never allowed yourself to feel. Your vision flickered violently while you clawed uselessly at his hands, trying desperately to drag in even one full breath.

You needed help.

Safe word.

Your mouth opened automatically.

“H—”

Nothing came out except a rasp.

Leon shoved you backward harder, your skull slamming against the cabinet again hard enough that white exploded across your vision.

The hospital safe word.

You just needed to say it.

“Hula—”

The sound collapsed into another strangled gasp as his fingers crushed tighter against your airway.

Your lungs burned.

Tears blurred your vision from pain and lack of oxygen while movement echoed faintly somewhere outside the trauma bay. People were still moving through the ER completely unaware of what was happening behind the curtain.

Your body was weakening fast.

You forced one shredded breath into your lungs and screamed:

“HULA HOOP!”

The entire department reacted instantly.

The trauma bay doors burst open hard enough to slam against the wall while voices shouted over each other.

Hands grabbed Leon, trying to drag him backward while he fought wildly in blind confusion and terror.

But before anyone could fully pull him away, he shoved you violently across the room.

Your shoulder struck the edge of the cabinetry with a horrible crack before the rest of your body collapsed hard onto the tile floor.

Pain tore through your arm instantly, sharp and wrong enough it barely felt real.

You couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

The room blurred violently while alarms screamed overhead and people shouted your name somewhere nearby.

And through all of it, through the pain and chaos splitting apart around you, your brain found one thing instinctively.

Jack.

You thought about the way he always found you in crowded trauma bays without even trying. The way his hoodie still smelled faintly like coffee and antiseptic around your shoulders. The quiet brush of his hand against your back only minutes earlier.

You wondered irrationally if he was going to blame himself for leaving the room.

That thought hurt almost as badly as the pain itself.

Your eyes slipped closed just as the world dissolved completely into noise.

Jack was halfway through finishing a chart when he realized he had not seen you in several minutes.

He looked up automatically, scanning the department for you out of habit more than anything else. Usually he could spot you immediately no matter how crowded the ER became. You moved quickly when you worked, sharp and focused and impossible to miss once he knew what to look for.

But you were nowhere.

“Hey, Javadi,” he called while signing off medication orders. “Have you seen Dr. Y/L/N?”

Javadi looked up so quickly, like she was a deer caught in headlights. “Uh… no,” she answered quickly. Too quickly. “I haven’t seen her since I left Leon. Sorry.”

Then she disappeared almost immediately toward another patient before he could ask anything else.

He pushed himself upright from the workstation, the familiar ache radiating faintly through his prosthetic. Long shifts always made it worse. The socket rubbed raw after enough hours on his feet, especially during busy trauma nights when he barely sat down.

Normally he ignored it.

Right now he barely felt it at all.

“Dana,” he called, already moving toward the nurses’ station. “Have you seen Y/N?”

Dana barely looked up from the chart she was reviewing. “Pretty sure she’s still with Leon. Why?”

Jack turned the iPad slightly toward her. “They haven’t gone to CT.”

That got her attention.

Her eyes flicked quickly toward the tracking board before settling back on him. “They’re probably backed up upstairs.”

“Maybe.”

But something still felt wrong.

Dana sighed softly. “Jack, she’s a big girl. She can handle herself.”

He knew that.

God, he knew that better than anybody.

You were one of the strongest people he had ever met. Smarter than most attendings twice your age. Calm during trauma activations that made residents freeze completely. You handled combative patients, pediatric codes, catastrophic MVCs, and grieving families with a steadiness that still amazed him after all these years.

But that feeling in his chest would not go away.

Dana pointed down the hallway. “I actually need you in Central Fourteen. Chest pain rule-out and Dr. Garcia wants another set of eyes before she calls cards.”

Jack exhaled through his nose, still staring at the tracking board.

“Right,” he muttered distractedly. “Yeah. Okay.”

He turned reluctantly toward the direction of Central Fourteen, adjusting his pace automatically as the prosthetic clicked softly against tile beneath his scrub pants. Fatigue had settled deep into the joint hours ago, making his gait slightly uneven now that the adrenaline from earlier trauma activations had worn off.

Then he heard it.

“HULA HOOP!”

Everything in his body stopped instantly.

The voice was barely recognizable.

Raw. Ragged. Strangled around obvious pain and panic in a way that made every hair on the back of his neck stand upright immediately. For one horrible second his brain refused to process it properly because it did not make sense. Not your voice. Not like that.

And then recognition hit him all at once.

The hospital safe word.

Trauma Two.

Jack’s heart dropped so violently it almost hurt.

No.

The thought hit him before anything else.

No no no.

Adrenaline detonated through his bloodstream hard enough to make him dizzy.

Then instinct took over completely.

“No,” he breathed aloud, already moving before the word fully left his mouth.

He pivoted so sharply pain shot violently through his prosthetic, the sudden turn grinding pressure through the socket hard enough that under normal circumstances it would have staggered him. But right now he barely felt it beneath the sheer overwhelming panic flooding his system.

Fear swallowed everything else whole.

Not the controlled fear he knew from trauma medicine. Not the clinical kind that sharpened your focus during codes and mass casualty calls.

This was different.

This was personal.

Jack shoved past a stretcher hard enough that the wheels screeched across tile while people all around him started reacting at the exact same time. Nurses turned toward Trauma Two instantly at the sound of the safe word. Dana’s head snapped upward from the nurses’ station. Santos was already running before half the department fully understood what was happening.

But Jack got there first.

The curtain outside Trauma Two jerked violently as shouting erupted from inside the room. Monitors screamed overhead loud enough to echo through the entire department while equipment crashed hard against the floor somewhere beyond the drapes.

“Get him off her!”

The words barely registered through the roaring in Jack’s ears.

His pulse was so loud now it drowned everything else out.

He hit the doorway hard enough that the curtain ripped halfway off the track as he shoved inside.

And then he saw you.

Lying on the floor.

Motionless.

For one horrifying second his brain simply stopped functioning.

You were crumpled unnaturally against the tile beside the cabinets, one arm twisted wrong beneath you while blood streaked across the side of your face from where your head had struck something hard enough to split skin open. Jack noticed everything all at once in the brutal hyperclarity trauma doctors developed after years in emergency medicine.

The bruising already forming around your throat.

The abnormal angle of your shoulder.

The way your chest barely moved.

And somehow that was the part that terrified him most.

You were not moving enough.

Leon was still screaming somewhere nearby while Ahmed and two nurses fought to restrain him against the opposite wall, his face wild with postictal confusion and terror. Somebody was yelling for sedation meds. The entire trauma bay had dissolved into complete chaos.

But Jack barely registered any of it.

Because you were on the floor.

And you were not getting up.

Something inside his chest seemed to cave inward violently.

“Oh, honey.”

Then he said your name, and the sound that came out barely resembled the steady, composed voice Jack used during traumas and codes and every impossible shift the hospital threw at him.

This was different.

There was no clinical calm left in him now.

Only fear.

Pure terrified fear.

He dropped beside you so fast pain tore sharply through his prosthetic as his knee hit tile, but he ignored it instantly. His hands shook hard enough he almost missed your carotid pulse the first time he checked.

Then finally.

There. Weak, but there.

Relief hit so hard it almost made him nauseous.

“Oh my God,” he whispered shakily, one bloodstained hand cradling the side of your face carefully while the other pressed against your neck searching for injuries. “Hey. Hey, stay with me. Come on.”

You did not respond.

Jack’s stomach turned violently.

Training forced itself back online in fragmented pieces despite the panic threatening to choke him alive. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Neuro. He assessed automatically even while his brain screamed at him that this was you beneath his hands.

Not a patient.

You.

Blood pressure crash from trauma? Concussion? Cervical injury? Shoulder dislocation? Fracture? Internal bleed?

His eyes flicked instantly toward your throat again and rage flooded him so suddenly it nearly stole his breath.

Finger-shaped bruises were already darkening against your skin.

He hurt you.

The realization nearly made Jack physically sick.

“Jack,” Dana’s voice cut sharply through the chaos as she dropped beside him. “We need to move.”

But Jack could barely hear her.

Your eyelashes fluttered faintly for half a second before falling closed again and something inside him broke completely at the sight.

“No no no,” he whispered frantically, brushing damp hair away from your face with shaking fingers. “Stay awake. Baby, stay awake for me.”

His voice cracked hard on the last word.

That terrified him almost as much as the sight of you bleeding on the floor.

Because Jack Abbot did not lose composure.

Not during traumas, not during mass casualties, not while pronouncing deaths.

But right now panic was tearing straight through him so violently he could barely breathe around it.

And for the first time in years, he had absolutely no idea how to separate being a doctor from being the man who loved you.

“What the hell happened?”

Robby’s voice cut sharply through the chaos as he pushed into Trauma Two with Mohan directly behind him, but for half a second, both of them stopped cold.

The room looked catastrophic. Leon was still fighting violently against security near the far wall, his movements frantic and disorganized while Santos shouted for more sedation. Equipment littered the floor around the trauma bay, overturned trays and scattered supplies crunching beneath people’s shoes as alarms screamed overhead loudly enough to make the entire room feel claustrophobic.

And in the middle of all of it, you were lying motionless on the floor with Jack kneeling beside you.

Blood streaked down the side of your face and disappeared beneath the collar of his hoodie still hanging around your shoulders. Bruising had already started darkening visibly around your throat, ugly fingerprints blooming beneath the fluorescent trauma lights, while your left arm rested at an angle that made Mohan’s stomach immediately drop.

“Jesus Christ,” Mohan breathed.

“Security’s got the patient,” Dana snapped, already dropping beside you with Santos. “Probably postictal aggression after the seizure. He went after her.”

Robby moved instantly after that, years of trauma medicine overriding shock the second he reached your side. “Get her on a gurney now. C-spine precautions. Santos, I need vitals. Dana, page CT and tell them we’re coming immediately. Mohan, get me neuro and ortho on standby.”

Everybody moved except Jack.

He stayed frozen beside you on the tile floor, one hand still cradling the side of your face like he physically could not force himself to let go.

“Jack,” Robby said.

No response.

Jack was staring at you with an expression Robby had never seen on him before. Not panic exactly. Worse than panic. Helplessness, maybe, like his brain had short-circuited somewhere between doctor and boyfriend and now could not figure out how to function as either.

“Jack,” Robby repeated more firmly.

That finally seemed to pull him back enough to blink.

“She isn’t breathing right,” he said hoarsely, voice rough enough it barely sounded like him anymore. “He had her by the throat. Her head hit the cabinet, probably. Possible LOC. Shoulder’s definitely dislocated, maybe fractured too.”

The words came out clipped and automatic, pure trauma assessment forced through panic, but his hands were still shaking.

Dana and Santos carefully slid a backboard beneath you while Mohan cut away the remains of the hoodie around your shoulder to assess the injury better. The second the fabric moved, Jack saw the full extent of the bruising spreading across your throat, dark purple already beneath your skin.

“He squeezed hard enough to leave petechiae,” Santos muttered quietly while examining your neck. “Shit.”

Robby’s jaw tightened immediately. “We need airway monitoring. Neck trauma protocol.”

You stirred weakly then, letting out a broken sound somewhere between a gasp and a whimper as Dana stabilized your shoulder. Jack moved instantly at the sound.

“Hey,” he said, voice softening so fast it almost hurt to hear. “Hey, don’t move. You’re okay.”

Your eyes fluttered halfway open for barely a second before unfocusing again.

“She’s awake,” Jack breathed.

“For now,” Robby answered grimly while checking your pupils with a penlight. “Possible concussion. We’re not ruling anything out yet.”

Jack knew that tone. It was the same one they all used when things might be much worse than they looked initially.

Around them, the room was finally beginning to settle into controlled chaos instead of outright panic. Security had Leon restrained now while Santos pushed sedatives through an IV line with tight, controlled movements. Leon’s terrified shouting dissolved into confused, exhausted mumbling as the medication began taking effect.

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” Mohan said quietly, mostly to fill the horrible silence hanging over the room.

Jack did not answer. Rationally, he already knew that. Postictal aggression, neurological confusion, severe agitation after seizure activity. They had all seen it before. But none of it mattered right now, because every time Jack blinked, he saw your body hitting the floor again.

“On my count,” Santos said firmly while positioning herself near your head. “One, two, three.”

They lifted you carefully onto the gurney, and the second they moved your shoulder, a sharp cry tore from your throat despite your barely conscious state.

Jack physically flinched.

Robby looked at him immediately. “Jack, I need you with me here.”

But Jack still looked frozen. His prosthetic locked slightly as he stood too quickly, pain shooting sharply through the joint while exhaustion and adrenaline crashed violently together inside his body. Normally, he compensated automatically for it. Years of physical therapy had taught him exactly how to move through pain without thinking.

Right now, he barely noticed it. All he could see was you strapped to a trauma gurney instead of standing beside one, and somehow that felt profoundly wrong in a way his brain could not fully process yet.

Dana squeezed his arm briefly as she passed him. “She’s alive,” she said quietly, firmly enough that it sounded almost like an order. “So stay with us.”

Jack swallowed hard, then finally nodded once.

The second the gurney locked into place beside the trauma bed, the room shifted fully into trauma mode. Controlled chaos. Fast hands. Sharply clipped orders. Monitor alarms blending into the constant noise of the ER outside while everybody moved around you with the kind of practiced coordination that only came from years of emergency medicine.

“BP dropping,” Santos called from the monitor station. “Ninety-two over fifty-six. Heart rate one-forty. Pulse ox ninety-four.”

Robby swore quietly under his breath before stepping beside the gurney. “Dana, I need another large bore IV. CBC, CMP, coags, type and screen, lactate. Full trauma panel.”

Dana was already moving before he finished speaking.

Mohan carefully stabilized your cervical spine while Perlah adjusted the collar more securely around your neck. Blood stained the side of your face now, dark against pale skin beneath the fluorescent trauma lights, while bruising continued spreading visibly across your throat.

“She’s tachycardic from pain and adrenaline,” Mohan said quickly while palpating carefully along your ribs and clavicle. “Left shoulder deformity obvious. Could be anterior dislocation, maybe proximal humerus fracture too.”

“She hit hard,” Dana added grimly while cutting away the sleeve of your scrub top completely. “Look at the swelling already, poor baby.”

Jack forced himself closer finally, though every instinct in his body screamed at him to stop looking entirely.

Your shoulder looked wrong. Not subtly wrong, catastrophically wrong. The joint sat visibly displaced beneath skin already darkening with bruising while your arm rested protectively against your torso in unconscious guarding. Even barely responsive, your body was trying to protect the injury.

“Y/N?” Robby called firmly while shining the penlight into your eyes again. “Hey, stay with me.”

Your eyelids fluttered weakly, and your lips parted slightly before a small broken sound escaped you, more pain than words.

“There you go,” Dana said softly. “That’s good, hey sweetie.”

“She’s responsive,” Mohan confirmed. “Pupils reactive bilaterally.”

“Any obvious neuro deficits?”

“Hard to assess until she’s more alert.”

Jack swallowed hard. Normally those words would have sounded clinical. Routine. Hearing them about you made him feel sick.

Robby’s fingers moved carefully along your scalp before stopping near the back of your head. “She’s got a laceration here. Probably where she hit the cabinet.”

“How bad?” Jack asked immediately.

Robby looked up briefly. “Needs staples. I’m more concerned about intracranial bleed.”

Jack felt the room narrow sharply around him as his brain supplied every possibility instantly. Subdural. Epidural. Contusion. Diffuse axonal injury. Years of trauma medicine suddenly felt less like a skill and more like torture because now he knew exactly how bad this could become.

“BP’s still dropping,” Santos called sharply.

“Hang another liter.”

Dana connected fluids immediately while Mohan checked your abdomen carefully for rigidity and tenderness.

“She guarding?”

“Little bit.”

“Could just be pain response.”

“Or internal injury,” Robby answered grimly.

Jack closed his eyes briefly. Only twenty minutes ago, he had been teasing you for refusing to change out of wet scrubs. Twenty minutes ago, you had been standing beside him alive and exhausted and rolling your eyes at him. Now you were strapped to a trauma gurney while your coworkers discussed possible brain bleeds.

The trauma bay doors pushed open again.

“What do we have?”

Garcia entered already pulling gloves on, clearly expecting another routine consult before her eyes landed on the gurney. Then she froze.

“Is that...?”

Nobody answered immediately because suddenly saying it aloud made everything feel horrifyingly real.

Garcia moved closer automatically, surgical instincts taking over even while shock still flickered visibly across her face. Her eyes swept quickly across your injuries, taking in the bruising around your throat, the unstable shoulder, and the blood matted into your hair.

“Oh my God.”

Jack looked away sharply at the sound in her voice. He could handle panic, trauma, blood, failed resuscitations, and catastrophic injuries. But he could not handle hearing pity directed at you.

“What happened?” Garcia asked quietly.

“Postictal assault,” Robby answered while reviewing your vitals. “Patient seized after MVC. Became combative during recovery.”

Garcia’s jaw tightened immediately. Her eyes flicked briefly toward Jack, and somehow that made everything worse. Everybody in the hospital knew about the two of you. Not because either of you talked about it much, but because some things became obvious after enough years working together. The way Jack unconsciously searched for you in crowded rooms. The way your voice softened around him even during impossible shifts. The way both of you somehow always ended up side by side during difficult traumas without discussing it first.

And now everybody was watching him try not to fall apart while you lay bleeding in front of him.

“Y/N,” Garcia said gently while stepping closer to assess your airway. “Can you hear me?”

Your brow twitched faintly at the sound of your name.

“Good,” she murmured softly. “Stay with us.”

Jack finally moved closer again until he stood directly beside the gurney. For a second, he just stared at you. Really stared. At the bruises darkening beneath your jaw, at the trembling rise and fall of your breathing, at the blood drying against your temple.

Then very carefully, he reached down and took your hand.

Your fingers twitched weakly against his palm almost immediately.

Tiny movement. Huge relief.

“Okay,” Robby said firmly, forcing the room back into focus. “Let’s move. I want CT angio head and neck immediately. We’re ruling out intracranial bleed and carotid injury.”

Garcia nodded once beside him, already assessing your airway with practiced hands. “Neck swelling’s getting worse.”

Jack saw it too now that she said it aloud. The bruising around your throat had spread darker beneath the fluorescent lights while swelling gathered visibly beneath your jawline. Every breath you took sounded wrong now. Wet. Shallow. Strained enough to make every survival instinct in his body start screaming.

“Pulse ox is dipping,” Santos called sharply. “Ninety-one.”

“Jaw thrust,” Garcia ordered immediately.

Dana repositioned carefully at your head while Garcia leaned closer, studying the bruising around your airway with growing concern. “She may need to be intubated before CT if the swelling progresses.”

The word hit Jack like a physical blow. Intubated. His brain immediately supplied images he did not want. Ventilator settings. Sedation drips. ICU monitors. Neurological checks every hour.

“No,” he said automatically before he could stop himself.

Everybody looked at him.

Jack swallowed hard immediately, realizing too late he had said it aloud.

Robby’s expression softened slightly. “Jack.”

He hated the way Robby said his name right now. Carefully. Like he was one bad second away from falling apart completely.

“I know,” Jack muttered quickly, dragging a shaky hand down his face. “I know.”

But he didn’t. Not really. Because his brain kept splitting violently between two impossible realities. One side of him catalogued injuries automatically. Airway trauma after strangulation. Possible cervical instability. Hypoxia. Concussion. Internal bleeding. Shoulder fracture-dislocation. The other side could barely process the fact that you were lying here at all.

Your breathing suddenly hitched sharply.

Jack’s head snapped toward you instantly.

Your eyes fluttered weakly before opening. Confusion crossed your face immediately while you tried weakly to move, but pain flashed across your expression so fast it made Jack physically tense.

“Don’t,” he said immediately, stepping closer. “Baby, don’t move.”

Your gaze drifted slowly around the trauma bay like you were trying to understand where you were. The bright lights. The people surrounding you. The monitors beeping overhead. Then finally, your eyes landed on Jack.

Relief flickered there instantly. Small. Barely there. Enough to nearly destroy him.

“Hey,” he said softly, gripping your hand tighter without realizing it. “Hey, I’m right here.”

Your lips parted slightly, but nothing came out at first except a weak breath.

Jack leaned closer immediately. “What?”

Your brow pinched faintly in confusion.

“...Leon?”

The room went quiet for half a second.

Even now, barely conscious and injured and terrified, your first instinct was still the patient. Something inside Jack cracked painfully at that.

“He’s restrained,” Robby answered gently before Jack could. “You’re safe.”

Your eyes shifted again, slower this time.

“Hurts,” you whispered faintly.

Jack looked immediately toward your shoulder. “I know,” he said quietly, voice finally cracking despite how hard he tried to control it. “I know, sweetheart.”

Garcia’s eyes flicked sharply toward him at the sound. Jack almost never lost composure at work. Not like this.

You tried to swallow and immediately winced.

Garcia noticed too. “Throat pain?”

A tiny nod.

“Difficulty breathing?”

Another weak nod.

Garcia looked immediately toward Robby. “Airway’s worsening.”

Robby swore quietly under his breath. “We tube here or risk losing it in CT.”

The room shifted instantly again. More movement. More urgency. Dana reached for airway equipment while Santos prepared sedation meds with visibly tighter movements now. Mohan adjusted oxygen flow quickly while Garcia moved toward the head of the bed.

Jack felt suddenly frozen all over again.

Your eyes moved back toward him weakly, panic beginning to flicker beneath the pain now that you were awake enough to understand pieces of the conversation around you.

“Jack,” you whispered hoarsely.

His chest tightened violently. “I’m here.”

Your fingers curled weakly against his hand.

“Don’t...” Your breathing hitched painfully. “Don’t leave.”

That finally broke him.

Because you sounded scared. You, the person who stayed calm during pediatric arrests and mass casualty incidents and catastrophic traumas that made residents physically sick afterward.

Jack leaned down immediately, pressing his forehead briefly against yours despite the blood and chaos surrounding both of you. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered shakily. “Okay? I’m right here.”

Then your heart rate spiked sharply.

“One-fifty,” Santos warned.

Your oxygen dipped again.

“Eighty-eight.”

Garcia looked up instantly. “That’s it. We’re securing the airway.”

Panic flashed visibly across your face, and Jack felt your hand tighten weakly around his.

“Hey,” he said immediately, brushing damp hair carefully away from your forehead. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

Your unfocused eyes found his again.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, even though his own heart was pounding hard enough to make him nauseous. “Just keep breathing for me.”

Garcia stepped beside him carefully. “Jack,” she said quietly. “I need room.”

And suddenly he realized there was nothing else he could do. No medication to order. No procedure capable of fixing this himself. No trauma protocol separating him from the overwhelming terror flooding his chest.

All he could do was let go of your hand and watch other people try to save you, and somehow that felt worse than anything he had seen in his entire career.

And somehow that felt infinitely worse than any injury he had seen in his entire career.

The intubation blurred together afterward in fragments Jack knew would probably stay with him for the rest of his life.

Garcia’s voice turned sharp and clinical the second she stepped fully into procedure mode. “Etomidate ready?”

“Ready.”

“Succinylcholine?”

“Ready.”

“Pulse ox?”

“Eighty-seven and dropping.”

The room moved quickly around you after that. Packaging tore open, monitors screamed softly overhead, and Santos pushed medications through your IV with controlled precision while Dana stabilized your cervical spine at the head of the bed.

Jack stood rooted beside the wall, feeling completely fucking useless.

He had watched hundreds of intubations in his career. He had performed them himself during impossible traumas, with blood filling airways and families screaming outside the room. Usually, the procedure grounded him. Medicine always grounded him because medicine made sense. Algorithms. Protocols. Airway, breathing, circulation. Find the problem and fix it.

But this was you, and suddenly none of it felt clinical anymore.

Your eyes found his one last time before the sedatives fully took effect. Fear still flickered there beneath the exhaustion and pain, but so did trust. Complete trust. The kind that made his chest ache violently because you were still looking at him like he could somehow fix this.

Then your body relaxed beneath the medication.

Garcia moved immediately. “Going in.”

The room fell quieter for a second except for the ventilator alarms and the sound of Jack’s own pulse hammering violently in his ears. He watched Garcia guide the laryngoscope carefully while Robby monitored your vitals from beside the bed.

“Visualized.”

“Tube.”

“Advancing.”

Jack swallowed hard enough that it hurt.

You looked so small suddenly. That was the thought that kept repeating in his head while he stared at your motionless body beneath trauma lights that suddenly felt much too bright. You had always seemed larger than life somehow. Loud when you wanted to be. Brilliant. Sharp-edged. Impossible to intimidate. The kind of doctor residents followed instinctively because even during disasters, you carried yourself like you could handle anything thrown at you.

Now you were lying completely still while somebody else breathed for you.

“Tube’s in,” Garcia confirmed.

Relief swept through the room instantly, subtle but collective.

“End tidal color change confirmed.”

“Breath sounds bilateral.”

“Secure it.”

Dana taped the ET tube carefully into place while the ventilator connected with a soft mechanical hiss. Your chest finally began rising in slow, controlled breaths afterward, steady and artificial and horrifyingly impersonal.

Jack hated the sound immediately.

The ventilator transformed you from injured into critical in a way his brain could no longer avoid.

Robby was already moving again. “Okay, we transport now. I want CTA head and neck, cervical spine imaging, chest CT, trauma series. Somebody call ortho and tell them she’s likely got a fracture-dislocation.”

“She’s still hypotensive,” Santos warned while adjusting fluids.

“Pressure?”

“Ninety systolic.”

“Hang another liter.”

Everything continued moving around him after that, but Jack could barely process any of it fully anymore. The room had narrowed into snapshots burned violently into his memory. Blood staining the collar of your scrub top. Finger-shaped bruises spreading darker around your throat. Your hand slipping weakly from his when they rolled the gurney toward the doors.

He followed automatically beside the bed while they rushed you toward imaging. His prosthetic protested immediately beneath the sudden pace, sharp pain radiating through the socket with every uneven step, but he barely registered it now. His entire body had narrowed itself into one singular instinct.

Stay close. Do not lose sight of her.

Hallway lights blurred overhead while the gurney rattled violently across tile. Nurses moved aside instantly when they recognized who was lying on the stretcher, and somehow that silence hurt worse than panic would have.

People stopped talking when they saw you.

A respiratory therapist physically froze near the elevators before whispering, “Oh my God.”

Jack looked away immediately. He could not handle watching other people realize how bad this was.

Then suddenly, he was left standing alone in the hallway.

The silence hit him all at once.

He stared numbly at the closed doors for several long seconds before finally turning back toward Trauma Two because he genuinely did not know what else to do with himself.

By the time he returned, the room was mostly empty again. The chaos was over. Only the aftermath remained.

One overturned tray still sat abandoned near the wall where it had been kicked over during the struggle. Wrappers and syringes littered the floor beside shattered plastic packaging while a monitor continued beeping pointlessly beside an empty bed.

And blood.

Your blood was still everywhere.

Jack stopped walking.

For a second he just stood there staring at it. Tiny streaks across the tile floor. Smears against the cabinets where your head had hit. Dark fingerprints dried against the bedrail.

His stomach twisted so violently he thought he might actually throw up.

Because the only thing left of you in this room now was blood.

Not your laugh echoing across the nurses’ station during overnight shifts. Not your sarcasm when Santos annoyed you on purpose. Not the warmth of your body curled against his after impossible shifts when both of you were too exhausted to even speak properly anymore.

Just blood.

Jack looked down slowly at his own hands. There was still dried blood caught beneath his fingernails from where he had held your face trying to keep you conscious. More stained the sleeves of his scrub top in dark rust-colored smears that made his chest tighten painfully every time he looked at them.

You were intubated upstairs while trauma surgeons searched your brain for bleeding.

The thought cracked something open inside him.

If he had stayed. If he had trusted his instincts. If he had checked sooner.

“Jack.”

Dana’s voice came softly from the doorway behind him.

He did not turn around immediately. For a second, neither of them spoke while she took in the scene around him. Dana had worked in emergency medicine long enough to understand what trauma aftermath looked like, not just physically, but emotionally too.

Jack looked wrecked. Not outwardly hysterical. That almost would have been easier. Instead, he looked hollowed out from the inside.

“You should sit down,” she said gently.

“I’m fine.”

The answer came automatically, immediate and empty.

Dana almost sighed because they both knew it was complete bullshit. She stepped further into the room slowly, careful with him now in the same way people approached trauma patients who had not realized how badly they were injured yet.

“You’re shaking.”

His hands were trembling badly now that the adrenaline had started wearing off, small uncontrollable tremors moving through his fingers no matter how tightly he clenched them into fists.

“I left her,” he said quietly.

Dana’s expression softened immediately. “Jack.”

“I left her alone with him.”

The guilt in his voice nearly hurt to hear.

Dana moved closer. “You could not have predicted postictal aggression escalating like that.”

“But I should’ve checked sooner.”

Jack laughed once under his breath, but there was absolutely no humor in it. Just panic and exhaustion and guilt twisting together so tightly he could barely breathe around it anymore.

“She sounded scared,” he whispered roughly. “Do you know how bad it has to be for her to sound scared?”

Dana’s chest tightened painfully because she did know. Everybody in that hospital knew how terrifyingly calm you usually were under pressure. You were the person comforting other people during disasters. The doctor residents looked for during bad traumas because your voice never shook.

But tonight it had.

Dana stepped directly in front of him then and reached up without hesitation, gripping the back of his neck firmly enough to ground him.

“Listen to me,” she said softly but seriously. “She is alive.”

Jack swallowed hard. “She squeezed my hand before CT.”

“Then hold onto that.”

His eyes burned immediately at the words.

For a second, he looked terrifyingly close to falling apart completely.

“She was looking at me like she thought she was dying.”

Dana’s face crumpled slightly at the crack in his voice because Jack Abbot almost never sounded fragile. Not after everything life had already put him through.

But this was different.

This was you.

“You know her,” Dana said quietly. “You know how hard she fights.”

Jack closed his eyes briefly because somehow that made this hurt even worse. He did know. He knew the exact stubborn determination living inside you, the way you worked through exhaustion and grief and pain because your body physically did not know how to stop caring about people.

And suddenly, the idea of losing you felt so catastrophic he genuinely could not imagine surviving it.

When you woke up, the first thing you felt was pain.

Not sharp at first. Not localized enough to understand. Just heavy.

A crushing ache spread through your entire body like every bone had shattered somewhere deep beneath your skin. Awareness dragged itself slowly upward through layers of medication and exhaustion while fluorescent hospital light glowed faintly red through your eyelids. For one blissfully empty second, your brain stayed blank enough that you did not remember anything at all.

Then your chest tightened violently around the ventilator tube lodged in your throat.

Panic hit instantly.

Your eyes snapped open as your body reacted on pure instinct, trying desperately to fight the foreign object forcing air into your lungs. The movement sent agony ripping through your throat and jaw so violently it nearly knocked you unconscious again. A horrible choking sound escaped around the tube while pain exploded across the side of your head hard enough to blur your vision immediately.

The monitors beside your bed erupted into sharp alarms.

Then suddenly Jack was there.

He moved so quickly the chair beside your ICU bed nearly tipped backward onto the floor. One second the room felt empty and terrifying and unfamiliar, and the next his hands were hovering carefully near your face like he wanted to touch you everywhere at once but was terrified of hurting you more.

“Hey, hey, don’t fight it,” he said immediately, voice low and urgent. “You’re okay. Breathe with it.”

You could see his mouth moving. Could see panic written all over his face.

But you could not hear him properly.

Everything sounded distorted beneath the ringing in your ears, voices muffled and warped together like you were trapped underwater. The ventilator hissed rhythmically beside you while your chest rose mechanically against your will, and the sensation was horrifying enough to send another wave of panic crashing violently through your body.

Jack kept talking anyway.

You recognized the cadence of his voice more than the words themselves. Calm. Steady. But underneath it there was something rawer now, something desperate he usually hid much better than this.

Your entire body hurt.

Your throat burned every time the ventilator pushed another breath into your lungs. Your jaw ached violently from the intubation while your left shoulder throbbed with deep nauseating pain that radiated all the way down your arm. Even breathing hurt despite the machine doing most of the work for you.

Then memory came back all at once.

The trauma bay. Leon seizing. Hands crushing around your throat. Your head slamming violently against the cabinet. The floor.

You started crying before you even realized it was happening.

Tears slipped silently sideways into your hair while panic clawed straight up your chest hard enough to blur your vision again. You could not stop shaking. Every instinct in your body still screamed danger even though logically you knew you were safe now.

Jack’s entire expression broke the second he realized you were crying.

“Oh, baby,” he whispered hoarsely.

At least you thought that was what he said.

He sat carefully on the edge of the chair beside your bed before reaching for your hand, avoiding IV lines and bruises with practiced gentleness. The second his fingers touched yours, you grabbed onto him desperately enough that pain shot violently through your injured shoulder again.

You did not care.

Jack was here.

And somehow that meant alive. Safe.

Your grip tightened harder around his hand while your breathing turned ragged around the tube again. Jack immediately leaned closer, his thumb brushing shakily across your knuckles while he tried to calm you before you exhausted yourself further.

“It’s okay,” he murmured softly. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Only then did you really look at him.

And God.

He looked awful.

Dark bruising sat beneath his eyes like he had not slept once since this happened. His hair looked messy in a way that suggested he had spent hours dragging anxious hands through it, and there was something hollowed out in his expression now that made your chest tighten painfully.

You mouthed the question anyway despite the ventilator.

What happened to you?

Jack watched your lips carefully before understanding finally crossed his face. His throat worked once visibly while emotion flashed so openly across his expression it almost scared you more than the pain itself.

He still looked terrified.

Even now.

Instead of speaking, he carefully turned your hand over in his and began tracing slow letters against your palm with his thumb.

Patient attacked you.

The memory crashed back completely after that.

The pressure around your throat. Leon’s empty unfocused eyes. Your body hitting the wall. The terrifying realization that he genuinely did not recognize you anymore.

You jerked violently on instinct before you could stop yourself, panic surging through your bloodstream so fast your vision blurred instantly while the cardiac monitor erupted into another wave of alarms beside the bed.

Jack reacted immediately.

“Hey, hey, look at me.”

You could not fully hear the words, but you knew his voice. Knew the shape of it. The desperation underneath it.

Your breathing turned frantic around the ventilator while terror clawed violently through your chest again. You remembered thinking you were going to die. Not abstractly. Not distantly.

Really die.

And for one horrifying second, lying in this ICU bed unable to speak or breathe on your own, that feeling came rushing back all over again.

Jack kept one hand wrapped tightly around yours while the other hovered uncertainly near your face. He looked like he wanted to pull you against him and protect you from everything all at once but knew touching you too much would only hurt you further.

“You’re safe now,” he kept saying quietly. “He can’t hurt you. You’re safe.”

Safe.

Your eyes darted weakly around the ICU room instead. Machines. IV poles. Bandages. Your leg elevated and immobilized beneath blankets. Soft restraints loosely secured around your wrists so you would not accidentally pull the ventilator tube out while disoriented.

You felt trapped inside your own body.

The panic became unbearable.

Then your eyes landed on the PCA pump beside the bed.

Jack noticed immediately.

His entire face fell.

“Baby…”

You reached weakly toward the button anyway with trembling fingers.

Jack looked absolutely shattered watching you press it. Not angry. Not disappointed.

Heartbroken.

Because he understood immediately what you were doing.

You could not stop the fear. Could not stop the pain.

So you were choosing unconsciousness instead.

Medication flooded slowly through your bloodstream almost immediately afterward. Warmth spread outward in gradual waves, softening the sharp edges of panic first before the pain finally began loosening its grip around your body. The terror still lingered somewhere deep beneath everything else, but it no longer felt sharp enough to suffocate you alive.

Your grip weakened slightly around Jack’s hand as exhaustion dragged heavily at your eyelids again.

Jack stayed exactly where he was.

You could barely keep your eyes open anymore, but you still saw the way he looked at you while the medication slowly pulled you back under.

Completely devastated.

Like watching you choose sedation over consciousness hurt him almost as much as the attack itself.

Your fingers twitched weakly against his palm before your eyes finally slipped closed again.

The last thing you felt before unconsciousness dragged you under completely was Jack lifting your hand carefully toward his mouth and pressing one shaking kiss against your bruised knuckles.

The second time you woke up was somehow worse because this time you stayed conscious long enough to understand what had happened to you.

Pain existed everywhere now.

Not sharp anymore. Not even severe enough in one specific place to focus on. It had settled deeper than that, heavy and constant, wrapping itself around your entire body until even breathing felt exhausting. Every inhale pulled painfully against bruised ribs while your jaw throbbed in slow aching pulses that spread all the way into your skull. The medication dulled the edges enough to keep panic from swallowing you whole again, but not enough to make you forget.

Nothing let you forget for very long.

Garcia stood beside your ICU bed when your eyes finally opened again, flashlight moving carefully across your pupils while monitors hummed steadily around the room. The overhead lights had been dimmed sometime while you slept, leaving everything washed in pale blue-gray shadows that made the hospital feel strangely unreal.

“Hey,” Garcia said softly the second she noticed you were awake. “Welcome back.”

Your hearing still came and went in fractured bursts after the concussion. Some sounds arrived painfully sharp while others disappeared completely beneath the relentless ringing inside your ears. Voices felt warped and distant, like everybody speaking stood underwater somewhere far away from you.

You blinked slowly toward the doorway and spotted Santos hovering there awkwardly holding a bouquet of flowers that looked aggressively stolen from the hospital gift shop. Half the stems bent sideways beneath crinkled plastic wrap while one of the price tags still dangled visibly from the bouquet.

You stared at them for a second before a weak breath of laughter escaped you despite the pain immediately punishing the movement.

Santos looked so relieved at the sound she nearly seemed close to crying herself.

“You scared the absolute shit out of us,” she said quickly, like humor was the only thing keeping her from saying something genuinely emotional instead.

The ghost of a smile tugged weakly at your mouth.

Garcia stepped back after finishing the neuro assessment while Santos moved a little closer to the bed, still clutching the flowers awkwardly against her chest.

“Abbott threatened like six people,” she muttered after clearing her throat.

Your eyes shifted toward her slowly.

“He almost went through security trying to get back to Leon.”

Your stomach twisted instantly.

Leon.

For one horrible second you saw him again exactly as he looked before the attack happened. Pale and exhausted beneath ambulance lights while rain hammered against the windows around both of you. Laughing weakly through pain. Asking if you were always that calm. Looking at you like you were safe.

You swallowed hard against the sudden nausea crawling into your throat.

“What happened to him?” you asked quietly, each word dragging painfully through the ache in your fractured jaw.

Santos’ expression changed immediately. The sarcasm disappeared first. Then the humor.

“He’s okay,” she answered after a moment, voice softer now. “Physically, I mean.”

You closed your eyes briefly.

Santos hesitated before continuing more carefully. “He doesn’t remember anything after the seizure started. Robby thinks it’s the postictal state mixed with the head trauma.”

The room fell quiet after that.

Not awkward quiet.

Heavy quiet.

The kind that settled directly into your ribs and stayed there.

Because the worst part was that you believed her completely.

You knew exactly what postictal violence looked like. You understood the neurological confusion, the blind panic, the total loss of recognition that sometimes followed severe seizures. Rationally and medically, every part of your brain understood exactly what had happened inside Trauma Two.

But emotionally, it still hurt in ways you did not know how to untangle yet.

A strange grief wrapped itself around the fear sitting inside your chest because less than an hour before the attack, Leon had been sitting beside you in the back of an ambulance talking about his daughter and his wife and soccer games and stupid jokes while rain pounded against the windows. You remembered thinking he seemed kind, the sort of patient who apologized too much for being in pain.

You had liked him.

And then suddenly he became the person who nearly killed you.

Emergency medicine was cruel like that sometimes. One second somebody was human to you. The next they became trauma.

Santos stepped closer quietly before squeezing your foot gently through the blanket. “We’ll come back later, okay?”

You nodded weakly.

After they left, the ICU room felt unbearably quiet again. Machines hummed softly around you while rain tapped faintly against distant windows somewhere beyond the hallway. Pittsburgh looked gray outside the narrow ICU window, the city blurred beneath another storm rolling slowly across the skyline.

You drifted in and out for hours after that.

Sometimes nurses came in to check vitals and neuro responses. Sometimes transport arrived to wheel you toward imaging. Sometimes you only woke long enough to register pain before medication dragged you under again.

Then sometime deep into the night, consciousness returned slowly enough that you realized somebody was sitting beside your bed.

Jack.

At first you thought he was asleep.

His head rested bowed carefully against your hand where it lay on top of the blanket, broad shoulders slumped forward like exhaustion had physically crushed him downward into the chair. The dim ICU lighting softened the edges of him enough that for one brief second he looked strangely fragile.

Then you noticed he was shaking.

Your heart cracked instantly.

Jack was crying.

Quietly. Almost silently. But hard enough that his shoulders trembled every few seconds beneath the dim blue ICU lights.

The sight hurt worse than any fracture in your body.

You had seen Jack exhausted before. Angry. Burned out after impossible shifts and mass casualty nights and pediatric codes that left entire departments emotionally gutted afterward.

But you had never seen him like this.

Very slowly, ignoring the pain shooting through your ribs and shoulder, you lifted your fingers weakly toward his hair.

The movement alone was enough.

Jack lifted his head immediately.

His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed beneath exhaustion so deep it looked painful. There was stubble shadowing his jaw now like he had not even thought about himself since this happened, and the healing cut near his cheekbone stood out harshly beneath fluorescent light.

Destroyed.

That was the only word your exhausted brain could find for the way he looked.

Jack Abbott was always the steady one. The person everybody else leaned on during disasters because he never seemed to break no matter how catastrophic things became around him.

Until now.

“I should’ve stayed.”

The words came out rough enough they barely sounded like him at all. Raw. Torn open somewhere deep inside.

You frowned weakly despite the pain. “No.”

“I knew something was wrong.”

“You couldn’t know.”

“I did.”

Jack stood abruptly then, pacing once across the small ICU room before turning back toward you like he physically could not force himself to stay still anymore. His prosthetic clicked sharply against the tile beneath his scrub pants while one trembling hand dragged hard through his hair again.

“I left you alone in there.”

“Jack.”

His face crumpled so suddenly it stole what little breath your bruised ribs could manage.

“When they pulled him off you...” His voice broke completely for one horrible second before he forced himself to continue anyway. “You weren’t moving.”

Your own eyes filled instantly.

Jack pressed shaking fingers hard against his mouth, trying desperately to regain control of himself and failing anyway.

“There was so much blood,” he whispered finally.

The confession hollowed the entire room out around both of you.

You reached toward him carefully despite the pain.

Jack moved back to your bedside immediately this time, like he physically could not tolerate distance from you anymore, and leaned down slowly until his forehead rested carefully against yours.

For a long time neither of you spoke.

Machines hummed softly around the room while rain tapped gently against the windows again. Jack’s breathing still shook every few seconds no matter how hard he tried controlling it, and you realized with sudden aching clarity that he had been holding himself together by force ever since the attack happened.

Probably for everyone else.

For the department.

For you.

Until now.

Finally, through the ache in your jaw and throat, you whispered softly, “You saved me.”

Jack closed his eyes immediately like the words hurt almost as much as the memory itself.

For a long moment he did not say anything at all. His forehead stayed pressed carefully against yours while his breathing shook unevenly every few seconds, and you realized suddenly that he was trying very hard not to completely fall apart in front of you. The effort of it sat visibly in every tense line of his body, in the way his fingers curled tightly around yours like letting go might physically destroy him, in the way his shoulders remained rigid even now like some part of him still expected another disaster to happen the second he stopped bracing for it.

“You almost died.”

The words came out so quietly you nearly missed them beneath the hum of machines surrounding both of you.

Jack pulled back just enough to look at you again, and the expression on his face made something ache deep inside your chest because he looked terrified still.

Not panicked anymore. Not frantic.

Just deeply, genuinely terrified in a way you had never seen before.

“I couldn’t get to you fast enough,” he admitted roughly, eyes fixed on your face like he needed constant proof you were still here. “I heard the safe word and I ran, but by the time I got there...” His throat tightened visibly. “You were on the floor.”

You swallowed painfully.

Bits and pieces still came back in flashes more than complete memories. Leon’s hands around your throat. The cabinet slamming against the back of your skull. The overwhelming certainty that your body was beginning to give out beneath you.

Then Jack.

Your eyes drifted slowly across his face now, taking him in properly for the first time since waking up. The exhaustion. The fear. The sleepless hollowing beneath his eyes. He looked like somebody who had been surviving on adrenaline alone for far too long.

“You did get to me,” you whispered carefully.

Jack laughed once under his breath, but the sound cracked painfully in the middle. “Barely.”

“That’s not true.”

His jaw tightened immediately.

You knew that look. The same one he got after bad outcomes. After losses he carried around long after everybody else moved on. Jack had always been harder on himself than anyone else could ever be, especially when the people he loved were involved.

And God, he loved deeply.

Even when he pretended not to.

You shifted your hand weakly against his, ignoring the ache radiating through your shoulder and ribs.

“Jack.”

His eyes lifted back to yours instantly.

“I’m here.”

Something inside him seemed to break completely at those words.

Jack lowered his head again, pressing one trembling kiss carefully against your bruised knuckles before holding your hand against his chest. His heartbeat pounded hard and uneven beneath your fingers, fast enough that you could still feel the leftover adrenaline vibrating through him.

For a while neither of you spoke again.

The ICU remained dim and quiet around you while rain continued tapping softly against the windows outside. Nurses’ footsteps echoed faintly somewhere down the hallway, distant enough that it almost felt like the rest of the world existed somewhere very far away from this room.

Your eyelids had started growing heavy again by the time Jack finally spoke.

“You scared me,” he admitted quietly.

The confession sounded small somehow. Honest in a way that made your chest ache more than the injuries did.

You looked at him for a second before squeezing his hand as tightly as your exhausted body would allow.

“I know,” you whispered.

Jack nodded once, eyes never leaving your face.

Then very carefully, like he was handling something impossibly fragile, he leaned closer and pressed a kiss against your forehead while exhaustion slowly began pulling you back under again.

This time, when sleep finally took you, Jack’s hand never left yours.

taglist : @kittykaylat1987

[finco99]

I would like to let it be known that I was absolutely right about how this fic was gonna turn out-

Devastating, softly angsty, and tender, all wrapped up in some of the most gorgeous pieces of writing I've ever read. Hands down.

Gosh, I’m always such a huge fan of the way you build tension 😭🤌

There’s something about it that genuinely has me physically tensing up while I read, or forcing myself to slow down because I get too caught up trying to race through reading, all caught up in the pace of the events. It’s so effective. From that uneasy “calm before the storm” feeling in the first half, to how quickly everything starting spinning in motion once the code was called. I could genuinely feel the urgency ramping up as I kept reading.

And even with Jack!!! I loved how his physical discomfort kept feeding into his emotional distress throughout the ordeal. Every time it came up, he brushed past it or ignored it, but it still fed into the stress simmering with the situation.

Ugh, I knew your writing style would lend itself so well to a medical fic if you ever wrote for The Pitt. No joke, lol.

There’s this really beautiful thing your writing does where it feels inherently soft and tender, but then that softness gets offset by tension or humor depending on the situation. (Which feels so refreshing because I usually see the reverse done more often, or the reverse comes more naturally to employ, idk) So I was so curious to see what that kind of fast-paced transition would look like in a fic like this one, and god, it delivered.

The characters forcing themselves to emotionally detach to be present for the emergency. Jack being too emotionally gripped by the emergency to force himselfto detach. Him becoming the this figure through which we experience the speed and efficiency of everyone else in that room. And then the reader’s panic and disorientation after waking up. These two slowly finding a rhythm through shared grief. Ugh. Literally everything about this was so, so good 🤌💕

And I still can’t believe there’s going to be a part two. I’m genuinely so excited to see where this story goes from here!!

[itevilhag]

she's hereeee!

please remind me why I'm still in college. I hate it here.

@eys-s gurl, your wish is my command

[verstappenverse]

The Bare Minimum

Pairing: Max Verstappen x Reader

Summary: Max always thought you never asked for much because you didn’t need much, low-maintenance to a fault, until he finally overhears the truth.

4.4k words / Masterlist

Max had always appreciated how easy you were to love.

You didn’t demand. You didn’t sulk over missed dates. There were no passive-aggressive comments about him not posting you enough or forgetting to text back when a race weekend swallowed him whole. You never made him feel guilty for the parts of his life that were already complicated. When he was travelling or exhausted, you simply kissed his forehead and told him to rest. When his schedule changed last minute, you never got upset, never made him sit through a tense silence or apologise for the same thing five different ways, you just shrugged with that soft little smile of yours and said, “We’ll figure it out.”

You weren’t just low-maintenance, you were selfless, unshakeably chill in a way that made loving you feel almost effortless. You understood the pressure, the travel, the media, the endless demands on his time, and you never tried to add yourself to the list of things he needed to manage.

You made room for his life before he even had to ask. You bent around the complicated edges of his world so naturally that, after a while, Max stopped noticing how much you were bending at all.

It was refreshing. Comforting, even. Being with you never felt like another obligation waiting for him when he got home. You were warmth, quiet, peace… but it also made it easy for Max to coast.

Because when you said you didn’t need flowers, he believed you. When you told him birthdays weren’t a big deal, he took your word for it.

When you said you didn’t mind that his attention was always half-distracted by Red Bull, his sim rig, his phone, or whatever new team crisis was unfolding in the background, he didn’t stop to wonder whether you meant it. He didn’t ask himself if you were genuinely fine with being loved in the gaps, or if you had simply learned to make your wants small enough that they never became inconvenient.

He didn’t notice that every time you said, “Don’t worry about it,” you were teaching him that he didn’t have to.

Until he saw the way your smile dimmed at Daniel’s girlfriend’s birthday party.

The boat was filled with champagne and noise, a private Monaco affair organised by Daniel, of course, because no one else could make a birthday party feel quite that excessive and still somehow charming. There was a neon sign glowing above the bar, a curated playlist that seemed suspiciously full of songs Daniel liked more than his girlfriend did, and custom cupcakes with everyone’s faces printed on them. Max didn’t even know you could do that.

You sat beside him with a drink in hand, your shoulder brushing his every now and then as the boat rocked gently against the water. To anyone else you looked perfectly fine, but Max had started paying closer attention now.

Your laugh came half a second too late, your smile faded too quickly, and your eyes kept drifting back to the couple across the deck.

Daniel’s girlfriend had her arms slung around his neck, his jacket draped over her shoulders, and a glittery tiara with Birthday Girl written across the front sitting slightly crooked on her head. Daniel kept adjusting it for her, grinning every time she swatted his hand away, and when she leaned into him, he kissed her temple without seeming to think about it. Thoughtless in the best way, like loving her out loud was simply instinct.

“You made it!” Daniel said, pulling Max into a hug before turning to you with even more enthusiasm. “And you look amazing. Seriously, come on, look at you.”

You laughed, a bit surprised, and looked down at yourself like you hadn’t expected anyone to notice.

Max noticed that.

Daniel’s girlfriend came over next, glowing, happy, adored. She hugged you tightly and thanked you both for coming, then turned to show you the bracelet Daniel had bought her. It was delicate and expensive, the kind of jewellery Max would never have picked out on his own because he would have convinced himself he didn’t know what he was doing and given up before trying.

“He surprised me with it this morning,” she said, beaming. “And he pretended he forgot my birthday for, like, ten minutes, which was evil, but then he had breakfast set up on the balcony.”

Daniel, overhearing, lifted his glass. “Romance is alive and well ladies and gentlemen.”

Normal Daniel. Loud, teasing, affectionate Daniel, who made a spectacle out of caring because he had never been embarrassed by warmth in the same way Max sometimes was, but then Max looked at you.

You were smiling. Of course you were smiling.

You were always polite. Always kind. Always good at being happy for other people, even when something inside you was quietly aching. There was something different about it then, something Max had never noticed before because he had never had reason to look for it.

Your smile didn’t quite reach your eyes.

You didn’t look devastated, you didn’t withdraw your hand from his arm or go quiet in a way anyone else would pick up on. You just looked at the bracelet on Daniel’s girlfriend’s wrist, then at the flowers, then at the wall of photos, and for half a second your expression morphed into something almost wistful.

Max felt it like a punch he had no right to react to.

The conversation moved on around him. Daniel was talking about the cake, someone else was laughing about how long it had taken to get the decorations right. His girlfriend was telling you how Daniel had been secretly planning it for weeks, badly, apparently, because he almost exposed himself several times.

You laughed at the story.

You said, “That’s really sweet.”

Max heard the softness in your voice.

For the first time all night, Max looked at the party properly. He looked at the flowers. The photos. The custom menu cards with her name on them. The cake Daniel had apparently taste-tested three times because the first one “didn’t feel like her.”

Then Max looked at you.

You were standing beside him with nothing from him except your own practiced understanding.

No flowers.

No post.

No planned birthday dinner he hadn’t rescheduled.

No little public signs that he was proud to love you.

No evidence, really, that Max Verstappen had ever looked at the woman beside him and thought, she deserves to feel chosen.

His stomach twisted, because suddenly he remembered your last birthday with a clarity that made him feel slightly sick.

He had been in Milton Keynes for simulator work. He’d called you late, later than he meant to, and you had answered in bed, face lit softly by your phone screen. You had smiled like you were happy just to hear from him. He had apologised again for not being able to be there. You had said it didn’t matter and he had promised to make it up to you. You had said, “Don’t stress, honestly. I had a nice day.”

Had you?

Had you really?

Or had you said that because it was easier than admitting you had wanted him there?

He thought about the flowers you always claimed not to need. The birthdays you said weren’t important. The dates you never demanded. The posts you never asked for. The attention you pretended not to miss.

Beside him, you glanced up. “You okay?”

Max blinked, pulled out of his thoughts by the gentleness of your voice. That made it worse somehow, even now you were checking on him.

“Yeah,” he said, too quickly. “Fine.”

You studied him for a moment, clearly not convinced, but you didn’t push. You never pushed. You simply nodded and looked back towards the others, your shoulder brushing lightly against his sleeve.

Max hated that too. He hated that you gave him space even when maybe he deserved pressure.

He hated that you had made yourself so easy to keep that he had forgotten keeping you was still something he had to actively do.

For the rest of the night, he couldn’t stop watching you.

He watched Daniel’s girlfriend pull you into photos, watched you laugh as someone handed you a party hat you refused to wear for about ten seconds. He watched you compliment the decorations, watched you ask questions about the planning, watched your fingers lightly brush over one of the flower arrangements when you thought no one was looking.

You liked flowers.

Of course you liked flowers.

Maybe not in the over-the-top, expensive, social-media way, but you liked them. He could tell by the way you touched the petals carefully, the way your face warmed when Daniel’s girlfriend told you Daniel had chosen them because they reminded him of a dress she once wore in Monaco.

Max stood there, silent and increasingly irritated with himself.

How many things had you convinced yourself you didn’t need simply because he had never offered them?

How many wants had you softened into jokes so they wouldn’t feel like demands?

How many times had you made yourself smaller around his life and called it love?

Later, when everyone gathered around the cake, Daniel made a speech. A terrible speech, because it was Daniel, so half of it was jokes and the other half was him pretending not to get emotional. Then he spoke about how his girlfriend made his life better. How she put up with him. How she deserved more than one night of being celebrated, but he hoped this was a decent start.

Everyone laughed.

His girlfriend cried.

You smiled.

Max felt like the worst boyfriend in the world.

He complimented you in private, usually quietly, usually after you’d done something for him. He told you he loved you, yes, but often in bed, or before hanging up, or in passing when one of you was leaving. He assumed you knew. He assumed choosing you privately counted the same as making you feel chosen.

On the drive home you were quieter than usual.

Your head rested against the window, city lights sliding over your face in brief flashes. Your heels were in your lap because you had taken them off the second you got in the car, and your fingers played absently with the strap like your mind was somewhere else.

Max kept glancing over. Usually he liked quiet with you, it was comfortable and easy, you didn’t need to fill every silence.

Tonight the quiet felt full of everything you weren’t saying.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked eventually.

You turned your head, smiling faintly. “Yeah. It was lovely.”

Lovely.

The word sat between you.

Max swallowed. “Daniel did a lot.”

“He did,” you said, and your voice was warm. “It was really sweet.”

There it was again. That careful admiration.

Max’s hands flexed around the steering wheel. “You like that kind of thing?”

You looked at him properly then, brows lifting a little. “What kind of thing?”

He shrugged, trying to sound casual and failing. “All of it. The flowers. The photos. The big party.”

You looked away and gave a small laugh, the kind that tried to make a truth sound harmless. “I mean, I don’t need all that.”

Max’s chest tightened.

That wasn’t what he had asked.

“I didn’t ask if you needed it.”

Your fingers stopped moving against the shoe strap and for a moment you said nothing. Then you looked down and smiled again, but this one was worse than the one at the party because it was meant only for him, meant to reassure him, meant to protect him from feeling bad about something he had already done.

“I just think it’s nice,” you said carefully. “For her. Daniel clearly put a lot of thought into it.”

Max nodded once, jaw tense.

Thought.

That was the word that stayed with him.

You didn’t need a private room full of flowers or a custom cake or a wall of photographs. You probably didn’t even want something that big, but you wanted thought. You wanted evidence that he had paused, considered you, and chosen to make you feel loved on purpose.

Max, who could analyse tyre degradation over fifty laps, who could remember tiny setup changes from races years ago, who could spend hours perfecting a sim lap by half a tenth, had somehow convinced himself he was incapable of remembering to buy you flowers.

“I should have done more for your birthday,” he said.

You went very still.

The car felt smaller suddenly.

“Max…”

“No,” he said, because he knew that tone. He knew you were about to let him off the hook again. “I should have.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

You exhaled quietly and looked out of the window again. “I told you it was fine.”

“I know you did.”

“Then why are you bringing it up?”

Because I finally saw your face, he wanted to say. Because I finally realised you have been asking for so little that I stopped giving you even that and I do not know how to forgive myself for not noticing sooner.

But Max had never been good with words when they mattered most.

So he said, “Because I think you say things are fine when they're not.”

Your mouth pressed together. That tiny movement cut through him more than any argument would have.

You weren’t angry, but part of him wished you were. Anger would have given him something to meet, something to fix, something loud enough that he couldn’t ignore it, you just looked tired and that was worse.

“I don’t want to be difficult,” you said after a while.

“You're not difficult,” he said immediately.

You gave him a small, sad smile. “I know. I just mean… your life is already a lot. You have so many people needing things from you all the time I never wanted to be another thing on the list.”

“You are not a thing on the list.”

“Aren’t I?” you asked softly.

Max didn’t answer fast enough, once again words failed him, he hated himself for that.

You turned your face back towards the window, and the reflection showed him the truth he had been avoiding all night. You weren’t crying or making a scene. You weren’t asking him to turn the car around or apologise in some grand dramatic way. You were simply sitting there beside him carrying a hurt that had clearly existed long before tonight.

He figured you’d be home from your errands by now.

Probably curled up somewhere in the apartment, wearing one of his hoodies like you always did when he was away for more than a few days. Maybe on the sofa with your knees tucked beneath you, scrolling mindlessly through your phone, or half-watching one of those comfort shows you liked to put on in the background while you waited for him. The thought came easily, warmly, and Max found himself smiling before he had even opened the door properly.

He liked coming home to you.

He liked the small signs of you scattered through his space. Your shoes by the door, your hair tie abandoned on the coffee table, your mug in the sink because you always forgot to rinse it. Your presence had softened the apartment in ways he hadn’t realised he needed, turning it from somewhere he slept between races into somewhere that actually felt like home.

The apartment was quiet when he stepped inside, but not empty.

Max kicked off his shoes and shrugged out of his jacket, already turning toward the living room when he heard your voice from the bedroom. Then he heard your best friend’s name, and realised you were on the phone.

He didn’t mean to eavesdrop. He was about to call out, to let you know he was back, but something about your tone made him stop before the words left his mouth. So he stayed quiet, halfway down the hall, one hand still resting against the wall.

“I’m not upset he did all that for her,” you were saying. “It’s sweet. It is.”

There was a pause.

Max’s body went strangely still.

He knew, instantly, what you were talking about.

“It’s just…” You exhaled shakily. “He’s never done anything like that for me.”

The words hit him hard. Max stared at the floor, heartbeat slowing into something heavy and uncomfortable.

“I don’t ask for much,” you continued, and your voice was smaller now, like you were embarrassed to even say it out loud. “I know I don’t. I never wanted to pressure him or make him feel like he had to go out of his way when his life is already so much. I thought if I was easygoing and low-maintenance, it would make things easier on him.”

His throat tightened.

“But sometimes—” Your voice broke so softly he almost missed it. “Sometimes I wish he’d do something without me having to ask.”

Max’s fingers curled around the edge of the wall.

He could feel every careless assumption he had ever made beginning to turn over in his head, one after another, each one worse than the last.

You didn’t care if he forgot plans, if he came home distracted, if he said he would make it up to you and then didn’t, because something else came up and you smiled like it was fine.

“Maybe I enabled it by alway saying I was fine... but I don’t need grand gestures,” you went on, voice wobbling now. “I know that’s not really him, and I don’t want him to be anyone else. I don’t want a big show just for the sake of it, but it would be nice to feel special sometimes… to feel like he thought about me without me having to ask.”

Max’s chest ached.

He looked toward the bedroom door, but he couldn’t move.

“I just want to know he wants to do those things for me,” you whispered. “Not because he’s apologising or because someone else did it first… because he loves me enough to notice.”

Max couldn’t breathe properly.

He hadn’t known.

He really hadn’t known.

He thought you meant it when you said you didn’t care about birthdays, anniversaries, flowers, or all the romantic things he had always been bad at. He had thought that was part of what made you you. Unbothered by the kind of performative relationship stuff he had never known how to do properly.

The conversation ended a few minutes later.

He heard the soft rustle of sheets then your footsteps moving across the bedroom floor. Max reacted too late, still trapped in the weight of what he had heard and only barely managed to step back into the hallway before you came out.

You stopped when you saw him.

For one awful second, neither of you said anything and then he smiled and wrapped you in a hug pretending like he hadn’t heard a word.

That night Max sat alone in the dark of the living room for a long time, head in his hands. He couldn’t bring himself to move, couldn’t bring himself to do anything except sit there in the silence and let every word he had overheard replay in his head until it felt carved into him.

He kept hearing your voice.

“to feel like he thought about me without me having to ask.”

He pressed the heels of his hands harder against his eyes.

God.

How many moments had you swallowed your disappointment before he could even notice it was there, dimming yourself down just to be easier to love?

It gutted him.

You hadn’t asked him for the world. You hadn’t asked him to become someone he wasn’t. You only wanted to feel considered. Somehow he had made the best thing in his life feel like she had to be grateful for whatever was left of him at the end of the day.

You deserved fireworks, even if you were the kind of girl who said she didn’t need them. You didn’t want more from him. You just wanted to matter enough for him to give it anyway.

You didn’t expect anything to change.

Max was always kind, attentive in the ways he knew how to be. He noticed when you were cold and passed you his hoodie without making a big thing of it. He reached for your hand in crowded places because he liked knowing exactly where you were. He remembered how you took your coffee, which side of the bed you preferred, the shows you put on when you needed background noise. He loved you. You knew he did.

So when he suggested you take a weekend off together “Somewhere quiet, just us” you didn’t overthink it. You figured he wanted to disappear for a couple of days, somewhere without cameras, team radios, sponsor obligations, or someone asking him about tyre degradation.

It wasn’t until you stepped onto the lakeside dock in Switzerland that you realised something was different.

The cottage was small but charming, tucked away by the water with warm wood walls, soft cream blankets, and floor-to-ceiling windows that made the whole place glow with the late afternoon light. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t the kind of place chosen to impress anyone, it felt private, thoughtful, almost painfully intimate.

Inside there were your favourite snacks arranged in the kitchen. Your favourite wine chilling in the fridge. Your comfort blanket folded over the armchair by the window. Your favourite book was already resting on the bedside table, the old, worn copy you had once told him you reread whenever your head felt too loud.

You frowned, turning slowly back to him. “Did you… did you set this up?”

Max leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, trying for casual and not quite managing it. “Maybe.”

You narrowed your eyes, sceptical. “What’s going on?”

His smirk softened a little. He just looked at you and there was something unusually careful in his expression, something that made your chest tighten before he had even said a word.

“I listened,” he said.

You blinked. Max glanced down briefly, like the words felt awkward in his mouth, but when he looked back up he didn’t look away again.

“I didn’t realise how much I’d taken for granted,” he continued quietly. “How much you gave by never asking. You made it easy for me, but that doesn’t mean I should’ve stopped trying.”

Your throat tightened.

“Max…”

“No, let me say it,” he murmured, taking a small step closer. “You always said things were fine. That you didn’t need flowers, or birthdays, or plans, or all the extra stuff and I believed you because it was easier because it meant I didn’t have to think about whether you were only saying it so I wouldn’t feel bad.”

You swallowed hard, looking away before your face could betray too much.

He walked you further inside, his hand warm at the small of your back, and that was when you noticed the little table by the window. It had been set for two, facing the lake as the sun began to lower behind the mountains. Candlelight, flowers, two plates, homemade pasta that looked slightly lopsided and very clearly like his doing, and a little folded note beside your place.

You stared at it for a second before picking it up.

In his messy, all-caps handwriting, it said:

I SHOULD HAVE MADE YOU FEEL SPECIAL BEFORE NOW. I’M GOING TO DO BETTER.

Max’s face shifted immediately, concern cutting through the nervousness. “Schatje…”

You shook your head quickly trying to laugh it off, but your voice came out thin. “I wanted to be cool,” you whispered. “I wanted to be the girlfriend who didn’t care about all that stuff. I thought if I asked for too much then I’d just become another pressure for you.”

Max stepped closer and cupped your cheeks, his thumbs brushing away the tears that slipped out despite your best efforts.

“You are the most important person in my life,” he murmured. “You always are.” His voice dropped softer, rougher. “I wish I could give you the world and I’m sorry it took me this long to show it.”

You looked at him then, really looked at him, at the nervous set of his mouth and the careful way he held you, like he understood now that easiness was not the same thing as not needing anything.

Then you finally kissed him.

Later that night you were curled against his chest with the fireplace crackling softly in the background, the cottage wrapped in that quiet, golden kind of warmth that made everything outside feel very far away.

Max had one arm around you, his hand resting beneath the hem of your sweater, fingers tracing slow, absent patterns against your skin.

You smiled into his shoulder, cheek pressed against the soft fabric as you listened to the steady beat of his.

“So,” you mumbled, voice sleepy but teasing, “is this a one-time gesture or…”

Max’s chest moved beneath you as he chuckled. “Oh no.”

You tilted your head slightly. “Oh no?”

“No,” he said, tightening his arm around you. “You’re getting so much romance now it’ll annoy you.”

You looked up at him trying and failing not to smile. “Really?”

He nodded solemnly, like he was discussing race strategy. “Really. I’m talking airport reunions. Flowers for no reason. Random poetry.”

“Poetry?” you repeated, laughing already.

“Bad poetry,” he corrected. “Very bad. Rhymes way too much.”

“Oh, God.”

“And a cheesy playlist,” he added, completely serious. “Maybe several. One for the car. One for when I’m away. One with songs you’ll make fun of me for.”

You laughed properly then, burying your face in his neck as warmth spread through your chest. It was never about the playlist, or the flowers, or whatever terrible poetry Max Verstappen might attempt in the name of love.

It was that he was thinking about it. That he had finally understood the difference between you not needing to be spoiled and you still deserving to be cherished.

Max turned his head and pressed a kiss into your hair. “I’m serious,” he murmured, quieter now. “I don’t want you wondering anymore.”

Your laughter softened. You lifted your face again, looking at him through the firelight. “Wondering what?”

“If I think about you,” he said. “If I notice. If I care enough to try.”

Your throat tightened, but this time the feeling wasn’t painful. Max brushed his thumb along your cheek. “I do,” he said. “I’ll show you better now.”

For a moment you just looked at him, then you leaned in, pressing a slow kiss to the corner of his mouth before tucking yourself back against him.

“That sounds perfect.” you whispered, smiling against his neck.

Taglist: @shigarika @bunnisplayground @thecoolpotatohologram @alexxavicry @gigglepre @esw1012 @satorinnie @percysaidnever @osclerc @sainzluvrr @autumn242 @shadowreader07 @joyfulpandamiracle @inmynotes63 @athanasia-day @embonbon @waterdeeply @shadowsoundeffects13 @fastandcurious16 @odegaardlia @skzvibes-blog @iambored24601 @e10owmaks @painfromblues @leto-twins-3107 @rxx-eegh @lewishamiltonismybf @mara1999 @armystay89 @ramonaflwsr @zazima @mischiefmxnxgedhp @yoonessa @wordskeeper @brumstappen @irenkaproszepana @butterkaput @blueskies4everxo @teamnovalak @taylordaughter @taetae-armyyyyy @kitty-m30w @abcdefghi09lmnopqrstuvwxyz @kevynnashley @robindrake13 @lilorose25 @sogoodtoheritsvicious @angelluv16 @alex1ella @nightrose-18

[nodded]

THE PITT 1.01 / 1.15

[ivy-senna]

just let me take care of you — harvey specter x reader

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summary harvey specter is many things. a doctor is not one of them. but when it's you, he tries anyway.

prompt – sick reader, harvey takes care of her, protective harvey, louis litt being louis litt warnings – none, just soft harvey and a very dramatic louis 😭🎀 word count – ~2.5k note – soft harvey is my roman empire and i will not apologise. Adding louis was the best decision, hope this is everything you wanted 🫶

requests are open :)

⋆｡°✩ 🎀 ♡ 🎀 ✩°｡⋆

You'd tried to hide it.

That was the thing — you'd genuinely, sincerely tried. You'd taken paracetamol at seven in the morning, drunk two coffees back to back, and walked into Pearson Specter looking entirely fine. Or close enough to fine. Fine adjacent.

Harvey had known by nine.

You'd felt it the moment he clocked it — that particular shift in his attention, subtle enough that nobody else would catch it but you'd had over a year to learn the difference between Harvey watching a room and Harvey watching you. The way his eyes had moved to you across the bullpen and stayed a second longer than necessary before he'd looked back at his file.

You'd chosen to ignore it. He'd let you, for a while.

By eleven you were at your desk with your third coffee going cold beside you, the same paragraph of a deposition prep blurring in front of you for the twentieth time, and a headache that had quietly graduated from manageable to genuinely miserable somewhere around your ten o'clock.

Donna appeared at your shoulder without sound.

"You look terrible," she said, not unkindly.

"Thank you Donna."

"Medically. How long?"

"Since yesterday."

She nodded, unsurprised. Set a glass of water on your desk. "He texted me at nine fifteen asking if you seemed off to me."

You closed your eyes briefly. "Of course he did."

"I told him you seemed fine." A pause. "I lied."

"Donna—"

"He worries." She said it simply, like it was just a fact, like Harvey Specter texting his secretary about you at nine in the morning was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe, at this point, it was. "He just does it quietly so you won't tell him to stop."

She patted your shoulder once and disappeared. You looked back at your screen. The paragraph remained impenetrable.

Harvey appeared in your office at half past twelve.

He closed the door behind him — conversation, not a pass-through — and instead of sitting across from you like he normally would he came around the desk entirely, perching against the edge of it beside your chair, close enough that you had to tilt your head up to look at him.

It was a deliberate choice. You both knew it.

He reached down without preamble and pressed the back of his hand to your forehead. Not clinical — too slow for clinical, his fingers brushing into your hairline after, a gesture that had nothing to do with checking your temperature and everything to do with the fact that he'd been wanting to do it since nine fifteen.

"You're warm," he said.

"I'm fine."

"You've read the same page for forty minutes."

"I'm—"

"Don't say processing." His eyes dropped to yours, steady and close. "Go home."

"I have the Calloway prep—"

"Mike has it."

"Harvey—"

"I already sorted it." His hand had moved without him seeming to notice, fingers resting lightly at the back of your neck now, thumb tracing a slow line just below your hairline. The kind of touch he only gave when he wasn't thinking about it, when the professional layer had slipped and it was just him underneath. "Go home. I'll be there by seven."

You looked at him. The headache pulsed. He was looking back at you with the expression he'd never once used in a courtroom — the quiet one, the one that only existed here, between the two of you, when there was nobody else around.

"You don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to." Simple. Certain. "Go home."

You went home.

Harvey was in the middle of a call when Louis appeared in his office doorway.

He didn't knock. He never knocked when he was worked up about something, and the expression on his face — somewhere between frantic and indignant, which was Louis's natural resting state during any minor inconvenience — told Harvey everything he needed to know about how this was going to go.

He held up one finger. Louis ignored it completely.

"Where is she?"

Harvey kept his eyes on the window, phone still to his ear. "I'll call you back." He hung up. Turned around. "You have thirty seconds."

"I've been looking for her for two hours," Louis said, already at full volume, already pacing the three steps his energy allowed before turning back. "She's not at her desk, she's not answering her phone, nobody knows where she is and I have a client meeting at four that she was supposed to—"

"She went home."

Louis stopped. "She went — why didn't anyone tell me—"

"Because it's not your business."

"It is absolutely my business when I have a client meeting—"

"Which Mike will cover." Harvey's voice hadn't changed. Still even, still controlled, but there was something underneath it — a particular flatness that people who knew him well enough understood meant stop. "She's sick. She went home."

"She can't just—" Louis gestured vaguely, the full weight of his frustration looking for somewhere to land, "—disappear without telling anyone. She has responsibilities, Harvey, and I don't care if she has a sniffle—"

"She has a fever." Harvey said it quietly. The kind of quiet that wasn't soft. "She's been sitting at her desk since eight this morning running a fever because she didn't want to let anyone down. She went home because I told her to." A pause. One beat. Controlled and deliberate. "And if you have a problem with that, Louis, you can take it up with Jessica."

Something in Louis's face shifted. The indignation receding slightly, recalibrating, the way it did when he'd pushed far enough into something to finally feel its edges.

"I didn't know she was actually—" he started.

"I know you didn't." Still flat. Still even. "Now you do."

Louis looked at him for a moment. Harvey held his gaze without expression, without movement, in the way that made him the best closer in the city — not because he was loud, but because he never needed to be.

The silence did the work.

"Is she—" Louis started, differently this time. Quieter. "Is she alright?"

Something shifted almost imperceptibly in Harvey's expression. "She will be."

Louis nodded slowly. He looked like he wanted to say something else, something that might have been an actual apology if he'd been able to locate one, and settled instead for a short, slightly stilted: "Tell her the meeting is covered. She shouldn't worry about it."

"I will."

Another pause. Then Louis, with the particular awkward sincerity he only managed when he'd genuinely overstepped: "I hope she feels better."

Harvey looked at him for one more second. "Close the door on your way out."

Louis closed the door on his way out.

Harvey was already reaching for his jacket.

He was there by six forty.

You heard his key in the lock — his key, on his keyring, where it had lived for the past eight months — and then his footsteps through the apartment, unhurried and familiar. He appeared in the bedroom doorway to find you buried under every blanket you owned, laptop open to something you'd already lost the thread of, looking approximately as awful as you felt.

He took in the blanket situation.

"That's my grey one," he said.

"You left it here."

"I left it here so it would be here when I'm here. Not so you could—" he gestured at the pile, "—hoard it."

"I'm sick."

"I can see that." But he was already setting down the bag he'd brought, shrugging off his jacket, and when he sat on the edge of the bed and reached over to press his hand to your forehead again it was gentler than before. More deliberate. His thumb traced across your cheekbone after, just once, and he let the touch linger in a way he almost never did anywhere that wasn't completely private.

"Still warm," he murmured.

"Still aware of that."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Did you eat today?"

"I had coffee."

"That's not—"

"I know it's not food, Harvey."

He looked at you for a moment with the expression that meant he was deciding how hard to push and landing on not very, because it was you and you were sick and there were certain fights he'd quietly stopped picking somewhere around month four. He reached into the bag instead — soup from the place on 54th, actual medicine, the specific brand of tea you kept at the office that he'd apparently memorised without ever mentioning it.

You watched him unpack it all onto your nightstand with the focused efficiency he brought to everything and felt something tighten in your chest that had nothing to do with being unwell.

"Harvey."

"Mm." Not looking up.

"You got the tea from my desk."

A pause. "Donna got it."

"You asked Donna to get my tea."

"Eat the soup."

You ate the soup.

He sat beside you, close enough that his shoulder pressed against yours, and pretended to review something on his phone while actually watching you in the way he'd been watching you all day — that particular quality of attention he'd never quite learned to hide from you, maybe had stopped trying to hide a long time ago.

"Louis came to find me," you said.

Harvey's jaw moved, just slightly. "I know."

"What did you say to him?"

"Nothing he didn't need to hear."

You looked at him sideways. He was looking at his phone, expression perfectly neutral, but there was something in the set of his shoulders — something settled, something that had been resolved — that told you it had been more than nothing.

"Harvey."

"He was loud," he said simply. "I wasn't."

"Did you threaten him?"

"I suggested he speak to Jessica if he had further concerns."

"That's a threat."

"That's a referral." The corner of his mouth curved, barely. "He said to tell you the meeting is covered and he hopes you feel better."

You blinked. "Louis said that?"

"Approximately."

You were quiet for a moment, turning that over. Then, softer: "You didn't have to do that."

He looked at you then, properly, and the neutrality had dropped entirely. Just him, the real version, the one you'd spent over a year learning.

"You were sitting at your desk with a fever for four hours," he said quietly, "because you didn't want to let anyone down." His hand found yours on top of the blanket, fingers curling loosely around it. "Nobody gets to make that worse."

You looked at him for a long moment. The headache had dulled. The soup was warm. Harvey Specter was sitting on your bed holding your hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, which, after a year, it was.

"You texted Donna about me at nine fifteen," you said.

He didn't look away. "I always notice."

Three words. Entirely unbothered. Completely devastating.

You looked back at your soup so he wouldn't see your face.

When you'd finished he set everything aside and reached over, pushing your hair back from your face with a familiarity that still caught you sometimes — the easiness of it, the way he touched you like it was just where his hands went. He tucked it behind your ear, let his fingers rest at your jaw.

"Sleep," he said.

"You'll be bored."

"I have work."

"You hate working from—"

"I don't hate it when it's here." Simply. Like it cost him nothing. "With you. I don't hate it."

You looked at him for a long moment. Harvey Specter, best closer in the city, sitting on your bed at quarter to seven on a Wednesday with his tie loosened and his walls entirely down and his hand still resting at your jaw like you were something worth being careful with.

"You're surprisingly good at this," you said quietly.

Something moved across his face. Warm and private and entirely his.

"Don't tell anyone," he said.

You laughed, tired and small, and let yourself sink into the pillows. His hand moved to your hair, slow and unhurried, and you heard him settle beside you — the quiet sound of him opening something on his phone, the familiar warmth of him along your side.

He stayed.

Of course he stayed. He'd been staying for over a year. That was the thing about Harvey that nobody at Pearson Specter would ever believe — that behind every wall and every sharp word and every carefully constructed performance, this was what existed. A man who texted Donna at nine fifteen and brought soup from the place on 54th and told Louis Litt exactly where to go and then came home and stayed.

Just stayed.

You were asleep within minutes, and the last thing you felt was his hand in your hair and the weight of him beside you and the particular irreplaceable feeling of being completely, entirely looked after.

⋆｡°✩ 🎀 ♡ 🎀 ✩°｡⋆

"nobody gets to make that worse" i need a moment 😭🎀 protective harvey fed my soul writing this, hope this was everything you wanted, thank you for the request 🫶

[itevilhag]

batman and robin (a medical mystery)

pairing: Jack Abbot x platonic!resident!reader

summary: batman is confused about a patient case so he assigns you, his sidekick, a medical mystery to solve ft. dr. robby.

word count: 1.8k!

warnings: reader is called Squeaky as a nickname, medical inaccuracies, inaccurate depictions of the workplace (artistic liberties, sorry), jack and his sidekick has banter, fluff, crack fic (?).

a/n: let's be silly with papa...i still suck at summaries. okay, i was feeling a little silly and thought i'd try my hand at a platonic jack abbot x filipino!reader who's an r4 (i couldn't put it on the pairing because it was too long lol) jack abbot, my beloved, you will now have a space in my masterlist.

You don’t exactly remember when coffee became the linguistical equivalent of are you okay? between you and Jack. Maybe it was after you lost your first patient in your intern year, or maybe it was after he stood too close to the edge of the roof after a child died by his hands. You don’t remember, but it became your own way of looking out for each other. 

You were just finishing your rounds when Jack entered your field of vision. He was reviewing a patient chart in the central hub when you noticed that he was leaning more on his left side, his brow pinched in a way that immediately signaled discomfort. You walked towards him and asked. “Gusto mong kape?” You want coffee? 

“Yep..” he answered rather quickly. Lying cow. There was your answer. “Okay.” you nodded before snatching your mug off the desk and making your way to the side station to get him a chair. 

You didn’t even bother to announce yourself when you rolled the chair right next to him. “Just sit down man, the discomforts written on your face. You’re not subtle.” 

Jack stares you down as if that would be enough to will you to leave him alone despite knowing it wasn’t going to work. He’s been mentoring you since your transfer at PTMC in your intern year. If there was anything he’d come to learn about you pretty quickly, it was your refusal to quit when you’ve set your mind onto something.  

Which was apparently him at the moment. 

“Get back to work after you finish that.” Jack said, nodding to your mug of coffee as he begrudgingly sat down on the chair. “And run these labs for me.” “‘Di ba pwedeng yung ibang interns nalang?” you groaned, your shoulders sagging immediately. 

Jack raises one brow at you in question. It takes you a second to understand what he meant. “Can’t the interns do it?” you translated, your head jerked towards the other bright eyed interns eager for a case with a side of approval.  

“I thought you were my star student?” he asked, his tone edged with challenge as he leaned back on his seat, his arms folding across his chest. “What does that have to do with anything?” you huffed, a little incredulous from his words. “Run these labs and find out then.” Jack replied, handing you the patient chart but you stepped back, physically distancing yourself from him and the chart. 

“I’d rather not.” 

Jack felt his eye twitch at your response. As good as you were at being a doctor, he swore that having you as his resident often made him feel like he was raising a 5 year-old trapped in an adult body. 

“You wanna be stuck with scut work for the rest of the shift, Squeaky?” he leaned forwards on his knees to emphasize his point. 

Your face  faltered at his question. “...No.” you sputtered. 

“Then do your work, and run these labs for me.” Jack said, the smugness on his face very much evident now. He took the mug off your hands and replaced it with the patient chart. “Please.” “Since you asked so nicely.” you mocked, your eyes fighting the urge to roll when you saw a smirk slowly building on his face. 

“Alam mo minsan gusto talaga kitang kulamin.” You know, sometimes I want to put a hex on you. you mumbled under your breath, your eyes now scanning the chart for information about the patient. “You wanna repeat that?” Jack asked, his eyes squinting as he bumped his left foot with yours. 

“Hindi mo naman maiintindihan eh.” You wouldn’t understand it. you countered, glaring at him through your lash. . “I understand enough.” Jack asserted, his hands waving to shoo you away. “Go.” 

You didn’t waste a second as you turned to walk away from him to get the labs done. At least there, you wouldn’t have to be graced with his very punchable face at the moment. 

“You’ll thank me later.” Jack called out to you, his eyes trained to your retreating figure. 

“I highly doubt that!” 

Robby, who just passed you by, throws you an amused glance that you don’t pay attention to, Jack only shrugs when Robby looks at him for an answer. And as much as you and Jack bicker back and forth, Robby won’t deny the truth he sees underneath all of it; you make each other better doctors. He pushes you harder because if no one else does, you’ll drown— swept away by the current, left in dirt searching for answers not even god could give you. You challenged him when necessary, corrected him without overstepping, fought him and stood up for your patients when the system deprived them of the very thing it swore to provide. 

“What case did the little sidekick get?” Robby asked, sauntering next to Jack in the hub. His badge stretched to meet the scanner, quickly looking up the case he had given you. “Medical mystery, huh? You making her do detective work?” “Yep.” Jack nodded, bending by his waist to pull his scrub pants up to slowly massage the aching muscle on his leg. He knew he was pushing himself again, to the point where even you happened to notice and felt the need to end his self-inflicted misery. 

Robby frowns at the case on the monitor, he then asked. “Wait, you’re not gonna wait until she figures it out to treat this patient, do you?” “She’ll figure it out on time.” Jack uttered, now leaning back on the chair before pulling his scrub pants down. “Have a little faith in Squeaky.” 

“I do have faith in Squeaky.” Robby affirmed as he turned to Jack. "It's you that I'm worried about.” 

“I won’t let anything happen.” Jack reassured. He had trust in you, he knew you would figure it out before the sun rose. 

“Better not, brother.” Robby cautioned, his attention shifting onto the next trauma case. 

All Jack had to do now was wait. 

… 

You caught up to Jack in the central hub again hours later after reviewing the patient lab results. 

“Sure kabang tamang case yung binigay mo sakin?” you asked Jack. Are you sure you gave me the right case? 

“Yes.” 

“Abbot, a case like this is for an R2 or an intern at best.” you pointed out. The lab results showed nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would cause concern. He usually gave you difficult cases and called them “learning opportunites”, so you weren’t exactly sure why Jack would give you a case like this. 

“Should be an easy patient for you to treat then.” Jack shrugged.  

“Okay, what am I missing?” you muttered under your breath, pulling out your notebook to show him your patient notes. “Look at this, these symptoms are so broad, it could be anything. And, trust me I’ve ruled all of them out.”

“Have you checked patient history?” Jack suggested, his eyes scanning the chicken scribbles called your hand writing on your notes. “They’ve been here 3 times within the past two weeks. They come in for the same symptoms, the same story, but no injuries to indicate major trauma or diseases.”

“So, if you’re confused. I’m confused as hell too.” 

Your brows raised a fraction at that, a smirk twitching in the corners of your lips. “You gave me a case because you didn’t know what was causing her symptoms?” 

“Yeah, that way we’re confused together.” Jack said, offering his fist at you. 

You looked at his hand and then back up to his face. Unbelievable. You just shook your head and chuckled before bumping yours with his. “Sure, Batman.” 

Same symptoms. Same story. No injuries to indicate major trauma or diseases.

Your brows furrow at the thought. “Does she say the same thing every time?” you suddenly asked. “You know, in consults— does she say the same thing?” 

“Word for word.” Jack confirmed. He already knew you were on to something the moment you asked the question. He finds it impressive every time. 

“Huh.” you paused, your brow furrowing in thought. “I’ll be right back.” 

Within the next few hours, you were locked up in the storage room with a laptop and stale coffee  searching for possible cases with similar attributes. Your head ached and your back was stiff, but being a doctor didn’t exactly allow for you to just pass off cases like this, even though you tried that very thing earlier. 

“What is wrong with you?” your eyes tirelessly scanned every medical journal you could find. “What am I missing?” 

Everything seemed hopeless until a case popped up on your screen. “Undesputed, baby!” you hollered, a wide smile ripping across your face, your voice ringing all over the ED with the patients chart in your hands. Some of the nurses snapped their heads towards you but you couldn’t care less, you finally found your missing piece. 

“What are you talking about?” Jack said, his head turning towards you and away from Robby who had nothing but confusion and bewildered amusement writing in his face. 

“I am still your star student, because I just solved your medical mystery. Take that!” you bragged, shoving the ipad onto his hands. Your smile was so wide Jack was convinced that you were seconds away from ripping your face in half.

Jack raised an impressed brow, which he didn’t even bother to hide. While Robby leaned over his shoulder, squinting to read the diagnosis for your patient. Robby raised a proud thumbs up towards you. 

“CO2 poisoning.” Jack nodded, approval evident in his voice. “Good job, kiddo.” 

Jack was aware of how he often comes up short with words when it came to you. Some days were better than others, but you didn’t really need a whole speech to know that he was proud. One look, a nod, or a string or words that barely counted as a sentence was enough to convey what he meant, because every single one, no matter how short or obscure, carried weight. It made you feel like you were doing something right, 

“Thanks, Batman.” you beamed, bouncing on the balls of your feet. “I already started her treatment, which was already approved by Dr. Al, so she will be good to go in a few hours.” 

“Look at you two— Batman and Robin.” Robby interrupts, gesturing between the two of you. “And here I am being accused of favoritism.” “Hey, this isn’t favoritism. This Dr. Abbot underestimating me and being proven wrong.” 

Robby only chuckled in reply.

“Don’t you have patients to see?” Jack said, his head tilting to the side. He could already feel the headache coming in again, the one born not out of an exhausting shift, but the one frequently caused by an R4 resident who could double as a junior detective.  “You know what, I'm not even gonna argue with you.” you replied, already backing away from the nurses station. “That was cool.” “Thanks for the case, Batman.” you said, your voice a little softer, more sincere. “Yeah, yeah. Go away, before you irritate me.” Jack waved you away back to the central station where more work awaited.  “But, I irritate you everyday.” you teased, a smirk playing on your lips.

“Exactly.”

taglist: @pizzalovah @melliumn @grandfoxangel @frickin-bats @staygoldsquatchling02 @justreadinghere7

[itevilhag]

TAGLIST FORM!

If anyone wants to be tagged for the upcoming fics (the pitt) here's the form for it.

estel's taglist

[puppiegracie]

actually i will start crying again if I think about the fact that it really didn't take robby all that much to open up. that it really took just the slightest tap and he was breaking. duke really seeing him, fully acknowledging the severity of his shit, talking quiet, extending empathy, extending friendship and connection.

and it didn't take that fucking much. he didn't have to torture it out of Robby. he was just firm and kind. not beating around the bush like jack has done and not harsh like dana and not vague like cassie.

saying I see what you're doing. I know what you're thinking. are you sure?

and that's all it took to get a little more out of Robby. a moment of actual genuine vulnerability. a verbal admittance of how bad it's starting to get. how much he needs this hospital but how much it's killing him.

and it is partially because Robby is so tired, and it gets so hard. he's keeping up all his anger to mask the hurt but that's exhausting. and it's harder and harder to keep it back. so the second a listening ear is extended by someone who's been safe for him he's laying it out. oh Robby they could never make me hate you. what a deeply human character.

[noah-wyles]

noah wyle, thank you for the most beautiful and heartbreaking scene as you come full circle and your memories of being traumatised in peds is eased with rocking an abandoned baby to sleep.

[itevilhag]

batman and robin (a medical mystery) SNEAK PEEK!

a/n: hey guys! since i've been very busy with college lately, i haven't been able to update much on the ficssss, so it'll probably take a bit longer before i post anything sooooo... here's a sneak peek of "batman and robin (a medical mystery)"

“I thought you were my star student?” he asked, his tone edged with challenge as he leaned back on his seat, his arms folding across his chest.

“What does that have to do with anything?” you huffed, a little incredulous from his words.

“Run these labs and find out then.” Jack replied, handing you the patient chart but you stepped back, physically distancing yourself from him and the chart.

“I’d rather not.”

Jack felt his eye twitch at your response. As good as you were at being a doctor, he swore that having you as his resident often made him feel like he was raising a 5 year-old trapped in an adult body. 

“You wanna be stuck with scut work for the rest of the shift, Squeaky?” he leaned forwards on his knees to emphasize his point. 

Your face  faltered at his question. “...No.” you sputtered.

“Then do your work, and run these labs for me.” Jack said, the smugness on his face very much evident now. He took the mug off your hands and replaced it with the patient chart. “Please.”

“Since you asked so nicely.” you mocked, your eyes fighting the urge to roll when you saw a smirk slowly building on his face. 

“Alam mo minsan gusto talaga kitang kulamin.” You know, sometimes I want to put a hex on you. you mumbled under your breath, your eyes now scanning the chart for information about the patient.

“You wanna repeat that?” Jack asked, his eyes squinting as he bumped his left foot with yours. 

“Hindi mo naman maiintindihan eh.” You wouldn’t understand it. you countered, glaring at him through your lash.

“I understand enough.” Jack asserted, his hands waving to shoo you away. “Go.”

college has been draining meeee, but i will post the fic soonnn, i promise omy

taglist: @pizzalovah @melliumn @grandfoxangel

[fangirl-dot-com]

You're gonna go far . . .

tags: mentor jack abbot x mentor michael robinavitch x mentee reader, angst, hurt/comfort, burnt out reader, only child, high parental expectations, judgmental parents, it has to hurt before it can get better, the need to run to grow

notes: well....after orbiter i kinda binged listened to more noah kahan, so if you demand paid therapy talk to him not me, like always if you enjoy getting your emotions pulverized and built back together, putting my phd in daddy issues to good use, please comment on this post to be added to my permanent taglist!

extra: made sure to get all the h's in Pittsburgh for my anon here

word count: 8.5k

The Pitt existed in a constant state of controlled disaster. Every hallway carried noise. Every room carried urgency. It breathed around you like a living thing with stretchers rattling over worn tile floors, trauma pages shrieking overhead, nurses calling for labs over the phone while exhausted residents moved from room to room with coffee-stained charts tucked beneath their arms. The overhead light cast everything in the same washed-out brightness that made it impossible to tell whether it was four in the afternoon or four in the morning, and by the twelfth hour of your shift, time itself had begun to feel slippery and unreal. 

You had learned to survive inside the madness long before you had learned how to survive anywhere else. 

Only a year into residency, most people in the department knew you as the resident who never stopped moving. You picked up extra shifts before anyone could ask. You stayed late without complaint. You volunteered for difficult patients, difficult procedures, and even more difficult families. If someone needed help, you were already there before your name was called. 

Nurses adored you for it. Attendings trusted you because of it. Med students followed after you like ducklings because despite your exhaustion, despite the permanent shadows beneath your eyes and the way your hands occasionally shook after eighteen-hour shifts, you were patients with them in a way few residents still had the energy to be. 

But Jack and Robby knew better. 

That was the most unfortunate thing about being mentored by two men who noticed everything.

You had somehow ended up under both of their wings during your first terrifying months at the Pitt, though neither of them would probably describe it that way aloud. Jack had claimed you first, in a sense. He had been the one to sit beside you after your first patient death that happened to be right as he walked in for handoffs, talking softly while you stared blankly at the vending machine in the waiting area because you couldn’t stop hearing the flatline in your head. Somewhere between that moment and now, he had somehow become the person who checked whether you’d eaten, who remembered the names of your difficult patients, who bumped his shoulder against yours after bad shifts and told you quietly that you did good work before your brain could convince you otherwise. 

Robby had been different. 

Robby mentored you the way sharpened steel honed another blade: precise, observant, relentless in a way that had terrified you initially because he missed absolutely nothing. He corrected your charting with brutal efficiency, expected excellence without excuse, and had a habit of standing silently behind you during procedures until your nerves nearly gave out completely. Yet somehow, beneath all of that intimidating composure, he had become one of the few people whose approval genuinely mattered to you. Maybe because it had been hard-earned. Maybe because when Robby praised someone, it actually meant something. 

Together, the two of them had slowly turned into the closest thing you had to stability inside and outside the hospital. 

Which was dangerous, really, because it meant they noticed things you desperately wanted hidden. 

“You’re doing it again,” Jack’s voice cut through your concentration softly enough that you nearly missed it beneath the noise of the department. 

You looked up from the computer at the nurses’ station to find him leaning against the counter beside you, early like always, salt and pepper curls slightly flattened and damp like he’d just stepped out of the shower and only ran a towel over them without any added products. There was a coffee cup balanced carelessly in one hand and a familiar look on his face that instantly made your stomach sink.

“What?” 

“You’re clenching your jaw.” He pointed toward your face. “You only do that when you haven’t eaten like biting your cheek is going to magically fill your stomach.” 

You looked back down at the chart in front of you, tearing your eyes away from his hazel ones. “I ate.” 

He snorted quietly. “You are genuinely one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.” 

“I had half a muffin,” you confessed. 

“Was that before or after noon?” 

You didn’t answer and that in itself was answer enough to make the man sigh dramatically before reaching into the pocket of his jacket and producing a protein bar that he slid across the counter in your way. The gesture was so practiced now it almost embarrassed you, because somewhere along the way, Jack had apparently decided monitoring your nutritional intake had become his person responsibility. 

“You know,” he said casually, “most people usually eat more than vending machine crumbs during a twelve-hour shift.” 

“I’m busy.” 

“So is everybody else.” 

You finally glanced up at him, an argument resting on your tongue, but the words died behind your teeth because he was looking at you with that same unbearably gentle concern he always wore whenever he thought you were running yourself into the ground again. 

It disarmed you every single damn time. 

Before you could force out another excuse, a trauma alert rang overhead sharp enough to snap the entire department into motion. 

“Trauma two, ambulance bay. ETA two minutes.” 

Jack straightened automatically. Across the department, you caught sight of Robby (who was supposed to already be gone) already moving toward the trauma room while barking instructions to a nurse beside him, his expression shifting seamlessly into focused command. 

“Come on,” Jack said, but you were already following. 

Moments later, the patient arrived unconscious after a multi-car collision, blood soaking through gauze wrapped hastily around his abdomen while paramedics rattled off vitals over the anxiousness of the group. The trauma room exploded into movement the second the stretcher crossed the threshold. Nurses shifted around each other with practiced efficiency, monitors shrieked intermittently, and beside you Robby’s voice remained impossibly calm. 

“Pressure?”

“Dropping.”

“Get another line in.” 

You slipped into place near the patient’s shoulder, adrenaline replacing exhaustion as your gloved hands moved through familiar motions. Your mind always quieted during trauma cases. There wasn’t room for self-doubt when someone’s life was actively bleeding out in front of you. 

Robby glanced toward you briefly while adjusting his gloves. “You’re on airway.” 

You nodded once. 

Years ago in med school, the assignment would’ve terrified you enough to make you freeze even with an attending helping you through it. Now you moved through muscle memory, repetition overriding fear. To your left, Jack handed over supplied before stepping in to stabilize the patient’s chest. 

The three of you worked together seamlessly by now: one of the problems with mentorship built over too many sleepless nights and too many near disasters; you learned each other’s rhythms too well. Jack knew exactly where your confidence faltered during procedures. Robby knew when you were overcompensating by volunteering for more than you could realistically handle. Both of them knew the particular silence tat settled over you after difficult phone calls from home. 

Neither had ever pushed too hard about those. 

That is until now. 

The trauma stabilized eventually after what felt like hours compressed into minutes. Once the patience was sent upstairs, the adrenaline drained out of your body so suddenly it left you dizzy. Your head pounded faintly behind your eyes. You realized belatedly you were running entirely on caffeine and anxiety. 

No one noticed when you slipped quietly down the hallway toward the supply closet near the back of the ER. 

Or at least, you thought no one noticed. 

The closet was cramped and dimly lit, packed floor-to-ceiling with stacked saline boxes and extra linens. It smelled faintly like antiseptic and cardboard. You leaned back heavily against the shelving unit with your eyes closed, fingers pressing hard against your temples while you tried to steady your breathing. 

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale—

Your phone buzzed wildly in your pocket, and the same lighting up the screen had your stomach dropping. 

Mom. 

For a brief moment, you considered ignore it entirely. But years of guilt and obligation had conditioned your body to respond before your brain could argue otherwise. 

You answered quietly. “Hi.” 

“There you are,” you mother said, her irritation bleeding through the speaker. “I’ve been calling.” 

You closed your eyes harder. “I’m at work.” 

“Well, forgive me for wanting to hear from my daughter.” 

In the background, you could hear the television from your parents’ living room playing faintly. The sound hit you with sudden painful familiarity. You could practically picture the entire scene despite being hundreds of miles away: your father in his recliner, your mother pacing the kitchen while holding the phone too tightly. 

“How’s the hospital?” she asked. 

“Tiring.” 

Your father’s voice cut in from somewhere behind her. “Still pretending to be a hotshot doctor?” 

His words landed exactly where they always did, making your bottom lip wobble before you trapped it under teeth. 

You swallowed carefully. “I’m not pretending.” 

He laughed once under his breath. “Right.” 

Silence stretched. The voices on the TV laughed. You slid slowly down the unit until you were sitting on the floor between the shelf and stacked boxes, exhaustion suddenly pressing into your bones with unbearable heaviness. 

“We just worry about you,” your mother continued, though the concern in her voice always came wrapped in something sharper. “You sound miserable every time we talk.” 

“Everyone’s the same, Mom. That’s residency.” 

“No,” your father snapped, voice now closer and louder in the phone. “That’s what happens when somebody spends their whole life chasing things they were never meant for.” 

Your chest tightened painfully as footsteps approached quietly down the hallway outside the supply closet. You didn’t notice. 

“You could’ve stayed here,” your mother said. “You could’ve worked somewhere smaller. Normal. But no, you always just had to prove something.” 

“I’m not trying to prove anything.” 

“Aren’t you?” your father snarked back. “You think these people actually see you as one of them? You think you belong in that fancy hospital?” 

Your throat burned. 

No matter how many patients trusted you, no matter how much Jack and Robby praised your work, no matter how many lives you helped save, some small broken part of you still believed him. 

You stared numbly at the floor tiles beneath your shoes, eyes blinking away tears and failing. 

“I have to go,” you whispered. 

“Of course you do,” your mother replied sharply. “Work matters more than family again.” 

The call ended before you could pull the phone away from your ear. Quiet swallowed the room afterward so completely that the distant sounds of the emergency department suddenly felt muffled and far away. Your grip tightened painfully around your phone while humiliation and exhaustion tangled together so tightly in your chest it became difficult to breathe. 

When the closet door opened suddenly, your head jerked upward. 

Jack stood there first, one hand resting against the handle. The concern on his face hit you like a physical blow because it wasn’t pity. Somehow thought, pity would have been easier to stomach instead of the open heartbreak painted across his face. 

Robby stood just behind him, arms folded tightly across his chest, jaw visibly tense beneath his incoming beard. 

Neither man spoke right away, which told you that they heard enough. The thought made heat blood your face. 

“I’m fine,” you blurted out, the response almost automatic and reflexive. 

Jack’s expression only softened further. “You’re sitting on the floor of a supply closet.” 

You tried to laugh weakly. “Needed a minute.” 

Robby’s gaze remained fixed on you with clinical precision, but there was anger simmering under his composure now. You could tell it wasn’t directed at you but outwards to the voices he’d overheard tearing pieces of out of somebody he had spent years trying to build back up. 

“How long has that been going on?” he asked quietly. 

Your eyes went back down to the flooring. “It’s not a big deal.” 

Jack exhaled slowly through his nose. “You don’t believe that.” 

The gentleness in his voice nearly undid you more than the phone call itself had. You always hated this part most, the unbearable vulnerability of being seen clearly by people you respected. Jack and Robby had watched you become a doctor piece by piece. They had seen you at three in the morning after losing patients. Seen you shaking before procedures. Seen you exhausted, angry, frightened, overworked. And along the way, they had also noticed the deeper wound beneath all of it: 

The one you spent most of your life trying to hide. 

Robby stepped forward and crouched slightly so he was closer to eye level, his voice remaining calm and even in the way it always did when he was trying very hard to not overwhelm patients. 

“You are one of the best residents in this department,” he said plainly. “You know that right?” 

The laugh that followed came out thin and humorless. “Sure.” 

“I’m serious.” 

“I think as my attending you have to say that.” 

“No. I really don’t.” 

Jack stepped further inside the closet before leaning back carefully against the shelves opposite of you. “You stayed two hours past shift last week helping an uninsured patient figure out medication access because you knew nobody else would. You caught a pulmonary embolism every other resident missed in triage. Half the med students here want to be you when they graduate.” 

You stared down at your hands because looking at either of them suddenly hurt too much. Whatever they said didn’t matter against the voices you’d been hearing your entire life. Robby seemed to recognize that quickly as sadness settled under his frustration. 

“They’re wrong about you,” he said softly. “So very wrong” 

Tears now burned at your eyes because, honestly, no one had ever said that to you before. Not friends. Not professors. Not even yourself. 

Jack’s voice softened even further. “You do not have to destroy yourself to prove that you have the right to be here.” 

Your face must have cracked at that because both men went still as the terrible truth sat openly between all three of you: you genuinely didn’t know how to exist without earning your worth first.

_______________________

Robby’s office always smelled faintly like burned coffee and old paper. 

You noticed that before anything else when you stepped hesitantly through the partially open door, your stomach already twisted tight with anxiety from the brief message Dana had relayed twenty minutes earlier. 

Robby wants to see you in his office. 

Which, in your experience usually meant one of three things: you charted something incorrectly, you had forgotten something important, or someone had died. 

By the time you reached the office, your pulse had worked itself into a miserable rapid flutter under your ribs despite trying to convince yourself you were overreacting. The Pitt swallowed the rest of the noise, leaving behind a small ringing in your ears. Robby’s office felt strangely isolated from all of it. 

Behind his desk, Robby sat with his reading glasses low on his nose, flipping through a stack of papers with the same composed concentration he approached nearly everything with. The desk lamp cast warm yellow light across the room, softening the harshness of the hospital fluorescents filtering in through the blinds. A half-finished cup of coffee sat forgotten near his elbow beside several patient charts and an open laptop screen crowded with emails. 

He looked up when you entered. 

“There you are,” he said warmly. “Close the door.” 

Your stomach dropped further. 

You obeyed instantly, fingers tightening around the strap of your bag as the door clicked softly shut behind you. For a moment, neither of you spoke. Robby returned his attention firefly to the papers in front of him while you remained awkwardly hovering near the doorway trying not to catastrophize every possibly outcome. 

Your brain, against your best wished, supplied several anyway. 

You replayed the last few shifts rapidly in your head searching for mistakes. Had you missed a lab? Forgotten an order? Spoken too sharply to a nurse during trauma intake? The anxiety sat so naturally in your body now that panic felt less like an emotion and more like muscle memory. 

“You can sit down,” Robby said after a moment, finally glancing back up at you. 

“Oh. Right.” 

You skittered across the office and lowered yourself carefully down into the chair across from his desk, posture still rigid with apprehension. Robby watched you for a long moment over the rim of his glasses. 

“You think you’re in trouble.” 

His observation landed embarrassingly accurate. 

You opened your mouth automatically. “Am I?” 

To your surprise, something almost amused flashed briefly across his face. “No.” 

The tension in your shoulders loosened slightly, though not fully. Years of criticism had taught your nervous system not to trust relief too quickly. 

Robby leaned back in his chair slowly, folding his hands together atop the desk. “How long have you been considering fellowship programs outside Pennsylvania?” 

Your breath caught. The question hit so directly you genuinely didn’t know how to answer for a second. The trust was humiliating in its own way. You had been considering them for months in secret, in the privacy of late nights and exhausted internet searches and moments where Pittsburgh suddenly felt too small for the life you wanted but had never allowed yourself to reach. 

Sometimes after difficult shifts, you would sit alone in your apartment scrolling through fellowship programs across the country just to imagine it for a moment. California. Seattle. Boston. Places so impossibly far away they barely felt real. Hospitals attached to research institutions and trauma centers bigger than anything you’d ever known. Places where no one knew your parents. Places where your entire history wouldn’t already be waiting for you before you arrived. 

But then guilt would settle almost immediately afterward. 

You would close the tabs, delete the searches, and clock in the next day without thinking of leaving. Because wanting to leave felt selfish. And because some part of you still couldn’t imagine being brave enough to actually go. 

Your hands folded tightly in your lap. “I haven’t really.” 

Robby remained entirely unconvinced. “You’re a terrible liar.” 

The words startled an unwilling laugh out of you despite your nerves. Jack was the one to usually say that not him. At the sound, Robby’s face melted before he reached for a folder sitting near the corner of his desk. 

“I got a call last week,” he said hesitantly, almost like he was testing the waters. “From a colleague at Harborview.” 

Your heartbeat stumbles. 

Harborview. 

Seattle. 

Clear across the country. 

You stared at him silently as the office suddenly became too warm. 

He slid the folder across the desk toward you, the paper catching slightly against the grain before stopping directly in front of your hands. You looked down slowly, eyes catching and widening at the sight of the logo at the top that belonged to one of the most prestigious trauma centers in the country.

And below it, your name was written in Robby’s perfect penmanship. 

Something cold and electric moved down your spine all at once. Your fingers hesitated against the edge of the folder before opening it carefully. Inside sat printed information about the fellowship program alongside a letter clipped neatly to the front. 

A recommendation letter. 

Signed by Michael Robinavitch, MD

Your eyes caught only fragments at first because your pulse had become unbearably loud in your ears. What he had written brought tears to your lash line. 

Exceptional clinical instincts . . . 

Among the most promising residents . . . 

Demonstrates rare emotional intelligence under pressure . . . 

Would excel in any institution fortunate to train them . . . 

Your throat tightened at you looked up too quickly. “You—” 

“I submitted it three days ago,” Robby confessed quietly. 

Shock hit first. Then confusion. Then something dangerously close to hurt. 

“You sent this without asking me?” 

Robby held your gaze steadily. “Yes.” 

It felt almost impossible to breath because this—this was the dream, wasn’t it? This was something you had secretly wanted for so long it physically ached sometimes. An escape route handed gently into your trembling hands. A chance at something bigger than the life you’d been told to settle for. 

So why did it suddenly feel a little like grief too? 

“You want me to leave?” you asked before you could stop yourself. 

Robby’s face dropped slightly. “No.” 

“Then why would you—” 

“Because you were never going to do it yourself.” 

You looked back down at the letter because suddenly meeting his eyes felt unmanageable. You had spent so long imagining leaving that you never truly prepared yourself for the possibility someone else might believe you capable of it too. 

Robby leaned forward in his chair, head tilting to try to meet your eyes. “You belong somewhere like this. You know that.” 

You laughed under your breath, the sound fragile in and of itself. “My parents would lose their minds.” 

Robby’s jaw tightened as he said your name. “This isn’t about your parents.” 

Except it always was. Every choice, every opportunity, every dream carefully cut down before it could grow too large to reach. 

You swallowed hard against the sudden pressure building in your throat. “Seattle is across the country.” 

“I’m aware.” 

“I don’t know anyone there.” 

“You would.” 

The certainty in his voice hurt unexpected because it implied something you still struggled to believe yourself: that people would want you there. You stared down at the recommendation letter, vision beginning to blur slightly. 

“You really think I could do this?” 

“I think,” he started, “you’ve spent your entire life making yourself smaller for other people.” 

Your breath hitched again. 

“You are one of the best doctors I’ve had to privilege to train,” he continued. “And if you stay here because you’re afraid of disappointing people who will never be satisfied anyway, you’re going to wake up in ten years from now wondering what happened to your life.” 

His words landed with devastating precision because deep down, under all the fear and guilt and fatigue, you had already wondered that yourself.  

Robby’s kind, brown eyes held yours. “You’re getting smaller here.” 

The office felt unbearable quiet now except for the faint hum of his fan and the occasional muffled announcement from the ER outside. 

Finally, your voice came out barely above a whisper. “What if I fail?” 

He looked at you the same way he looked at difficult trauma cases; not dismissing the fear but refusing to let it dictate the outcome. He wasn’t going to let you walk away from this because you were scared. 

“Then you fail,” he said simply. “And you survive it.” 

Failure had always sounded catastrophic in your parents’ voices. Permanent. Proof that they had been right all along. 

But with how Robby said it, it felt like it was survivable and human.

For the first time, the possibility of leaving didn’t feel entirely impossible anymore. It felt terrifying yes, but also maybe worth it all anyway.

_______________________

The emergency department had somehow managed to pause for you. 

Not fully, of course. The Pitt never truly stopped moving. But for once, the chaos had shifted itself long enough to make room for something softer.

You stood near the center of the department feeling almost painfully aware of yourself while half the ER crowded around the nurses’ station holding vending machine snacks, cafeteria cupcakes, and paper coffee cups lifted in celebration. Someone had dragged over a flimsy folding table covered in sheet cake with GOOD LUCK written across it in slightly smeared blue icing. Balloons bobbled lazily near the ceiling tiles, looking deeply out of place in the harsh lighting. 

It was absurd, embarrassing, and almost humiliating. And somehow it nearly made you cry. 

“You look terrified.” Jack’s voice appeared beside you through the noise, warm amusement threading easily into his words. 

You glanced sideways to find him balancing two plastic cups of terrible hospital punch while watching you with barely concealed fondness. “I hate this,” you muttered under your breath. 

“You absolutely do not.” 

“I’m being publicly perceived.” 

Jack snorted softly before handing you one of the drinks. “Tragic.” 

Across the department, several nurses had cornered Robby near the charting computers demanding he say something resembling a speech. Judging by the look on his face, he would’ve preferred active physical violence. 

“You trained them,” Dana was insisting firmly. 

“So did literally anyone else here,” Robby replied. 

“Yeah, but you’re the scary one, so it’ll mean more.” 

A ripple of laughter moved through the staff nearby while Robby looked profoundly unamused by this logic. 

Your chest tightened unexpected as you watched your surroundings unfold in the familiar faces, the exhausted laughter, the warmth threaded through the department despite another endless shift looming only hours away. The Pitt had become something dangerously close to home somewhere along the way. Not because the work was easy—God knew it wasn’t. But because these people had seen every broken terrified version of you and stayed anyway. 

And now you were leaving them; the thought still felt surreal even after the acceptance calls, even after signing the paperwork, even after the official announcement against your will that you would be joining one of the most prestigious trauma fellowship programs in the country at Harborview in Seattle. 

Seattle. 

The word still startled you. It was so far from Pittsburgh that it barely felt attached to your real life at all. 

A resident from across the department raised his coffee cup toward you. “You know how insane this is, right?” 

Heat flooded your face. “Please don’t start.” 

“No, seriously,” Perlah chimed in. “Do you know how many people would kill for that placement?” 

“You’re representing the Pitt now,” Princess added proudly. 

Her sentence lodged itself awkwardly beneath your ribs. Representing the Pitt. You weren’t escaping it, weren’t abandoning it, but representing it. You looked instinctive toward Robby. As if he sensed it, his gaze lifted from across the room and settled briefly on yours. His features softened for a half a second before Dana shoved a plastic knife into his hand and demanded he cut the cake already. 

Jack bumped his shoulder lightly against yours. “You should probably enjoy this.” 

You laughed weakly. “I’m trying.” 

“You’re spiraling internally.” 

“I’m always spiraling internally.” 

“Fair enough.” 

The familiar ease of the conversation helped settled your nerves slightly, though not enough to stop the overwhelming ache building slowly in your chest. You kept catching yourself looking around the department like you were trying to memorize it all before it disappeared: the trauma bay doors, the faded blue walls near triage, the nurses’ station where you had spent countless night charting beside Jack while Robb criticized your caffeine intake with hypocritical seriousness. 

This place had watched you become someone, and now it was letting you go.

A few hours later, after the cake had been mostly demolished and the department slowly returned to its normal rhythm, you found yourself cornered near the supply station by Perlah and Princess aggressively insisting you take leftovers home. 

“You’re too skinny for Seatle,” Princess informed you. 

“I don’t think that’s how geography works,” you replied. 

Before they could continue, Jack appeared suddenly at your elbow. “Borrowing them,” he announced. 

Perlah narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “For what?” 

“Secret attending business.” 

“That sounds fake.” 

“It is fake,” you admitted. 

Jack ignored the three of you and jerked his head toward the hallway. “Come on.” 

Confusion washed over you, but you followed him anyway. A few feet ahead, Robby waited near the elevators with his hands tucked into the pockets of his zip up jacket. The second he saw the two of you approaching, he pressed the button for the elevator without explanation. 

You frowned slightly. “Am I being murdered?” 

“Probably,” Jack teased. 

“Good to know.” 

Robby simply shook his head tiredly as the elevator doors slid open. Neither man explained anything during the ride upward. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but it carried a strange weight to it that settled gradually over your shoulders the higher the elevator climbed. Your pulse quickened with anticipation and something sadder underneath it. 

The roof access door creaked loudly when Jack shoved it opening, causing the cold night air to hit your face. 

Pittsburgh stretched endlessly around you under the dark sky, the city glittering gold and white against the streets below while ambulance sirens echoed faintly off in the distance. The hospital roof had become something sacred over the years for exhausted staff members needing five minutes away from the noise downstairs. You had come up here after bad shifts before, after losing patients, about pulling doubles that left you too hollowed out to immediately drive home after. 

Tonight, though, it felt different. 

You stepped further onto the roof slowly while Jack let the heavy door slam shut behind him. The city wind tugged lightly at your jacket while your eyes drifted toward the skyline. Seattle suddenly feeling impossibly far away. 

“You know,” Jack said quietly behind you, “you almost turned this down.”

You huffed softly. “I know.” 

“And you’re still thinking about it.” 

“I know.” The honestly slipped out before you could hold it back. 

Despite everything—the excitement, the honor, the impossible opportunity—fear still lived stubbornly in your body. Fear of failing. Fear of disappointing everyone. Fear that your parents had been right all along and eventually someone at Harborview would realize they had made a mistake choosing you. 

You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself against the cold. “I keep waiting for somebody to figure out I have no idea what I’m doing.” 

Jack and Robby exchanged a brief glance behind you. 

Robby sighted softly through his nose like the words physically pained him. “You know,” he said, “most arrogant doctors are the most terrible doctors.”

You glanced back toward him. 

“However, the ones who question themselves,” he continued, “the ones who worry about failing . . . they’re usually the ones who care enough to become great doctors.” 

You swallowed tears down thickly. 

Jack stepped closer, pulling something oblong from the pocket of his jacket. “We got you something.” 

“You didn’t have to—” 

“We know,” Jack interrupted gently before holding the item out for you to take. 

Your eyes dropped toward the object in his hands, and your heart fluttered. 

A stethoscope. 

It wasn’t hospital-issued, wasn’t cheap. 

The instrument was beautiful with dark blue tubing catching faint city light beneath the skyline while silver detailing gleamed softly near the chest piece. You stared down at it wordlessly. For a second, you genuinely couldn’t breathe as you took it from him, fingers rubbing along the soft rubber. 

“There’s something engraved on it,” Robby added softly. 

Your fingers trembled slightly as you turned it over. Near the tubing junction, etched carefully into the metal in precise lettering, were four simple words: 

Still in your corner. 

The world blurred, and you swallowed hard against the sudden painful pressure in your throat while your thumb brushed shakily over the engraving again.

“Oh,” you whispered. 

Neither Jack nor Robby spoke, which somehow made it all worse. 

Your eyes burned fiercely as a tumble of emotions crashed through you all at once: gratitude, grief, fear, love so deep and overwhelming it physically hurt to carry. 

“You take this with you,” Jack spoke softly but sternly. “Every interview. Every trauma. Every shift from hell.” 

“And when you’re convinced that you’re failing,” Robby added, “you hold onto it and remember that two old guys from Pittsburgh already know exactly how capable you are.” 

Your composure broke as you tried to laugh through the tears threatening your voice, eyes looking back down because crying in front of them still embarrassed you despite all the versions of you they’ve seen before. 

“This is unfair,” you muttered, back of your hand wiping aggressively under your eyes. 

Jack smiled sadly. “Yeah, probably.” 

The stethoscope felt heavier in your hands than it should have only because of what it meant. 

For so much of your life, support had always felt conditional, fragile, something that disappeared the second you disappointed people. But standing there on the hospital roof with a glowing Pittsburgh and cold night air nipping your skin, Jack and Robby were handing you something terrifyingly unfamiliar: 

the certainty that even thousands of miles away, even if you struggled, even if you failed sometimes, even if Seattle became lonely and overwhelming and difficult, you would not lose them. 

You pressed your fingers tighter around the tubing, Robby’s features softening as he watched you. 

“You’re going to do extraordinary there,” he whispered. 

Your eyes burned harder not because you fully believed him yet, but because you finally found yourself wanting to. 

_______________________

The Pitt had changed in a thousand tiny ways over the years. 

Some changes were obvious. Different residents moved through the halls now, newer faces slipping into routines that once belonged to people long gone from the Pitt. The trauma bays had newer monitors. The waiting room chairs had finally been replaced after years of complaints. Dana had somehow gained even less patience despite everyone previously believing that impossible. 

Other changes felt quieter. 

The kind you only noticed in passing moments. 

Like how Robby still occasionally looked toward room six whenever an especially difficult trauma rolled through because that had always been your room somehow. Or how Jack still brough an extra coffee on his way in before remembering halfway through the line that you weren’t there to steal the extra one anymore.

Absence settled strangely into places once someone left them behind especially when they had mattered. 

“Whitaker, if you touch that central line tray with your bare hands again, I’m revoking your ability to speak.” 

“I literally wasn’t touching it. I merely glanced in its direction.” 

“You were thinking about touching it.” 

“I can’t believe this is my work environment.” 

The familiar noise buzzed around Robby as he stood near the nurses’ station review labs on a tablet, exhaustion pressing heavily behind his eyes after hours’ worth of chaos. Nearby, Dana looked personally victimized by Dennis’s existence while Trinity tried unsuccessfully to hid her laughter behind a patient chart. 

Victoria glanced up from the computer beside them. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I think Dana actually likes bullying him.” 

Dana didn’t even look up from her paperwork. “Correct.” 

Dennis pointed accusingly. “See?” 

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?” 

“That feels entirely unrelated.” 

A tired smile tugged briefly at the corner of Robby’s mouth despite his best effort not to seem interested in the banter.   

The newer residents had settled into the Pitt in their own messy way over the past year. Samira moved through rooms with sharp instinct and too much emotional attachment to sad patients. Frank boasted too much when nervous and somehow ended up charming most of the nursing staff because of it. Trinity hid startling clinical intelligence beneath dry sarcasm and exhaustion. Dennis had slipped into the department like he belonged there from the beginning, steady and observant in a way Robby respected immediately. And Mel blessed the Pitt with her soft voice that never seemed to sugar coat things but still had the ease to bring patients down from panic. 

Different from your class but good. 

Still, every once in a while, one of them would do something that reminded him painfully of you. Usually it happened when they stayed too late helping patients who technically weren’t their responsibility anymore. 

Dana finally looked up from her charting. “You heard from your golden child lately?” 

Robby sighed softy without looking away from the tablet. “They are not my golden child.” 

“Sure they are.” 

Dennis looked between them curiously. “Wait, who?” 

Dana said your name as she casually leaned against the counter. “Former resident. Robby and Abbot’s favorite.” 

“We—I don’t have favorites.” 

“You still bring them up during trauma reviews.” 

“It’s educational.” 

“No, Cap, that’s emotional attachment.” 

Robby shot her a flat look while several residents nearby became more interested. 

“Hold on,” Frank said, glancing up from his chart. “This is the one from Seattle, right?” 

His sentence caught everyone’s attention; even Jack’s, who had just wandered back into the department carrying two coffees and the stagger of a man who maybe got 5 hours of sleep before heading back into work. 

“Who’s talking about Seattle?” he asked. 

Dana pointed toward Robby. “I asked how your kid was doing.” 

“Oh,” he answered, face dropping all sharpness and melting into something melancholy at the thought of you.

Trinity blinked between the two attendings. “Okay, now I need context because both of you suddenly look like divorced parents at a graduation.” 

Samira, bless her heart, nodded along. “Seriously. Who are they?” 

The two men glanced at each other before taking breathing out a synchronous sigh before Robby set the tablet down against the counter. 

“They were probably one of the best residents the Pitt has had,” he said.

Mel’s eyebrows raised. “That good?” 

Robby crossed his arms loosely and nodded. “Top of their class. Exceptional under pressure. Trauma instincts most attendings would kill for.” 

“And terrifyingly hardworking,” Jack added while handing one of the coffees to Dana. “Like, genuinely concerning levels of hardworking.” 

“I once found them charting with a concussion,” Dana mentioned. 

The small group all looked horrified. 

“That cannot be real,” Trinity spoke. 

“It was absolutely real,” Jack confirmed. “They tried to tell us they were ‘fine’ while their head actively bled through gauze.” 

Victoria let out an impressed laugh. “Okay, that’s kind of iconic.” 

“It was deeply annoying,” Robby corrected even though there was an unmistakable fondness in his tone. “The kid wouldn’t just stay down.” 

Mel tilted her head slightly. “So why’d they leave?” 

Jack leaned back against the counter next to Robby, hazel eyes drifting absently toward the trauma bay doors like you’d step through them in the next moment. “They got offered a fellowship at Harborview. Trauma surgery.” 

Trinity’s eyes widened. “Harborview?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Holy shit.” 

Frank looked genuinely stunned. “That’s insane.” 

The corner of Robby’s mouth tugged upward. “They deserved it.” 

Mel studied the two attendings quietly for a second before speaking. “You miss them.” 

Jack huffed something similar to a quiet laugh. “Turns out when somebody spends years haunting your ER, you noticed when they’re gone.” 

Trinity pointed her pen toward him. “See? Divorced parents.” 

Jack’s eyebrows pinched. “Nobody’s divorced.” 

“You’re coparenting emotionally.” 

Robby pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly while Dennis nearly choked laughing. 

However, underneath all the humor, their ache remained. Because the truth was you’d been gone for years. Seattle had become your life. Harborview. Research publications. National conferences. Cases more complex than anything the Pitt could ever offer Every once in a while, Dana would forward an article mentioning your name, and the entire department would pass it around like proud relatives.  

Look at them!

Look how far they’ve made it! 

Yet whether you’d ever come back was always a lingering uncertainty that threaded with their pride. 

Jack stared absently into his coffee for a moment before smiling faintly to himself. “You know they still call Robby before major procedures.” 

A look of irritation crossed Robby’s face. “That happened once.” 

“Three times.” 

“Four,” Dana corrected helpfully. 

Robby looked personally betrayed. 

Samira grinned. “Wait, seriously?” 

Jack nodded. “Middle of the night sometimes. They’ll panic about a surgery complication and call him like he’s Google MD.” 

“That is adorable.” 

“It is not.” 

“It’s extremely adorable,” Dana cheesed. 

“Seems like you really love them,” Dennis added after watching Robby try to hide a fond smile. 

Robby simply shrugged. “They’re worth loving.” 

Everyone in emergency medicine understood what he meant. To train someone, watch them grow, lose sleep over them, fight for them, and let them leave anyway because loving them properly meant wanting more for them than you could personally give had to mean something. 

“They’re doing good things out there,” Jack said softly. 

Beneath their sadness of missing you, beneath the uncertainty of whether Pittsburgh would ever become home for you again, there was still steady, undeniable, endless, and unwavering pride that blossomed in their voices whenever your name came up. 

And that was more than some could even wish for.  

_______________________

The Pitt sounded exactly the same. 

That was the first thing you noticed standing just outside the ambulance bay entrance beside Gloria, fingers curled tightly around the strap of your bag while your pulse thudded unevenly beneath your ribs. Even through the sliding doors, you could hear the department breathing in a familiar rhythm with distant overhead pages crackling through speakers, monitors beeping deeper into the ER, phones ringing near the nurses’ station, and voices overlapping one another beneath the constant movement of gurneys against tile floors. 

For years after leaving Pittsburgh, those sounds haunted you a little like a phantom limb and memories stitched into your nervous system. 

Seattle had its own rhythm. Harborview had become home in many ways over the years in its trauma rooms, its residents, the skyline outside your apartment after long shifts. You had built an entirely life there; a very successful one; the kind of life younger you used to ache for so badly it hurt.

But the Pitt still lived deep in your bones. 

You swallowed thickly. 

Gloria glanced sideways at you as she pushed open the ambulance bay doors. “You look like you’re about to pass out.” 

“I might,” you answered truthfully. 

“That’s reassuring from our new attending.” 

“I haven’t been back here in years.” 

“You’ve also performed surgery on people with rebar through their chest cavities without breaking a sweat.” 

“That was highly dramatized.”

Gloria laughed softly before stepping fully into the department. 

Warm light spilled over your instantly. The familiar smell of antiseptic, coffee, and stale hospital air wrapped around your senses so quickly your chest tightened. The ER stretched before you exactly as you remembered. And somehow, despite all the years apart, your body still knew this place instinctively. 

No one noticed you at first which was good; you weren’t entirely sure your heart could survive being perceived so quickly. 

Gloria guided you quietly toward the side of the nurses’ station while staff rushed around nearby. A sleepy looking blond stood half-asleep beside a computer while a brunette argued with Dana about discharge paperwork. A young, dark-skinned med student leaned against the counter drinking matcha with an expression of someone reconsidering every life choice that brought her into emergency medicine. 

And across the department, Robby stood at the center of handoff looking so tired enough that your chest ached on instinct for him. He looked older than when you left, all worn down in the way emergency medicine wore people down eventually. His sleeves were rolled unevenly to his elbows, stethoscope hanging crookedly around his neck while he scanned through a chart with quiet concentration. The sight hit you harder than expected because memories came rushing back all at once. 

For years after the move, there were still moments you caught yourself thinking: I should ask Robby what’d he do.

Some habits never left. 

He looked up briefly while continuing handoff, entirely unaware you were standing barely twenty feet away watching him. 

"We’re short two nurses today,” he said tiredly, glancing between the residents gathered around him. “Which means nobody gets to psychologically unravel until after noon.” 

The sleepy blond raised a hand weakly. “Can I schedule mine in advance?”

“No, Whitaker, you cannot.” 

“That feels very anti-worker.” 

“You’re lucky we feed you,” Dana spoke up without looking away from her board. 

Whitaker (now that his name had been provided) blinked. “We’re getting fed?” 

Nearby, the brunette laughed while a man with a hairline people would fly to Turkey for shook his head behind a patient chart with visible amusement.

At the sight, a warmth settled low in your stomach. You had missed this—the Pitt and all its ramblings and teasing and ability to make someone feel comfortable in their own skin. 

Robby flipped absently to another page in the chart before continuing. “Also, administration finally approved another attending for day-shift trauma coverage.”

That caught everyone’s attention. 

The brunette straightened slightly. “Wait, seriously?” 

“About time,” Dana muttered. “You’ve been stretched thin for far too long.”  

Whitaker looked suspicious. “Are they normal?” 

“No normal person willingly works here,” the dark-skinned med student said around her straw. 

“Fair.” 

Robby sucked in a deep breath, shaking his head. “I haven’t met them yet, but apparently they’re starting this morning, so please try not to scare them off immediately.” 

Dana finally looked at him. “You say that like it’s our fault people quit.” 

“It usually is.” 

A ripple of tired laughter moved through the group. 

Robby opened his mouth to say something again as he lifted his gaze, but his words died instantly on his tongue as his eyes found yours. 

For one suspended second, the entire department seemed to blur around his face’s expression that changed through confusion first, then disbelief, before settling on something so sharp and emotional it nearly knocked the breath from your lungs even from across the room. 

The chart lowered slowly in his hand, his feet already shuffling slowly toward you while everyone looked between you and him with confused wide eyes. 

Michael Robinavitch didn’t freeze for anyone. 

You smile before your nerves could completely betray you. “Hi, Robby.” 

Whitaker frowned, eyes glancing between you too as he leaned closer to the brunette. “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m watching something deeply important?” he stage whispered. 

Robby didn’t hear him. He stopped and stared at you like the floor had disappeared beneath him. “Kid?” 

The nickname hit hard. No one in Seattle ever called you that. There, you were doctor, attending, colleague. Somewhere along the way, you had become someone polished and capable and frighteningly respected.  

But one word from Robby and suddenly you felt twenty-six again, exhausted and terrified and trying desperately to prove you deserved to exist in this department. 

“You’re here,” he said softly. 

You giggled, eyes bright and glossy. “That’s usually how jobs work.” 

That seemed to finally know him back into motion as he wrapped his arms around you and brought you into his chest. You all but melted into him, the smell of his cologne hitting warm in your nose. His cheek rested on the top of your head.

“You didn’t tell me,” he murmured. 

“I wanted to surprise you.” 

“Well, congrats; color me very surprised and very happy.” 

Around you, the rest of them had gone nearly silent watching the interaction. 

Dennis glanced wildly between everyone. “Hold on.” 

Trinity’s eyes grew even bigger. “Oh. OH!” 

Victoria slapped a hand over her mouth. “That’s them.” 

Mel blinked slowly. “The Seattle one?” 

You pulled back from Robby and looked over at Dana. “Am I hospital folklore?” 

She nodded, eyes also glossy as she took you in over her silver frames. “You absolutely are.” 

Dennis looked scandalized. “Wait, this is the resident you two keep talking about?” 

Robby sighed softly without taking his eyes off you. “Apparently.” 

“No, seriously,” Trinity cut in, staring openly now. “You’re like . . . Pitt mythology.” 

A snort flew loudly through your nose. “That feel so dramatic.” 

Hearing you laugh again seemed to physically settled something inside Robby as his face morphed into something prideful. His arm raised and wrapped around your shoulders, effectively pulling you back into his side with a smile.

It looked like everyone was dying to interrogate you further, but before they could, the trauma alarms screamed overhead. Dana, who had picked up the station phone, lowered it. 

“GSW incoming. SWAT raid gone wrong; officer involved. ETA two minutes,” she announced. 

Like a clack of thunder, the department exploded back into motion. Nurses rushed toward the bay, and the residents scattered for more supplies all while monitors flickered awake. Gloves snapped loudly in the air into place around wrists. And without even thinking about it, you set your bag down on the station and grabbed a pair yourself. 

“Mind if I join in?” you asked calmly. 

The newer residents went slightly quiet at the confidence in your voice while Robby looked at you fully. You weren’t the frightened resident he used to know you as. Now, you were a physician standing tall beside him. Another wave of pride washed over him. 

“Yeah,” he said awestruck in a way. “Please do.” 

The trauma bay doors slid open moments later. Paramedics and uniformed SWAT members wheeled in a bleeding officer while voices overlapped through the commotion.

“GSW through the shoulder—” 

“Pressure is dropping—” 

“Move, move—” 

Then, another familiar and sarcastic voice cut through the others. “If one more drop of blood gets on my new shoes, I’m actually going to file a complaint against veteran discrimination.” 

Your head snapped in his direction as Jack stepped through the ambulance bay doors half-covered in SWAT gear, helmet tucked beneath one arm while blood stained the bottom of his pant leg. He looked irritated and entirely focused on the patient—

Until his eyes landed on you, causing him to freeze instantly. Everyone watched as disbelief, relief, and love flashed so quickly across his face it almost felt too intimate to witness. Your composure nearly shattered on the spot. 

“Hey, Jack,” you said, voice loud enough to carry over. 

The words had barely left your mouth before he crossed the department toward you quickly. He didn’t seem to care about the motion around him, didn’t seem to even notice he had an audience. 

Once second you stood there clutching your blue, latex gloves in trembling hands and the next Jack had pulled you tightly against him, one arm wrapping around your shoulders hard enough to nearly steal your breath entirely. 

“Oh,” he whispered quietly against your hair. “Hey, kid.” 

Your eyes burned while your arms wrapped around his middle, familiar warmth and exhaustion and home hitting all at once beneath the light. 

“You came back,” he murmured softly.   

“Yeah,” you whispered back.” 

Suddenly, the years of distance, Seattle itself, phone calls, missed birthdays, research conferences, and lonely apartments after terrible shifts didn’t matter because Jack still held you exactly the same way he used to after nights in the Pitt, carefully like something precious that had exhausted itself by trying too hard for too long. 

Somewhere nearby, Dennis whispered, “Oh my gosh, they really are their kid.” 

No one corrected him. 

Jack finally pulled back enough just to cup your face briefly in both hands, hazel eyes moving over you like he was trying to memorize every changed detail all at once. “You look good.” 

Healthier his expression implied. Lighter

You swallowed thickly. “You look tired.” 

“That’s because Robby keeps aging me prematurely.” 

“Liar,” Robby muttered nearby, though his voice had gone suspiciously soft. 

The patient groaned loudly behind all of you, shattering the moment but snapping the motion back into place. You stepped toward the trauma bed first. 

“Okay,” you said, pulling gloves on. “Let’s save this guy before Dana kills us for emotional loitering.” 

Dana pointed toward you across the room. “See? They did come back healthier.” 

Laughter rippled quickly through the bay as you, Jack, and Robby moved together in a seamless action just like no time had passed at all. 

🏷️ permanent tags: @dumb-fawkin-bitch @nofinnn2 @books-thingys-andstuff @nyxmoretti @glitterquadricorn @itzpixiebabe @xoxoloverb @macbaetwo @cerberus101 @thorfemmes

[itevilhag]

i yearn for platonic fics like this...

[itevilhag]

Any thoughts about frank langdon x filipina!reader??? As a filipinang maldita,,, i can personally assume that me and langdon will always bicker 😭

the way i already know filipino!reader would cuss this mf out in tagalog when he pisses her off, but would also be a ride or die type friend with him

i have 3 wips rn, but i might write some more for frank and filipino!reader

who knows???

[itevilhag]

kinda funny

[itevilhag]

being in the hospital with my mom just made me realize how much i actually fucking hate it here.

kinda ironic given im writing the pitt fics