━━ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . jack abbot x morgue tech!reader ; after declining robby's offer to get drinks because he has plans with you, jack lets it slip that he is seeing someone, despite the obvious lack of a title on your relationship. robby is less than thrilled when he finds out who jack is dating
━━ content + warnings ; this falls in early relationship / robby's mental health ( its implied he will commit suicide on his sabbatical ) / reader is neurodivergent, there are many disabilities that fall under this category and is not specified for a reason! / age gap ( 31 x 49 ) / fem!reader / robby unconsciously infantilizing the reader / no resolution
field trip ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . to THE MORGUE
━ part two
The nurses station was the hub of the emergency department like the eye of a storm. Even in rare stretches when no one was shouting for a crash cart or rushing towards the ambulance bay for an incoming trauma, the department carried its own constant hum.
Jack stood at one end of the nurses station with his forearm braced against the counter, finishing a chart he should have been done with twenty minutes ago.
The brightness from the computer screen made the exhaustion that was already pulling at the corners of his mind seem sharper.
He had to keep telling himself he'd done this for a reason. The double shift he'd never have agreed to, if not for the promise of an extra day off.
A day off that just so happened to land on the same day as yours. The odds had felt so absurdly slim that Jack had checked twice when you told him. Then he'd told you not to make any plans, for what he'd wanted to do to you would make even the dirtiest of minds blush.
He wasn't exactly sure what he'd have planned, but by this time tomorrow he knew you'd at least be together.
Though his mind was wandering far away from his chart, he was thinking about none of it visibly when Robby stopped beside him.
Robby had been standing at the opposite side of the hub for the better part of ten minutes, his attention also seemingly anywhere but on the tablet in hand. He'd probably reread the same portion of the chart twice without retaining much of it.
His sabbatical request had been approved this morning, the confirmation waiting in his email beneath a subject line so bland it almost seemed insulting.
Three months riding around on his new motorcycle, at least that's what the official story was. He'd nodded through the meeting and signed the necessary paperwork without so much as a inkling of guilt.
He had no intention of returning.
Anyone who had half a brain would be able to piece together what Robby was going to do on this so-called sabbatical. That's particularly why he hadn't told anyone, let alone Jack.
Robby knew Jack would be able to see past his rest, reassess and recover spiel.
It didn't really matter to Robby if HR believeed his story. But if Jack got so much of an inkling that he didn't plan to return in exactly three months, he wasn't sure he'd be able to leave at all.
Robby had spent most of his shift trying to decide how to tell him in a way that was convincing, and still had made no progress. Mentioning it at the hospital, surrounded by nurses and patients, a place where he wouldn't be able to explain seemed too callous.
It only occurred to him a few minutes ago that he could do it over a drink when he'd heard Santos pestering Whitaker about drinks after work. To do it somewhere outside of the hospital, where Jack could be angry without having to immediately walk into another trauma.
"You got tomorrow off?" Robby's attempt to sound ordinary only made his question sound more awkward.
"Mhm," Jack answered with a hum without looking up from his screen.
Robby let another second of silence pass before he shrugged. "I do too. Figured we could grab a beer."
"Can't." Jack's answer came so quickly that Robby's thumb stopped moving.
"Can't?" he repeated, glancing sideways at Jack from over the rim of his readers.
"I've got plans," Jack replied, tapping through the final portion of his chart.
Robby studied him for a moment, but Jack's expression gave him nothing. It rarely did.
After years of friendship, Robby had learned that if he ever wanted to understand Jack past the little dialogue he offered, he'd have to be able to notice the little things. The slight tightening around his eyes when he was irritated, the way he pressed his tongue into his cheek when he was trying to bite his tongue, and the subtle lift at one corner of his mouth when something amused him more than he wanted anyone to know.
At the moment though, there was only concentration and fatigue. Neither of which gave Robby any insight on to what his mysterious plans were.
Robby snorted and returned his attention to the tablet. "What, one dangerous hobby ain't enough?"
Jack stops typing. He turned his head just enough to look a Robby confusion breaking briefly through his usual stoicism.
Robby continued typing on his own chart. "Between swat and your inability to sit still, I figured you'd taken up cave diving or something'."
A nurse stepped between them to grab a stack of labels from the printer. Jack shifted back to give her room, his hands abandoning the tablet on the counter. He could have dismissed the comment. He could have said nothing and let Robby assume whatever he wanted about the plans tomorrow night.
Instead, perhaps because he was tired or because the truth was suddenly easier than inventing another answer, the words left him before he had decided to share them.
“I’m seeing someone,” Jack said.
The tapping against Robby’s screen stopped completely.
For several seconds, the department seemed to move around the two of them without either man participating in it.
Jack Abbot did not date casually. At least, he never had in all the years that Robby had known him. He knew that the death of his wife had changed the way Jack had seen the dating pool so if there had been women, Jack treated the details with the same security other people reserved for classified records.
Robby had tried more than once, to push him toward something resembling a social life. The suggestions had been met with grunts, deflections, or a look that warned Robby not to press his luck.
Now Jack had apparently been seeing someone long enough to have plan on a shared night off, and this was the first Robby was hearing about.
"Serious?" Robby asked.
Jack opened his mouth with an answer ready, then paused.
The question should not have required thought. Serious was supposed to be the threshold people crossed deliberately, something agreed upon. But Jack could not remember a single conversation where either of you had defined what was happening between you.
He thought of the snacks that you saved him from your lunch because you knew he wouldn't eat on shift if you didn't.
He thought of the go bag he left in his truck so he'd have fresh clothes after spending that night at your house because he hadn't yet gathered the courage to ask you for a drawer of his own.
He thought of the way your shoulders loosened when he walked into the morgue and how you had started looking for him at the end of every shift as naturally as he looked for you.
And he thought of tomorrow night and the quiet certainty with which he had already reserved it for you.
“Yeah,” Jack answered, nodding once as the truth settled into place. “It is.”
Robby’s surprise softened into something warmer. A grin spread across his face, genuine and immediate. “Well, shit,” Robby said. “Good for you, man.”
“Thanks,” Jack replied.
The conversation stilled there because Jack offered nothing else.
Robby waited for a name or a detail, perhaps even a grudging explanation on how the relationship had started. Jack, however, simply returned his attention to the tablet.
He watched him for a moment before remembering that if he wanted information from Jack, he'd have to ask for it directly.
“So who is she?” Robby asked. “Would I know her?”
Jack glanced toward him again. The question carried a second one beneath it that neither man needed stated aloud: did she work at the hospital?
“Uh, probably not,” Jack said. “She works nights downstairs.”
Robby’s expression changed.
His brows pulled together as he followed the implication through the hospital’s layout. Downstairs could have meant a variety of different things. Imaging, maintenance, central supply, or several administrative offices.
But nights narrowed the possibilities significantly, and Jack’s recent habit of disappearing toward the service elevator after shift change narrowed them even further.
Robby hoped he was wrong but he asked anyway. "Like in the morgue?"
“Yeah.” Jack frowned at the disbelief spreading across Robby’s face. “Why?”
The answer confirmed exactly what Robby had been trying not to conclude.
He knew the night staffing downstairs. He knew there was only one regular technician working those hours, and he knew you well enough for an image of you to rise immediately in his mind.
You standing on the edge of the day shift bustle with a clipboard tucked against your chest, waiting too long for an opening in a conversation because interrupting felt impossible.
You apologizing when someone else stepped into your path.
You going silent when too many people spoke to you at once. He remembered the meetings about your transfer to nights and the relief that had settled over you once the hospital found a schedule better suited to your needs.
Robby looked at Jack, who stood almost twenty years older, physically imposing without effort, experienced in ways you were not, and apparently serious about you.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Robby muttered.
Jack’s frown deepened.
“Are you having some kind of midlife crisis?” Robby asked.
“What are you talking about?” Jack replied with the beginning of an incredulous laugh, as though Robby had changed subjects without warning.
Robby said your name. He did not mean for it to sound harsh, but disbelief sharpened every syllable. As if he couldn't even think of you in the same context as Jack.
“Yeah?” Jack answered.
The simplicity of his confirmation only worsened the unease gathering in Robby’s chest. “You don’t think she’s just a bit too young for you?” he asked.
“What?” Jack replied.
He had already said the word several times during the conversation, each repetition carrying a different shade of confusion. Now irritation began to bleed into it.
Robby glanced toward the nearest treatment room before lowering his voice. The ER had no privacy, only varying degrees of public exposure, and this was not a discussion he wanted overheard.
“She’s what, thirty?” Robby asked.
“Thirty-one,” Jack corrected.
“And you’re pushing fucking fifty, Jack.”
“I’m forty-nine.”
“Oh, that makes it better,” Robby said dryly.
Jack did not respond.
He genuinely did not understand why the number changed anything. You were thirty-one, not twenty-one. You had a career, an apartment, bills, preferences, and the ability to make decisions he does not always agree with. He had not hidden his age from you or misrepresented what he wanted. He had not tricked you into anything.
The idea that your age alone made you incapable of choosing him struck Jack as absurd.
Robby watched the confusion remain on his face and mistook it for a failure to see the problem.
“You know the only reason she switched to nights is because she couldn’t handle the stress of days,” Robby said. Jack’s brows knitted together.
That detail caught him more sharply than the accusation about his age. He knew why you preferred nights. He knew the quiet helped, that the reduced staff and predictable routines made it easier for you to work without spending every hour braced against other people.
What he hadn't known was that Robby knew any of that.
“What would you know about her?” Jack questioned. The wording landed harder than he intended.
Robby’s mouth tightened. “I know she’s vulnerable,” he said.
“I know that,” Jack answered.
There was no hesitation because denying it would have meant denying parts of you Jack had spent months learning how to understand. He knew confrontation exhausted you. That you sometimes agreed too quickly because disappointing someone frightened you more than discomfort did.
He knew there were days when the world pressed too harshly against your skin and words became difficult.
But he also knew you were stubborn, capable, and more perceptive than most people gave you credit for.
He had watched you stand over bodies no one else wanted to see and give them more care than some patients received alive. He had seen you solve problems alone because asking for help did not come naturally, even when it should have.
Your vulnerability was not the sum of you.
Robby heard only the admission.
“And that doesn’t bother you?” Robby asked.
The question changed the shape of the conversation.
Until now, Jack had understood Robby’s concern as skepticism about an age gap. Irritating, perhaps invasive, but not insulting. This was different. The implication beneath the words reached somewhere much closer to bone.
Jack’s expression closed.
He turned his gaze toward the patient board mounted above the hub, though he was no longer reading it. His jaw flexed once. Then again.
He loved Robby like a brother. That knowledge was the only thing keeping him silent. Because the answer forming in his mouth was cruel, and once spoken, it would not be easily taken back.
Robby recognized the warning in Jack’s stillness but continued anyway. He had known Jack too long to be frightened by silence, and concern had already carried him past the point where stopping felt responsible.
“I think you’re in a position where she might not know how to tell you no,” Robby said. Jack’s jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
The department kept moving around them, oblivious to the turmoil forming between the two attendings, though Jack heard none of it clearly.
“Watch yourself,” he said. His voice never rose. It did not need to.
Robby drew in a breath through his nose. For a second, he seemed prepared to leave it there. Then the thought of you on days, overwhelmed and apologizing, pushed him forward again.
“I’m not saying you’re a bad man,” Robby said.
Jack looked at him. The anger in his face was controlled but unmistakable. Robby lowered his voice even further. “I’m saying good men can still make bad decisions.”
The words settled between them with enough weight to make the space around the, feel suddenly narrow.
Jack stared at the man who had known him through war stories, grief, the death of his wife, and every self-destructive choice he had made in the name of being useful. Robby knew exactly what kind of man he was, which made the implication worse rather than easier to dismiss.
Jack could have defended himself.
He could have told Robby that you had set every boundary between you and that he had followed each one. He could have explained how carefully he watched for hesitation, how often he asked when you seemed unsure, how terrified he was of becoming another person who spoke over you.
He did not say any of that.
Defending the relationship to Robby felt too close to placing you on trial. It would require exposing things that belonged to you, private choices and private moments that Jack had no intention of turning into evidence.
More than that, anger had closed around his throat.
“I haven’t,” Jack huffed.
He shoved his tablet onto the counter with more force than necessary and turned away.
Robby watched him cross the department, shoulders rigid and gait sharper than usual as he moved toward the south corridor.
The invitation for a beer remained suspended between them, unanswered in every way that mattered.
Robby looked down at the tablet still resting in his hand. The sabbatical he had intended to mention now felt impossibly distant, the carefully imagined conversation reduced to another thing he had failed to say.
Across the ER, Jack disappeared around the corner before the anger could loosen enough to let doubt in.
VISIT THE INSPIRATION VAULT — ˚₊‧ 𐙚
— series m.list
˚₊‧ 𐙚 layout inspo @mariasont 𑣲⋆
LOOSE FILES FROM THE ARCHIVE
˚₊‧ 𐙚 — best read in descending order
𝜗𝜚 ⋆ ₊˚ CATCHING PRINT
— after your shift, you go upstairs to the er looking for jack and you run into a few of your boyfriend's coworkers, they bring to your attention just how large jack abbot really is — NSFW 18+
𝜗𝜚 ⋆ ₊˚ AGE VS MATURITY PT. ONE
— after declining robby's offer to get drinks because he has plans with you, jack lets it slip that he is seeing someone, despite the obvious lack of a title on your relationship. robby is less than thrilled when he finds out who jack is dating — SFW
𝜗𝜚 ⋆ ₊˚ RAIN CHECK? PT. TWO
— after his argument with robby about the morality of your relationship, jack cancels the plans the two of you had made. in the midst of his spiral, you show up on his doorstep — SFW
𝜗𝜚 ⋆ ₊˚ BEARD BURN ( coming soon )
— after a long five days apart due to a mandatory medical conference, you and jack spend the most time apart you have during your whole relationship. when he returns, something is very different about your boyfriends face — NSFW 18+
𝜗𝜚 ⋆ ₊˚ ASK ME ( coming soon )
— after a close call involving jack being shot at, you begin to realize just how dangerous his hobbies are — SFW
summary — being a social work intern at pmtc means juggling er consults, graduate school, and a thesis on repeat trauma patients who fall through the cracks of the system. it also means occasionally forgetting things, like eating.
contents — jack abbot x sw!inern!reader, age gap, power imbalance, mel-coded reader, fem!reader ( but no physical descriptors ), reader is a type one diabetic with hypoglycemia ( a couple references to past incidents ), unedited, wc 2.2k
ʚɞ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ LAYOUT INSPO — @mariasont
— bet you wanna meet the reader ʚɞ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊
Emergency rooms were not designed for quiet people.
You had figured that out sometime during your second week at PMTC, standing in the middle of the nurses’ station with three different voices calling your name and a trauma alert going off somewhere behind you.
The er existed in layers of noise, monitors chirping, stretchers rattling across tile, doctors shouting orders over the steady hum of fluorescent lights, and somehow you had learned to move through all of it without getting lost.
Your family liked to joke that you had been trained for it.
You grew up in Pittsburgh, in a house where six people talking at once was considered a normal dinner conversation. Someone was always shouting from another room, someone else arguing about the Steelers, your mother asking if anyone had seen her phone.
Compared to that, the ER was practically organized. It still made your nerves stand on end because of the chaotic loud but the organization gave you something to focus on.
You adjusted the pile in your arms, youe laptop, a PMTC iPad, and a notebook, and slipped past the trauma bay doors, nodding automatically when one of the nurses waved you down.
“Hey—social work!” someone called.
You stopped.
Technically you were the social work intern, which meant you still occasionally looked around behind you to see if a real social worker was following.
There wasn’t.
Your supervisor, Kiara, was somewhere upstairs handling another consult, which meant most of the er had quietly accepted that if they needed social work right now, they were getting you.
You tried to convince yourself that you didn't mind but you always came back around to the conclusion that you did mind. You minded a lot, in fact. As an intern you were still constantly doubting yourself and looking towards Kiara to double check.
“Room twelve, Mr. Melnick, is asking about discharge again,” the nurse said. “Thought you should know.”
“Okay,” you said immediately, already pulling your small notebook from your pocket.
You wrote it down.
You wrote everything down nowadays. Names, numbers, resources, reminders to drink water, question you needed to ask later and occasionally things people said that has stuck in your head longer than they should have.
The notebook had become something of a survival tool.
It was also currently full of notes about Mr. Melnick. He had been in the er four times in the last two months. He was a combat veteran, with severe PTSD, panic attacks that escalated quickly enough to land him back in a trauma room before anyone could convince him he was safe.
Technically, the case belonged to Kiara. In practice, the case had slowly become yours. Mostly because it overlapped almost perfectly with your master’s thesis.
Your thesis advisor had described it as “an underexamined but critically important area of emergency medicine.” You usually described it as repeat er trauma patients who fell through every other crack in the system.
Veterans especially.
Which was how Dr. Abbot had ended up involved. At first it had been purely practical.
Not only was he Mr. Melnick primary emergency medicine physician but you had also needed insight into how combat trauma presented in people like Mr. Melnick, what set it off, what helped, what didn’t, and Dr. Abbot was one of the only physicians in the department who had both the clinical experience and the personal background to understand it.
He was also, inconveniently, a veteran himself. So you had done what you usually did when you needed information. You looked him up in the hospital directory and texted him.
You hadn’t really thought about it.
Doctors texted each other all the time. Nurses texted consults. Residents texted attendings. You assumed social work interns could text attendings too.
Dr. Abbot had responded with a short, blunt answer to your question.
Then another.
Somewhere between the first shift and the second, the two of you had ended up orbiting the same patient chart for most of the night.
Which was also how he had become the unfortunate witness to what the er had since referred to, quietly, and with far too much interest, as the incident.
You still maintained it had been blown slightly out of proportion. Your blood sugar had dropped. It happened sometimes.
Being a type one diabetic meant there were days when your body decided it would prefer to function like an unsupervised toddler instead of a responsible adult. Most of the time you managed it fine.
Except when you didn’t eat.
And between a PMTC caseload, a full graduate program, and a thesis that refused to write itself, eating had quietly become one of those things that sometimes slipped your mind.
The episode itself had been quick, embarrassingly so.
You had been standing at the nurses’ station explaining a discharge barrier for Mr. Melnick with Dr. Abbot when the room tilted slightly to the left.
Then everything had gone dark. You didn’t remember falling. You only remembered waking up in a trauma room with a glucose tablet dissolving unpleasantly on your tongue and Dr. Abbot standing at the end of the gurney with a glucometer in his hand.
The er had learned two things about you that night.
One: you were a type one diabetic.
Two: Dr. Abbot did not take that lightly.
Which was why, apparently, you were now being periodically monitored like a mildly irresponsible houseplant.
You settled into one of the chairs at the far end of the nurses’ station, flipping open your laptop so you could update the notes on Mr. Melnick before the next consult came in.
Your desktop looked exactly like it always did—half research, half chaos.
A small music player hummed quietly in the corner of the screen. A reminder notification blinked lazily beside it. Several open documents sat scattered across the desktop like unfinished thoughts.
You had just opened the case notes when your phone buzzed against the table. A text notification appeared on your screen. For a second you just stared at the name.
Then you sighed quietly to yourself and riffled around your scrubs pocket for your cell phone.
Did you eat today?
For a moment you simply looked at the message.
The glow of your phone screen reflected faintly against the stainless steel edge of the nurses’ station while the er continued moving around you—stretchers rolling past, monitors chirping, someone laughing too loudly at the far desk.
You checked the time.
12:04 AM.
You had been on shift since six.
Somewhere in the back of your mind you tried to retrace the evening the way you would retrace a patient timeline.
Six o’clock: check in.
Six-thirty: Mr. Melnick chart review.
Seven: consult in trauma three.
Eight: back to Melnick’s chart.
Nine: phone call with a case manager.
Ten: another consult.
Eleven: more notes.
At no point in that timeline did food appear, bot because you weren’t hungry because you were.
You just forgot.
Which was a dangerous realization for someone with type one diabetes. Your thumb hovered over the keyboard. You should tell the truth.
But instead, you typed quickly before your brain had time to argue with you.
yes
You hit send. The message bubble appeared underneath his question. Almost immediately your stomach twisted. You stared at the screen for a second, feeling the lie settle somewhere uncomfortable under your ribs.
Then, because apparently you were incapable of leaving things alone, you typed again.
coffee counts, dr. abbot
You sent that one too. The familiar blue bubbles stacked beneath his message. For a second nothing happened, the three dots didn’t appear.
You lowered your phone slightly, leaning back in your chair as the thought crossed your mind, quiet and unwelcome.
Why did he even care?
Sure, he was a doctor.
But he wasn’t your doctor.
You didn’t even know him that well.
Two shifts working the same patient didn’t exactly count as a meaningful relationship. Most of your interactions so far had consisted of clinical questions, short answers, and the occasional blunt correction when you misunderstood something about combat trauma.
And yet.
He had been the one to catch you when you collapsed. He had been the one to check your blood sugar. He had been the one to make sure you stayed in the trauma bed long enough for the glucose tablets to actually work.
Since then, he had checked on you twice. Three times if you counted this. Which was strange. Strange enough that it made something in your chest twist a little.
Not entirely bad but not entirely good either.
Your phone buzzed again in your hand and you looked down.
No, it doesn't.
You could practically hear the flat disapproval in the sentence. Which was ridiculous. You couldn’t hear tone through text messages.
That wasn’t how communication worked and yet somehow you could still picture the exact expression he would be wearing if he were standing in front of you right now.
Brows drawn together slightly, mouth set in that quiet, unimpressed line he seemed to default to whenever you said something he didn’t like.
Your stomach twisted again, guilt this time. Before you could think of something else to say, another message appeared.
There wasn’t really a world where ignoring Dr. Abbot was a good professional decision. Especially when the message read less like a request and more like a direct order.
You closed your laptop.
The motion triggered the quiet cascade of your usual traveling office. Your iPad slid onto your pile first, followed by the small stack of notebooks that seemed to multiply every time you looked away from them. Your phone disappeared into the front pocket of your scrubs while you gathered the loose papers that had migrated across the nurses’ station during the last two hours.
When you finally stood, the chair rolled slightly backward behind you. Your pile felt heavier than it had a while ago. You adjusted your grip and then turned towards the desk where Lena, the night shift charge nurse, was reviewing the patient board.
“Lena?” you asked. She didn’t even look up at first. “Yeah?”
“Where’s South fifteen?” Her eyes lifted away from the board slowly. Then one eyebrow crept up. “South fifteen?” she repeated. She pointed down the hallway with the end of her pen. “Supply room past trauma two. Last door on the right.”
“Thank you,” you said quickly.
You had already turned before she could say anything else.
The hallway was quieter than the nurses’ station, but the er never really slept. The familiar rhythm of the department followed you as you walked, footsteps, distant voices, the soft beeping of monitors somewhere behind a curtain.
You passed trauma two. Then the supply closet. Then the last door on the right, South 15. You hesitated for exactly two second before pushing it open.
Dr. Abbot was already inside. He was leaning back against the wall near the foot of the empty hospital bed, arms folded loosely behind his back like he had absolutely nowhere else in the world he needed to be.
Which was, of course, a lie.
Attendings always had somewhere else to be.
He looked remarkably patient. Your eyes landed on him first. Tall, dark t-shirt, slightly disheveled hair like he had run a hand through it sometime in the last hour and never bothered fixing it.
There was something unmistakably smug about the way he was standing there, not obvious smugness but something subtly smug.
The kind that said he already knew exactly how this conversation was going to go. Then your attention shifted. Next to the empty hospital bed sat one of the adjustable rolling tables.
And on that table, a sandwich and a yellow Gatorade. You looked back at him immediately. “This is unnecessary, Dr. Abbot,” you said.
He didn't move. “Sit,” he said calmly. You didn’t sit.
Instead you adjusted your heavy pile in your arms and attempted a professional pivot. “Actually, I was hoping we could talk about Mr. Melnick’s discharge barriers—”
“Not right now.”
The interruption was immediate. Your mouth closed again. Dr. Abbot pushed himself off the wall and stepped toward you before grabbing the hulking pile in your arms and setting it on the table. Then, gesturing casually to the food like it was the only topic currently available for discussion.
“I didn’t know what kind of sandwich you like,” he said. “So I grabbed chicken salad.” He nudged the bottle slightly with one finger. “And a yellow Gatorade.”
You stared at the table. Then back at him. “Oh,” you said quickly. “I love chicken salad.” The words came out a little too fast, a little too bright.
You made absolutely no move to reach for the sandwich.
His eyes flicked from your face to the untouched food and back again. Then one eyebrow lifted slightly. A beat of silence passed. Then he said, very calmly, “Do I need to supervise?”
You blinked.
He tilted his head slightly. “Or are you just going to do what I say?”
more works for sw!intern!reader — CLICK HERE . 𖥔 ݁ ˖
REQUESTS ARE OPEN ʚɞ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊
━━ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . jack abbot x morgue tech!reader ; after finding out that you took all the bodies down to the morgue despite the fact that you were breaking a dozen rules and ignoring your shift responsibilities, jack is now feeling ten times more guilty than he already was
field trip ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . to THE MORGUE
The ER had finally started to breathe again.
It wasn't quiet, the emergency department was never truly quiet. Somewhere down the hall a monitor alarm chirped before being silenced. Wheels rattled over tile. Phones rang.
But compared to two hours ago, when every available body had been moving at once, the department now almost felt peaceful.
For the first time in hours, Jack could breathe.
He stripped off a blood stained disposable gown and gloves as he stepped out of trauma room one. It was almost the end of his shift and exhaustion had started pulling heavily on his shoulders. The adrenaline that always came with a life threatening trauma usually disapated quickly and left behind only sore muscles. His lower back ached, especially and his prosthetic had been bothering him since midnight.
All he wanted was coffee and ten uninterrupted minutes to finish charting.
Halfway to the command desk, he stopped. Bay two was empty. His eyes narrowed and a frown pulled at the corners of his already downturned mouth. A few hours ago there had been bodies lined against the wall because the morgue was over capacity.
Now the bay didn't hold a single one. The crash bed in front of him was bodyless and had been stripped clean. Someone had even wiped it down. Not that that was particularly out of the ordinary but the vinyl seemed to shine more than usual.
"Lena?" Jack called.
The overnight charge nurse glanced up from her tablet, cateye glasses low on the bridge of her nose. "Yeah?" She mumbled.
"What happened to the bodies?" Jack asked, hooking a finger behind him towards the now precariously empty bay two. Lena followed his gaze and she shrugged. As if four missing bodies were completely normal and this was a common occurrence. "Oh, the morgue girl got 'em."
He blinked slowly before lifting his wrist almost subconsciously. "Kinda early for the funeral home." Jack looked at his watch once more, convinced he'd read the numbers wrong. But the same ones blinked back at him.
"Mhm?" Lena hummed confusion, but her eyes had already difted back to her chart. "Did the funeral home come down and pick up the others to make room for ours?"
The charge nurse didn't seem particularly concerned, but then again, she hadn't reread your email a dozen times in guilt after the little debacle downstairs three hours ago. "Uh, I don't know, she didn't exactly stick around for chit chat. Seemed like she was in a hurry," Lena shrugged.
"Who helped her move them?" Jack asked. He wanted to know exactly to reem out for leaving the ER and not reporting back to their attending. Lena only shrugged, not even taking her eyes off her tablet. "I assume another tech from downstairs. She insisted she didn't need any help."
There were no other techs from downstairs. A fact Jack was glaringly aware of since he'd witnessed the emptiness of the morgue hours ago. He felt something unpleasant settle in his stomach. He now knows undoubtedly that you did it all by yourself.
He looked back towards the empty bay. The guilt he was already feeling for snapping at you increased by a tenfold. His jaw tightened.
"Where the hell was everybody?"
Lena laughed once. He opened his mouth to chastise the woman because this was definitely not funny. "You work here, Jack. You know where everybody was."
Unfortunately, he did. While the night shift was significantly more tame than the day shift, it was still an emergency department. That meant almost every available body was busy running traumas, taking admissions, managing the patients left from said day shift. All in all trying to keep the department from collapsing.
Everyone had been busy. Including you. Especially you, it seems.
He looked down at the transfer paperwork Lena extented towards him. The signature sat neatly at the bottom. Everything filled out to perfection in your neat handwriting. All except the lonely line where he'd been supposed to sign at the transfer. "She asked me to wait until she was gone before I gave that to you," Lena revealed.
Jack's gaze lifted. His brows instantly furrowed. Surely he'd been harsh with you before and he had not so inadvertently insinuated that you weren't doing your job but had that really detered you from even talking to him? From even being in his presence?
"Why?" he asked, though he was sure he could probably guess at the answer. Lena's expression softened. "'He's busy'," Lena quoted your exact words, a similar disappointment in her look, "'and it isn't worth bothering Dr. Abbot with something that's just my job.' I believe her words were."
Jack looked away first. The guilt settled even lower because he could still hear is own voice from earlier in her words, your words. "You were too hard on her," Lena stated bluntly. Jack almost wanted to fight back. Lena hadn't been there, she didn't know what was said or not said. But his fight died in his throat because he was too hard on you and that hadn't been fair.
Lena sighed, then gestured towards the elevators. "Go apologize."
"Seriously?" He frowned but the charge nurse was insistent, pointing her pen to the elevators. Jack looked at his watch then sighed. "I have patients to see."
She turned her wrist and glanced at her watch. Then she tapped on it with her stylist. "Your shift is over. I can do the shift handoffs."
He propped his hands on his hips, trying to think of a reason not to go down to the morgue. Obviously you didn't want to see him. How would you react to him barging into your space like that?
Again.
He couldn't find another excuse not to, so he huffed and turned on his heels to gather his things from his locker and then mosey on down to the morgue for the second time this shift.
The morgue was cold.
And while it usually gave most people a chill down their spine when entering, the current temperature was way below normal. Ten minutes ago, you'd lowered the thermostat another couple degrees leaving the morgue at a resounding temperature of thirty-six degrees fahrenheit.
You were technically violating protocol. But there was a lot of things happening tonight that were violating protocol so you surmised that one little bump in the thermostat likely wouldn't matter standing against all the other things you'd done.
Things like bringing bodies down knowing full well that you were at capacity and therefore delaying the autopsies you were supposed to have done tonight. With the two of the extra bodies occupying the autopsy tables, you didn't have a space to complete them. Dr. Howell would understand the position upstairs and the funeral home had put you in.
At least, you hoped he did.
But the longer you sat next to the fourth and final body positioned next to your desk, the less confidence you had. At this point though, a few degress on the thermostat felt like the least important problem in the room.
Your fingers ached as you turned another page in the logbook. The skin across your knuckles had gone stiff from repeated exposure to the cold. You usually didn't really notice it. After enough years, the cold stopped feeling like discomfort and started feeling more like background noise.
For you, the cold had always been reliable and somewhat predictable. Unlike people.
You adjusted the stack of paperwork beside your elbow and continued charting. Each page was the same. Thats how you liked it. It kept your mind occupied. Kept you from replaying the events of tonight. Mainly it kept you from wondering if Dr. Abbot was still mad now that you'd done what he'd asked.
You tried to tell yourself that it didn't matter what he thought. You did your job and that was what mattered. Whether or not he noticed was out of your control.
The squeal of the morgue door made you freeze. Your pen stopped mid word. Nobody came down here unannounced and the last time somebody had, you'd been yelled at. So, excuse you for being nervous.
You prayed it was Dr. Howell or one of the day time techs, but you knew that both of them were chronically late.
Slowly, you lifted your head and Jack Abbot stood in the doorway. You wondered what horrible deed you did in your past life would warrant putting this man in your path, not once but twice in one day.
He looked oddly out of place beneath the fluorescent lights. Your stomach tightened immediately. Jack's gaze landed on you and you didn't have time to pretend you hadn't been looking at him. He glanced around the room. To the two autopy tables, the gurney against the wall and the one next to your desk.
What was that thing about protocol again?
His expression changed almost imperceptibly. The sort of change most people would miss. You didn't. His jaw tightened, shoulders squared, and eyes lingering longer than before. You braced for impact.
Jack rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. "It's freezing in here."
Your voice came out smaller than intended. "I'm sorry, I turned down the thermostat."
You're not really sure why you confessed to him so easily nor why you apologized for it. Sure he was above you in status and could probably get you fired at the drop of a dime but why would Jack Abbot care about whether or not you touched the thermostat?
His gaze immediately found the control panel mounted on the far wall. Then his eyes returned to you. "No kidding." A cold of breath escaped him. "You trying to preserve yourself next."
You really couldn't tell if he was joking or not. That put laughing out of the question in case he wasn't. So instead you shrugged. Jack looked around once more and when he spoke again, his voice was much lower. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."
The words settled heavily between you. You stared dumbfounded at him. For a moment, he seemed almost annoyed with himself. "I didn't know," he confessed. How could he have? He couldn't have been bothered to read the dozen emails you'd sent.
"I thought—" he started but quickly cut himself off. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I thought. I'm sorry."
You swallowed.
"It's okay."
"No," his answer came immediately and a beat later he added, "it's not."
The conviction in his voice startled you more than the apology itself. Jack looked at you for another second before his eyes dropped.
For a second, you foolishly thought he was looking at your lips. But without another word, he shrugged off his backpack then followed by his jacket. You frowned immediately. "Dr. Abbot—"
You weren't quite sure what he was doing. Surely, he wasn't getting ready to stay awhile. Then, handed out like an olive branch, he held his jacket towards you. "Put this on."
You blinked like a deer in headlights. "What?"
"It's freezing and if you insist on working in here, you're not going to do so without something to keep you warm."
He continued to keep his arm outstretched towards you, the coat hanging from his hand. You knew immediately you weren't winning this fight. So slowly, you accepted it. The coat still felt warm inside from his body heat and sleeves swallowed your hands entirely.
The smell hit next. Coffee and soap and hospital. Somehow wholly perfect for Jack.
Something tightened unexpectedly in your chest. Across from you, he nodded once. A satisfied smirk stretched upon his face. Like the matter had been resolved. Like he hadn't just completely altered your ability to think clearly for the last thirty minutes of your shift.
˚ ༘ ೀ ⋆ 𓇗 ｡ ˚ ━━━━ the cherry on top
in which you have never had an orgasm in your entire life. after dozens of failed tries with countless college boys, you give up and abstain from men. until joel miller, your best friends dad, offers you a solution \ series
˚ ༘ ೀ ⋆ 𓇗 ｡ ˚ ━━━━ idea of an angel
in which you were just a child when the world ended—raised in fear, shaped by survival, protected so tightly that your parents still treat you like you’re made of glass. jackson sees you as soft. but joel miller sees the truth. you’re his patrol partner—sunlight with a rifle, warmth in a world that froze over long before the snow came. and joel is the man who lives in the cold. the man who keeps watch. the man who would never dare touch what he wants \ series
˚ ༘ ೀ ⋆ 𓇗 ｡ ˚ ━━━━ salvific
in which you were raised on scripture, silence, and a father who mistook control for faith. rick grimes wasn’t looking for a miracle when he opened the locked door beneath the church—but he found you anyway and now the man who speaks for god has finally met someone he cannot command \ series
━━ ⋆ 𖤓 ⋆ ˚ ࿔ dbf!jack abbott x sw!reader ; after getting stabbed during a cps intervention gone violently wrong, you, a chaos-mouthed social work intern wake up in a trauma bay with your father’s best friend—dr. jack abbot—covered in your blood and absolutely livid. what follows is a spiral of fury, restraint, and inappropriate undressing that might just cost you both everything ━ 6.2k
join ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . the NIGHT SHIFT
The first thing they tell you when you start at The Pitt isn’t about safety protocols, hipaa violations, or where to find the best vending machine snacks ( though, you know its in the ER, between curtain four and five—Dennis guards it like a troll under a bridge ).
It isn’t about how to fill out your casework logs, or what to say to grieving families, or even how to survive your practicum without burning out.
It’s — don’t let the doctors intimidate you.
You laughed when they said it. Laughed harder when you met them, these supposed intimidating doctors.
Because the truth is, it’s not the doctors who scare you. It’s not the blood or the chaos or the screams that spill out from ambulance bay doors at three am on a full moon.
It’s not the waiting room full of addicts or the bruised kids who flinch when you raise your voice too fast. It’s not even the hallway ghosts or those too-far-gone stares of people who’ve lost everything before you’ve had your morning coffee.
What scares you is silence, powerlessness. The inability to stop a cycle you’ve seen destroy too many lives.
So you don’t do silence.
You talk, constantly, bluntly, and sometimes inappropriately. Frequently inappropriately. And if people mistake your sarcasm for cynicism, fine. You know what you are. You’re chaos in a clipboard. A disaster with a pen. A public health liability with half a master’s degree and zero sense of self-preservation.
But you get the job done.
You’re an intern—barely. Midway through your master’s-slash-phd in clinical social work, still neck-deep in psych theory and practicum hour requirements, and somehow lucky, or cursed, enough to land your field placement at Pittsburgh’s most chaotic level one trauma center.
The Pitt.
It’s not glamorous or safe but it’s real. Raw and bloody and bursting at the seams with broken people and the systems that failed them. For someone like you, someone who lives off adrenaline and injustice, it’s perfect.
You work under Kiara, a senior hospital social worker. She’s your mentor, your boss, and possibly the only reason you haven’t been kicked out yet. She’s also got a terrifyingly accurate bullshit detector and once body-checked a surgical resident for calling your trauma patient a junkie.
Your caseload isn’t light. You’re not here for the flu patients or twisted ankles. You’re called for the ugly ones. Rape kits, suicide watches, pediatric assaults, domestic violence stabbings, drug-induced psychosis. Basically the patients no one wants to deal with but have to.
You talk them down. Talk them through, talk them into staying and into breathing. Into signing the discharge forms and into reporting the ones who hurt them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes you cry in the staff bathroom with the broken lock and the rusted sink. Sometimes you rage in Kiara's office while she hands you a capri sun and tells you to file your notes before you start swinging.
Sometimes you look in the mirror and think this is going to kill me.
But you keep showing up because if you don’t—who will?
You’ve been at The Pitt for a few months, operating on a strict intern basis. No medical license, no therapy credentialing, none prestige of a real social worker. Just you, your badge, your student email, and the right to observe more trauma in a single day than most people will see in a lifetime.
You spend most of your time in the ER and critical care floors. They don’t trust you on pediatrics anymore after the bite incident—your fault, technically, but also his, for underestimating your reflexes .
You rotate between psychiatric consults and post-trauma debriefings, occasionally shadowing grief counselors or addiction liaison teams. You’ve made a habit of inserting yourself into rounds you weren’t invited to. No one really stops you anymore. Probably because you’re too loud to ignore.
You are, by all accounts, a walking headache.
And yet, they keep letting you through the double doors.
Most days, your outfit is half business casual, half whatever you found at the back of your closet. Your id badge hangs off a lanyard you’ve drawn on with sharpie. Someone added a devil horn doodle over your face. You assume Frank probably had something to do with that.
You’re everything a trauma hospital should’ve rejected.
But you’re also damn good at your job.
You’ve got a mouth on you, sure—but it’s the same mouth that gets seventeen-year-old gang members to open up. The same mouth that gets battered women to sign police reports.
The same mouth that gets under Jack Abbot’s skin so bad he once nearly walked into traffic trying to get away from you.
Jack Abbot is not your father.
That’s the first—and maybe the only—reason you get away with half the shit you say to him.
He doesn’t ground you nor does he bark orders. He doesn’t tell you to cover up or smile more or stop swearing like a drunken sailor with unresolved childhood trauma.
Okay, he does tell you to stop swearing. A lot. Like he’s in charge of your moral compass or some shit. Like you didn’t come out of the womb swinging with a mouth full of curses and contempt.
But he’s not your father.
He’s your father’s best friend.
They met in the army. Jack was the cocky field medic with a death wish and a chip on his shoulder; your dad was the steady one, the strategic one, the kind of man who could take down a room full of enemies without breaking a sweat. They weren’t supposed to like each other.
And yet, like most war-forged friendships, they bonded over shared trauma, near-death experiences, and enough black-market whiskey to kill a horse.
Your father saved Jack’s life once, in some no-name desert hellhole you were never allowed to ask about. Jack saved his in return, probably more than once.
They don’t talk about it much. But it’s there—in the way your father’s voice softens when Jack’s name comes up. In the old photos buried in storage boxes, the kind you only found once by accident. Two men, dirt-streaked, exhausted, bleeding at the edges and somehow still smiling.
So when your dad took his final deployment—a favor for an old war buddy, some quiet, off-the-books assignment you weren’t allowed to ask questions about—he went to Jack.
Told him you’d been placed at The Pitt. He'd said you were a handful. Told him—stern-faced, serious as death— “Watch over her, please, Jackie. She’s all I’ve got.”
And Jack, in all his brooding, overworked, emotionally constipated glory, he said yes. Of course he did because he owed your father his life.
Even if that life meant putting up with you.
From the start, it was a fucking disaster. You, with your sharp mouth and unapologetic stare and him, with his clinical detachment and simmering judgment.
He made it very clear that he didn’t want you there. That interns were a liability. That the ER wasn’t a place for untrained, undisciplined brats with hero complexes.
“This isn’t your playground,” he snapped once, mid-code. “Stop acting like the fun police,” you shot back.
You’ve been circling each other like wolves ever since.
He acts like you’re a walking hr violation. Like you’re too loud, too reckless, too much. He barks at you to “wash your damn mouth” and threatens to report you to Kiara every other shift.
But he always asks Kiara for a consults because he knows your her shadow. Always steps between you and the messier patients. Always lingers a little longer than he needs to.
You know what he thinks of you.
At least, you think you do.
You see the way he clenches his jaw when you open your mouth. The way his hands fist at his sides when you make another wildly inappropriate joke during patient intake.
The way he stares at the wall like it personally offended him whenever you show up in ripped jeans and combat boots, badge swinging, lip gloss smeared.
He hates you.
That’s fine.
You don’t like him much either.
Except for the part where he’s the hottest man you’ve ever seen in your goddamn life. It’s not a crush. Don’t be gross. It's not like you’re in love with Jack Abbot.
It’s just, he’s tall and broad and built like every repressed Catholic fantasy you’ve ever denied having. He’s got those storm-grey curls, the ones that stay tucked behind his ears but go wild when he’s elbow-deep in a trauma bay. The ones you definitely want to tug.
He’s got that scowl. The kind that could ruin someone’s week from across the nurses’ station. The one that coincidentally makes your knees go loose and your spine straighten like a challenge.
And his voice—low, gritted, tight with restraint when he says things like “for christ’s sake, show some professionalism” or “someone outta put you in your fucking place.”
You joke. Of course you joke. It’s how you cope. How you flirt. How you keep from actually climbing into his lap during lunch breaks and asking what it would take for him to shut you up with his mouth.
You flirt to cover the fact that your thighs press together every time he growls your name. You make innuendos like it’s a sport, smirk when he turns red with fury, or embarrassment. You push, and push, and push because that’s the only way to keep the heat from swallowing you whole.
Maybe it’s the age difference. Or the authority. The forbidden-ness of it all. Perhaps maybe it’s the fact that you know Jack would never touch you. That he’d rather chew off his own hand than admit he wants you back.
Or maybe it’s just that you’ve never wanted anyone the way you want him and that is deeply humiliating.
But hey, if he’s going to hate you anyway, you might as well make him sweat.
You’re standing just outside the nurse’s station with Kiara, clipboard in hand, trying to keep your voice steady while a man across from you—mid-forties, greasy flannel, bad tattoos—grips the arm of a child hard enough to leave bruises.
You clock it instantly and not just the way he holds the kid, but the way he looks at you.
He’s sizing you up like you’re a problem he could fix with one punch. and you smile at him like you’d throw the first one.
The kid’s maybe five, thin, wide-eyed, and a little too quiet for your liking.
She’s scurried away to sit in one of the plastic waiting room chairs with a worn stuffed elephant in her lap, thumb in her mouth, skin patchy with what looks like old healing burns beneath her sweater sleeves.
You’d seen the marks during intake, saw the nurse’s note, the mandatory flag. You didn’t have to see more. You knew the minute the man walked in and said, “my niece had an accident,” with a voice that carried too much ownership, that this wasn’t going to end clean.
“Mr. Marsh,” Kiara says, voice smooth as steel. “We’ve reviewed the preliminary findings and spoken with emergency services. Given the nature of your niece’s injuries and the statements made by responding personnel, we’re initiating a CPS report and placing her in temporary protective custody.”
“The fuck you are.” The snap was like a bone cracking beneath too much pressure. You expected as much.
You take a step closer, clipboard still clutched to your chest but your voice doesn’t waver. “Sir, I am going to need you to remain calm—”
“That’s my family,” he growls, stepping toward the girl. “You don’t get to take her. Her mom’s strung out in Allegheny County Lockup, and I’m the only one left who gives a damn.”
“Then maybe,” you say, tone bone-dry, “you shouldn’t have yanked on her arm like it was a doorknob.” Kiara shoots you a look. Sharp and tired. She doesn’t have the energy to scold you again. Especially not in the light of the situation.
The man’s face reddens and his hand balls into a fist. The girl doesn’t move. She’s frozen, eyes wide, thumb still in her mouth. You crouch slowly, give her a soft smile.
“Hey, sweetheart. Why don’t you come with me for a minute, okay? We’ve got crayons and popsicles in the back. You ever had a grape one?” she nods but only just barely. You offer your hand.
“C’mon. I promise we’ll keep Mr. Elephant safe.” She places her tiny fingers in yours like they weigh the world. You stand. Kiara gestures toward Nina, another social worker lingering at the edge of the chaos. She whisks the girl away down the corridor, away from the tension. The man’s gaze follows, sharp as a razor.
“You fucking bitch,” he spits, suddenly surging forward. You move to intercept without thinking. Kiara’s already trying and failing at stepping in between.
You’ve dealt with aggression before. Screaming, threats, broken phones, but there’s something in this man’s eyes. Something off.
His face twitches, as do his fingers and you realize, far too late, he’s not reaching for the girl. “Sir, back up,” Kiara warns, hand outstretched, looking around for security. “You’re making this worse than it has to be.”
“You don’t know what worse looks like.” He’s practically vibrating. Something clicks in your mind.
You’ve seen that look before—in addicts cornered during psych evals, in violent exes slamming their fists against locked doors, in men who think the world owes them something and that women are the debt collectors.
Your gut twists.
Then you see it, a flicker of silver beneath the hem of his coat. A quick glint. The blade of a pocketknife. Your clipboard hits the ground before you realize you dropped it. “Hey!” you bark, voice suddenly sharp, not social-worker-soft, not trauma-informed-friendly, just loud. “Put it the fuck down—”
And that’s when he lunges. "Security!"
You know what no one tells you about being stabbed?
It’s hot.
It doesn't happen like it does in the movies. It's not sharp or cold or cinematic. There is just a build heat bubbling under your skin. White hot as it rips through your side like a flare gun fired point blank into soft tissue.
Your nerve endings go haywire, like they can’t agree whether to scream or shut down entirely. Your ribs jar against the blow, and for a horrifying half-second, you think maybe the blade's still inside you.
But then—
Oh.
No, he pulled it out.
That’s why there’s so much blood.
You stumble backward, hand pressed hard against your ribs, your palm already soaked in wet warmth. It pulses through your fingers like a second heartbeat, fast and panicked and very, very wrong.
You don’t fall gracefully.
You drop like a shot deer, clumsy, knees sideways, landing half on your elbow and half on someone’s crumpled hoodie on the floor. The pain makes you howl. A strangled, animal sound that bursts from your chest unfiltered.
“What the fu—!”
Your vision swims. A dark haze edges the corners of your eyes like burnt film. Somewhere to your left, Kiara is screaming. Somewhere to your right, the guy who stabbed you is being tackled by two guards and a passing CNA with murder in his eyes.
And you are bleeding out on the floor of a hospital you technically don’t even work at, clutching your side with a hand that won’t stop shaking.
“Don’t move—don’t—Nina, get help! Get trauma over here now!” That’s kiara’s voice, commanding and somewhat terrified. You’d try to comfort her, if you weren’t so goddamn angry.
“You gotta be some kind of stupid to stab a woman in a hospital?! Are you fucking kidding me—!” your voice cracks as it rises, climbing toward hysteria.
You’re not crying. You’re just sweating aggressively out of your eyes, okay? Your lungs fight to inflate. You suck in a breath and get half of it before the wound tugs wrong and you double over with a wet groan. you bite it back, barely.
A nurse skids into view, dropping to their knees beside you. You can just tell by the look on her face, young, new and fucking terrified. “Okay, okay, okay—you’re okay, we’re gonna—we’re gonna apply pressure—”
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” you snarl through gritted teeth. They blink at you, visibly rattled but nevertheless, the pressure they apply is not gentle.
“Jesus fuck—!” you nearly slap them. Not on purpose. Just as a reflex. You reach down, trying to press your own hand harder over theirs because clearly they aren't doing it right. Not if the blood is still pouring out of you like the Niagara Falls.
But you can't get a grip, everything is slippery. You can feel it soaking through the layers you are wearing. Through your shirt, bra, coat, the fucking bandaid Kiara made you slap over your tattoo this morning.
“This is not how I die,” you whisper, wild-eyed. “I am not dying in a polyester blazer with a hot topic pin on it—” the nurse stares at you. “You’re not dying.”
“Tell that to my entire blood volume on the ground—!”
Another wave of pain rolls through you. It crests in your throat, pushes a sob halfway up your windpipe before you grit it down again. You taste copper. Maybe from your split lip, maybe from sheer, molten rage.
Kiara’s crouched over you now, speaking fast into a radio clipped to her hip and then yelling at the nurse on the other side of the partition at the front desk. “Go get a doctor! And a gurney!”
You clutch at her sleeve, your other hand still pinned over your gushing side. “I’m gonna throw up,” you croak.
“Don’t you dare,” she says, gripping your wrist. “I mean it,” you say, “Right in your lap, Kiara—dead center—”
The lights above you seem to buzz louder now or maybe that’s your ears or your heart. Or your ego leaving your body after the most undignified five minutes of your professional life.
You’re lying in the middle of the ER waiting room. You’re covered in your own blood. You’ve officially scared a nurse into silence and the worst part is you still haven’t gotten that goddamn CPS paperwork filed.
You try to sit up.
That was a big mistake. The pain grabs you by the spine and yanks. Your breath catches, snaps, really, and for one awful second, everything goes white. Like full-screen, clinical-grade whiteout.
“No—nope, I'm gonna stay down—here . . .”
Someone’s hands on your shoulders now. You can't tell but your sure its more nurses who do a lot more shouting. “Where’s the gurney? I called for a gurney—”
You feel the floor shift under your back as someone slides a board beneath you. The cold plastic against your spine makes you shudder. You’re dimly aware of a woman trying to start an IV in your left arm while someone else pinches the skin near your jaw to keep you conscious.
“Stay with us, Sweetheart. What’s your name?”
“Don’t call me sweetheart. I will end your whole bloodline.”
“Vitals dropping. Systolic’s barely hanging on—”
“I swear to god if you cut this top I’m gonna—fuck—fuck!”
And then, just when you’re about to black out from blood loss, indignation, and the unbearable itch of polyester against your sweat-slicked neck, you hear it.
The ER double doors slam open with force. someone stomps in. Heavy boots and even heavier breath. A voice like a blade drawn clean from its sheath. “Move,” and the second you hear it, every cell in your body screams oh no.
Because that’s Jack.
And you are so fucked.
His eyes scan the chaos. Security wrestling with the man who stabbed you. Blood smeared on the floor like some fucked-up Jackson Pollock. Kiara kneeling over you, hand pressed to your side.
And then, he sees you.
You’re half-upright on the gurney now, propped on one elbow, trying to stop the nurses from cutting your blazer with a pair of trauma shears. Your delirious at this point. “Don’t—don’t—I like this outfit, I swear to god I’ll sue someone—”
“She’s in shock,” someone murmurs beside him. “She lost a lot of blood—she needs—”
“I'm not in shock—Jack, tell them I'm being fucking serious—ow, ow—!"
“Out of my way.” He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to because in an instant, they scatter and then he’s at your side.
“Jesus Christ,” he growls, and his hands are already on you, gripping your jaw and tipping your face toward his. Checking your pupils. Your color. “What the fuck happened?”
You blink up at him. You’re smiling. Why are you smiling? Your teeth are pink. You can taste your own blood on your tongue. “Hi, Jackie,” you slur. “You ever see your life flash before your eyes and it’s just thirty seconds of you eating string cheese in the staff bathroom?”
His nostrils flare and you can visibly see his jaw click. His hands tighten just slightly where they hold your face. “What part of ‘stay out of red-level interventions’ did you not fucking understand?”
“What part of ‘this kid was getting beat to hell’ did you miss. Ow, fuck, Jack—” you whine. He’s already assessing the wound, pulling back the soaked fabric. His fingers are too skilled and too gentle. It makes you dizzy in a different way.
Who the fuck gets horny while actively bleeding out?
“Knife wound. Lower right quadrant. No visible organ evisceration. Bleeding’s heavy but localized." One of the nurses that scattered, called out towards Jack. He nod and then yells, "get trauma five ready. Now!”
The nurses move like they’ve been struck. Someone shoves open the trauma bay doors. The gurney wheels groan. “We were doing our job,” Kiara cuts in, still breathless, still covered in your blood. Almost as if she knows Jack is about to rip her a new one.
Jack’s head snaps toward her. His voice drops. “Your job was to keep her out of this kind of risk. Not to throw her into a CPS confrontation without a trained intervention officer or security present.”
“We didn’t know he had a knife.”
“Then maybe next time you vet the violent assholes before they get within stabbing distance! She's my fucking responsibility, Kiara!”
Oof.
Your heart skips at that one.
Kiara looks like she’s been slapped but Jack’s not done. “You were supposed to keep her out of danger.” His voice breaks slightly, not enough for anyone else to notice.
But you do.
The gurney jerks forward. “You’re gonna be fine,” Jack mutters, voice low and tight as he walks beside you. “You hear me?”
“Yeah, but . . . like. Hot fine or like regular fine? Because I feel like I’m leaking in ways that’ll mess up my whole aesthetic—”
“Do you ever quit it?”
“You’re so mean to me.”
“You got stabbed, you little brat.”
“Yeah, but like . . . for justice.” He looks like he wants to strangle you. They wheel you through the trauma bay doors.
Somewhere, under the pain and the blood and the rising nausea, you feel safe. Which is pretty ironic because you did just get fucking stabbed.
The gurney squeals around the corner on uneven wheels, one of them stuck from some ancient collision with a supply cart two years ago. You feel it drag beneath you every few feet, the jolt punching through your spine like a hammer to bone.
You’re vaguely aware of the nurse, Jess? Jenny?. Whatever her name is, she is shouting something about trauma bay five. You think Shen is above you, pushing the gurney. You think you told him once you liked his cargo boots. Maybe you hallucinated that.
You can’t tell.
Everything’s red, sticky, pulsing and all too bright.
Jack’s hands are still on you. One pressed hard to your side, keeping the pressure constant. The other gripping the side metal railing of the gurney like he wants to rip it off. He’s leaning over you on your left, breathing hard, jaw clenched so tight you swear you can hear his molars grinding.
“Where the fuck is security?!” His voice ricochets off the corridor walls. “I want them in the trauma bay, now!” Shen flinches.
“Already called. they're on their way—”
“They should’ve been there before she was stabbed!”
“Dr. Abbot—”
The rage coming off Jack is nuclear.
You’re still bleeding, granted not as fast as before, but enough that your skin’s gone cold. Your lips feel weird. You want to say something sarcastic but it’s like your brain’s swimming through molasses.
Jack’s hand, broad, steady, coated in your blood—grips your wrist suddenly, anchoring you to the gurney frame as they jerk you through the trauma bay doors. You know he's looking for a pulse because your eyes have begun to flutter.
“You with me?” he asks, voice rougher now, a crack under all that rage. “Don’t you dare close your eyes.”
“S’just . . . a little nap,” you mumble. “Ten minutes, Jackie…”
“No. No naps. Open your fucking eyes.”
They stop moving. The gurney locks in. The light above you flares on, white, sterile, cruel on your eyelids but it doesn't matter because you are no longer awake.
"Fuck!" Jack curses when he looks down and immediately notices your eyes have closed and not reopened.
A flurry of movement, gloves and gauze all being pushed towards you. Shen pulls out trauma scissors. Jack slaps his hand away. “Touch that top and she’ll gut you when she wakes up.”
“It's covered in blood—” Shen tries to argue.
“So is everything else in this room. You want to cut something? Cut the fuckin' attitude.” He doesn’t stop moving. One hand is pressing gauze to your side, the other already reaching over for the tray before the nurse can even finish unwrapping the sterile kit. His voice is tight, rapid, mechanical.
“BP?”
“Dropping.”
“Push one liter wide open, then start the second. Two large-bore IVs. I need four-o suture, lidocaine, betadine.”
“We called trauma surgery—”
“I've got it! It's not deep enough for surgery, we just gotta stop the bleeding.”
The door opens again. Security arrives. Theres two of them, maybe three. It doesn't matter. He doesn’t glance up. He has more important things to look at right now.
He’s already pulling away the soaked fabric with steady, clinical hands, fingers stained deep rust-red, jaw clenched hard enough to crack enamel. Blood sticks to his gloves, smears the blue of the latex a sickening color of crimson.
He leans over your side, peering into the wound, lips pressed into a razor-thin line. The pads of his fingers ghost across your skin, professional, careful, but still somehow desperate.
Then, Jack rounds on them like a storm.
He looks insane. Still gloved—blood dripping from his fingers. Your blood. “You.” His voice is a snarl now. “How the fuck did a man with a weapon get past you?”
He doesn’t yell it at anyone specific. Or maybe he does. Maybe it’s aimed at security, still standing by the door like they’re not five seconds away from being flayed alive.
They hesitate.
“No, really, how? Was he invisible? Did the metal detector take the night off? Did someone forget to give a single fuck about basic safety protocol?”
“He wasn’t flagged. He didn’t show signs of escalation—”
“You let him sit ten feet from an unaccompanied minor and a staff intern, are you fucking kidding me?!”
He turns back to you. Taking the syringe from the nurse and he injects lidocaine near the wound with terrifying precision. His voice lowers, just a hair when he talks to Shen. “Local in. She’s stable enough for sutures.”
A nurse scrubs your side. You wince even in unconsciousness.
“He was apprehended—"
“After!" he yells. Almost everyone in the room jumps at the sound. "After, she was bleeding on the floor.”
“Dr. abbot—” Kiara’s voice behind him is calm, firm, a professional’s warning, dares to speak. “You’re not being rational.”
He spins on her.
“Rational?” he echoes, without looking at her. “She’s twenty-four. She’s a grad student. she was assigned to work under you and now I’m the one threading her skin back together while you stand there acting like this is just another Thursday.”
He glares at her. It’s enough to cut through steel. “You want to talk rational? Let’s start with what the fuck went wrong on your watch.”
Kiara flinches, but says nothing. He goes back to you. “Vitals holding,” a nurse says. “We’re okay.”
“She is not fucking okay,” Jack mutters. “She’s just not dead yet.”
You're not quite sure when you fell unconscious but your eyes slowly blink open. Blinking once then twice before peering up at him through your lashes. Your voice is weak but you can’t help it. “You always this mean to girls who bleed on you?” His eyes flick down and his jaw tightens but his heart races at the fact that you have come back to consciousness.
“You’re not special.”
“Liar.”
His hands don’t tremble, not even a little, but his breathing’s off. You know it is. “You need to stop talking,” he says flatly.
“You need to stop flirting,” a nurse mutters. The glare she received from Jack could've leveled cities and you whisper you were more coherent to enjoy it.
“I’m dying, let me have this.”
“You are not dying,” Jack grits out. “And you are making this infinitely worse.”
“You’re so hot when you’re mad.”
“I’m always mad.”
“Yeah, but now you’re mad and wrist-deep in my side, which is kind of hot, ow ow ow okay, okay—” he tightens the last suture knot with a jerk. You yelp. Shen snorts in the corner and coughs to cover it.
The room is quieter now. The bleeding’s under control. Your adrenaline is burning off and Jack is still covered in your blood.
“If she tries to leave, fuckin' sedate her and someone—” he turns to security, eyes like frozen steel, “better have gotten that fucking asshole outta my waiting room."
He finally stops moving.
Finally pulls his gloves off with a audible snap and tosses them into the bin. Then the trauma bay doors shut with a hiss of finality as the nurses and security and Shen leave the trauma room.
The moment they do, the temperature in the room drops ten degrees and it is definitely not from the ac or the sweat drying on your skin.
He stands just inside the door, his chest heaving like he sprinted through a war zone, like he’s still in one. His jaw is clenched. His eyes are locked on you.
You, sprawled across the gurney, still half in your ruined clothes and half in denial, look up at him with a dazed little frown. “Your mad at me?” your voice is quiet and severely lacking all its bravado. He doesn’t answer.
He just strides toward the sink, scrubs his hands again with rough, punishing motions, blood still drying along his forearms. You watch the red turn pink then wash completely off.
He doesn't speak until his hands are clean. He doesn’t even look at you until the blood is off and even then, it’s not a soft look. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
You blink at him. "Because it was my fucking fault I got stabbed."
“Don’t start,” he bites, already reaching for the medical wipes and gauze. “You don’t get have an attitude right now.”
“I got stabbed. Pretty sure that buys me a little attitude.”
“Pretty sure you’re not in charge of anything right now.” He steps to your side, eyes flicking over the damage. Your shirt’s in a heap on the ground soaked through with dried and tacky blood. Your skin is sticky, crusted red in patches, with fresh bruises blooming violet along your ribs.
His lips press into a furious line as he wipes near the edge of your bra. You’re thankful he abided by your request not to cut your shirt but that left you stripped down to your bra and not a cute one. One of the functional, beige, i didn’t think i’d be impaled today variety. Blood has soaked halfway down it.
“Raise your arm.”
“Why?”
“So I can clean you up.”
“Y’know, if you wanted to feel me up that badly, you could’ve just asked—” He cuts you off with a glare.
You do as you're told, albeit slowly and with a hiss and a wince and a muttered insult about men with god complexes. “You're stupid. Fucking reckless. Bleeding like a goddamn faucet and still making jokes—”
“This’ll sting,” he warns has the wipe gets closer to the wound.
“Oh, now you’re warning me?” The cold hits your ribs and you flinch so hard your elbow nearly clocks him in the chin. He doesn’t back away. He doesn’t soften. His hand goes to your shoulder, presses you down, holds you still.
“Do you have any idea what you just did?” His voice is low now, in a dangerous kind of tone. “What kind of risk you took?” You look at him. smirk twitching. Weak, but still there.
“I saved a kid.”
“You could’ve died.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Then what the fuck were you thinking?!” His voice cracks on that last word. You go quiet. His hand on your shoulder trembles before tightening again.
The alcohol stings as he wipes more of the blood from your stomach, your ribs, your hip. He moves like he’s trying not to hurt you, but everything about him is rigid.
He tosses the gauze into the bin and grabs the gown from the side tray.
“Arms up.”
“Bossy.”
“Up.”
You raise them.
He slips the gown over your head like he’s furious at the fabric. It’s thin, starched and smells like bleach and regret. He yanks the ties into place then tugs the hem down to your thighs with clinical detachment and short, angry motions, like the fabric personally insulted him. You flinch at the tug.
You think that’s it. You think he’s done. You think you’re safe.
You are not safe.
“We need to get that bra off.” His voice is flat, cold, and utterly clinical. You blink, slowly. “It’s fine,” you lie. “I’ll take care of it later.”
“It’s soaked in blood.”
“A little vintage gore never hurt anybody.”
“It’s sticking to the skin near your wound. If it dries like that, you'll pull a stitch and I'll have to do it all over again. You won’t like that.”
“You could’ve just said you wanted to see my tits.” He stares at you like he wants to put you back in shock on purpose. “I'm going to unhook it,” he says, already stepping around the gurney. “Don’t make this weird.”
“Too late.”
He exhales sharply, through his nose, through gritted teeth and moves behind you. The room is quiet now. Just the soft shuffle of his boots, the faint beeping of the vitals monitor, the rustle of your hospital gown as he pulls it back from your shoulders, just enough to reach the clasp.
Your breath hitches, not from pain, but from how goddamn careful he is. His fingers graze the curve of your spine, knuckles rough, fingertips clean, not gloved anymore but bare and touching your skin.
“Tilt forward a little.”
You do.
You feel the graze of his knuckle against the sides of your ribs.
Your skin lights up under every inch he touches. A wildfire. A problem. “I’m only doing this so it doesn’t stick,” he mutters, as if reading your dirty goddamn mind. “Sure,” you whisper, lips dry. “That’s what they all say.”
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t scold you for once.
And that probably makes this a hundred times worse for you. The clasp clicks open with a soft snap.
He pulls the bra away from your back, one side at a time, fabric peeling slow over the dried blood on your skin. You hiss, part pain, part, well, not pain.
“I’ll throw it out,” he says, folding it into a biohazard bag.
“No ceremony? That thing’s seen more action than my entire dating history.” Still no answer. He tugs the gown back up your arms. Re-ties it. His fingers brush the nape of your neck. You nearly shiver.
“You’re burning up,” he mutters.
“You’re touching me.”
“You might have a fever.”
"You're touching me, Jack."
He pauses, just one breath. Just one moment. Then, “don’t make this worse than it is.” If you didn't know any better you'd of thought he was begging. You turn your head. “You’re the one undressing me in a trauma bay, Jack.”
His jaw tightens. "We’re done here.”
“That’s too bad,” you murmur, “I was starting to think you liked me.” He doesn’t move but after a second, when he turns back towards you. You catch it, that twitch of his hand, that flicker of restraint.
“You think this is a joke. That bleeding out in my ER is some kind of fucking bit.”
“Jack—”
“You don’t get it. You don’t.” You stare at him. He’s pacing now, hands on his hips, breathing shallow. “You could’ve died. Do you know what that would’ve done to your dad? To me?”
Your heart skips. He realizes what he’s said. He closes his eyes. breathes. Once, then twice. “I’m going to go fill out your chart.”
He turns toward the door.
But not before you whisper, “you were scared.” He stops but he doesn’t turn around. “You were scared for me.”
Another pause. “Say it, Jack.”
Then, without turning, “Don’t you ever fucking do that again.”
omg i thought you had deleted your morgue fic lmao i wrote smth wrong and obviously tumblr couldnt find it and i freaked out 😭😭😭 dont ever delete it im so serious
noooo the day i delete jackie and morgue girl is the day that i die!!! they are literally my whole lifeeee lmao
kinda wanna beef with robby so here’s a teaser for the next jackie and morgue girl update 🤪
tw ; prolly ooc robby but idc 🤷♀️
“She’s thirty,” Jack is half leaned on the command desk, his face scrunched as he winces. Jack has never had a problem with your age, but for some reason telling Robby made him feel like he was admitting a dirty little secret.
Robby stopped typing on his computer and looked hesitantly towards the man he was consider a brother. “Are we having some kind of midlife crisis?” Robby asked.
He could have been joking. Jack wished he was but Robby’s expression was nothing if not serious. He scratches the back of his neck nervously.
“No, it’s nothing like that, ok,” Jack tried to reason. “Look you just gotta meet her.”
Robby scoffed. “What does a thirty-year-old woman want with your old ass?” He hadn’t meant it as an insult but Robby couldn’t fathom the idea of a young thirty year old woman trailing after a man double her age. Call him old fashioned or whatever you want but he’d been raised better than that.
━━ john logan x graham!reader ; wc 7.6k
tw ; mention of parental abuse ( phil graham ) , secret relationship/brothers best friend , unedited
part one \ part two
Hannah sat at the tiny kitchen table with her laptop open in front of her, one foot tucked beneath her as she worked through a mountain of notes for one of her classes.
Across the room, you occumpied your usual spot on the couch. At some point over the last week, the couch had become yours. It wasn't like you moved in or anything but your blanket was always there. Your charger was permanently plugged into the outlet beside it. One of your textbooks sat abandoned on the coffee table beside an empty mug from earlier.
It wasn't home but it was beginning to feel dangerously close.
You highlighted the passage in your textbook before scribbling something into the margin. The movement felt mechanical at this point. You'd spent the better part of the week trying to convince yourself everything was normal by throwing yourself into your studies.
Though it wasn't as easy as you thought it would be. You had convinced yourself that simply leaving hockey house for the time being would be enough to forget your problems.
Perhaps if you'd really thought about it, you probably shouldn't have moved in with Allie and Hannah if you were trying to avoid anything and everything hockey.
They were your best friends but unfortunately, Hannah and Allie weren't exactly neutral territory. They were also both dating members of the team and not just any members but Dean and your brother Garrett.
Avoiding hockey while living with them was a little like trying to avoid water while sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool.
They tried their best not to bring it in conversation too much or bring them around but there was bound to be mess ups.
The front door burst open. You didn't even need to look up to know that today was going to be significantly harder to run away from your problems. The sheer force of his entrance announced him before he every spoke.
He was mumbling something to Allie that you didn't quite catch but you definitely heard both of their laughs bouncing off the dorm room walls. You look up just in time to watch them stumble past the walk way and further into the dorm.
Dean had one arm slung around Allie's shoulders while she attempted and failed to push him away playfully. The sight was so aggressively normal it almost made you smile.
Allie's eye landed on you as they approached the couch.
The smile vanished from her face so quickly it was almost impressive. You knew exactly what she was thinking. The realization hit her and immediately triggered a mountain of guilt. You could see it in her eyes.
"Oh my god."
You immediately sat up straighter. "It's ok," you reassured.
She still looked horrified. "I totally forgot—"
"Seriously," you offered her the most reassuring smile you could manage with everyone staring at you. "It's fine."
You stomach had already started twisting itself into knots but that wasn't Allie's fault and the last thing you wanted was for her to have to walk on eggshells in her own dorm room.
"This is your dorm, Al," you continued. "If anything, I'm the one intruding."
The words came so naturally you barely thought about them. That was probably apart of the problem because immediately afterward you recognized exactly what you'd done.
You had minimized your pain in the service of making someone else feel better. Again. Making yourself smaller. You were getting disturbingly good at it.
Allie's expression softened slightly. You smiled again, one last attempt to convince her. This time the smile reached your eyes or at least you hoped it did.
Eventually she offered one back. Unfortunately, Dean chose that exact moment to pull the conversation back. "Damn, Graham."
Your stomach sank immediately. You tried to prepare yourself what what he might say but there were too many possibilities. You could only hope that he didn't mention what you think he was about to.
He was completely oblivious. "You really know how to wreck a hockey house," a laugh escaped him.
You managed a tiny smile in hopes that would make him move on faster. Dean, of course, interpreted it as encouragement.
"Seriously though," he dropped dramatically on to the couch next to you. One arm stretched lazily across the back of the couch behind you. "Logan looks like absolute shit."
You shifted and suddenly you couldn't feel your hands properly.
Across the room, Hannah looked up from her laptop. You didn't miss the way her eyes immediately found yours. Dean missed it entirely.
"Dean—" Allie tried.
But once Dean started talking it was like trying to stop a freight train. "What?" he asked genuinely confused but he still continued. "Like I knew you two sneaking around was gonna blow up eventually but Jesus!"
Humiliation flooded your chest so quickly it almost stole your breath. Not because Dean sounded angry. Not because he was blaming you. Because he wasn't.
"Dean," this time it was Hannah.
"Him and Garrett, like cats and fucking dogs, bro." He immediately started making clawing motions with his fingers. Dean continued. "They can't even be in the same room right now."
Something inside your chest dropped. The room suddenly felt too small. And your brain did what it always did. It twisted and it weaponized your own misgivings.
You ruined everything.
You ruined Garrett's friendship.
You ruined the house.
You ruined Logan.
The thoughts all arrived at once. Fast enough to make your stomach hurt.
Before anyone could stop you, you stood. The motion was abrupt enough to startle everyone, even Dean. You grabbed the first excuse you could fine. "I need some air." They were thinner than you intended.
You didn't give them a chance to respond because then you were moving and you didn't stop. Not even when you heard the tail end of Allie scolding her boyfriends. "Are you actually fucking stupid?" You practically heard the thump she gave him on the head.
You didn't stop when you heard Hannah mutter, "I'll talk to her," or the soft padding of her foot steps behind you.
You didn't stop until your feet carried you all the way outside.
Cold air hit your face the second the dorm building shut behind you.
It should have helped, the air, you mean.
Instead your lungs still felt tight, like Dean's words had followed you outside and lodged themselves somewhere beneath your ribs.
You stopped near the concrete steps leading down towards the parking lot, foling your arms tightly across your chest against the wind. Campus looked different this late at night.
Softer in a way you almost despised. The sidewalks glowed gold beneath the street lamps while distant dorm window flickered with movement and television light.
Somewhere farther across Briar's campus, you swore you could hear people laughing. Normal people. The kind got into fights and hookups and messy college drama without accidentally detonating years worth of trauma in the process.
The door opened behind you again. You didn't need to turn around to know it was Hannah. "Dean's an idiot," she states, simply.
Despite everything, a quiet breath of amusement escaped you. "You're just now figuring that out?"
Hannah moved to stand beside you, leaning her elbows against the railing in mirror of you. She wore one of Garrett's hoddies, you recognized, over leggings, sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms. Her brunette hair pulled into a messy knot that looked like she'd done it without much thought to how it looked. You craved her effortlessness.
"He really didn't mean to upset you," she said gently, "You better than anyone know he has absolutely no filter."
"I know," you rubbed your hands over your arm absentmindedly. "I know he didn't." You stared out towards the empty parking lot for a second before adding quietly, "I'm fine."
The lie settled between you immediately. It wasn't dramatic but it wasn't wholly convincing either. Hannah was quiet long enough that you finally looked over at her.
"You don't have to pretend you're okay with me," she muttered. Something in your chest tightened painfully at how easily she said it. When she spoke to you, it didn't feel like the others. It didn't feel like she was accusing you of anything or trying to pity you.
It was like she was just saying statement. Just matter of fact.
She'd already noticed the way you'd spent the last week making yourself smaller in her dorm. Sleeping on the couch despite both her and Allie offering their beds more than once. Keeping your clothes folded neatly in one tiny overnight bag near the armrest like you were afraid to spread it out too much.
You looked away first. You feared that if you looked at her any longer you'd be helpless to spill your guts to her. She just had that way about her. You thought perhaps that was what drew Garrett to her in the first place.
"Look, Hannah," you swallowed once. "I know Garrett's told you all about—" the words stalled out halfway. You made a vague motion with your hand instead, hoping she understood what you were trying to say. "You know."
You saw her expression shift almost immediately. Suddenly more hesitant and more careful then you'd seen her before. Like she thought you were about to tell her Garrett never should have said anything in the first place.
Honestly, maybe you should have felt that way.
Because it wasn't just Garrett's story to tell, it was yours too. But the idea of him carrying all of that around alone somehow felt worse than the alternitive.
"Hey," you said quickly before she could apologize for something you weren't mad at. "Really. I'm glad he told you."
Hannah frowned slightly.
"He deserves somebody he can trust. Especially with something like that." Something soft and sad flickered across her face then, gone almost instantly. For a minute neither of you said anything.
Then Hannah asked quietly, "Did you want to tell Logan eventually?"
"Yes," the answer came out so fast it surprised even you. Your voice held no hesitation, no uncertainty. Because the truth was that you had wanted to tell him someday. You just hadn't gotten there yet.
Hannah glanced toward you carefully. "What made you wait?"
You let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
It felt strangely easy talking to Hannah out here in the dark where nobody could really look at you directly. Maybe because Garrett had already trusted her with the ugliest parts of the story. Maybe because Hannah was unique positioned to give you an insight on how both Garrett and Logan were feeling and why.
Or maybe it was because you were exhausted from carrying this around by yourself. And now that Logan knew anyway, what did it matter? Either way, this was the situation you were in. "I didn't want it to change the way looked at me," you confessed. The words had come out quicker and more true than you had intended.
Your throat tightened and you looked hard down at the concrete beneath your shoes. "Turns out I had a reason to be scared."
Hannah didn't interrupt, she didn't rush to reassure you, she just let you be. That almost made it easier to keep going. "You didn't see his face, Hannah."
Your vision blurred suddenly enough that you had to blink hard against it. "Before . . ," you swallowed, "before he looked at me and saw—" The word caught somewhere deep in your chest. "Me."
"And now?" Hannah's voice stayed soft.
A horrible ache spread through you so sharply it almost made your stomach hurt. "Now all he sees is what happened to me." The sentence hung there between you. Raw and humiliating.
You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself. "And fuck, I get it," your laugh this time sound thin even to your own ears. "When Garrett started saying all that shit—" You stopped, jaw tightening hard enough to ache. "How was Logan supposed to look at me normally after that?"
For a second all you could hear was the distant traffic and the hum of campus life. Then Hannah sighed quietly beside you. "I really can't speak for Garrett or what he was feeling in that moment," she admitted carefully. "But right now? He's terrified."
"I know that."
"No," Hannah said gently, "I don't think you do."
That made you turn and look at her. She leaned further against the railing to catch your eye. "Maybe on some level you understand it," she continued, "But you and Garrett are looking at this from completely different places."
The knot in your chest tightened.
"Garrett doesn't think Logan is like your father," you frown slightly, "He thinks anger turns men into him."
The words hit hard enough that you physically stilled. Because suddenly Garrett's face in your bedroom looked differently in your memory. Less controling and furious and more terrified. You wonder how you didn't see it before.
"Logan would never hurt me," you stated firmly. You knew that with complete certainty. Hannah nodded immediately. "I know," and her voice held no doubt or hesistation.
"Garrett knows that too," she said softly, "But he thought the same thing about your dad once too."
The air left your lungs slowly. And for the first time since the fight happened, the situation shifted slightly beneath your feet. Because until now you'd only been seeing it from your side, the humiliation, the exposure, the way Logan looked at you afterward.
You hadn't really stopped to consider what Garrett must have seen standing in that doorway. Not Logan, but your father in another form.
"I wasn't there for the fight," Hannah said after a minute. "But I saw the aftermath." You looked at her quietly. "You know what I saw when Logan went looking for Garrett afterward?"
Your stomach twisted painfully. "What?" you ask.
Hannah's expression softened immeasurably. "A guy who looked completely fucking heartbroken." Your eyes burned with fresh tears at the new revelation. "There wasn't any pity," she said firmly. "I saw somebody realizing how much pain you've been carrying around alone and having absolutely no idea how to help you."
The hockey house is rarely quiet.
There was usually a hockey game playing somewhere, or Tucker making some kind of extravagant lunch, or Dean arguing with somebody just for the sake of arguing.
Today there was nothing.
Just the soft hum of the refrigerator and the sound of your own footsteps as you climbed the stairs.
No Tucker or Dean.
No Logan.
That last thought hit harder than it should have and you immediately try to shove it aside. You weren't here for Logan and you weren't here for Garrett either.
The only reason you have been brave enough to even step in the vicinity of hockey house was that Hannah had promised the house was empty for at least an hour and you were running out of clothes.
That was it.
Nothing more.
The lie sounded flimsy even inside your own head.
The last couple of days had made you a stranger in your own home. The realization landed harder than it should have. Days of sleeping on Hannah and Allie's couch. Days of pretending you weren't checking your phone every five minutes. Days of deliberately avoiding every place on campus where you might accidentally run into Logan.
The hallway upstairs looked unchanged too. Even the hole in the wall next to your bedroom door was still there. It was smaller than you remember, though. You can tell someone had tried to patch it up. A rough square of spackle sat over the damage, uneven and obvious against the surrounding paint.
Your stomach twisted as your mind played the scene in your head unexpectedly. The crack of Garrett's fist going through the sheet rock. The sharp sting of fear behind your ribs that you had been helpless to stop. And the humiliation that had followed immediately afterward when you realized that Logan had seen you flinch.
You pack quickly because you feared if you spent any longer in this house you'd probably start crying.
Pulling a duffle from your closet, you yanked open your drawers, one after the other. There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to the clothes you grabbed.
The faster you left, the better.
The faster you moved, the less opportunity there was to think.
Unfortunately, thinking found you anyway. Your eye caught your dresser where one of Logan's cologne sat. Your desk chair in which his hoodie was draped.
They were normal things. Stupid things. Things that shouldn't have felt like somebody sticking their fingers directly into your ribcage. But everywhere you looked was piece of Logan.
It's a wonder Garrett hadn't found out sooner.
Twenty minutes later your bag was full. You slung the strap over your shoulder and headed down stairs before you could change your mind.
Or worse, before you abandoned your whole plan and just laid in your bed.
The front door opened just as you reached the foyer. You froze immediately, hoping it was either Dean or Tucker, but mostly the latter. The universe, apparently, had a sick sense of humor.
Garrett stepped in carrying a hockey bag over one shoulder. He stopped just as abruptly when he saw you standing there. He looked tired in a way you'd never seen before. More than just bags under his eyes, his shoulders sagged. Something uncomfortable shifted inside your chest. You tried to ignore it.
For a second, neither of you spoke. The surprise on his face mirrored your own. Then something else settled over it. Some thing sickeningly familiar and your stomach sank.
You were starting to think that Hannah's definition of an empty house and your definition were two very different things.
"What are you doing here?" you asked.
Garrett blinked once then scoffed, incredulously. "Besides the fact that I live here?"
Your rolled your eyes, not because the answer particularly annoyed you but because it sounded so painfully like Garrett. The same sarcastic tone. The same smartass response.
The same brother who used to steal your fries then act confused when you got mad about it.
You both dropped your bag simultaneously with thuds on the ground as you stared each other down. You crossed your arms because he did not answer your question.
"Han is coming over," he relented, reluctantly.
Understanding hit you immediately. You stared at him, then the front door, then at him again. You wondered how he would react if you'd just left.
"Fucking Hannah," you grumbled.
"Excuse me?" Garrett narrowed his eyes quickly. Despite yourself, despite everything, a tiny piece of your irritation shifted. Because of course of all things happening right now, Garrett was offended on Hannah's behalf.
You almost laugh despite yourself. It was a clever plan, you had to admit. You never thought she would stoop so low as to trick you into running into your brother.
"I was just leaving," you explained before reaching down and grabbing your discarded bag. You stepped around him and curled your hand around the door knob but before you could so much as turn it you heard Garrett scoff behind you. "I see you're still running away."
The doorknob suddenly felt very cold beneath your fingers. You froze for a second but then you were whipping around. "Excuse me?"
Garrett crossed him arms. "That's what you do." Something dangerous flickered in his expression and suddenly it felt less like talking to your brother and more like standing across from the captain of the hockey team. "When things get hard, you run away. Did when you were younger, doing it now," he finished.
The words landed exactly where they were supposed to, right beneath your ribs. The accusation tasted like bile on your tongue. Maybe because some small, ugly part knew there was a small truth to his words. "Fuck you, Garrett."
The word practically launched out of your mouth before you could really think about it. Garrett, though, didn't even flinch. If anything, his expression hardened further.
"Don't get mad at me because I'm the only one telling the truth around here," he crossed his arms.
You laughed once, sharp and humorless. You understood exactly what he meant. The months you spent sneaking around his back with Logan. "Obviously I was right not to tell you."
Garrett's head snapped back slightly, like your words had caught him off guard. "This isn't my fault," he snapped.
The sheer audacity of that statement almost made you laugh again. "Isn't it?" you ask.
"Yeah," he mumbled, sarcastically as he threw a hand out between you, "it's my fault you fucked my best friend."
Something hot and immediate flared in your chest. Anger or embarrassment, you didn't know. Maybe both. "Not that it's any of your fucking business," you shot back, "but Logan and I haven't fucked."
You hated the term but it only seemed appropriate for the way he was behaving. For the first time since he'd walked in on you and Logan, Garrett looked genuinely surprised.
It lasted but a second before his mouth flattened back into a thin line. You wave both your hands around him wildly. "So this whole thing—," you continued to gesture between the two of you, the house, the most miserable couple of days of your life, "is all fucking you!"
"Coulda fooled me."
"Oh my god!"
You stared at him because somehow he still wasn't getting it. Or maybe he was and was simply too stubborn to admit it. Both options equally screamed Garrett and it was making your head spin.
"You promised me," the words cracked through the foyer.
They were quiet. You could hear how much he meant them. "You stood right there and promised me you'd stay away from the team."
The guilt hit you unexpectedly, wholly sharp and unwanted because he wasn't wrong. You had promised. Standing in this very house, actually. At the time you thought Garrett was being ridiculous, overprotective and annoying.
Now look where all of that had gotten you.
Your guilt had only lasted a second before the anger returned. "Not every fucking hockey player is dad."
The words echoed through the silence that followed. Neither of you moved nor looked away. "I don't go around accusing you of being just like him." The second the sentence left your mouth you knew you'd gone too far.
Garrett's entire body went still. "What the hell does that mean?"
You swallowed. "Your a hockey player," you started. Your brain was screaming at you to stop, to shut up, but instead you continued. "So by your twisted logic, you're him."
"I'm nothing like him," Garrett snapped with no hesitation.
The fight leaked right out of you because of course he wasn't. You had never, not once in your entire life, looked at Garrett and seen your father. Not when he was sixteen and standing between you and a slammed bedroom door. Not when he was eighteen and moving heaven and earth to get you in to Briar. Not even when he'd been so angry he'd punched a hole in your bedroom wall.
And judging by the look on Garrett's face that wasn't what he'd heard. Guilt twisted in your stomach. "I didn't mean it like that."
Garrett looked away first. Which somehow made it worse.
"I just don't understand why you keep trying to turn Logan into Dad," you explained. Your voice came out quieter now, less angry and more defeated. "You know better than anyone that he'd never do that."
"I don't know that."
You were at a loss. You couldn't even begin to comprehend why Garrett wasn't willing to give Logan the benefit of the doubt that he was giving himself. He'd insisted he wasn't his father simply because he was a hockey player so why did that alone mean Logan was.
"Bullshit."
His eyes snapped back to yours. "Can you for once just try and look at this from my perspective?" The frustration in his voice caught you off guard. Because beneath the anger and stubborness and accusations, there was something that sounded suspiciously like desperation.
You stared at him then slowly shook your head. "I am looking at this from your perspective," you explained. Garrett opened his mouth to refute. You didn't let him speak. "You don't trust me."
It landed between you with startling clarity. Because that was it, wasn't it?
That was the the thing you'd been carrying around since the fight. The fact that Garrett looked at your relationship and saw a disaster waiting to happen. That he looked at you and apparently saw someone incapable of protecting herself.
"Do you honestly think I wouldn't be able to spot the signs?" you asked, incredulously.
Your throat tightened as years flashed through your head all at once. Locked doors, raised voices, the careful way your mother used to watch the room whenever your father came home.
You knew what fear looked like. You knew what apologies sounded like when they were't really apologies.
You knew.
"Do you think I wouldn't protect myself?"
Garrett's expression cracked for a second and you saw it immediately. "We both know how hard it is to walk away from something like that," he confessed.
The fight drained out of you so suddenly it made you dizzy. Because for the first time since this whole mess started, you finally understood what Hannah had been trying to tell you.
It was fear. That's was Garrett was feeling right now. Not anger because you had broken the promise. Not betrayal because the one you had chose had been his best friends.
Fear.
"I'm just trying to protect you."
"Did it ever occur to you that I don't want it?" The question stopped him cold. He blinked once then again. Like the possibility had genuinely never crossed his mind before.
You had spent your whole life living behind Garrett. He was your shield and when you were young, that was what you need to protect yourself from your father. Garrett didn't understand why now that wasn't what you needed.
"What?"
You swallowed hard. "You are my brother," the emotion was pressing hard against your ribs. It made every word ache. "And I love you more than anyone in the world. But you have to let me make my own decisions," your eyes burned, "and my own mistakes."
The house seeming impossibly quiet around you. Then his shoulders sagged, suddenly looking older than you remembered. "I just don't want to see you hurt."
"I know that."
Garrett rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, despretely trying to look anywhere except at you.
"But bad things happen, Garrett. People get hurt. Relationships end and if that happens, I will deal with it."
He closed his eyes for a second and another. Finally he dragged both ahnds over his face and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. "I'm so fucking sorry."
Your brother had never been particularly good at apologies.
Not because he wasn't sorry when he screwed up. Quite the opposite, actually. Garrett felt everything so intensely that sometimes it seemed to swallow him whole. He just wasn't very good at saying it out loud.
So when he did, you knew he meant it.
Garrett's hands were still covering part of his face, his gaze fixed firmly on the hardwood floor like he couldn't quite bring himself to look at you.
The sight hurt because he'd looked guilty and for as angry as you'd been these past couple of days, that was never what you'd wanted. You'd wanted him to understand.
There was a difference.
Garrett finally looked up. His eyes found yours for the first time in what felt like hours.
You weren't even entirely sure what there was left to say. Because the truth was that Garrett had hurt you, badly.
The truth was also that you'd hurt him too.
You'd lied.
You'd hidden Logan.
You'd broken a promise.
And somewhere in the middle of all that hurt, the two of you had forgotten something embarrassingly simple.
You were on the same side.
The realization hit with enough force to make your chest ache. Garrett wasn't your enemy. He never had been. He was just your brother. Your stupid, stubborn, overprotective brother who loved you so much that sometimes he forgot where protecting ended and controlling began.
The same brother who used to leave his bedroom door cracked open when you were kids because he knew thunderstorms scared you.
The same brother who stood between you and your father more times than you could count.
Your vision blurred, again.
God, you were getting really tired of crying.
Garrett saw it immediately. The guilt on his face somehow deepened. "Hey," he said quietly. The single word sounded wrecked.
You shook your head before he could continue. Then you crossed the distance between you. Garrett barely had time to react. One second there was space between you. The next your arms were around him.
For half a heartbeat he froze. Then both of his arms wrapped around you so quickly it almost knocked the air from your lungs.
His chin settled against the top of your head. Your face buried itself against his chest. And just like that you were twelve years old again.
"I'm sorry," Garrett said again. His voice rumbled through his chest beneath your cheek. You felt it more than heard it.
"I'm sorry." This time it sounded less like an apology and more like a confession. He'd been carrying the words around for days.
You squeezed him tighter. Not because it fixed everything. It didn't.
Not because you suddenly agreed with what he'd done. You didn't.
But because forgiveness and understanding weren't the same thing. And right now understanding was enough.
The dorm felt too quiet without Hannah and Allie in it.
One of Hannah's sociology textbooks sat open on the kitchen table beside a half finished iced coffee. Allie's shoes had been kicked off by the couch in a careless little trail toward her bedroom door.
The space felt wholly not like yours, something you tried to remember as you moved around. Always putting things back where you found them, if you even gathered the courage to touch them at all.
You sat curled beneath a throw blanket on Hannah and Allie's couch, scrolling through the schools social media to see if there were any students looking to get out of their apartment leases. Not that you'd even be able to afford taking over someones lease, but you could get a job.
Anyway, you'd been looking at the same post for the last twenty minutes and not because it had potential. Rain tapped softly against the dorm windows. The harder it came down the more distracted you got.
You chuck your phone towards the end of the couch by your feet and you felt it buzz right after. But you had become strangely good at not checking it so you didn't.
The knock at the door shattered the fragile silence so abruptly your shoulders jumped. You stood to answer it but froze when you thought about it more. What was the etiquette for answering someone else's front door?
There was another knock the longer you waited to open it. Then, through the wood, you heard a voice. "I know you're in there. Fucking Dean told me."
Your heart stopped. Every muscle in your body locked at the sound of John Logan's voice through the door. You stayed completely still, as if he could see you though the thick wood of the door.
Like maybe if you didn't breathe too loudly he would think you weren't here and eventually leave without you having to say a word.
The hallway outside the dorm creaked softly beneath his shifting weight. "Look," Logan started, voice rougher than you remember it sounding, "I know you worked things out with Garrett and I'm really fucking glad you guys patched things up."
Your throat tightened.
It had taken over a week.
A week of avoiding the hockey house and all its inhabitants entirely. A week of Garrett apologizing in every way except directly at first because guilt made him clumsy. And a whole week of Hannah quietly acting as a bridge between the two of you until she finally had to trick you two into the same place to work things out.
You had fixed things with Garrett.
Well, you had at least started the process.
Logan kept talking through the door, knocking you out of your spiral before you fell too deeply into it. "But I also know that means the only reason you haven't come home is because of me."
The words landed like a bruise pressed too hard. "And I can't fucking live with that," he admitted quietly. "Hockey house is your home too."
You squeeze your eyes shut.
Don't answer.
Don't answer.
Don't answer.
You answered. "I don't want to see you, Logan."
The lies tasted horrible on your tongue and even more vile as it left your mouth. Silence was all that answered you in return for a while.
"Yeah. I know," he said it so softly you almost didn't hear it through the door. Your chest physically hurt at how defeated he sounded. "I know you don't."
Rainwater streaked slowly down the dorm windows behind you while the quiet stretched between the two of you. Then, his voice interrupted the quiet once again. "God," Logan whispered hoarsely, probably more to himself than to you, but you listened anyway. "I don't know how all this got so fucked up."
Your eyes burned. You hated this. You hated every bit.
"Listen," he continues after another pause, "I just—I want you to come home and I'll figure out somewhere else to stay. I can sleep at the auto shop or some shit."
The image hit you instantly, him sleeping on the old dusty couch in the office of his older brother's mechanics auto shop. Accepting all that uncomfort just so you could return to hockey house, your home.
"Point is," he finished quietly, "I won't be there, so you should go home." Your stomach twisted violently.
I won't be there. As if that would magically making everything all better. I won't be there. As if that would change anything. I won't be there. As if that was what you wanted.
He seemed to take your silence as agreement because a few seconds later, you heard soft footstep against the hallway floor, walking away from you. He was leaving.
Something ugly and desperate clawed at your chest immediately. You stilled because this is what you wanted, wasn't it? Distance, space, an end to this horrible tension every time you thought about him.
This was him giving you it. A way out. So why did it make you sick to your stomach? Why did the thought of him walking away suddenly feel unbearable?
Before you could stop yourself, you crossed the room and yanked open the dorm door, the words spilling out of your mouth with out your permission. "Don't—" your voice cracked instantly.
Logan stopped hallway down the hallway. "Don't do that."
He went completely still but he didn't turn around. For one terrible second your brain tried to convince you it was because he couldn't stand looking at you either.
The truth was much worse.
If Logan turned around fully and looked at you right now, he wasn't sure he'd be able to leave at all. "What?"
His head turned slightly over his shoulder, enough that you caught the sharp edge of his profile beneath the ugly fluorescent dorm lights. But he kept his feet planted firmly away from you like physically moving closer might somehow scare you off again.
"You stay at hockey house," you said quietly. Your fingers tightened around the edge of the door. "Allie and Hannah said I can stay here as long as I need until I find somewhere more permanent."
Logan stilled completely, you almost thought he might have stopped breathing.
You don't really know why you told him that. It wasn't like you moving out was a done deal. You hadn't told anyone yet and you hadn't fully decided on it. But if it was between you or him living at hockey house, you wanted it to be him.
The hallway suddenly felt too narrow and Logan felt the bile reaching the back of his throat. Because in his head, there was only one reason you would rather leave entirely than exist in the same house as him now.
Your father and what he now represented after the fight.
"You're moving out?" This time he fully turned towards you. You hated how nervous his expression made you feel now. "I think it's best for everyone," you confessed, nodding your head to try and give him more reassurance that this is what you wanted.
"That's bullshit." The words came out immediately and low. You can tell that he didn't mean to stay that out loud. It was written all over his face and somehow that made your stomach churn worse.
"Excuse me?"
Logan dragged a hand through his damp hair roughly and you wonder for a split second if he got caught in the rain on his way here. Frustration flashed over his face before he tried forcing it back down again.
"You're not fucking moving out," his voice was a bit louder than he meant to and it only added fuel to the fire. Because the second the words left his mouth, regret crossed his features.
Because he knew.
He knew exactly how bad that sounded in light of everything he now knew about your past. He knew what he did and didn't get to demand from you anymore. "You don't get to tell me what to do," you snapped.
Your voice had come out sharper than either of you expected. Logan's expression immediately shifted. "You're right," he said quickly. "Shit. I'm sorry."
And there it was again.
That look.
The same one he'd worn after Garrett accidentally let your entire childhood spill out into the open. It was the same expression he'd had standing in your bedroom while you ripped his jersey off and threw it back at him like it burned.
It made something hot and furious twist violently all over you. Because you had spent years clawing your way out of being treated like a victim. And now every time Logan looked at you like that, you felt like one all over again. "Stop that!" The shout echoed harshly down the hallway.
The carefulness somehow got worse. "Stop looking at me like that!"
"Like what?"
"Like I'm fucking glass!" you snapped. "Like I'm gonna break!" Your breathing had started shaking now. "You're angry? Then be angry! Fight with me! Yell at me!"
Logan stared at you like he genuinely couldn't process what you were asking of him. "You want me to fight with you?" he asked incredulously.
"I want you to stop treating me differently!"
The words cracked out of you painfully. Because that was the real wound underneath all of this. It didn't matter that Garrett had found out about you and Logan. It didn't even matter so much that Logan now knew what your father had done to you.
It was this.
The shift.
The way Logan hesitated to touch you. The way he spoke softer to you. Looked at you like he was terrified one wrong move would shatter you apart.
Logan opened his mouth and then closed it again. He had nothing to say because you were right. He had been treating you differently.
How the hell was he supposed to not after watching you physically flinch when Garrett punched the wall? After hearing the panic in your voice every time he'd brought your father up?
"Fuck."
"Come on!" you yelled, tears already threatening your vision. The truth was that if Logan had yelled then you would know what to do. You would know how to navigate the situation because it was what you had done your whole life. But this guilt and carefulness that he now treated you with was something you didn't understand. You didn't know what to do with it.
"Don't clam up now! Yell at me!" Something sharp flashed across Logan's face then. Hurt or anger or fear, you don't know but you don't care because you knew this is going to give you exactly what you were asking for.
"All right, fine!" The words bounced hard off the walls. "Is that what you want?" he snapped. "You want to turn me into your father?"
Your stomach dropped instantly. "Is that why did didn't tell me?" Logan asked. You didn't need to ask him to know what he was talking about. He wants to know why you never told him about your father. But to insinuate that you didn't because you were afraid that that information would somehow turn him into your father was preposterous.
"You thought I'd be just like him?"
"What? No!" You sounded genuinely horrified because from your perspective that had never been the problem.
Garrett feared men turning into your father. You feared people looking at you like his victim. Those were very different things.
"What the fuck am I supposed to think?" Logan shot back, voice cracking at the edges. "You left! You kicked me out and then disappeared without saying anything!"
The anger dissolved suddenly from his face, leaving behind something more wounded. "You flinched away from me," he said quieter. "Like I was gonna—" He couldn't finish it.
But the sentence hung there anyway. Your chest ached. "I left because I ruined everything," you confessed.
Logan stared at you like you'd spoken another language. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
"I thought Garrett was never gonna talk to me again," you admitted shakily, "I ruined us and I ruined you and Garrett and—" you didn't know how much further you could get without breaking down crying.
"He's your best friend, John. I couldn't take that away from you." Logan's face twisted painfully. "You need him," you finished.
"I need you!"
The words hit so hard your heart stopped and you don't know if or when it would start again. "You don't," you insist. Because between you and Garrett, in your eyes, the choice was obvious. Garrett had so much more going for him, he was the logical choice.
"Fucking stop with that self deprecating bullshit," Logan stepped closer finally, frustration bleeding through every word now. "I need you," he repeated fiercely, "and if Garrett hates my guts for the rest of my life, so be it because I love you."
Your eyes flood instantly.
"So quit telling me what I need."
A broken sound escaped your throat before you could stop it. Humiliation hit immediately afterward. You covered your face with both hands on instinct because Logan seeing you cry only made you cry harder.
Everything hurt. Your chest, your throat, your head. Your heart beat so loud in your ears that you didn't hear him move. You didn't realize just how close he had gotten until his warm fingers touched your wrist carefully.
It wasn't hesitant but it was gentle all the same. "Please stop pushing me away," he begged. The quietness of his voice broke something open inside of you.
Slowly, you let him guide your hands away from your face. Your vision blurred with tears but you had never seen him so clearly. "I don't want everything to change," you whisper.
Logan searched your face for a long moment. "Because I know now?" he asked, though you surmised he already knew the answer. You nodded once.
He exhaled shakily before his hands slid from your wrists to cradle your face fully, thumbs brushing softly beneath tear stained cheeks.
"Baby," he said quietly, "knowing what happened doesn't change who you are." His face so close to yours now, your foreheads almost touched. "And it doesn't change how I feel."
Your eyes squeezed shut. "But I won't lie to you," he admitted softly, "I do look at you differently."
Your entire body tensed instantly.
There it was.
The thing you had spent the last week and a half running from.
Logan felt it happen beneath his hands immediately but he didn't let go as he continued. "Because now I understand," he whispered, "I understand why you always apologize for taking up space."
A tear slipped down your cheek.
"Why loud noises make you jump and why you put everybody else's feeling before your own." His thumbs brush beneath your eyes carefully.
"You're still you," he murmured, "and I'm still me. That hasn't changed and I won't let it."
Your hands lifted slowly to cover his where they still held your face. For a second neither of you moved. Then you kissed him. It was short and sweet and a little salty from the tears but no less impactful.
Logan exhaled shakily against your mouth like he'd been holding his breath for weeks.
"I'm sorry," you whispered. His eyes softened immediately again. "You have nothing to be sorry for, baby," he assured.
The hallway fell quiet except for the rain tapping softly against distant dorm windows. Then, almost like he was afraid it would shatter the moment, his voice started again, "Please come home."
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