Day 5 - “I would choose you in every lifetime, every universe.” 🍒
Steve Rogers x Reader
Summary: You were raised that if you love something you set it free, even if that’s the absolute last thing you want.
PSA: @wildflowersandvibranium the angst bug got me
Warnings: hurt but mostly comfort, implied to be post sex but no explicit mention, Steve being sweet, reader being insecure, happy ending :)
Word Count: 800
Isla & Pink's Galentine's Event
"You can go if you want." You offer.
Steve stops breathing under you, the soft rise and fall of his chest going completely still.
"What?" He asks, and poor Steve genuinely doesn't seem to have a clue.
With a sigh you continue, ignoring the sting of tears in your eyes as you do.
"You can go back I mean." You tell him, ignoring how bitter the words taste despite how much you do truly mean them. "I understand."
You're not stupid.
When Steve volunteered to return the stones, you saw it.
He's had that look in his eyes, ever since him and Tony came back. That wistfulness that only comes with regret and an irrepressible "What if?"
You know it's her. The woman who's legacy you've been chasing since you met him. The one you could never compete with.
It didn't used to bother you, it still doesn't truthfully. After all, who can compete with a dead woman?
Who can compete with the chance to go back in time and get it right?
"It's okay." You choke out, closing your eyes to stave off the sting of tears. "I just want you to be happy."
Steve is stiff as a board beneath you. The hand that had been tracing your spine stops, hovering somewhere over the back of your neck as he processes your offer.
"You want me to go back in time?" He asks.
His voice sounds thin, worried almost.
"Of course." You try to force some cheerfulness. "I just want you to be happy."
You can hear the sheets rustle as Steve shifts. "And you think I'd be happier there?"
The tears well anyway, bubbling under your eyelids and threatening to spill no matter how you tight you squeeze them shut.
"Wouldn't you?"
Steve is quiet for a long time, long enough for your chest to start to shake as you do your best to stay strong. Heart pounding with nerves as you brace yourself for what comes next.
What comes next is his hands.
Slowly, they move you, guiding you flat onto you back so Steve can roll over top of you. A large hand cradles your face, the touch so familiar and comforting it sets you over the edge.
A hiccup escapes, then another, just as the first tear pushes past your waterline.
"Where would you be?" He asks.
He doesn't acknowledge your tears, but brushes them away, his thumb catching the sad droplets and catching them as they threaten to roll down your cheek.
"Here." You croak, chest heaving with an stifled sob.
"Here?" He repeats.
You nod, eyes still squeezed shut.
Another one escapes, crashing into the pad of Steve's finger as it rules from the corner of your eye.
"Look at me." Steve tells you, voice steady.
You shake your head, petulant and hurting. A girl can only be so mature when telling her boyfriend it's okay if he breaks up with her.
"Please." Steve breaks, barely above a whisper.
You give in, fighting through stuck lashes as you finally peek at Steve's face.
He's staring at you like he's afraid you'll break, pretty blue eyes confused and shining with worry.
"Why would I go there when you're here?" He asks.
God, is he really going to make you spell it out?
You choke down another sob, releasing an uneven exhale as you try to give him a calm answer.
"To be with her." You tell him, "With Peggy."
Steve's reaction is nothing short of shock, his jaw dropping and closing, just to fall open again.
"Oh honey." He coos.
"Steve stop-" you try to fight him, hand weekly pushing at the one holding your face. "I know you still love her."
Steve shushes you, but not to be mean or cruel.
"I don't want that life anymore." He tells you.
The tears keep coming anyway, streaming down your cheeks like rivers as he leans in and starts to kiss them away.
"I haven't in a long time."
You hiccup again, hand holding onto Steve's wrist like you're afraid he might disappear.
"You haven't?" You ask, sounding so small.
"No." Steve breathes, pressing his forehead to you. "I like the life I'm building here, now, with you."
"But-"
"No buts." Steve interrupts, pressing a kiss to your lips. "I would choose you in every life time, every universe."
Despite the pounding of your heart, the ache in your chest and the salt of your tears, you believe him.
"Then why'd you ask to go back?" You blink up at him, searching for any sign of that regret you swore you saw.
Steve laughs, a breathy huff against your lips as he presses a chaste kiss to them.
"There's a ring." He explains. "It was my moms and I'm pretty sure I can get my hands on it if I get the timing right."
You heart stutters.
"A ring?"
Steve nods, his own eyes watery eyes as he kisses you again. "Your ring."
"Oh."
"My silly girl." He says, nudging his nose against yours. "You're my future, the only one I want."
a fic about that thing when you get sleepy around the person you love.
WARNINGS/TAGS: reader is a shield agent, reader's gender is unspecified, mentions of canon-typical violence, fluff/soft, the space between friends and something more
Turns out insomnia can be cured, only with very specific ingredients.
One: have Sam Wilson insist on watching Top Gun—again—when it comes his turn for a movie night pick.
This happens every two months or so. You love the man, but he needs to stop trolling at this point. After this rewatch, you’ll probably regurgitate Val Kilmer’s lines while you brush your teeth in the morning.
Wanda rolls her eyes so hard you think they might get stuck like that forever.
“This is the last time, Sam!”
But Sam smiles through the crowd’s boos. Even while the team complains, they take their positions on and around the couch anyway. Yourself included.
Because everyone loves him, and it’s just your fucking luck he loves Top Gun.
Two: find a comfortable surface.
The common room couch? Real nice surface. Of course a government-funded cohabitation facility for their top operatives can afford Egyptian cotton-upholstered furniture.
Three: be extremely tired.
The most recent mission you completed just finished debriefing in the afternoon—a few hours before movie night. It was a track-and-extract of a trafficking ring, except you got assigned the track part, and that was a lot less fun. The stakeouts were long, and the car you sat in had aged leather seats that dampened the already stale air. No air conditioning—can’t risk turning on the engine. No activity around the building you watched, either.
Stretch that out for some days, and naturally, all you wanted upon touchdown was a hot shower and a bed with springs.
Top Gun, a soft couch, and fatigue. Those three variables are enough to force you asleep, but just to be as empirical as possible, you have to list down another.
Four:
Get Steve Rogers to sit next to you.
Technically you didn’t get him to. He sauntered in late, saw the only open spot, and helped himself.
Suspicious, come to think of it. Why did nobody sit next to you? Nat and you would whisper quipped commentaries at each other. Wanda and you are close enough friends to cuddle. Sam would take the opportunity to further grind your gears by manspreading—his hobby is grinding people’s gears.
“Comfy?”
Steve is dressed in gray sweats and a simple t-shirt, its deep blue bringing out his eyes.
He’s the one who looks comfortable, if anything. You’re tempted to thumb at his shirt sleeve and ask about the thread count, but like a normal human being, you nod your yes and watch the opening credits roll.
You can feel his blue eyes on the side of your cheek before he looks at the screen, too.
The moment the movie begins proper, you find yourself muttering the opening line.
“Ghost Rider, this is Strike. We have unknown contact. Inbound Mustang. Your vector zero nine zero for bogey.”
Steve chuckles next to you and the warm sound coaxes your eyes to meet.
What happens next is automatic: seeing him smile makes you do the same.
The movie continues on, but its familiarity begs your attentions to wander. They instead pay dues to the gravity of his forearm, which nearly brushes yours. In the dim, you catch a glimpse of a vein that runs down one side like a river, and file the image away as inappropriate.
That’s Steve Rogers. Captain America. Your boss, good friend, and the entire nation’s moral compass, who keeps a list of the best places to get apple pie. You will direct your gaze with the respect he deserves.
And you do. Except in schooling your vision, your other senses betray you.
He smells good.
That thought feels way more inappropriate than looking at his forearm—which, for the record, you have seen and touched, all in a professional capacity. So you chose to stare at his hand again and hold your brain back from cataloging the scent of his soap, shampoo, or whatever combination of product that has your heart kicking like it wants out of your chest.
Steve Rogers doesn’t cure insomnia. He worsens it—or so you think.
Sleepy is the last thing you are, until the minutes tick by and sleep claims you anyway. You remember yawning while watching the nightclub scene. Iceman wore a pair of aviators indoors.
By the time the flying part of Top Gun rolls around, you don’t get to watch it: you’re knocked out cold.
─ ·✶· ─
When you wake up, cold is the last thing you are. Partly because the common room is designed to bleed with sunlight.
It’s morning, just the top of—yellow rays cut through the windows, no cloud in the sky to block its path.
Your skin feels warm.
It’s really no surprise. Steve Rogers is lying next to you.
How he is lying next to you is a surprise. The man’s broad frame looks cramped on the inside part of the couch, but nothing on his face betrays discomfort. He’s sound asleep, one arm folded under his head, the other slung loosely on your waist—not quite encircling it, just resting. His chest rises and falls slow. You realize this because you have both hands on that exact part of him.
Oh, shit. You’re touching his chest.
It turns out you shifted your palms a little too quickly, because Steve begins to stir. His tendency for alertness quickly revealed blue eyes that blinked once, twice, thrice—before his gaze eventually focuses on you. He doesn’t yawn, perhaps as confused as you are.
“Morning,” you whisper, almost sheepish.
He hums back. “Morning.”
“Uh… What happened?”
It’s quiet for a bit. You’re not sure if his brain has caught up. He’s staring—not the kind of stare you see on the field. Softer. Blue eyes study your face, then the position you’re in, piecing together the scene.
“You fell asleep last night,” he finally says, running his fingers through his hair. They fall across his forehead like the most good-looking bad news you’ve ever laid your eyes on. “Guess I must’ve fallen asleep, too.”
The untangling happens slowly. He lifts his arm away from your waist, props himself up on one elbow. You take the chance to sit and stretch, pretending that a tight neck is your number one concern and not the growing warmth on your cheeks.
“Can’t believe none of them woke us up,” you murmur. “Sam should be banned from picking Top Gun ever again.”
He chuckles. The sound still hits you like it did last night, amplified now by the lack of distance between you. But Steve finally stands up, folds his arms behind his head, then extends them. He repeats the motion a few times. You feel bad—his circulation must be damn near cut off after sleeping weird the entire night on a couch far too small for two.
“Well… at least we’re well-rested.”
You blink, taken aback.
“You slept well?” you ask.
“Yeah,” he nods, “you?”
Now that the question ricocheted back, you realize you don’t feel shitty where you should. Your limbs aren’t particularly sore. Your head feels clear after the initial fog.
Well-rested. Is this what it feels like?
“I think so,” you reply. There’s a smile on his face when you look back at him: small and slightly lopsided. He looks handsome.
Then he extends a hand, as if he knew that smile would make your knees buckle.
“C’mon, I’ll make you coffee.”
The second time happens two weeks later.
The Quinjet’s hum was almost an alien silence after the fight.
It was tough. Only three operatives were deployed: you, Nat, and Steve—top operatives, yes, but still only three. You went up against a swarm of mercenaries, their guns blazing, while the team’s equipment was mostly stealth gear not even half the enemy’s firepower.
You managed by the skin of the edge of your teeth. The word barely doesn’t quite cover it.
After putting the jet on autopilot and complaining about rancid intel with adrenaline-flooded veins, the three of you fall quiet.
Fatigue creeps in.
Last part of the mission: get through a five-hour flight back to New York.
Natasha sits in front of you, rebuilding her usual mask of nonchalance—you can see it in her sigh as she buckles up. The earlier combat chipped at her cool, and reasonably so: being in this line of work for most of her life doesn’t change the fact that it only takes one bullet to end it.
And boy, were there quite the number of bullets.
Steve chose the spot next to you, despite all the empty space in the cabin. You thought maybe he wanted to huddle, talk about the mission, see how you held up. You were the only non-Avenger in this assignment—it was reasonable to assume you wouldn’t be as used to this as they are.
But it’s been a good ten minutes and he hasn’t said a word.
A moment of uncertainty grips you. Post-mission, he’s usually corralling the team, checking morale, doing a small debrief of his own. Granted, there’s only you and Nat, so maybe there’s no need for that, but…
…is he alright?
Just as you look over to your side, concerned, you feel warmth, weight, and a brush of something soft.
You can no longer move.
Because Steve is asleep, and his head was on your shoulder.
His seat isn’t exactly glued next to yours, but close enough for him to bridge the gap. You watch the blonde strands of his hair press against the black of your tac suit and think about all the times you felt his weight on you—the most recent being his back glued to your chest while he shielded you from a bullet hail, just before you managed a rocky takeoff.
Aside from that? Fingers around your wrist during training. “Nice try,” he said once, as if your uppercut wasn’t the most predictable move ever. A friendly hand patting your shoulder after.
But never like this.
It takes a lot of effort for you to stare at something else that isn’t him.
Your gaze unfortunately lands on Nat, less than five feet in front of you.
She’s already smirking.
You look down on your lap, slightly embarrassed and left with nothing you can do. A little less than five hours to go on this flight.
Might as well get some shut-eye.
─ ·✶· ─
“Hey.”
You blink awake, nearly jumping upright. Natasha chuckles, patting her hand on your shoulder.
“Easy, there,” she nods towards the cockpit. You see a familiar sight.
“We arrived. Get some real rest after the debrief.”
You rub the sleep away from your eyes. “Thanks.”
You glance at Steve. He’s already in the middle of getting out of his seat.
You wonder if his head on your shoulder was part of a dream.
At least the third time happens somewhere with a bed, which of course you argue over.
Steve starts it.
“I’ll take the couch.”
You thumb the hem of your tank top. “You know, I was going to say that.”
“That’s kind of you,” he smiles, “but please.”
He gestures to the bed the both of you are ever-so-politely “no, you”-ing over: it’s rickety and is clothed in the thinnest sheets ever, sure, but there’s only one of it, so naturally this battle of politeness has to be fought.
You raise a brow challengingly. “If you take the couch, I’ll take the floor.”
Steve’s expression hardens like he took that personally. “No way am I gonna let you.”
“Then take the bed.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“The couch.”
“But it’ll be uncomfortable.”
“Aha,” your lips curl into a smile, “so you admit that the couch is uncomfortable.”
He looks away. You can tell he’s holding back his face from breaking out into a disbelieving grin.
Eventually, like an overly-used television trope, the inevitable consensus is that you are going to share instead.
Funny how—even during the back-and-forth—it felt like it was always going to come to this. Like you’d surrendered sharing the bed as an eventuality rather than a possibility.
Funny how you could feel him thinking the same.
Which leads you to this point in time:
Two hours past midnight, T-minus five hours before your mission starts. Nothing high stakes—it’s just the two of you—but still, at this rate, you’ll be running on fumes tomorrow.
The night coats the safehouse in darkness, bedroom included: the curtains are drawn and the night light is off to hide you better.
Even in the dim, you can glimpse the outline of him. He’s in a t-shirt and sweats again.
His weight on the bed next to you is unmistakable. You try to recall the last time you didn’t sleep alone—except for the times you fell asleep with him.
You can’t remember.
He breaks the silence thirty minutes after you said your good nights.
You’re counting.
“Can’t sleep?”
You shift from your side to your back.
“You caught me. You?”
He’s seated instead of lying down, spine pressed against the brittle headboard.
“Same.”
You pause. Look at him from your spot on the pillow. His profile is sharp where the dark should dull it, or maybe you’ve just memorized it so well. Still, there’s something unreadable about him.
“Does it happen often?” you ask.
He looks down at you, blue eyes soft. “Sometimes. Often enough.”
You let the answer sink in—Steve Rogers, super soldier, can’t sleep—and shoot him a wry smile.
“Maybe you ought to lie down, if you want to try and sleep?”
He let out a quiet, humorous huff. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Then he makes himself comfortable next to you, head finally touching the pillow. You feel the cotton of his shirt brush against your bare shoulder. His weight is more prominent now, and there’s a faint smell that reminds you of a forest after the rain. The blonde of his hair brings you back to the Quinjet—weeks ago at this point, but your eyes remember.
He’s so close. If your fingers even so much as twitch, they’ll probably kiss his.
“Why can’t you sleep?” he asks, voice low.
You stare at him. The last time you saw him sideways like this was after movie night.
Why can’t you sleep? It’s been such a big part of your life, you forget why.
“It’s just difficult for me,” you start, “but these days… I’m not sure.”
He lets you find the thread, shifting so he’s facing you. You begin to face him, too—like your shoulder blades and his are long lost twins.
You finally tell him.
“I get a feeling that something is going to happen, and I need to be ready for it.”
Something in his eyes shines just then: a mosaic mix of regret and recognition.
Thirty-three minutes since ‘good night’, and in this nocturnal darkness, you see a kind of light.
On the surface, Steve couldn’t be more unlike you. Yet you find that the two of you are more similar than you initially thought.
You’re both soldiers who are good at your job, partly because of this: the alertness in your souls that demands one eye ever-watchful. The spirit of a sentinel that doesn’t know what peace is because it’s never learned.
They say there’s no rest for the wicked. Here he is, the truest heart of them all, not even sleepy.
In his wordless glance is an understanding. You have no need to explain.
But then his eyes start to wander and you wish he would say more, because the trace of his gaze feels too intimate for teammates.
Yet it tastes familiar.
Has he looked at you like this before? Ocean blues drag a path down your face, brushing past your lips in a swoop so secret you’d miss it if you blinked. His gaze veers off the side, but not away from you. Is he studying your cheek? The shell of your ear?
What on earth does he see in you?
You speak because the space between your ribcage hurts.
“We’re gonna be so fucked tomorrow morning.”
His laugh is quiet, more apparent in his face instead of the volume of his voice. There it is, the distraction you needed—except the sensation in your chest tugs stronger. Just once, but enough for you to notice.
Of course you’d fallen for him. There’s no way you wouldn’t.
But you’re a soldier, and so is he, and there’s work to do tomorrow.
To your mild surprise—and his, in the small shine in his eyes—you yawn.
It’s strange. It should keep you up, this proximity with him. Though your relationship with Steve is comfortable, the context around this situation should make you feel more uptight rather than relax.
You think about the man in the meeting room and the man you spar with. He advocates for calm decision-making, but eggs you on with a cheeky “that all you got, agent?” on the training mat. Both versions of him are here with you. In bed. A decision he made calmly.
How is it possible to be nervous and unwind at the same time?
A few seconds pass, and you yawn again.
“That’s your cue,” he smiles wryly. It shoots an arrow through you.
“Yeah. Try to get some sleep,” you smile back, turning to face away from him before he sees the crack in it. “Good night, Steve.”
“Good night.” He says your name, and that’s the last thing you hear.
Your lullaby.
You don’t know he falls asleep right after.
─ ·✶· ─
Steve wakes up first—he has a tendency of doing that. It means he’s the first witness to a softness that wrecks him.
Somewhere in the night, your bodies turned to face each other.
It reminds him of sunflowers.
Unlike that time after movie night, there’s more space between you. A part of him mourns the distance, though sharing a bed already signals a lack of.
Another part of him is happy he gets to see your face.
You look peaceful like this. Not that you look troubled when you’re awake. Just… something about your eyes closed, the space between your brows completely relaxed, your lips ever-so-slightly parted—it’s not a sight he gets to see often, especially not in this sort of terrain.
You might be in a safehouse, and the bed springs might be rusted by age, but the thin line between consciousness and sleep encourages the mind to wander—and for a man of discipline, wandering is dangerous. It tempts him with thoughts that taste more like dreams.
What if you weren’t in a safehouse? What if this was your bed—yours and his—and sharing it wasn’t birthed out of politeness?
What if this is just something he gets to see every morning?
You stir gently. A stray strand of hair falls on your face. He lifts his hand up to tuck it back.
Stubbornly, it slips back to where it landed before. He smiles.
This dream will soon end, he realizes. In a matter of minutes, he feels the sun rising behind his back, a treacherous thing that beckons another fight for someone else’s future.
When you open your eyes, you’ll go back to being soldiers. You’ll call him Cap on the field.
Last night’s memory surfaces. He holds on to the shape of his name in your voice.
The bright morning erases long shadows. For once, he wishes it didn’t.
He allows himself one final thing.
Fingers cradle your cheek, thumb brushing the soft of it. In your sleep, you lean into his touch. His breath snags, and so does his heartbeat.
Then, after the pang’s echoes die down, Steve rests a hand on your shoulder to wake you.
The fourth time happens because you ask for it.
He’s been up reading by the lamplight, only one chapter in when he started, now halfway through—a sign that the hour is later than he thinks it is. The book isn’t a particularly riveting one, either: time passed in a crawling pace with each page. Where he thought his ambivalence towards the subject matter would put him to sleep, here he is.
Wide awake on page 257.
Awake to hear the knock on his door. Three times. Soft, almost imperceptible.
Steve stares like he knows who it is already. The book is placed on the nightstand.
He opens the door to see you.
The sight tears him two ways.
You’re in short shorts and an oversized tee that has seen better days. He would see the print on the front if you weren’t hugging a folded-up blanket against your chest. There’s a sting on his sternum—from how you trust him enough to appear at his doorstep halfway through dawn, and from the look on your face.
It’s the look of someone who’s trying their best to sleep, but can’t.
“I didn’t think you’d be up, I’m so sorry,” you breathe, surprised.
He’s aware of the concern bleeding through his every gesture. You haven’t told him what you needed and he’s already holding the door wide open.
“Hey, no, don’t be. What’s wrong?”
You part your lips, deliberating.
“I can’t sleep.”
It’s as simple as that, but he knows exactly how difficult the battle is.
He nods, feeling his jaw clench. He hides his hands in his pockets—if they had their way, you’d be in his arms by now, but that’d be selfish of him.
Because clearly there’s something you want to tell him. Something more. He watches as you seem to debate for and against yourself: the toll of sleeplessness on you renders your expressions crystalline.
He waits patiently in the doorway. A quiet encouragement that yearns to surround you in louder ways.
You finally find the words.
“The last time I had a good night’s sleep was at that safehouse.”
He remembers. It was the night he wished you weren’t just agents on a mission. It was the night he got to stare at your back, wishing for a world where pulling you against his chest won’t make things complicated.
He swallows. “Me, too.”
In time’s desert, it’s these little memories he shares with you that dot the landscape like oases. You discovered these sacred places together, where you may fix what the journey broke.
But they’re still few and far between. The rest of life is a white noise: all those mission briefs and debriefs used to mean something, now they just chip away at the memory of what sanctuary feels like.
And yet he recalls the details perfectly. Enough to conjure a balm that is his own imagination. He pretends you’re next to him, weight sinking on the bed, hair splayed on his pillow. He pretends some nights. Most nights.
Every night.
“Can I please sleep with you?”
You ask before he can offer, then cut in before he responds.
“Not like that,” you stammer, distraught, “I mean—”
“No, I know what you mean, it’s okay.”
You laugh weakly, gesturing at your blanket. “I don’t want to seem presumptuous, it’s just that my room is—”
“Four floors down, yeah,” he knows the way there because he’s considered it more than a few times.
Steve’s hand lands gently on your shoulder, guiding you inside.
“Don’t worry about it. Come on.”
You cross that hallowed threshold into his room. Steve clicks the door closed before leading you towards the bed. It’s much too dark—and too late—for a room tour, anyway.
He unfurls his comforter, and in doing so notices the way you watch him. In another time and place, he’d be more amused at the way you looked: like you were standing at attention.
You don’t climb into the bed until he does.
“So you brought your own blankie?” There was a hint of a tease in his question, though not at all unkind.
You pout, sitting on the bed. Said blanket is still in your arms.
“It’s not a blankie.”
“Then why’d you bring it?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug, “didn’t want to steal yours from you.”
He smiles, lifting his comforter as if telling you to make yourself at home in it.
“I don’t mind.”
“You sure?”
“Of course. We’ve slept in worse conditions, haven’t we?”
That pulls a smile out of you, and it scares him how pleased he is with himself.
But you settling underneath his blanket and onto the bed pleases him more. He watches on a propped elbow as you adjust your head on his pillow, and he’s grateful that you’re here—in more ways than one.
That you’re here is something he’s always thankful for. That you’re here in his room instead of the other way around is a special occasion to be grateful. Being in your bedroom—in your bed—would mean enveloping himself in you, and there was no way he’d survive that.
The thought alone already makes him want. He’s not accustomed to it.
Soon, the two of you are lying face to face. He catalogs the way you fit into his space: perfectly.
“You okay?” he asks.
You answer with a nod and a quiet “yeah, better now.”
There’s a moment where all you do is look at each other. It suspends the very thing you came looking for, eyes open, expectant.
“Steve?”
“Mm?”
Then you do that thing again when you hesitate with your words, before finally stringing them together.
Like earlier, it’s a request. As if he’d ever refuse you anything.
“Can I hold you?”
He breathes through a sudden wave of emotion, like a dislodged splinter in a dam.
You’re asking him for permission, but in doing so, he feels like he’s been given it—you want the very thing he’s longed to give you since that night on the couch.
So he doesn’t answer with words.
His arm circles around your waist while the other cradles your nape, both pulling you closer. Your legs brush. You let out a sigh of capitulation.
There’s a thrum in his spine as you move, too—you nestle your face in the crook of his neck, both hands resting against his chest. He wonders if you can feel his heartbeat.
How many lines have he crossed by doing this? The list of his transgressions runs long.
For once, he doesn’t give a damn.
He holds you tight. You bury yourself in him. The warmth that has soothed him many times seems to bleed like an open wound—there was no need to hide behind stations or the guise of propriety.
Together, the two of you are broken pieces of different things, laid in a perfect fit. Breathing. Craving the rest only the other can bring.
A hard life melting into a soft place, where he doesn’t have to choose between love and rest.
You bring him both.
“Steve?”
“Mm?”
He likes this refrain: you calling his name, him answering.
You look up at him from the hug. He dips his chin down to meet your gaze.
“Thank you.”
I should be the one saying that, he thinks to himself, but this is no time for emotional revelations. Not yet—you’re too tired for it.
So he pulls you in closer like closer was ever possible. You find shelter in the hollow of his neck again, nose kissing his throat. He strokes a gentle hand down your hair, feeling you sigh warm air against his skin. Your t-shirt is soft against his. His other palm presses steady on your back.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
Soon enough, your breathing evens. You’re asleep.
He remembers the safehouse this time, the peaceful look on your face. He remembers clinging onto those last few minutes of closeness before the call of duty snuffs out peace. The light of day always makes the lines between you that much clearer.
Like tide, you’re further away from him when the sun is up.
For now, he allows himself one small thing.
He leans down and kisses your crown, breathing in your shampoo. His lips press one, two, three more times, wandering further down: your temple, your eyelid, your cheek—each breaching a boundary.
Each bearing a promise.
There’s no assignment come morning. No more reason to run.
Tomorrow, he’ll tell you how he feels.
A thumb brushes your lower lip, careful not to wake you.
That one will have to wait until tomorrow, if you’ll let him. The only thing he can do now is dream of it.
He hopes this is the last night he’ll dream of it.
taglist: @pinksplace @thceseus @theworstwolvie
my first time writing steve...... and i broke my self-imposed ban of no writing in april for him with this idea....... if it's balls, lie to my face
summary ! A glimpse into your mornings with your husband when he’s not working nights!
warnings ! Fluff, lots and lots of fluff, kissing, slight makeout, groping, pet names like “sweetheart.” “babe.” “baby.” “my love” “my diamond” “goddess Devine”
pairing: Jack Abbot x fem!wife!reader
alanas-masterlist
It was a sunny morning, the kind of morning where you felt at peace. Like you had no obligations to the world. The sun that crept through the linen curtains was gradient, a mix of honey and amber that casted on your face as you slept. The gentle chirping, twittering, and melodic warbling of birds was like music. Not only that, but you were warm.
Your favorite part about mornings like this was the fact that your husband was in bed next to you, no loyalty to the night shift, no buzzing of his phone calling him to work. Your eyes fluttered open slowly, somehow in your sleep you shifted on top of him, one of his hands on your back and the other anchoring your hip. He looked peaceful while he slept, fragile even. Moments like this, he was just Jack.
Your Jack.
You admired him, the way his eyes wrinkled in the corner, and how his skin was so soft and warm against yours. If you didn’t have a life you would just lay here forever watching him sleep. But sadly it’s already eight am.
You slowly slipped off of him trying to be as quiet as possible, your feet hit the cold wood floor as you slowly crept out of the room. You made your way to the kitchen heading straight for the coffee maker. The house was cold, maybe even more so because you were in light pink shorts and one of Jacks white tees. The coffee pot rumbled as you got out two mugs. The mug you used everyday was forest green, his was brown, he bought both when you two traveled to Colorado to visit his mom.
The sound of the coffee machine woke Jack from his sleep. He stepped out of the room with his crutch rubbing his eyes with one of his hands. He was in grey sweatpants and no shirt, his hair was slightly ruffled from sleep. None of that mattered, because when you turned to look at him, it was like your soul was melting. He walked up to you slowly as you leaned back against the counter putting his crutch to the side with a small smile.
“Morning sweetheart..” His voice was deeper from sleep, but god so hot. He placed his hands on your hips as your arms wrapped around his neck. The two of you just stared at each other, like getting lost in pandora.
“Morning baby.” You whispered kissing him lightly before letting go of him and turning your attention the coffee pot as you filled the mugs.
You knew how he liked his coffee, black no creamer. You roasted him about it for the longest time, he did the same when he watched you pour creamer in your mug the first time you spent the night at his place. He said “all your drinking is sugar.” The memory alone made you smile to yourself as you grabbed the creamer out of the fridge.
“I was thinking we could go to the grocery store and then maybe check out that new vintage shop you saw the other day.” He said softly from behind you.
“It’s a date.” You said with a smile turning around placing your hands on his chest. You would never turn down the opportunity to spend his money.
He grinned kissing you, you kissed him back feeling his tongue slip into your mouth. His hands lowered to your ass groping you softly. You couldn’t help but lean into his touch, a small whimper leaving your lips as he smiled into the kiss. He backed you into the counter deepening the kiss as his hands moved from your ass to cup your face. If you weren’t so sore from last nights activities you probably would’ve indulged in morning sex, but nope.
You quickly pulled away before you got lost in him, turning around grabbing the coffee mugs.
“Babe-“ He whined.
“Nope-you had your fun last night. There has to be some hope for the day.” You said sarcastically.
It was routine what happened next, you carried the mugs through the living room and outside to the porch table, setting them down while he followed behind on his crutches. He sat down on the wooden bench across from you.
The dewdrops from the roof were acting like prisms on blades of grass, and a crystal-clear sky with wisps of white, fluffy clouds surrounded us. A light breeze rustling through the canopy, distant, quiet hums of the neighborhood waking up with us.
“How are you this morning my love?” He asked bringing the coffee mug to his mouth.
“Good…you know how I feel when you call me ‘my love’” You claimed setting your mug down in front of you as you stood up to sit on his lap. His arm slung around your waist as your hand rested on the back of his neck.
That term was always used when your father was angry with your mother. Jack sometimes said it on purpose or just genuinely forgot.
“What should I call you?” He asked holding his hand out across his lap for you to hold, and you did.
“My name for everyday, my diamond for Sundays, and goddess divine-but only on very special occasions.” You giggled as his grin grew wide.
“When can I call you Mrs. Abbot?” He whispered.
“You may only call me Mrs. Abbot when you are completely, and perfectly, incandescently happy.” You said squeezing his hand.
“How are you this morning Mrs. Abbot?”
Aw so cute! Also peep the pride and prejudice mentions…😏
Summary : Of course, out of everyone in the universe, you had to fall in love with a soldier from Brooklyn.
Pairing : Bucky Barnes x Guardian of The Galaxy! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Will they, won’t they trope, one night stand to lovers, fluff, angst-ish with a happy ending! grief/mourning, sexual content (including semi public sex, no anatomical detail as per usual). Childhood abuse/neglect, trauma dumping with Bucky, Reader is a humanoid alien described to have non-specific markings on her skin. Reader is described to have two hearts but looks like a human female otherwise. Reader is the daughter of Ego (half siblings to Star Lord and Mantis). Described the plot of GOTG vol 2, Infinity war, Endgame, GOTG vol 3, and a little bit of lead up Thunderbolts. Earth is referred to as Terra. Food. (Let me know if I missed anything!)
Word count : 13.7k
Note : This has been in the works for like, 6 months now, and I’m finally happy with how it turned out! The title is taken and inspired by “Let Me Down Easy” by Gang of Youths. Enjoy!
You told Peter Quill you would never live on Terra when you were thirteen years old.
You were sitting cross-legged on the floor of a Ravager ship with grease streaked on your cheek and a stolen ration bar in your hand. You had the confidence of a little girl who had never once seen Earth and had already decided it was not fun at all.
“You said your planet still uses wheels,” you said, horrified.
Peter looked up from where he was painting a blue stripe on one of Yondu’s old shoes because he thought it looked cool. “Wheels are useful,” he shrugged.
“They are primitive.”
“Cars are cool.”
“Cars are slow.”
“They have music.”
That, unfortunately, made you stop dead in your tracks, because Terra did have good music. Peter made sure everyone knew that. He had his cassette player and he treated it like the planet lived inside that little plastic box and those stupid orange headphones.
Still, you lifted your chin. “Fine,” you rolled your eyes. “One point for Terra. I’m still never moving there.”
Peter threw a bolt at you. You caught it without looking.
From the doorway, Yondu laughed,“Both of you kids are idiots.”
You grinned. Peter grinned. Yondu scoffed and pretended he didn’t love either of you.
Back then, you and Peter were just Ravager kids. You grew up with rooms under engine bays, learning how to steal and squeeze into tight spaces before you learned how to talk about feelings.
You called Peter your brother as a joke. He called you his sister, too, when he was annoyed with you, which was often. Mostly because you stole his snacks, rewired his blasters, and told alien girls he cried during Footloose (the girls would be so confused and ask what is a loose foot?).
Neither of you knew, until years later, that the joke turned out to be true.
Why would you even think that? You looked so different.
By the time you learned you were both children of Ego, everything was already falling apart. You and Peter both stood there with celestial light in your veins and heartbreak deep in your stomach.
Ego looked at you and Peter like you were not his children at all. To him you were not people, not family. You were not kids Yondu had fed, clothed, shouted at, protected, and raised in his own terrible way.
You and Peter were… batteries.
And then Yondu died.
What were you supposed to do then? How were you supposed to process the fact that your father was a monster and your daddy was fucking dead?
That grief changed you. It changed Peter, too.
For a while, neither of you joked about anything.
Yondu’s parenting hadn’t always been… healthy. He had been mean, loud, unfair. He pitted you and Peter against each other because he said it “builds character”. He taught you to steal, lie, shoot, and run,
But he had also taken you in. He tried his best and loved you, even if he never knew how to show it properly.
The Guardians became your family after that, making space for you the way that they made space for Peter.
And it didn’t take long for you to realise why your brother was so fond of them : no one really knew how to leave each other alone.
Rocket complained about everyone while making sure everyone had weapons that worked. Groot wrapped little branches around your wrist when he thought you were upset. Drax gave you advice that was almost always terrible and occasionally devastatingly profound. Gamora understood what it meant to be made by a monster, and yet still wanted to be better. Mantis, newcomer to the group, too, touched your hand one night and whispered that your sadness felt like a dying star.
The Guardians didn’t fix that grief, they could not. They filled that hollow emptiness with arguments over music, bad plans, worse jokes, emergency repairs, and shared meals.
You had been a Ravager first, but with this rag tag band of freaks, you became more than Ego’s child, more than Yondu’s ward. You were a Guardian of the Galaxy, with all the terrible decisions and accidental tenderness that came with it.
For a while, that was enough. What more could you ask for? Your family was insane and the galaxy kept trying to kill you in increasingly creative ways, which honestly felt normal enough. You had missions and people to annoy. You had Peter to bully whenever he got too sentimental about Terra. You had a place to stand. You had a reason to stay.
Then came Thanos, and Titan.
Titan was dead in a way that made your skin crawl. It was huge and orange and silent, a ruined sky stretching above you like the planet itself had given up long before you arrived.
The fight came back to you later in flashes, though your brain still struggled to fill in the full picture: You remembered Tony Stark bleeding into the ground and Stephen Strange looking at everything like he already knew the ending. You remembered Mantis holding on to the Mad Titan’s sleep with everything she had, small but braver than almost anyone gave her credit for. Peter Parker, an arachnid boy to the best of your understanding, had been fighting for his life. You remembered throwing yourself at him, blades in hand, the remnants of power burning beneath your skin. You hated the way it reminded you of Ego. You hated the way it made you feel like his daughter. But in that moment, with your chosen family around you and that monster in front of you, you used it anyway.
You were a guardian; and guardians didn’t have to be healed to fight for each other. You didn’t have to be whole.
But it was not enough.
The plan almost worked, which just made it worse. For one breathless second, it felt like you might actually pull it off. Mantis had him under and the gauntlet was right there. Everyone was moving, shouting, straining, almost winning.
Then Peter found out about Gamora, and grief did what grief always did in your family: it broke.
You couldn’t even blame him, really. Later, maybe, people would.
Maybe they would say he ruined everything. Maybe they would say he should have held it together.
But you knew Peter. You knew that kind of loss. If someone had stood in front of you mentioning Yondu’s death like it was necessary, you weren’t sure you would have been any smarter, any less reckless.
Neither you nor Peter had ever learned how to grieve quietly.
Then Thanos was gone, and you never knew silence would get worse than the fight.
At first, you thought the dust on your hand was from the planet. Titan was full of it, after all. But then your fingers started to break apart, coming undone, and grey at the edges, scattering into the air before your mind could make sense of it.
You stared at your own hand, as if you looked hard enough, you could force it to stay.
Peter saw it happen.
One second he was Star-Lord, heartbroken and still trying to understand what he had done, and then he was just Peter. Your brother, the boy from the Ravager ship, the idiot who used to throw bolts at you.
“Hey,” he said, and there was panic in it immediately. “No. No, no, no—”
You tried to reach for him, but your arm started disappearing halfway there.
That was when the fear finally hit you like a child reaching for light in the dark. You looked past Peter and saw Mantis fading too, eyes wide and wet, her hand stretching toward you even as her own body betrayed her. Drax was already gone. The battlefield was emptying itself one person at a time, and all you could think was that your family was scattered across the galaxy and you had not said goodbye to any of them.
You had spent your life acting like leaving was easy because Ravagers left. Guardians left. People like you learned how to walk away before anyone could see what it cost. But this was not leaving. This was being taken. This was the universe reaching into your chest and ripping you out before you could choose a final word, a final joke, a final insult about Terra just to make Peter laugh.
Peter lunged for you, hand outstretched, desperate to catch what was left, but he… started disappearing, too.
Then you were both dust.
—
And then, five years later, you woke up in what felt like the middle of the end of the universe.
One second, you were dust on Titan. The next, you were gasping air back into your lungs, stumbling through a portal with Peter shouting and Mantis grabbing your arm like she needed to make sure you were real. There was no time to understand or ask what had happened, where you had been, or why everyone looked like they had spent years grieving you.
There was only Thanos standing across the battlefield like the galaxy had not already suffered enough because of him.
So you fought him again, and this time, you won.
Earth, as it turned out, was not boring.
Earth was loud and muddy and actively on fire, which was frankly more personality than you had expected from Peter’s stupid little wheel planet. Earth had witches throwing red light from their hands, sorcerers opening glowing doorways in the air, flying men in metal suits, a giant green Terran who looked like someone had inflated a nerd with steroids, and at least one god with an axe. There were soldiers with wings, tiny insect people, archers with no self-preservation, and a man dressed like a flag who kept throwing a shield like he had never heard of blasters.
Earth also had Bucky Barnes.
Rocket introduced you to him two days after the battle, when everyone was still sleep-deprived and trying to figure out what the fuck had happened in the five missing years. The Avengers had put the Guardians in a motel, which was… an interesting choice. The bed was too soft, the ceiling was too low, and everything on Terra smelled like detergent and old carpet. You were sitting on the floor because it felt less ridiculous than the springed-cot thing they called a mattress when Rocket kicked the door open without knocking.
Rocket had been introducing “Terran freaks” to you, which mostly involved dragging various Avengers to the motel and describing them in the least respectful way possible. He had spent five years coming back and forth from Earth, apparently, which meant he met most of the important ones. And those he hadn’t met yet, he already knew about through stories.
“This is Green Monster Man,” Rocket said yesterday, showing Banner around to the guardians.
“That’s Bug Guy,” Rocket said this morning, taking Scott Lang on a tour of the motel, showing him off like a show-and-tell presentation.
Of course, this time, he had a new guy to show around.
“Hey,” he said, jerking one thumb over his shoulder. “This is Metal Arm Man.”
You looked up.
And fuck.
Metal Arm Man was beautiful, in the way some Terrans seemed to admire. He was not shiny, like a Sovereign. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He looked like a man who had crawled out of several consecutive wars. He had tired blue eyes, dark brown hair tucked behind his ears, a jawline carved by old gods, and a black-and-gold metal arm— so it made sense why Rocket had taken a liking to him. Or. y’know. His metal appendages.
He stared at you too, and there was nothing polite about it. His eyes moved over the faint shimmer under your skin and the Ravager leathers you had refused to trade for Earth clothes. He looked at the bruise healing along your collarbone, and the knife strapped to your thigh.
Rocket looked between the two of you and made a gagging sound. “What the hell are you two doing?”
The man cleared his throat, like he had remembered manners halfway through staring at you. “My name’s Bucky.”
You blinked. “Bucky?”
His mouth twitched. “Yeah.”
You stared at him for another second, genuinely trying to decide whether Terra was playing some kind of joke on you. “Is that even a real name?”
From somewhere in the hallway, Peter shouted, “Don’t make fun of Terran names! You’re embarrassing me!”
You ignored your brother. Bucky, to his credit, didn't look offended. If anything, he looked amused, which only made him more annoyingly attractive.
“It’s um...” He scratched the back of his head with a human arm. “It’s short for James Buchanan Barnes,” he said, as if that made it any better.
You frowned. Why are earth names so unnecessarily long and complicated? “That’s worse.”
Peter, who apparently had still been listening in, made a noise from the hallway. “Can you be normal for literally one minute?”
“No,” you and Rocket said at the same time.
Bucky actually smiled then.
And you, who had spent most of your life insisting Terra was primitive, boring, and overrated, had the unfortunate thought that maybe you had been wrong.
—
You ended up on the motel roof that night because Earth rooms were suffocating.
It wasn’t exactly difficult. Terran buildings were hilariously easy to escape from. All it took was one window, one rusted ladder, a short jump, and you were on the roof with your back against a humming vent and your knees drawn up to your chest, looking out over a planet you still didn’t understand.
Earth was strange at night. The fire and smoke from the battlefield were gone from here, replaced by yellow streetlights, blinking towers, the rush of wheeled vehicles dragging themselves along roads like they had nowhere better to be. The sky was weird. There was too much light from the city and not enough stars visible. You could barely see anything past the haze, and for someone who had grown up under infinite darkness in a space pirate ship, that felt almost cruel.
Your fingers moved absently over your arm.
The markings there were faint tonight, but still visible. Thin lines of soft, light trailing from your wrist toward your elbow, glowing under the skin like someone had hidden stardust in your veins. Proof, if you needed it, that you were not human. These were markings of your mother’s species, but it didn’t really matter, did it? Your mother’s planet was a dead one. You had no true home.
Behind you, the roof access door creaked.
You didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. “You’re still here, Metal Arm Man?”
You heard a pause, then a huff that might have been a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Still here.”
Bucky Barnes stepped onto the roof like he was trying not to startle a wild animal. He was wearing the same thing he was earlier: dark shirt, dark jacket, dark boots. The metal arm reflected the weak rooftop light as he walked closer, black and gold lines shifting with him.
He stopped a few feet away, giving you space.
“Your brother cornered me downstairs,” he said.
You finally looked over at him. “Pete?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “He wanted to talk to me about Captain America collectible trading cards.”
You blinked. “About what?”
“That was pretty much my response.”
You tried to picture Peter, still freshly returned from being dust in his home planet, cornering this beautiful and haunted-looking Terran soldier in a motel hallway to discuss little paper images of a man in a flag suit. You had no idea what trading cards were. You had no idea why Captain America needed collecting. You had no idea why Peter was like this, except that unfortunately you knew exactly why Peter was like this.
“He’s very embarrassing,” you said.
Bucky’s mouth twitched up. “He seemed excited.”
“He gets like that when Terra is involved. The planet does something to his brain.”
“Pretty sure he was asking if I knew how much the 1944 set was worth.”
You stared at him. “Do you?”
“No.” This time, he did laugh. It was a startled sound that seemed to slip out of him before he could stop it. The sound suited him too much. It made him look younger for half a second, less broken from war and more like someone who might have once been very good at smiling.
He walked closer after that, though still not too close. “Mind if I sit?”
You looked back out over the city. “It is your planet.”
“Not sure that means much.”
“No?”
“No.” You could hear him being flat and careful. There was something he wasn’t really saying.
So you shrugged, and Bucky sat beside you with a polite amount of space between your shoulder and his. For a while, neither of you spoke. Somewhere in the building, you could hear Drax laughing. And in a nearby home, you could hear a young voice crying quietly enough that they probably thought nobody could hear. But you could, your hearing was better than human hearing.
You did not feel better than human that night, though. You… felt tired.
Bucky’s eyes moved to your arm. You thought he was looking at your species marking. But then he asked, “does it hurt?” and you knew he was talking about something much more… sensitive.
You glanced down at your arm, turning it over to show the deep scarring line that never quite healed from your battle with Ego. “No. Not usually.”
“What is it?”
You flexed your fingers, watching the light shift faintly beneath your skin. “Proof that my planet-sized narcissist father tried to kill me.”
Bucky turned his head toward you.
You smiled without humour. “My biological father is a living planet. He made many children across the galaxy because he wanted to use us as batteries for his expansion plan.”
Bucky stared at you for a second, then looked out over the city again. “That’s a lot.”
“Yeah,” you leaned back, “I have been told my childhood is not a good first-date topic.”
His mouth twitched again, but it was kinder this time. “This a first date?”
You looked at him, and the rooftop seemed to tilt slightly. “I don’t know. Is sitting on a roof after a universe-ending battle a date on Terra?”
“Usually no.”
“Usually?”
“I’m old. Dating got weird while I was gone.”
While I was gone.
Huh. Another little door with some probably horrible backstory behind it. You wondered how many of those he had
So you pushed your door open first.
You just started talking because the city sounded too alive after all that death, and because Bucky Barnes gave you the kind of comfort that made people say things they didn’t mean to say yet.
You told him about Ego first, because that was the biggest part of the story on paper. But he was not the part that hurt the most.
You told him how mother’s home planet had already been dying when Yondu found you. The sky had been the wrong colour for so long that you thought all skies looked sick. You remembered your mother’s hands, or maybe you had invented that memory. You remembered being small, hungry, angry, and too tired to cry properly.
Then Yondu came. He got you out because that was what he did.
Bucky listened without interrupting. He didn’t rush to relate, though you suspected he might’ve been able to. He sat there beside you on the motel roof, one knee bent, metal arm resting still against it, and let the words come out.
You looked down at your hands.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said eventually.
People said that a lot, and you usually hated it. But from him, it didn’t sound empty. Maybe, it was because his voice already carried so much sorrow that it knew how to make room for yours.
You swallowed. “The funny thing is, Yondu threatened to eat Peter and me so many times. But at least he was there. I might have Ego’s blood, but Yondu gave me a home.”
Bucky sighed. “Blood doesn’t mean much by itself.”
You looked at him.
His eyes were fixed on the city, but he was not really seeing it anymore. The streetlights reflected faintly in his face, illuminating the tired slope of his mouth and the shadows beneath his eyes. “I had a family once. Parents, a sister, everything.”
And just like that, Bucky pushed his door open too.
Maybe it was easier to trauma dump to a pretty alien girl who he’s pretty certain he won’t see again.
He told you about war, handing you broken parts of himself and trusting you not to cut yourself on them. He told you about leaving home, about falling, about waking up in the hands of monsters. He told you enough that your stomach turned cold.
You had known there was something wrong in him. It made more sense now that you knew they had taken a living thing apart and put it back together with instructions missing.
You looked at his arm again, even though that wasn’t the arm. Then, you looked at his face. “Oh,” you said, after he told you about HYDRA. “They made you a weapon.”
Anger rose in your stomach, a real, hot, familiar anger. It was the kind of anger you had learned from Ravagers. It was actionable. It was pure and feral.
“Are they dead?” you asked.
That made him look at you.
You blinked. “What? It’s a reasonable question.”
Bucky studied your face, and he looked almost amused behind the exhaustion of his eyes. “Most of them.”
“Most is not all.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“Do you want help?”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I am very good at killing people,” you added, because honesty, that seemed polite.
Bucky stared at you for half a second, then laughed again, this time with more breath in it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
You smiled despite yourself, then looked away before it got too real. You had known him for less than a day, properly, and the rooftop felt smaller than it should. His shoulder was not touching yours, but you were aware of the space between you.
Bucky seemed aware of it too.
“So,” he said after a while, voice lighter in a way that felt deliberate, “do aliens have one-night stands?”
You turned to him slowly. “Do we have what?”
“One-night stands.”
You stared.
He seemed to realise he had lost you and shifted slightly, almost embarrassed. “I uh… Casual sex. You know… two people spending a night together because they want to.”
“Oh.” You considered that. “Yes. Obviously.”
He exhaled a laugh. “Obviously?”
“You thought Terrans invented casual sex?”
“No.”
“That would be a very Terran thing to think.”
His smile lingered, and so did yours.
The air changed then, and it had been changing for a while, probably from the moment Rocket shoved him into your orbit and called him Metal Arm Man like he was doing you both a favour. But now there were no Guardians yelling in the lobby, no brother to embarrass you with trading cards. Just the two of you on a motel roof, talking your asses off about monsters who called themselves fathers and creators, grief, and sex like any of it belonged in the same conversation.
Maybe it did.
Maybe this was what survivors did. Maybe they took the worst things that had ever happened to them, laid them down between each other, and then reached for each other anyway.
“So,” you said, because you were suddenly very aware of your own two heartbeats, “is this you asking?”
His eyes flicked back to yours. “Maybe.”
“Maybe is a coward’s answer.”
That did something to him. You saw it in the slight shift of his jaw, the way his gaze darkened, the way his human hand curled loosely against his knee. Still, when he spoke, his voice was careful.
“I’m asking,” he said. “But only if you want that.”
You didn’t answer immediately, though not for being unsure. You were very, annoyingly sure, actually. You wanted him in a way that felt too quick and too simple after a lifetime of things being complicated. You wanted his mouth and his hands and the sadness in his eyes. You wanted to forget the battlefield for a few hours. You wanted to feel alive in a way that didn’t involve fighting for it, for once.
You leaned closer anyway.
“On my planet,” you said, “we do not call it a one-night stand.”
“No?”
“No,” you shook your head with a chuckle. “Mostly because I don’t have a planet. But if I did, I would call it a very reasonable use of a night.”
Bucky’s smile was small and devastating. “That so?”
“Yes.”
You were close enough now to see the tiny flecks of grey in his blue eyes and the faint scar near his mouth. Yet, he held himself like he was giving you every chance to change your mind.
You didn’t.
Instead, you touched the metal fingers resting beside him. The vibranium was cool under your hand.
“I want that,” you said. Then, because you had never been good at masking kindness, you added, “And I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
Bucky’s face changed, but not with pity, thank the stars. You would have left immediately if it had been pity.
Instead, it was recognition.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me neither.”
When he kissed you, it was careful for all of two seconds.
His mouth pressed yours once, soft and hesitant. His human hand hovered near your waist before settling there, warm through your shirt. His metal hand stayed braced against the rooftop beside you, like he was holding himself back from touching too much too soon.
It was infuriatingly sweet.
So you fixed it.
You leaned into him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt, and kissed him back harder.
Bucky made a small sound against your mouth, and his hand tightened at your waist. His mouth opened under yours, and the kiss turned deeper, messier.
You had kissed people before. You had kissed in back rooms of spaceports, against ship walls, in the dark corners of bars where nobody cared about names. You knew what casual was.
This did not feel like that.
Bucky kissed you like he was trying to remember how, and somehow that made it worse. When your fingers slid up into his hair, he exhaled against you.
He was a little rough at the edges. He was careful, then hungry, then careful again when you shifted closer and his metal hand finally moved to your hip.
You pulled back just enough to breathe, your forehead nearly touching his.
Bucky’s eyes opened slowly. His pupils were dark, his mouth swollen.
“Sorry,” he said, voice rough. “I’m a little rusty.”
You blinked at him. Then you looked very deliberately at his metal arm.
“You don’t have rust.”
For a second, he just stared at you. Then he laughed. “No, I don’t.”
You traced your fingers down the front of his shirt, feeling his breathing change beneath your touch. “You don’t need to apologise.”
His eyes dropped to your hand.
It should not have been so attractive, how kind he was. So you kissed him again.
By the time the two of you made it back inside, laughing under your breath, Bucky nearly knocked his shoulder against the frame trying not to let go of you.
It was still supposed to be simple. That was what you told yourself when he kissed you against the wall. That was what you told yourself when your hands found the edge of his shirt and pulled it over your head. That was what you told yourself when he paused, forehead against yours, and asked again if you were sure.
You were.
So for a few stolen hours, neither of you had to be a weapon.
You just made each other feel good.
—
In the morning, someone knocked on your door.
It was a determined knock, followed by a pause, followed by another knock that was weirdly polite.
You opened your eyes slowly.
For a second, you had no idea where you were. The light coming through the curtains was thin and grey and Terran. Then you became aware of the warm body behind you, the weight of an arm across your waist, the steady rise and fall of Bucky Barnes breathing against the back of your neck.
Oh.
Right.
The knocking came again.
Beside you, Bucky stirred awake. His arm tightened around you for half a second before he seemed to remember where he was, who you were, and what had happened the night before.
“I am Groot?” came a muffled voice from the hallway.
You closed your eyes.
Bucky’s voice was sleep-rough when he whispered, “Is that…?”
“Yes,” you whispered back. “That’s Groot.”
“He okay?”
“He’s asking about breakfast.”
“I am Groot,” Groot said again, more insistently this time.
You dragged a hand over your face. “What the hell is an IHOP?”
Bucky blinked, then made the mistake of laughing.
It wasn’t particularly loud, but you felt it against your shoulder and immediately wanted to do several stupid things, including staying exactly where you were and never opening the door. Unfortunately, Groot knocked again, and then someone in the room next to yours opened their door.
“I am going to kill both of you” Nebula called to you from the hallway.
You sat up so fast Bucky almost got elbowed in the chin.
Oh, shit.
Bucky sat up beside you with his hair a mess, eyes wide, mouth pressed tightly together like he was trying very hard not to laugh and make this worse.
You put a shirt and trousers on, panicking, making bucky put his boxers on, too.
Nebula continued, voice flat and merciless. “Some of us were trying to sleep. Some of us didn’t need to hear whatever Terran mating ritual you were performing in there all night!”
Your entire body went hot.
“You heard?” you opened the door to peek outside to see a crowd of guardians already converging there. You weren’t opening the door fully yet. Obviously. Bucky was still trying to find his shirt.
Nebula scoffed, “It was impossible not to.”
From the hallway, Rocket’s voice cut in. “I just put a pillow over my head.”
You dropped your face into your hands.
Bucky’s hand touched your back as he made his way to look for his socks, still shirtless.
“I still don’t know what IHOP is,” said Mantis, because apparently, she was there too.
“A breakfast place,” Bucky said, loud enough for everyone to hear. To be fair, Bucky had never really been there either. It was only a thing after the war, so all the knowledge he had about chain restaurants came secondhand from Sam’s stories and Shuri’s travels.
Drax, answer loudly from the hallway. “Why is it called that?”
“It stands for International House of Pancakes,” Bucky shouted back, looping his belt through. You stared at him, and he looked almost apologetic.
Before Bucky could answer, there was another voice in the hallway.
Peter.
“Why is everyone standing outside—” His voice cut off into a silence, which meant Peter Quill had looked through the half-open door, seen Bucky Barnes half-dressed, and experienced several emotions at once, most notably disgust and awe, which you were unaware could coexist .
Then he shouted, “YOU HAD SEX WITH A HOWLING COMMANDO?”
You froze. Bucky froze.
You stared at Peter through the gap in the door, genuinely exhausted. “I have no idea what that means.”
Peter looked like he hated that he knew something about his sister’s sex life, but was amazed you bagged a historical figure he learned about in school. “It means he’s a war hero!”
Bucky, looking increasingly like he regretted being alive, said, “Quill—”
Peter opened the door a little wider. “No, no, no, no, I’m not judging. Sir, I respect you very much.”
“Oh my god,” you said.
“Don’t call him sir,” Nebula said from somewhere out of sight.
Peter ignored both of you, because Peter had never once let good advice stop him. “Bucky, sir, would you like to join us at IHOP?”
You turned to him in alarm. “No.”
Bucky looked between you and the doorway.
“No, please,” you said, smoothing your stupid borrowed human shirt that said I ❤️ New York. “Bucky. Just go.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
You immediately realised how that sounded a bit aggressive and winced. “Not like that. I mean— before they make this worse. Before Peter starts asking you questions about ancient Terran history or Rocket asks if your arm has detachable components.”
“I was building up to it,” Rocket said, looking a bit pissed.
Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. You could see the smile fighting its way onto his mouth despite everything, still unfairly attractive. He finally found his shirt under the bed, while you looked very hard at the wall and pretended you were not noticing the way his back moved.
Bucky pulled his shirt on, then his jacket, then paused by the bed.
Rocket was still muttering about pancakes, Groot was making curious little noises, and Peter was whispering something that sounded like “World War Two Legend” under his breath. But inside the room, between you and Bucky, there was a pocket of silence.
“I’ll see you around?” you said.
“I hope so.” Then he smiled like he wanted to say something else, but then Peter coughed very loudly in the hallway, and the moment snapped. Bucky gave you one last look, then stepped out into the corridor, where Peter immediately straightened.
“Big fan,” Peter said.
“Pete!” you groaned.
Bucky, because he was apparently kind even under extreme psychological pressure, just nodded. “Thanks.”
Just like that, he left with a kiss on your temple.
Peter spent the entire walk there explaining World War Two to you.
Rocket and Drax collectively ordered too much food. Nebula threatened three different utensils. Groot liked the syrup so much he tried to drink it straight from the little container. Mantis, still not fully adjusted to Earth mornings, asked if your “night of physical bonding” had helped with your sadness, which made you put your head down on the table while Peter choked on his coffee.
By the time you got back to the motel, you saw a small Terran phone on the nightstand that you hadn’t noticed when you left.
It had one number saved: Bucky.
—
You were supposed to leave Earth after a week.
It had been the initial plan. It was only supposed to be one extra week on Peter’s weird little wheel planet, just long enough for Rocket to patch the Benatar, insult several Earth scientists, establish reliable interstellar communication, and call NASA a hobby club with delusions of grandeur.
Unfortunately, the Benatar was more fucked than anyone wanted to admit.
Earth, being a backwater planet with no shortage of paperwork, five years of stagnation, and parts that apparently could not just be stolen without “causing an international incident,” made repairs painfully slow. Rocket had to source pieces from Stark warehouses, Wakandan labs, old S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra storage, and one aerospace facility where he bit a man for calling him a raccoon.
So one week became five months.
And of course, you had to pass the time somehow.
Bucky Barnes was a very, very good way to pass the time.
The phone came in handy, because every time you weren’t helping a guardian with an annoyingly administrative task, you were lonely. So, you would call him.
It might not have been a one night stand anymore, but it was still casual.
It was so casual you fucked him every time the two of you were alone for more than seven minutes. You did it in his temporary apartment, your motel room, the roof, his kitchen, the backseat of a borrowed car, after he made the mistake of telling you the windows were tinted.
Huh. Maybe this contraption on wheels wasn't as useless as you thought it was.
Bucky had survived many things, including war and brainwashing, but apparently nothing had prepared him for you, wearing Ravager leathers deciding she wanted him immediately and treating Terran public decency like a loose suggestion.
There was the bar incident, which he still could not talk about without going pink in the ears. See, Bucky Barnes had not expected to be getting a blowjob from an alien girl in a cubicle of a newly reopened dive bar bathroom.
But there he was.
Things happened.
There was also the alley behind a Brooklyn diner, where his metal hand ended up in your folds, and you learned, very quickly, that Terran technology was not always primitive.
There was the temporary compound supply closet, where you had gone in looking for a power converter and came out with your hair ruined and knees weak, and Bucky looking like he had seen god in a storage room full of printer paper. There was the motel laundry room at three in the morning, where the machines rattled so loudly that you thought no one could hear you, until Drax walked past the next day and told you he sincerely wished his “pounding” would produce “strong children.”
You looked like you wanted the planet to split open and swallow you whole.
It was filthy and stupid. It was fun. It was definitely casual.
That was what you kept saying, anyway.
Calling it casual meant it didn’t matter that his metal arm felt good. Casual meant it did not matter that his human hand felt just as good. Casual meant it didn’t matter that he figured out exactly when you wanted him to be gentle and when you very much didn’t, that he could make you forget every insulting thing you had ever said about Earth with his mouth on your neck and that Brooklyn rasp in your ear.
Casual meant you could leave when you had to.
Bucky made that harder by being annoyingly charming outside of bed. He introduced you to human food like pizza, bagels, and pancakes. He taught you how to tell real New York pizza from the “modern stuff,” even when you were still struggling to eat the flimsy-foldable bread thing in the first place.
“You like it,” he said, watching you steal a pepperoni from his box.
You shrugged, but didn’t deny it. He smiled at you like you were funny, which was dangerous because you liked his smile far too much.
Then one afternoon, he told you he was from Brooklyn, and you sat up so fast you nearly kicked over the coffee table.
“Brooklyn,” you said. “As in No Sleep Till?”
Bucky blinked, then laughed. “Yeah. Shuri made me listen to that.”
“Pete loves that song.”
“Of course he does.”
You nodded solemnly. “It is one of the only respectable things about this planet.”
He leaned back, smiling into his coffee. “Brooklyn?”
“No. Music.”
He looked so offended you had to kiss him.
That was the problem with Bucky. He was too easy to kiss, too easy to want, too easy to crawl back to after a long day of Rocket screaming at wiring diagrams and Peter trying to explain why Earth malls used to matter culturally. Bucky made you food and started leaving space for your knives on his temporary dresser like that was a normal thing to do for someone you were only sleeping with.
The Benatar was fixed eventually.
Rocket announced the news to Avengers and Guardians and Asgardians and Wakandans alike, over breakfast like it was good news, because it was. Your family could leave, because the ship could fly.
Bucky didn’t say anything.
He just looked at you across the table, and you realised with a sick little twist in your chest that casual had become the biggest lie you had ever told.
—
The night before you left Earth, you found yourself on top of Bucky Barnes again in his makeshift New Asgardian tent.
It was getting increasingly harder and harder to pretend your chest didn’t hurt every time he looked at you like you were a treasure he had found in the wreckage and wanted, desperately, to keep.
His hands were on either side of you, your knees pressed into the cot on either side of him, your palms braced against his chest, your hair falling around your face while you rode him hard enough to make the frame knock into the fabric.
“Fuck,” Bucky breathed, head tipped back against the pillow, eyes half-lidded and wrecked. “Baby—”
You hated when Terrans called people that. Well. You hated it until he did it.
When he did, it made a warm pool in your stomach, made both your hearts kick faster, made you grind down harder just to hear him lose his breath again.
His metal hand tightened on your thigh. His human hand slid up your waist, warm and rough, thumb pressing into the place beneath your ribs like he was checking that you were still there.
You leaned down and kissed him because you couldn’t stand his face.
You could not stand his beautiful, sad, earnest face. You couldn’t stand that he had kissed you on the temple in a motel hallway once and therefore ruined your life forever. You couldn’t stand that he had made Earth feel less like Peter’s stupid planet and more like a place with someone waiting for you to come back.
Bucky groaned into your mouth when you moved again, taking him until your thighs shook.
“Christ,” he rasped, dragging his mouth down your throat, the place where your pulse was too fast. One pulse. Then the other. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“Good,” you said, breathless. “Then I don’t have to leave you.”
It was meant to be a joke. It didn’t feel like one.
You were leaving in the morning, and earlier today, Drax had asked if Bucky would be joining you and then said that he hoped so because Bucky seemed like he had “excellent reproductive prowess.”
You had kicked Drax under the table.
Bucky had not laughed much after that.
Now he looked up at you, hair messy against the pillow, mouth swollen from kissing.
After you rode out your high and drawn out his at the same time, you collapsed next to him.
“Stay,” he said, barely above a whisper, as if he had been holding it in for weeks and it had finally slipped out
“Bucky...”
“I know,” he said quickly, and his hands slid up your back, holding you against him. “I know. Pete’s out there. The Guardians are out there. I know that’s your family.”
You swallowed hard. “You could come with me.”
His face changed. There it was, the conversation you had been circling. You knew in reality, that this was nothing more than a ridiculous, impossible fantasy you had been trying not to build.
“You could,” you said again. “Thor’s coming.”
Bucky huffed a laugh, but it broke halfway through. “Yeah, well. Thor doesn’t exactly blend in here either.”
“You don’t blend in anywhere.”
“That’s fair.”
You tried to smile.
Bucky’s hand came up to your face, metal fingers careful against your cheek. The cool touch made your eyes sting.
“I haven’t been home in a long time,” he said.
“I know.”
“I don’t even know if New York is still home,” he admitted. “But I think I need to try.”
You nodded, even though it felt like swallowing glass.
You understood. Bucky had been dragged through so much. He had only just been handed a life that belonged to him. For the first time in a long time, this was his chance to figure out who he was when nobody was using him.
How could you ask him to leave that?
And how could he ask you to stay?
Your only tether to anything like family was Peter and Guardians.
Earth had Bucky.
Space had everyone else.
You pressed your forehead to his. “You’re breaking my hearts,” you whispered.
His breath hitched, kissing the edge of your lips. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” you said, wiping at your cheek angrily. “And they’re both beating quicker than they should be.”
He laughed then, and you laughed too, even as tears slipped hot down your face and fell onto his skin.
He kissed them off your cheeks.
You kissed his lips then as if you could press every unsaid thing into his mouth and make him understand. I’m sorry. I want you. I have to go. Come with me. Stay safe. Wait for me. Don’t wait for me. Please wait for me.
Eventually, Bucky rolled you beneath him with one smooth shift and you gasped against his mouth.
For a second, you thought he only meant to hold you there.
His weight settled over you, his hair fell around his face, his breath still uneven from what you had done to him not long ago, and yet when his hips pressed between your thighs, you felt him already hard again.
You blinked up at him.
Bucky froze, because in all honestly, his uncontrollable evidence of wanting you had made him feel like a perv. It was almost funny, really. This man had survived unspeakable things, but apparently getting hard again too quickly in front of the girl leaving his planet in the morning was what made him look embarrassed.
Your lips parted.
He let out a rough little breath, eyes flicking away for half a second. “Sorry.”
You stared at him. “Why are you apologizing?”
He was embarrassed and wanting and so painfully Bucky that it made your chest ache. “Super soldier thing,” he muttered. “I can, uh…”
You raised an eyebrow.
He looked down at you, cheeks faintly flushed now, and that was worse than all the filth you had done together in the last five months. “…go again,” he finished.
Then, you laughed, but not because it was funny.
But because of course James Buchanan Barnes would be hovering over you on your last night on Earth, looking sweet and apologetic for the fact that his body still wanted yours after you had already wasted him half to death.
He laughed too, quieter.
“You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “I just— I want you. But you don’t have to.”
You reached up and touched him. His stubble scratched against your palm. His eyes closed for half a second like he was trying to memorise that too.
It was your last night, with his sheets tangled around your legs, with his body over yours.
You were tired and sore. But you wanted him again so badly it felt dumb.
“Yes,” you whispered.
Bucky opened his eyes.
You hooked your legs around his waist and pulled him closer. “Yes. Please.”
He kissed you first, like he was saying thank you into your mouth. Then his hand slid down your side, over your hip, between your thighs, touching you with careful fingers until your body reacted to him all over again.
He pushed into you again, slow enough that you felt every inch and stretch until your back arched.
His forehead dropped to yours.
“Look at me,” he said.
You did.
He moved slowly at first,one hand tangled with yours against the sheets, the other braced beside your head. It was not the frantic, filthy kind of sex the two of you had gotten so good at. It was not trying to see how fast you could make him come apart before someone noticed you were missing.
This was him fucking you like he wanted you to remember exactly what leaving felt like.
Every thrust pushed the air from your lungs, and every drag of his body against yours made your thighs tighten around his waist. You dug your nails into his back and he groaned into your neck, hips snapping harder for a second before he caught himself again.
“Don’t,” you gasped.
He lifted his head. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t hold back.”
His eyes darkened.
Your voice cracked around the next words. “I want to miss all of it.”
Bucky kissed you hard, and then he gave you exactly what you asked for. He fucked you into the mattress with the kind of hunger that had been hiding his mouth at your throat, his hands on your hips.
You let yourself have it.
For once, you didn’t try to make it funny.
You just let him have you.
And when you came, it hit you so hard you cried out against his shoulder, bones trembling. Bucky followed after, burying his face in your neck with a broken sound, holding you so tightly it almost hurt.
Good.
You wanted it to fucking ache.
For a long time afterwards, neither of you moved.
The room smelled like sweat and sex and Bucky’s laundry soap. Your skin was damp against his. His heartbeat thudded under your ear, steady precious.
Eventually, you whispered, “I’m going to miss this.”
His hand stilled in your hair.
You closed your eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”
Bucky pressed his mouth to the top of your head.
“I’m gonna miss you, too,” he said.
You wanted to be brave about it. Still, your throat burned.
You shifted enough to reach for the little device on the makeshift nightstand. It was small, flat, and ugly, because Rocket had built it from three different communication systems, one stolen Stark component, and another thing he claimed was “probably not radioactive anymore.”
You placed it in Bucky’s hand.
He looked down at it. “What’s this?”
“A communicator.”
His brows lifted. “This works in space?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Some parts of space are unreachable,” you said, defensive because Rocket had already explained the limitations six times and you understood maybe half of them. “There are dead zones, black-market relay issues, Kree interference, and weird cosmic nonsense. Also Rocket said if you press the red button too many times, it may get hot.”
Bucky stared at you.
You sniffed. “But it works.”
His thumb moved over the edge of it, careful. “Yeah?”
“Yes. So reach out, please.” Your voice went low. “Even if I don’t answer right away, even if it takes a while. I’ll answer when I can.”
Bucky looked at you then, and the naked hope in his face nearly killed you.
“I’ll visit,” you said quickly, because if he looked at you like that much longer, you were going to do something embarrassing like stay. “From time to time.”
“From time to time,” he repeated.
You winced.you knew that sounded terrible, as if you didn’t want to give enough effort. “I mean I will come back,” you said, grabbing his wrist. “I mean it. I don’t know when. I don’t know how often. My family attracts disasters like Drax attracts confusing conversations, but I will come visit.”
Bucky’s hand turned under yours until he could lace your fingers together.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
Then Bucky sat up, reaching toward the floor where his jeans had been abandoned hours ago. He searched the pocket and pulled out a thin chain tangled around his fingers.
He looked almost shy when he handed it to you.
You took it, frowning at the two small metal plates hung from the chain, stamped with Terran letters and numbers you didn’t fully understand.
“What is this?”
“My dog tags.”
You stared at him, then thought of the only other dog you know of: Cosmo. “You’re not a dog.”
He laughed, soft and pained. “No.”
“Then why are they called that?”
“I don’t know. It’s an Army thing.”
You turned the tags over in your palm. “They have your name,” you said, before looking up.
His smiled.
Oh.
“They’re important,” you realised.
Bucky nodded once. “They’re from… before.”
And just like that, you understood. Your fingers closed around the tags.
“Bucky,” you whispered.
He shrugged like it didn’t matter, which meant it mattered terribly. “Figured you should have something.”
You looked down at them again, and your vision blurred. “I don’t have anything like this to give you.”
“You gave me a space phone that might explode."
You laughed. Bucky smiled, but his eyes were wet too.
You leaned forward and kissed him gentler, before he slipped the chain over your head. The tags settled between your breasts, cold against your skin, right between your two stupid, breaking hearts.
Bucky watched them land there, and the look on his face made heat curl through you all over again.You touched the tags. “How do they look?”
His eyes lifted to yours.
“Like mine,” he said, then seemed to realise what he had said.
You went very still.
Bucky’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did,” you said.
He looked at you.
You crawled back into his lap, the chain shifting against your bare skin, the communicator forgotten on the bed beside you. His hands came to your waist automatically.
“Good,” you whispered.
Then you kissed him again.
By morning, your body ached everywhere.
When you finally stood in the doorway with your bag over your shoulder and his dog tags hidden beneath your shirt, you and Bucky looked at each other like you both wanted to ask again.
Stay.
Come with me.
Both of you were too kind to say either out loud.
You kissed him one more time before you boarded the Benatar.
—
You visited Bucky Barnes four times in the next three years.
Four times sounded almost generous if you didn’t think about all the days between.
Still, you messaged him when you could.
Sometimes the communicator worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes your voice arrived through the little device in his palm three weeks late, half-swallowed by static and distance, saying, “—Rocket says if this thing starts beeping, that's technically your fault—” before cutting out entirely.
Sometimes Bucky sent you a message and had no idea whether it reached you.
Still alive?
That was his most common one. It looked and sounded casual. It was anything but.
You usually answered with something stupid, like: Unfortunately. Or Yes. You?
Or once, after apparently being shot at by pirates, chased through a collapsing space station, and nearly eaten by something Peter insisted was “not technically a worm”, you texted back: Define alive.
Bucky read that one in his kitchen at two in the morning and was scared shitless for your life.
Then he looked out of his window.
Brooklyn never showed enough stars, but some nights, when he couldn’t sleep, he went up to the roof anyway. He stood there with his jacket pulled close, metal hand resting on the ledge, eyes lifted to a sky that hid you from him.
He wondered where you were.
He wondered if you were safe. He wondered if you were injured and pretending you weren’t. He wondered if Peter was annoying you. He wondered if Rocket was taking care of you the way he promised to. He wondered if you ever looked out into the dark and thought of him, too.
—
The first time you came back, it was only for two days.
You told nebula to land on his roof, because of course you did. Bucky had already learned that you considered swinging, hinged doors a Terran inconvenience because you stubbed your toe on one once.
He had been waiting there for twenty minutes, when your little shuttle appeared above the building, and Bucky forgot every reasonable thing he had ever planned to say.
You jumped down with a bag over your shoulder, boots hitting the concrete like you had never once doubted you would land on your feet. For a second, you just looked at him. He looked at you, too. Eight months sat between you awkwardly, until you smiled.
“Your planet still smells strange,” you said.
Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Hi to you too.”
He kissed you, and it wasn’t frantic at first. It was worse. His hands came up to your face like he was checking that you were real, thumbs brushing your cheeks, before you made a small sound and pulled him closer by the front of his jacket.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead stayed against yours.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said quietly.
You swallowed, suddenly irritated with him for sounding so grateful. “For two days.”
“I know.”
“It’s not enough time.”
“I know,” he said again.
His apartment was exactly like him in the worst way. There were books stacked beside the couch, a blanket folded over the arm, mugs drying beside the sink, and a little space cleared on the dresser where, after one hour, your duffel bag somehow ended up.
You walked around slowly, inspecting everything. Bucky followed you like he was trying not to look nervous.
“It’s very square,” you announced eventually.
He leaned against the kitchen counter. “You said that about the motel too.”
“Terrans love boxes.”
He laughed and spent the days showing you his neighbourhood.
That night, you didn’t do half the filthy things you had promised yourself you would do on the way there. You had thought you would make the most of the short visit, but instead, you ended up under his blankets, your back against his chest, his arm around your waist, your body so tired from travel and space jumps that you fell asleep before you could even make a joke about his mattress.
Bucky stayed awake.
He couldn’t help it. He had spent eight months imagining you in this apartment, and now you were here. His dog tags rested against your chest beneath one of his shirts. He could feel the little metal plates when his hand settled over your ribs.
“You still wear them,” he murmured.
You weren't fully asleep. “They are important.”
“To me.”
“To me too,” you said, voice thick with exhaustion.
Bucky’s breath hitched.
You seemed to realise what you had said a second later, because you shifted and cleared your throat. “Also, they’re useful identification in case I misplace you.”
He huffed a laugh into your hair. “In case you misplace me?”
“Yes.”
“Where would you misplace me?”
“I don’t know. Your planet has many streets.”
A long silence passed as your fingers found his hand over your waist, and instead of moving it away, you threaded your fingers through his.
After a while, Bucky said, “You know, this feels like one of those old war movies.”
You turned your head slightly. “What does?”
“This. You showing up for two days and leaving again.” His voice was light, but trying too hard. “Like you’re a sailor being shipped out.”
You blinked in the dark. “I am the sailor?”
“Yeah.”
“And what are you?”
You felt his smile against your neck before he said, very seriously, “The damsel.”
You chuckled sleepily. Bucky chuckled, too, arms wrapping around you properly when you playfully tried to twist away from him. “Oh, you poor thing,” you said. “Do you require rescuing, princess?”
“Every few months, apparently.”
You laughed again, quieter this time.
Then the humour faded, because every joke with Bucky seemed to have a cliff beneath it.
—
The second time you came back, it was for five days.
Rocket needed Bruce Banner for something involving gamma signatures, and deep-space interference. You came with him because someone had to stop Rocket from biting another scientist.
Also because Bucky was there.
Not that you said that.
You invited him to the ship and while Bruce was there, too. Rocket gagged. “Not in my lab.”
You didn’t make it to dinner before you ended up in Bucky’s apartment.
This time, the urgency was there. Five days was longer. You could do more than cuddle in five days.
Bucky kissed you against his front door with one hand at your waist and the other braced beside your head. You laughed into his mouth when he almost tripped over your bag, and he muttered something about you being a menace before kissing you harder.
Afterward, as your skin cooled beneath his sheets, Bucky went quiet.
“What?” you asked, turning your head on the pillow.
He stared up at the ceiling, one hand resting on his stomach. “I went on a date.”
He looked like it had been eating him alive. He looked like he hated himself for it.
Against your better judgement, as you took in the absurdity of the conversation, you laughed. It came out a little too bright.
“Oh,” you said. “Okay.”
Bucky looked at you. “Okay?”
“Yes. Okay.” You pushed yourself up on one elbow and tried to look mature. “That’s good.”
He didn’t answer. He almost would rather you shout at him, even if you never said you were exclusive and had no reason to assume so.
You kept going because silence was dangerous. “You live here. You should date. You should have… Terran meals and Terran walks and whatever else dating is.”
“I had dinner where she worked,” he said quietly.
You looked at him for a moment, then asked another question because you were stupid and cruel to yourself. “How was she?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Nice.”
“Nice is good.”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty?”
He turned his head toward you, and he looked hurt now. “Don’t do that.”
Bucky seemed to regret saying it as soon as he did. He looked away again, but you had already seen too much.
You swallowed. “It is not like we’re in a relationship.”
“I know.”
“You can date.”
“I know.”
“Then how was it?”
“She…” he gulped, knowing it went nowhere, knowing he would never see her again because it felt so wrong, he felt nauseous afterwards. “She’s not you.”
Oh.
You didn’t know what to do with that.
You wanted to tell him not to wait for you, but the thought of him not waiting made your breath hitched. You wanted to tell him to date someone else, but not her. Actually, not anyone. You wanted to say you were sorry, or that you loved him.
Instead, you reached for his hand.
He let you take it.
“I don’t want you to be lonely,” you said.
“I know.”
You looked at him. “But?”
Bucky squeezed your fingers once. “But I still am.”
—
The third time, you visited, you stayed for a week
That time, Sam invited you to a Wilson cookout at his sister’s house.
Bucky asked badly as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Sam’s having a cookout. Sarah’ll be there. The boys too, but… we don’t have to go.”
You stared at him. “Do they know about me?”
“Yes.”
“What do they know?”
He looked uncomfortable.
You narrowed your eyes. “James Buchanan Barnes.”
“Oh, now it’s the full name?”
“What do they know?”
“That you visit.” He smiled faintly, but it faded quickly. “I… I just wanted you there.”
So you went on the short flight to New Orleans with him.
The Wilson’s Louisiana house was warm and smelled of grilled food and salt air.
You stood beside Bucky, as kids pointed out your markings, and suddenly became very aware that you didn’t know how to be introduced.
Sarah solved that immediately by smiling at you like she had already decided she liked you.
“So,” she said, handing you a plate, “you’re Barnes’ long-distance girlfriend.”
Bucky froze. Sam took one sip of his drink like had been waiting all day for this.
You laughed at once. “That’s not what this is.”
Sarah’s eyebrows lifted.
“It is more like…” You glanced at Bucky, then away, because his face had gone blank. “What you Terrans call an intergalactic booty call.”
Sam choked.
One of the boys immediately asked, “What’s a booty call?”
“Ask your uncle,” Sarah said.
Sam looked betrayed. “Why would you do that to me?”
You wanted to take it back.
You wanted to say, actually, no, that was wrong. Actually, he’s not that or I cross galaxies for him.
But you didn’t say any of that.
Later, while Sarah’s boys asked you increasingly strange questions about space, you caught Bucky looking at you from across the yard. He was leaning against the railing beside Sam, who was saying something to him. But Bucky was not really listening. His eyes were on you like a lost puppy.
You mouthed, stop.
He smiled faintly.
Three days later, you begged for his spare arm.
Bucky said no before you even finished explaining.
“It is for Rocket,” you insisted.
“That makes it worse.”
“It’s for Christmas!” You told him, leaning across his kitchen table. “He’s my best friend.”
Bucky leaned back, looking at you. You were wearing one of his shirts again, hair still damp from his shower. His apartment looked both wrong and right around you, as if you had always belonged there and were always about to leave.
“Fine,” he said at last.
Your face lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah. But I want something.”
You immediately narrowed your eyes. “I don’t make deals with soldiers.”
Bucky smiled, but it was fragile. “Just come back soon, yeah?”
Oh.
He didn’t look away, even though you could tell he wanted to.
Soon.
As if soon was easy, as if your life was not a mess of missions, emergencies, broken engines, family obligations, cosmic disasters, and Peter doing stupid things with massive diplomatic consequences.
“Bucky…”
“I know,” he said. “I know you can’t promise me anything.”
You swallowed.
“I know,” he repeated, but his voice was rougher now. “Just… try.”
You could have fought a demand or mocked a plea. But this…
You reached across the table and took his hand.
“I’ll try,” you said.
—
The fourth time, you came back two months later.
He opened the apartment door and just stood there, staring at you like he couldn't quite believe you were here.
You held up a bag, because apparently, you had taken a detour on the way to his apartment. “I brought bagels.”
His eyes dropped to the bag, then back to your face.
You lifted the bag higher, because you couldn’t survive much more of that look. “Bread circles, Bucky. Are you going to let me in or do Terrans eat in corridors now?”
He let you in.
The bagels were forgotten on the counter within minutes.
You told him about Mantis on the second night.
You were in his bed, his arm around you, the room dim except for the weak city light through the blinds. The dog tags rested against your bare sternum, rising and falling with your breathing. Bucky’s fingers had been tracing absent shapes along your side, soothing, when he asked about how Christmas in Knowhere went.
So you told him that Rocket loved the arm, but you also told him the bigger revelation.
“Mantis is my sister,” you said.
Bucky’s hand paused for a second. “Your sister?”
You nodded, staring at the ceiling. “She’s one of Ego’s, too.” You said with a smile. “She was already family. I mean, before. She was already one of ours. But now…”
“Now it’s different,” Bucky said.
“Yes.”
He shifted slightly to look at you. “How do you feel?”
You took a long breath. “Happy. I want to kill him again, but he’s already dead, so...”
Bucky smiled faintly. “I’m glad you have her.”
You believed him.
And he was telling the truth. He was glad, and Bucky would rather jump off a bridge than ever be cruel with your happiness. He never made you feel guilty for having family beyond him, never treated the Guardians like a competition, never asked you to shrink your world until only he was left in it. He loved you too much for that, even if neither of you had said the word.
But mantis being your sister, when all you ever wanted in life was family, meant that you’ve got another reason to stay up there.
Every piece of family you found among the stars tied you tighter to a life Bucky could only visit through broken messages and sparse wondering.
And what did Earth have?
One soldier in Brooklyn.
And later, after you fell asleep, Bucky laid awake beneath you and looked toward the window.
He wondered where you would be in a month.
He wondered if the communicator would work or if Rocket would be stripping it for parts again in an emergency.
He wondered if one day you would stop coming back and he would still find himself on the roof, looking up, waiting for you.
Then he looked down at the dog tags resting against your chest. For a few days, at least, the universe was small enough to fit in his bed.
—
Months later…
Rocket almost died, not in the abstract way all of you almost died every other cycle, either.
Rocket actually almost died.
You could still see it when you closed your eyes: his body on the table, fur matted, chest refusing to rise like a normal raccoon.
For a second, you thought your best friend had gone somewhere none of you could follow.
Then he came back.
Against all odds, Rocket lived.
The High Evolutionary was gone, his ship was wreckage. The children and the animals aboard the ship were safe. Knowhere had become both an ark and a home to many, many new faces.
Everywhere you looked, there was evidence of survivals. There were kids sleeping in corners because they hadn’t yet learned beds were safe and strange animals blinking under unfamiliar lights.
And now, your family was changing.
Mantis said she wanted to go. Although it felt like your sister was abandoning you, she reassured you that she wanted to see the universe without Ego. She wanted to find herself without the guardians breathing down her neck.
Which was fair
But she was your sister. You had barely gotten to have that before this. And yet, you understood.
Then Peter said he was leaving, too.
He was leaving for Earth because he wanted to see his grandfather again.
Peter tried to say it casually, but he was terrible at it. When he said it, he was not Star-Lord. He was not the idiot who had danced in front of Ronan, or the man who had lost Gamora, or the brother who had thrown bolts at you across Ravager floors.
He was just Peter, a little boy who had been taken from home, finally admitting there was still someone there he needed to go back to.
And maybe because everyone else was saying the brave thing out loud, you did, too.
“I could come with you,” you said.
Peter blinked at you. Then his face scrunched up in immediate disgust. “You can’t come live with my grandpa with me.”
You smacked him upside the head.
“Ow!”
“No, dumbass,” you rolled your eyes, "I'm not gonna live with you.”
Peter rubbed the back of his head, wounded and hurt, but then his eyes dropped to the chain beneath your shirt.
His eyes changed.
“Ohhh,” he said.
You looked away at once. “Don’t.”
Peter’s mouth opened wider. “Ahhh.”
“Peter.”
“Oh my god.”
“Don’t.”
But he was already grinning, all mischief and brotherly cruelty. “I see now.”
Drax leaned forward, deeply alarmed by being left out of something. “What? What are we seeing?”
“Nothing,” you said quickly.
Nebula folded her arms, finally catching up, “Guess who else is on Terra?”
Your face went hot.
Drax’s eyes widened. “Ah.”
“I am not going because of him,” you sputtered out, clearly lying through your teeth, “maybe I just want to learn of Terran music!”
The pretense was paper thin, and even you knew it.
Rocket made a rude little noise from his seat.
You turned. “What?”
He lifted both paws. “Didn’t say anything.”
“I am Groot,” Groot said mildly from beside him.
Rocket nodded. “Exactly.”
You looked at Groot in betrayal.
Groot only blinked at you with those gentle eyes.
Mantis smiled softly. “You do touch the metal necklace every time someone mentions Terra.”
“I don’t.”
“You are touching them now.”
You dropped your hand like the metal had burned you.
“This is amazing.” Peter looked delighted. “My sister is moving to Earth for that old robot. We’ll practically be neighbors.”
“He’s not old.”
Nebula finally looked up.
Peter held up a finger. “He fought in World War Two.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“It means old.”
“He looks fine.”
Rocket barked a laugh. “Oh, she’s got it bad.”
“I don’t have anything”
Drax nodded with grave certainty. “She has been claimed by the metal warrior. He gave her necklace plates.”
“They are called dog tags.”
“You are not a dog.”
“That is what I said!”
Nebula smiled a little, which for her was basically hysterics. “You cross galaxies to crawl into his bed and wear his military identification around your neck.”
Well, when she said it like that…
Mantis leaned closer. “He makes you less lonely.”
Finally, everybody shut the hell up.
Because yes. He did.
Right.
Rocket looked away first.
He was picking at a seam in his jacket, claws worrying the fabric until the thread started to pull loose. His ears were low, though he was clearly trying to make them not be. His mouth had twisted into that flat line he wore whenever feeling like he wanted to bite.
Mantis was leaving. Peter was leaving. You were leaving. The children of Ego, all drifting off in different directions like the dead bastard pleft cruelty in your blood.
Rocket scoffed. “Great. Real touching. Everybody’s got somewhere better to be now.”
Your hearts felt hurt. “Rocket.”
“What?” he snapped, too fast. “It’s good. It’s great. Everyone’s got somewhere to be.”
Rocket didn’t look at you.
He had almost died. He had woken up into a universe where he was finally captain, and now his family was peeling apart.
“Family’s still family,” you said, “Even when we’re spread out.”
You looked around the room at the only family you’d ever really known, and here was Rocket pretending not to be sad.
The raccoon looked up at you three, and this time, he looked… okay.
“I am groot,” Groot said, finally.
I love you guys.
—
Bucky wasn’t expecting a knock on a random Tuesday.
He should have been, probably.
That was his life now: he always had knocks at weird hours, which was usually campaign staff with clipboards. Sometimes it was Sam showing up because apparently “boundaries” were optional during election season. Other times it was someone from legal, or from security, or an intern from the press being brave enough, or stupid enough to knock on the former winter soldier’s door at 8AM.
He had only just started his campaign for congressman, and already his personal life felt less personal the more people tried to pry open his head with a crowbar.
So when the knock came, he thought someone had leaked his address.
He thought this must be a reporter. His life must be blowing up.
He set the mug down, rubbed a hand over his face, and walked to the door trying to make his expression less like it belonged on a wanted poster.
Then he opened it and the entire world stopped.
You were standing in his hallway.
You.
You were actually there, clothes damp from rain, hair windswept, a duffel bag hanging from your shoulder, his dog tags tucked beneath your shirt.
Behind you, Peter Quill stood near the stairwell, a respectful amount of distance, but probably a reminded that he was still your brother. He gave Bucky a small thumbs-up before scurrying down the stairs. He had already said goodbye in the car and given you his address in Missouri after driving you here, obviously. You didn’t know how cars worked. Yet.
Bucky barely saw him, mostly because he couldn’t stop looking at you.
You looked nervous, which was so wrong it almost hurt to see. You had fought gods, monsters, armies, and living planets. And now you were standing in his doorway like you were afraid he might say reject you.
“Hi,” you said, voice smaller than usual.
Bucky’s hand tightened around the edge of the door.
“I’m here to stay,” you said. “If that’s okay.”
For a second, nothing existed to Bucky, not even the campaign or reporters or Earth or space. Just you.
Then Bucky stepped forward and pulled you into his arms.
Your duffel slipped off your shoulder and hit the hallway floor, but neither of you cared. His metal hand spread across your back, gentle even when the rest of him was shaking. His human arm was wrapped around your waist as buried his face against your neck.
You went still, startled by it, and then folded into him without any resistance whatsoever.
Bucky closed his eyes.
His throat tightened so suddenly he almost couldn’t get the words out.
“How long?” he asked.
Your fingers curled into the back of his shirt. “For the foreseeable future.”
Oh.
Oh, stars.
Bucky pulled back just enough to look at you.
Your eyes were watering. His probably were, too, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have room to care. You swallowed.
“I should’ve asked you first,” you rushed out. “I know. I just wanted it to be a surprise, and Pete thought it might be a good surprise, so I’m—”
Bucky kissed you.
He couldn’t stand to listen to you ask permission to be wanted. Because of course you were wanted.
Yes.
Yes, stay.
Yes, here.
Yes, with me.
You made a broken little noise into his mouth, and Bucky’s hand slid into your hair, holding you there like he was anchoring both of you to the same planet.
When Bucky finally pulled back, his forehead stayed pressed to yours.
For a second, neither of you spoke.
Then you whispered, “Good surprise?”
Bucky let out a laugh, but it broke. “Yeah,” he said, voice wet. “Yeah, sweetheart. Good surprise.”
You sighed then.
Bucky bent down, picked up your duffel, and stepped back into the apartment. You crossed the threshold, eyes moving over the campaign papers on the table, the tie abandoned on the couch, the books stacked by the window, the stupid square Terran box of a home you had to teased every time you visited.
—
And then life kept going.
You stayed, and the world didn’t collapse.
Bucky still had campaign meetings and reporters still asked questions that made your fingers twitch toward knives you were no longer allowed to carry in certain government buildings. Peter sent too many messages after getting you both a smartphone. Rocket called every once in a while, calling Earth “a bureaucratic sinkhole.” Bucky tried to teach you how primaries worked, and you told him Terrans had made voting sound more complicated than interstellar smuggling.
He won anyway.
By the time Mantis visited Earth months later, Bucky Barnes was now Congressman Barnes, which still sounded fake to your alien brain.
The news loved it, obviously. They wrote all sorts of headlines:
Former Winter Soldier wins historic congressional seat.
James Buchanan Barnes sworn into office.
Congressman Barnes has an alien girlfriend.
That one was your favourite.
You framed it.
Bucky came home one evening, saw it hanging in the hallway of your new DC penthouse, and stopped dead with his briefcase still in his hand.
You were sitting on the floor nearby, sorting through a box of your things and pretending very hard not to watch him notice.
He stared at the headline.
“You framed it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“In the hallway, where guests can see it.”
“That is usually why people hang things in hallways, is it not?”
Bucky sighed, but he didn’t take it down.
The penthouse had been a compromise, which was to say Bucky had wanted something secure and reasonable, and you had wanted the biggest house with the biggest windows.
You’re still not used to Terran skies, but from high up, DC was lovely. You could see glowing roads and monuments with headlights and ridiculous little wheeled vehicles dragging themselves around.
Bucky said the place made sense for security.
When Peter visited for the first time, he looked at the glass walls, the high ceiling, the guest rooms, the kitchen big enough for a small diplomatic crisis, and said, “Oh. So you guys are rich rich now.”
“It’s practical,” Bucky said, even though rich wasn’t a place he’d use.
“It has what? Two walk in closets ” Peter said, and guessed right.
“I wanted a third one for all my knives,” you said. “But I had to compromise.”
Bucky looked at you like he loved you and regretted encouraging you at the same time.
And slowly, it became yours.
You had your weird human boots by his polished shoes. You had strange little space trinkets on his shelves, and your faux fur jacket thrown over the back of his very expensive chair.
When Mantis visited, Peter visited, too.
He was still arguing with security about his blasters when she stepped into the penthouse and looked around with wide eyes.
“Oh,” she said softly. “You live very high.”
Bucky was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, opening pizza boxes.
“Your sister likes windows,” he said.
He said it like your wanting mattered enough to explain the whole place.
Mantis smiled.
Bucky glanced at you, then slid a box toward all three of you. Eventually, Peter sat on the floor like he owned the place. Mantis sat cross-legged beside him, studying her slice with concern. You curled into Bucky’s side on the couch, his arm along the back of it, his knee against yours.
Mantis took one bite and her eyes widened. “This is amazing.”
You looked at Peter, your brother, who had once thrown bolts at you across the floor of a Ravager ship and now sat eating pizza in your living room. You looked at Mantis, your sister, free and alive and choosing her own way through the universe. You looked at Bucky, the man who had once been a one-night stand in a motel room, but now, he was your home in every sense of the word.
And tonight, the universe was small enough to fit in one living room.
Mantis leaned back, pizza balanced carefully in both hands.
“I like Earth,” she said.
You looked at her, then at Peter, then at Bucky.
“Yeah,” you said, leaning into your lover’s side. “It has one or two good things.”
—end.
Extra note: I think this reader would make a wonderful Thunderbolt. Thoughts?
summary: you sleep with jack for the first time and discover what it means to be loved gently
cw: smut (mdni, 18+), gentle sex, oral (f rec), referenced p in v, reader uses sex as a coping mechanism and has low self-esteem, light intoxication
wc: 3k
a/n: listen, I do not think that rough sex is necessarily a bad thing, but it can be. I don’t feel like expanding on this
now playing: Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby – Cigarettes After Sex
Jack can’t take his eyes off you. Not when you look the way you do right now: skin glowing, eyes sparkling, and a truly sincere smile on your face.
The wine bottle shared between the two of you stands at your feet as his hands snake around your waist, pulling you closer. He tastes the grapes on your tongue when his own slips between your parted lips, mapping out the inside of your mouth slowly. His palm wanders from your side to the small of your back, pressing you flush against him.
You only pull away when you start to get lightheaded—too little oxygen, too much love.
Love.
Neither one of you has said it yet. It’s much too early for that four-letter word, but the idea of it hangs over you as he kisses your cheek instead of your mouth to let you catch your breath.
Jack tilts his head to meet your gaze and smiles softly. His eyes drift over your face like he’s memorizing every inch. He’s close enough that he could count each individual lash if he wanted to.
When he lifts his hands to cup your face between his palms, you melt into his touch.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.
Your skin heats under his hands, blood rushing to your face. The timid smile on your face tugs at Jack’s heartstrings.
“So beautiful,” he repeats tenderly.
He means it.
You misinterpret it.
When you stand on your tiptoes to kiss him again, there’s more heat to it—the kind that leads to places you haven’t been to with him yet.
He keeps you steady, your face still held by him.
His lips fit against yours like two puzzle pieces.
The weight of him leads you towards the couch naturally. He doesn’t guide or force but simply leans in until you sink onto the cushions, him braced above you.
Your hand drifts down from his chest to his stomach. Through his shirt, you still feel the way his muscles flex under your touch.
He breaks the kiss to look at you, an almost dopey curve to his mouth.
“You’re ticklin’ me,” he mumbles.
“That’s on purpose,” you reply.
He grins, then catches your hands in his own.
“Is that so?” he whispers. “Anything else you want to confess?”
You let a few seconds pass, just for dramatic effect, before you nod.
“Yeah,” you mumble, “I’m also trying to take your shirt off right now.”
Jack chuckles softly.
“You don’t say,” he teases. “Any reason for that?”
You roll your eyes fondly.
“Take a guess.”
A gentle laugh spills from him, originating deep from his chest. You feel the vibration travel through him until it reaches your hand, too.
“I think I can help out with that.”
He grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it up, then over his head. Your eyes are glued to every inch of sun-kissed skin that’s slowly exposed. For a moment, you hesitate before you reach out to rest your hand on his chest, feeling the heat radiating from him.
When you’ve had your fill of touching him—though you’re not sure you’ll ever get enough of him—you take off your own shirt. You had planned in advance and worn a black lace bralette, but you hadn’t told Jack, so you could trick him into thinking that you’re always this put together.
The matching panties waited for him under the skirt, which you were eager for him to pull off of you.
Jack can’t look away—and doesn’t want to. You’re surprised that for once, it doesn’t feel like you’re being ogled.
No, Jack admires.
His fingers drift over your breasts up to your neck, then rest on your face.
“Like I said,” he whispers. “Beautiful.”
Instead of answering, you lean in to kiss him again. As your lips press against his, you reach for his belt buckle and open it. Jack hums into your mouth, a small roll of his hips encouraging you.
He helps you take off his jeans. Jack talked to you about not wearing his prosthetic at home around you a few days ago, but right now, he still has it on. He seems a little nervous as his pants fall away, and you get a full glance at it for the first time.
You don’t mind at all.
The next barrier that falls is your skirt. Jack undoes the zipper at the side carefully, then slides the fabric down your legs. He makes a sound you can’t quite categorize when he sees the thin lace panties you picked out for tonight.
“Fuck,” he whispers, “How are you this perfect?”
Again, you forgo an answer with another kiss.
Jack notices. He cups your face, then pulls away a little just to look at you. His brows knit together slightly.
“Hey,” he mumbles.
You haven’t been together that long yet, but he knows you well enough to see that you don’t feel like talking about this right now.
Still, for a moment, he chews on his bottom lip in contemplation before he asks, “Wouldn’t you rather take this to the bedroom?”
You shrug softly.
“I don’t mind the couch. Whatever you want.”
The divot between his brows deepens.
“But I’m asking you what you want,” he counters. “If… if we’re doing this right now, I want you to be comfortable.”
“I am comfortable,” you reply.
He nods reluctantly.
“Alright,” he mumbles.
The next kiss feels a little different—not in a bad way, just more careful. Jack waits, lets you chase him instead of taking the lead. So you do.
You reach behind you to unfasten the clasps of your bra. As the lace falls away, Jack watches with amazement. He almost manages to throw in another compliment for you, but you don’t give him the chance.
You stand up from the couch and hook your fingers into your panties, then slowly slip them off.
Jack’s breath hitches. He leans into the back of the couch to watch as you step out of the fabric that fell to your ankles. This time, he truly stares.
When you step closer, he pulls you in by your hips until you’re seated on his lap. Your bare cunt brushes over the bulge in his boxers, causing both of you to moan.
You roll against him once, then twice, then kiss him again. The heat between the two of you is unbearable. You don’t understand why he hasn’t taken off his underpants yet and wonder if he maybe just needs a little bit more encouragement, so you grind down against him again.
Jack hisses at the contact, his fingers tightening on your sides.
“Fuck, baby,” he mutters. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”
“Then let me help you,” you chuckle and reach for the waistband of his boxers.
He lifts his hips to help you slip them off—and you swallow hard when you see what you’re working with. The grey happy trail you’ve been eyeing since his shirt came off leads down to his thick cock. The size of the bulge makes more sense now. He’s veiny and flushed a dark red, almost a little purple at the tip.
“Jesus,” you whisper.
Jack chuckles, maybe even a little self-consciously so.
“Yeah, it’s um… it’s been a while for me,” he admits.
Your mouth falls open—you hadn’t expected that. A man with his looks, a doctor at that, too?
“Really?” you ask. “I mean… that’s okay. I don’t mind. Just… tell me what you like.”
He shrugs softly.
“I like you.”
His answer is so sappy that it makes you grin.
“Shut up. No, really, tell me what you like.”
Jack looks at you and pulls you closer again.
“I’m serious,” he mumbles. “I just want you, however you want. Why? What kinda stuff do the kids like these days?”
Your face warms a little.
“I don’t know,” you mumble. A total lie.
“We can try some stuff, you know?”
“Like what?” he asks. “You want me to tie you up?”
He chuckles like the idea is absurd to him.
“Would you want to tie me up?” you counter.
Jack’s brows furrow again.
“I don’t think that’s my thing,” he says quietly.
You nod slowly.
“What about…”
Saying it out loud feels, for lack of a better word, cringe, so you take his hand and place it on the base of your throat.
Jack doesn’t pull away immediately, but his fingers don’t wrap around your neck either. He looks up at you, his jaw set tightly.
Then he shakes his head and cups your face instead.
“I don’t think so,” he says softly. “How about… we just take things slow and figure it out as we go?”
When you nod, Jack kisses you, and it tastes like relief.
He surprises you when he switches positions with you—you’d have thought he would want you to stay on top.
Jack braces his weight on his forearms as he hovers above you, his face just inches away from you. Then he lowers his head, but his lips don’t meet yours—they trail down over your chest. His tongue swirls around your nipple, making you gasp as the sensation tingles through you.
He cups your other breast, squeezing and kneading the flesh gently, then places a kiss on the valley between your breasts before he descends further.
To your ribs… then your navel… then your hipbone.
Your breath stills completely when his fingers come to rest on your thighs. He doesn’t push them open yet.
“May I?” he asks.
“Yeah,” you whisper.
He parts your legs gently, his eyes still focused on you until he lowers his head and—
Your world tilts a little.
When his tongue drags through your drenched slit, and Jack moans out loud, you arch towards him. He holds your hips in place, fingers digging into the flesh—not hard enough to bruise, but enough to make you feel him.
“Fuck,” he gasps, “You taste so fucking good, baby.”
He flattens his tongue against your clit, licking upwards until you see stars.
“Jack-“ you moan, trying… you don’t know what you’re trying to say. Your fingers find purchase in his hair, tugging slightly at the grey curls.
He sucks your clit into his mouth, causing you to cry out in pleasure.
He laps at your cunt like a starved dog, and you can’t believe that “it’s been a while” for him, not when he’s eating you out like that.
“I—oh God,” you sigh dreamily.
Your legs quiver, your hips twitch—your entire body is shaking with pleasure.
“That’s it, baby,” Jack murmurs, his words muffled. “Fuck—please, just let me make you feel good.”
The sounds of your arousal mixing with his saliva are unholy—a wet overflow of moisture between your thighs. Jack seems to be right where he wants to be. He moans into your flesh, his hips bucking and pressing into the couch below like he is trying to alleviate the ache, the buildup of his own need.
When you come apart, he guides you through it, not stopping until your brain is overflowing with oxytocin and your thighs won’t stop shaking.
Both of you are panting when he comes up.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and smiles devilishly.
“God… we’re so doing this again,” he declares softly.
You’re at a loss for words. You haven’t come like that ever. All you can do is nod and reach for him.
Jack plants his arms on either side of your head and kisses you deeply. You taste yourself on his tongue, the sweet, tangy flavor erupting in your mouth.
His leaking cock presses against your tummy as his lips graze yours.
You reach between you and stroke him, making him groan into your mouth.
“Jesus,” he mutters when he pulls away to look at you. “You—”
He thrusts into your hand instinctively, and you realize just how pent up he is.
“Your turn,” you whisper.
Jack tsks softly, half amused, half… something else.
He cups your face and kisses your jaw tenderly.
“Believe me, that was my turn,” he says lowly. “But if you want to keep going, I’m sure as hell not saying no.”
--
The bliss afterwards is indescribable. But it’s also foreign.
You still sense every press of his hands on your body without feeling tender, every brush of his lips without a single mark on your skin, and every thrust of his hips without that residual feeling of having been used.
Jack was nothing but gentle.
And god, it was incredible.
The sheets underneath you are crumpled and slightly damp with sweat and sex, but you don’t mind. Not when Jack’s arm is wrapped around you, your back pressing against his chest. He kisses the side of your neck where your pulse still flutters with excitement.
“You were incredible,” he whispers.
It must be so obvious that his words fluster you because he smirks when you hide your face in the sheets.
“Barely even did anything,” you mumble.
Jack makes a sound you can’t quite discern.
“Right,” he chuckles. “Except that thing where you got really tight when you were about to come again or—”
You whip around and press your hand over his mouth, your eyes wide and embarrassed.
“Jack,” you complain, half-serious, half-playful.
He kisses your palm and smiles.
“Hey, I’m just teasin’,” he retorts. “But I really meant it. It was really great for me.”
“Yeah, for me, too,” you mumble.
You’re not used to any kind of pillow talk, so the words feel thick, like they don’t quite want to leave your mouth.
Jack doesn’t seem to mind. He just pulls you closer against his chest and rests his chin on the top of your head.
As the minutes pass, he tells you to go pee and promises more cuddles later on.
In the bathroom, you look at yourself in the mirror. The haphazardly buttoned-up shirt you’re wearing belongs to Jack and falls to your mid-thigh. Your hair is a mess from how often he ran his hands through it. A few hickeys begin to gain color and paint your neck a soft purple.
You can’t help but smile.
“Hey, sweetheart?” Jack calls out. “Your phone keeps vibrating. I think someone really wants to talk to you!”
“Yeah, just a sec,” you reply.
When you return to his bedroom, Jack is sitting up, his brows drawn together slightly. Your phone is in his hand, the screen facing up.
“Sorry,” he says as he passes it to you. “I didn’t mean to spy on you or anything, just wanted to bring it to you.”
You take your phone and glance at the messages—and feel your face heat up.
“Oh.” Your laugh comes out stiff as you quickly shut off your phone. “Sorry, um—they’re joking, of course. Like, uh…”
Jack looks at you quietly, watching as you fumble nervously with the edge of your phone case. There was a light flush to his cheeks now, too.
“No, no, don’t worry, I shouldn’t have read it anyway, I just looked at it ‘cause it kept… vibrating,” he explains.
The awkward silence that follows feels detrimental.
You wonder if you should explain more, or if maybe stammering another apology would make it worse, but then Jack breaks the quiet first.
“Not to sound my age, but… I assume cracking means… uh… hooking up?”
You press your lips together uncomfortably.
“Yeah,” you mumble. “Like, um… yes.”
He nods once. Then he tilts his head to catch your eyes.
“It’s not the… nicest word, is it?” he asks.
“It’s just, like, a TikTok thing,” you answer.
“Hm,” is all he replies.
Then he takes your hand and guides you back onto the mattress. You meet his gaze hesitantly. The lines around his eyes are a little deeper, just like the furrow between his brows. He doesn’t seem angry, just serious.
“I… I kind of would prefer it if you didn’t think of what we just did as… “cracking”. It’s not the word I would use,” he says slowly.
“It’s just a word,” you mutter.
“Not to me,” he argues softly. “It’s… words have meanings. And cracking sounds like… like I’m doing something to you, not with you. I don’t mean to be… all old man and, like, police your language. But… I don’t want you to think of sex with me that way. Or… with anyone else for that matter, even though, ideally, I would like this to be a long-term thing.”
His hazel eyes don’t leave your face for even a single moment, and it’s almost overwhelming—if it weren’t for the sincerity in them.
“I’m sorry—" you begin, but Jack shushes you.
“No, sweetheart, I don’t- I don’t want you to apologize. I just want you to be comfortable with me. I wanna make sure you… you feel respected by me,” he explains.
“I do,” you reply quickly. “Really. Like, no one else has ever… been this kind to me.”
Jack’s face falls.
“Oh, no, I mean, like… you’re a gentleman,” you elaborate.
He shakes his head softly.
“No, baby, I’m… this is… this is the bare minimum. Christ.”
Jack’s hands find yours, and he leans in to kiss your forehead. Then he wraps his arms around you.
“At the risk of sounding like your father, I think you kids need to put down your phones and go out in the real world.”
❤︎ just a quick reminder that the best way to support authors on here is to comment and reblog ❤︎ ☆ find my masterlist here ☆
You love your nighttime routines; you love putting on a nightie after a shower and doing your skincare; you love looking like a shiny donut once you leave the bathroom; you love laying on Jack’s chest and quietly reading together until you both fall asleep. Other nights, the you both watch a movie (your pick, always) and one of you always dozes off.
Sometimes, Jack has other urges. Tonight, you look nothing short of the evening beauty he always sees you as, nightie on or not. Your skin is shiny with whatever moisturizer you’ve put on, and as you tuck in for bed and pull out your E-reader, all he wants is to devour you. You can feel his eyes on you as you pull back the duvet and scoot onto your side of the bed.
An arm slings around your shoulder to pull you closer into his broad chest. Of course, he’s shirtless because of the Pittsburgh summers; humid and hot, even at night. You cuddle closer to him and open your E-book to the last chapter you left off.
His blunt nails draw up and down your arm, giving you goosebumps. He presses his thigh closer to yours and dips down his head to brush his nose against your earlobe. You squirm, feeling his breath against your skin. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he breathes, seeking out your neck. You smell like soap and fresh laundry after your shower, and it does nothing except stir him.
You shift and he pulls your thighs closer together with his free hand while he kisses down your neck. “Jack.”
“Yeah.” He grunts, gently guiding you down onto the pillows and forcing the E-reader out of your hand. He presses you against the mattress, caging you in with his body. There's a hand tangling in your hair and another arching you into him.
“Jack.” You groan, trying to push him off. “I was reading. I’m on the last chapters!”
“Mm,” is all he replies with. He’s too busy kissing your face and sucking at your neck to coherently respond. Too full of his want for you. You’d welcome it if you didn’t have other matters at hand, say, your murder mystery that you’ve been itching to get to the bottom of.
“Jack!” You try again, trying your best to push off his full body weight on you. You grumble, asking, “Can we compromise? Please?”
At that, he finally lifts his head. You see hazel pupils swallowed by darkness, a flush on his face, and glossy, swollen lips. He murmurs, “Like what?” in his roughened voice before kissing you once.
You giggle, “Give me fifteen minutes. Okay?” Putting a finger to his lips, you repeat, “Fifteen minutes to finish my book.”
“Fifteen?” Jack’s panting like a dog by now, a stray hand still squeezing at your hips. “You’re gonna make your old man wait?”
“Oh, shush.” You roll your eyes. “You’ve lived 50 years, you can survive 15 minutes.”
Appeased, he rolls off you. You scoot yourself up to sit against the headboard again, and he lays his head in your lap, eager. Now unbothered, you grab your E-reader and start reading again.
You feel him huff and puff against your thigh. “What if I have a heart attack within these fifteen minutes?”
“You work in an ER.”
But he gets what he wants, because it takes fourteen minutes for you to put your E-reader away and finally kiss Jack.
CW: fluff to smut, emotional comfort. no use of y/n. 18+ (minors do not interact). doctor!jack x forensics-pathology!reader. established relationship (3 years). reader struggles with a lingering insecurity/feeling like a burden. praise. semi-public teasing (whispering). unprotected slow-paced vaginal sex. lots of em-dashes and semicolons.
The museum always had that specific brand of quiet—just the low hum of random conversations, the occasional echo of someone's keys jingling, and the rhythmic scuff of sneakers on polished stone floors. For Jack, after a string of brutal night shifts in the ER that left him feeling like he was running on battery acid and sheer willpower, the stillness was like taking a dunk in ice-cold water. No sirens, no overhead pages, no chaotic rushing. Just a slow, aimless afternoon. Refreshing.
...And your hand in his, pulling him along.
You were moving from display to display with a hyper-focused energy, your nose practically pressed to the glass as you read through the descriptions. Jack didn’t mind the slow pace at all; this was your kid-in-a-candy-store moment. At the hospital, he was always the guy carrying the weight, making the big calls, and pushing everyone to move faster because seconds actually mattered. Everything was literally life and death. Here, he was completely fine letting you play tour guide. Honestly, he was just relieved to have absolutely nowhere he urgently needed to be.
Jack already had his phone out. It had become automatic for him over the three years you'd been together. Whenever you lingered a little too long, or the lighting caught the side of your face just right, he’d slide the phone from his pocket. He’d step back a couple of paces, adjust for the glare, and snap a handful of candids of you completely lost in thought.
"Hey," he muttered, nudging your shoulder lightly with his own. "Turn around real quick. Just lean against the rail right there."
You blinked, snapped out of whatever you were reading, and looked at him a little sheepishly before doing what he said. He'd adjust his angle, getting the exact framing he’d learned you liked for your Instagram, snapping a few more before slipping the phone back into his jacket pocket. You knew he loved you, of course, but you were still entirely oblivious to just how hyper-fixated he was on you the second he clocked out. You never quite realized that he wasn't just tolerating your hobbies—he was completely captivated by them because they belonged to you. He tracked your moods, your angles, and your comfort with the same high-alert focus he used on a critical patient, but entirely driven by a consuming affection.
When you heard the camera click again, you glanced over your shoulder, your face flushing a little but your eyes bright as you pointed at a piece of ancient pottery. "Look at the pattern on the rim here, Jack. This style means they were trading with the western regions a lot earlier than the textbooks usually say. Like, by at least two centuries."
"Is that right?" Jack asked, his voice low and raspy from a lack of decent sleep and years of barking orders. He didn't know the first thing about antiquity, but he liked the tone of your voice when you were explaining something you genuinely cared about. "What's the giveaway on the style?"
You smiled, launching into a brief, easy breakdown of the etching and the type of clay they used. Jack just listened, nodding along, asking a casual question here and there just to keep you talking. He didn’t need to understand the history to enjoy the way you talked about it; he just liked the animated way your hands moved when you got into the details.
But as you moved toward the back half of the wing, near a display of an ancient Byzantine coin, the familiar, sharp ache in his left leg started to act up. The prosthetic handled his long shifts well enough when he was constantly moving and the adrenaline was pumping, but the stop-and-start, slow pacing on hard museum marble was tough on his residual limb. The skin was starting to pinch against the socket, and a dull heat was building in the joint. He tried to smooth out his stride, adjusting his weight to his good leg, but the localized pressure was getting hard to ignore.
He gave your hand a gentle tug, pulling you slightly out of the flow of the other visitors shuffling past. Before he spoke, he brought your interwoven fingers up to his mouth, his lips brushing softly over the back of your knuckles as he leaned down.
"Hey," he muttered softly against your skin, his rough voice vibrating against your hand. "I'm going to go grab a seat on that bench we passed by earlier. My leg’s starting to get pretty sore."
Your eyes dropped to his leg instantly, checking his posture, then snapped back up to his face. The excitement immediately dialed down, replaced by that familiar, cautious look you got whenever you worried you were putting him out. "Oh. Do you want to leave? We can go, it's totally fine."
"No, don't be ridiculous," he said, finally dropping your hand from his lips but keeping his fingers locked with yours as he gave your lower back a reassuring, steady nudge. "Stay here and finish browsing. You're only halfway through the exhibit and you haven't even read about the coins yet. Go on, I’ll be right over there."
You looked at the bench, then back at him, evaluating how much pain he was actually in. After a second, you shook your head, your grip tightening on his fingers. "I'm coming with you."
Jack didn't argue. He didn't have the energy to fight you on it when his leg felt like this. He walked with a noticeable limp over to the wooden bench against the wall, letting out a rough grunt as he finally sat down. He immediately reached down, unzipping his jacket to give himself some breathing room, and used his large hand to firmly massage his thigh and knee area, trying to work out the tension where the socket was pinching the skin.
You plopped down right next to him, your fingers still laced with his, sliding in close, wrapping your arm around his bicep like a vine and leaning your head against his shoulder. It was a familiar habit that had formed between you two over the years you'd been together, a way of grounding each other without making a big deal out of it.
Jack leaned down, rubbing his jaw against the top of your head, smelling the faint scent of your shampoo, before pressing a quick, casual kiss to your temple.
You let out a long, slow sigh against his shoulder, your body relaxing against his heavy frame. Between his erratic hours in the ER and your own brutal schedule running pathology panels and handling postmortem lab work down in the forensics department, actual quality time like this was rare. You were both used to exhausting environments, which made these quiet afternoons feel incredibly fragile.
"You okay?" he asked, keeping his voice down so it didn't carry across the room.
You nodded against his jacket, the rough fabric scratching slightly against your cheek. Your thumb traced a lazy, repetitive circle over the back of his hand, feeling the calluses and the blunt shape of his knuckles. You both just sat there for a minute, watching a couple argue in hushed tones over a map display across the room.
"Thank you," you said quietly.
Jack let out a dry, amused huff, his chest rising and falling beneath your head. "For what?"
"For coming here. For taking the pictures. Just... for doing this with me. I know I can be a lot to drag around when you're already exhausted."
"You don't have to thank me for spending a Sunday afternoon with you," Jack said, his tone leveling out into something steady and practical. "I like seeing you have a good time. It’s a nice change of pace from the usual routine."
You looked down at your interwoven fingers, shifting a little uncomfortably on the hard wooden bench, your thumb stopping its movement. The old anxiety of being a burden, of taking up too much space or demanding too much attention, started to creep into your voice. "I just know it's probably pretty boring for you. You're used to the ER, and everything there is high-stakes. I'm basically making you stand in front of glass boxes reading paragraphs. I feel like I'm wasting your only day off on something stupid."
Jack paused his hand on his leg, turning his head to look down at the side of your face. His expression didn't change drastically, but his eyes were entirely serious, the casual demeanor dropping away. "Who told you that you were boring to be around?"
You shrugged, looking out at the polished gallery floor, watching the reflection of the overhead lights. "Just... growing up. And even some people now. I just feel like sometimes it's nice when you can just slow down and actually look at things. But my friends always thought it was a chore. If they came, they’d just rush through to get their own pictures taken for their feeds, and then complain until we left. I always felt like I was ruining their day just by wanting to look at stuff, so I just stopped asking people to come with me. ...But it's not as fun when you don't have anyone to share that joy with—you know?"
A brief, sharp flicker of irritation crossed Jack's mind as he hummed in agreement—he had a very low tolerance for anyone who had ever made you feel like a chore or an inconvenience—but he kept his voice completely level. He didn't want to make a big deal out of an old, lingering insecurity, nor did he want to make you feel defensive about people you used to care about.
"Well, then they sound like idiots," Jack said plainly, squeezing your hand hard enough to make you look up. "If someone watches you get genuinely excited about something and their only reaction is that they're bored, that’s a reflection on their own lack of substance, not you."
He shifted his arm, pulling you slightly firmer against his side so that your shoulder nested perfectly under his.
"I'm happy to be here," he mumbled into your hair, his voice rough but softer than usual. "I'm happy to be anywhere with you where nobody is bleeding, dying, or screaming at me to fix them. My job is loud and chaotic, and your lab isn't exactly a walk in the park either. I spend half my life wishing the clock would move slower. I like the quiet. I like watching you read your paragraphs. It’s peace, if you want the honest truth. You're never a waste of my time."
The slight tension in your posture finally faded, your shoulders dropping as you let out a breath, leaning your full weight against him. The old doubts always took a minute to clear out, but hearing him say it in that blunt, unvarnished way of his always did the trick. You still didn't quite realize that he would gladly sit on a hard bench for hours just to watch you smile, but you believed him anyway.
"You mean that?" you whispered, eyes glimmering as you looked up at him.
"I don't say things I don't mean. Too tired for it," Jack said, his voice warm as he looked back out at the exhibit, his large hand still holding yours securely on his knee. "Take your time. Once my leg stops throbbing, you can drag me into the next room and I'll take twenty more photos of you. Deal?"
You laughed softly against his shoulder.
Jack looked down at you for a beat, watching the way your expression softened into something relaxed and entirely trusting. A sudden shift went through him—the kind that usually hit him when he realized just how much he had you all to himself for the rest of the day.
He leaned in close, his chest pressing against your shoulder as he tilted his head down. His lips brushed right against the sensitive curve of your ear, his breath warm and deliberate.
"You know," he murmured, his low, gravy whisper sending an immediate shiver down your spine, "if you like things slow, I can show you exactly how much I love taking my time when we get back to the apartment."
You let out a soft, sharp gasp, a hot wave of color instantly creeping up your neck and flooding your cheeks. You pushed against his chest with the heel of your hand—a totally useless, light nudge of mock anger that didn't move his broad frame an inch. Under the fabric of your jeans, your thighs clenched subtly, a purely involuntary reaction to the low vibration of his voice, but Jack didn’t miss a single thing. He felt the sudden shift in your weight, saw the way your breathing hitched, and the smugness in his chest only deepened. He loved that after three years, he could still completely throw you off balance with a single sentence.
"Shut up," you whispered, looking around quickly to make sure nobody was close enough to hear, your face still burning. "We're in public."
"Just making an observation," Jack murmured, finally pulling back just enough to look down at you, his eyes dark with a very different kind of focus now. He let out a small, huff of a laugh, his large hand giving your hip a firm, reassuring squeeze before he let go. "Come on. Leg feels better. Let's go look at the next room."
You got up from the bench a little flustered, your hand instantly slipping back into his. The rest of the museum trip went by in a bit of a blur. You still read the paragraphs, and Jack still dutifully took the photos, stopping you in front of a massive courtyard window to capture the late afternoon light hitting your hair. But the atmosphere between you two had shifted. The air felt thick, charged with a mutual impatience that neither of you was acknowledging out loud. Every time his shoulder brushed yours, or his thumb stroked the back of your hand, the tension pulled a little tighter.
By the time you finally walked through the heavy glass exit doors and out into the humid late-afternoon air, neither of you was really thinking about history anymore.
The drive back to the apartment was mostly silent, the radio playing low in the background, but Jack kept his right hand resting flat on your thigh the entire way, his thumb occasionally tracing slow, heavy circles through the fabric of your pants. Every time you stopped at a red light, your eyes would meet, and the look in his was steady, unblinking, and entirely intent on you. It was the same undivided attention that usually made you feel a little overwhelmed if you thought about it too hard, but right now, it just made your pulse thud thick in your throat.
You barely had time to drop your bag onto the entryway table before Jack’s hands were on you, his large palms gripping your waist and pulling you back against his chest. You turned in his hold, your hands instantly finding the lapels of his jacket, and when his mouth came down on yours it was deep, heavy, and desperate with the kind of hunger that only built up after days of passing each other like ghosts in the hallway.
You backed up blindly, your heels hitting the wall of the narrow hallway, and Jack followed you without breaking the kiss, crowding you into the drywall. His good leg braced between yours, his weight solid and grounding, while his hands slid down to cup the back of your thighs, lifting you just enough to break your balance. His tongue slid against yours, deep and familiar, his hands mapping the curve of your hips through your clothes, pressing you firmly against him.
"Jack," you breathed against his lips, your fingers tangling in the short curls at his nape. "The bedroom."
"Working on it," he rasped, his mouth moving down to press a hard, biting kiss to the junction where your neck met your shoulder, making you arch into him with a sigh.
When you finally reached the edge of the mattress, Jack slowed down completely, just like he promised. He sat down first, a familiar grunt escaping him as he unbuckled the strap of his prosthetic, letting it slide free so he could fully relax into the bed. You didn't wait. You crawled up onto the mattress beside him, your hands immediately finding the hem of his shirt, helping him pull it over his head before discarding your own clothes.
The sunlight was fading, casting long, lazy shadows across the sheets as he pinned your wrists above your head, his large fingers lacing through yours just like they had in the museum galleries. But this time, there was no crowd, no glass cases, and no old insecurities about taking up his time.
"Told you," Jack whispered, his voice a rough, low growl in the dimming room as he settled his weight between your hips, his eyes locked onto yours with that terrifyingly beautiful, undivided focus. "We're going slow."
And he kept his word. His large, calloused hands traced every inch of your skin with a reverence that made your throat tight. There was no rush. He kissed your forehead, your eyelids, the corners of your mouth, before sinking back into your lips with a deliberate rhythm that felt like healing. Every touch was heavy and intentional. When he finally slid inside you, a soft, broken sound escaped your lips, your fingers locking behind his back from the sheer, aching friction of it.
"Look at me," he whispered, his thumb catching a stray tear of pure overwhelm at the corner of your eye.
You opened your eyes, looking into his, your fingers tightening convulsively in his hair as he began to move. His pace was steady, deep, and relentless. He watched your face in the twilight—the way your brow furrowed, the way your lips parted, and the way your skin flushed under his touch. There was no rushing here, no ticking clock, no emergency pages waiting to tear him away. There was only the heat of your skin, the rhythmic, heavy sound of his own breathing, and the absolute certainty that for the next few hours, the rest of the world didn't exist. Every movement was unhurried, a deep, heavy friction that made everything else completely fall away. He held you tight against his chest, his heart hammering against your ribs, his rough voice murmuring quiet, breathless praises against your skin every time you moved together. You relished every single sensation—the heat of his skin, the weight of his body pressing you into the mattress, the blunt, honest rhythm of his love.
A little later, you lay with your head buried securely in the crook of his neck, one of your legs tangled with his good one, the sheets pulled loosely over both of you. Jack’s large arm was wrapped around your waist, his fingers idly tracing small, random shapes against your lower back. His breath was steady now, warm against your hair.
You pressed a soft kiss to his collarbone, your eyes heavy with sleep.
"Definitely better than the museum," you murmured into his skin, your voice small and content.
Jack let out a low, rumbling chuckle that vibrated right through your chest. He tightened his grip around your waist, pulling you just a fraction closer, and pressed a long, lingering kiss into your hair.
"Told you so," he whispered. "Now close your eyes. We've got nowhere to be."
making his dinner because he’s hungry && stubborn!
assorted pair⋮ ⌗ ‧₊˚ ┊ jack abbot x sweetheart!reader 🎀
preview ⋮ ⌗ ┆ you’ve been texting jack while he’s on shift at ptmc, when he mentions he doesn’t have anything to eat for dinner. so you make him some and deliver since he’s too stubborn to ask or order anything.
warnings ⋮ ⌗ ┆hope yall have a huge sweet tooth for this fluff!! characters included: jack abbot, lena, parker ellis, and john shen!
enjoy, lovelies 𓏲ּ𝄢 ⊹ ࣪ ˖
you had lost track of time while texting jack, it was now 12:00 am, luckily you were off today so not much to worry about. but as you two talked, jack had mentioned his lack of dinner and you felt bad.
and since he forgot to make some and couldn’t just up and leave work, he said he’d just have to wait until his shift finished.
so, you took matters into your own hands, and started cooking while you waited for his next reply. the least you could do was cook something. and before you had started you texted him what you were doing before you started cooking and tuned out your phone. that “something” you planned to make quickly turned into a steak, potatoes, shrimp rice, with two chocolate chip cookies and water bottle.
it’s been about 30 minutes since you texted jack, you weren’t upset. not in the slightest, you knew he had to have been busy with a patients or an emergency.
neighbor jack 😫: “it’s fine, i can hold off till the end of my shift. i’ve done it many times, sweetheart.”
you rolled your eyes at the message. he can never ask for help, can he? your had suggested in earlier messages to cook for him. but he brushed it off, saying that he was just going to a fast food place once he had a break.
like you’d let that happen.
once you finished cooking, you packed it up into containers of one of your spare bento boxes. you tried to pick one of your less girlier ones for him, and found an older navy blue one.
you put a robe on over your lace pajama set (tank top and sleep pants). put on a pair of bunny slippers, grabbed your keys from the bowl and went to your car to get to the pitt. once you got there it felt very different from the daytime.
like vastly different. you knew not to think of the “q” word for the staffs sake.
you went to the nurses station, and asked for jack.
“jack? jack abbot?” you shook your head and held up the lunchbox. “aw, that’s sweet of you.” the charge nurse, who’s name you learned was lena complimented.
you waited patiently for him, and saw him turn the corner.
“I thought i told you i’d get something to eat later?” he said walking up to you.
“and yet i’m here holding your dinner.” you replied with a smile.
“you’re so stubborn.” he jokingly sighed and pulled you into a hug. “you’re worse.” you said playfully.
you both pulled away from the hug and you handed him the lunchbox. “inside you have a steak, potatoes, shrimp, rice, two cookies, and some water.”
“oh i get dessert?” he asked with a smirk.
“oh shut up.” you rolled your eyes sarcastically. he pulled you back in for a hug, and he kissed your forehead then took the lunchbox from your hands.
the action caught you off guard, but not in a bad way. your eyes widened and you stumbled back. “woah! you good?” you held up your hand to your forehead. “mhm! yeah. ‘m fine, just a little flustered.” you said awkwardly, making him laugh.
you looked over his shoulder and realized two doctors had been watching you two, pretending to be working. jack sighed and turned around. “ellis, shen, get back to work.” the two snickered and walked off. “they’re gonna be two pains in my ass now.” you giggled. “oh so my annoyance is funny?”
“for me, absolutely.”
“you should get home, you never know when it could get hectic around here.” he said softly, taking you hand and starting to walk with you.
“yeah, i’m starting to get sleepy anyway.” you yawned.
“if you start to feel too tired, pull over and sleep some, okay?”
“okay.” you said mockingly. “sweetie?” he called out to you. “yeah?” you turned to him. “thank you.” his face looked so sweet and his features were soft. the way he looked at you started to make you feel flustered again.
“anytime, jack. you know that.” you smiled softly.
he walked you out to your car. “get home safe. and text me when you get home.” he said as you got into your car.
“okay jack.” you said with fake exasperation. you both said your goodbyes and he went back inside to continue his shift.
“well, you’re becoming quite the romantic.” lena said while looking down at her computer.
“yeah, yeah.” he swatted his hand at her. “you better thank her with more than just words!” she shouted as he began to walk off, and he shook his head at her words.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ໒꒱
the next morning ⋆˙⟡ ⸝⸝
you woke up to repeated knocking on your front door. you saw that bonnet was halfway across the room. you got out of your bed, picked up your bonnet (and put it on), while the knocking persisted.
“i’m coming!” you yelled. irritated by being woken up so abruptly on your day off was annoying. the door swung open and revealed a mailman, “sign here please.” you took the pen and clipboard then handed it back to him.
you rubbed your eyes and saw that practically your entire hallway was full of flowers. you jaw dropped, your eyes widened, and you were definitely awake now.
you saw a card on the flower on your mat. you bent down to pick it up. inside it read:
“thanks for the dinner last night. i appreciate it, you should not listen to me more often. anyways, could i take you dinner sometime soon?”
SUMMARY: Jack is that stage in life where a day off can never really be a day off. He always finds something that needs fixing, and as his wife, you’ve grown accustomed to that. You don’t expect him to be so clumsy at it, and you don’t expect to get hurt helping him when the doctor becomes the patient.
NOTES: Injuries (laceration on the arm, fractured ankle), household accidents, mentions of blood, medical setting, established marriage, very sweet and selfless Jack, hurt/comfort vibes.
REQUESTED BY: @dillydallyy
NAVIGATION | PITT MASTERLIST | KO-FI
The rhythmic, heavy thud of the mallet against wood had been echoing through the house for the better part of an hour. Jack was upstairs on the landing, finally tackling the squeaky floorboard that had been driving you mad for weeks. You were down in the kitchen, enjoying the quiet weekend and waiting for the kettle to boil so you could bring him a cup of tea.
The comforting routine shattered in an instant. A sudden, metallic crunch echoed down the stairs, followed by a heavy thud and a sharp, choked gasp of pure agony. The silence that immediately followed was heavy and terrifying.
"Jack?" you called out, your heart leaping into your throat. There was no answer, just the sound of low, ragged breathing. Dropping the mug onto the counter, you bolted up the stairs, your socks slipping slightly on the carpet as you rounded the corner to the landing.
Jack had collapsed against the wall, his face entirely drained of colour and slick with a sudden, cold sweat. His eyes were clamped shut, and his right hand was wrapped desperately around his left forearm. Dark, thick blood was already spilling through his fingers, pooling rapidly on the pale timber he had just been prying up.
"Fuck, Jack," you breathed, dropping to your knees beside him. The sheer volume of blood made your stomach drop, your hands hovering over him, trembling violently. You had seen him in his hospital scrubs a thousand times, completely unshakable in the face of trauma, but seeing him as the patient completely paralysed you.
Jack opened his eyes, the pupils blown wide with shock and pain. Even as his breathing hitched, the seasoned emergency doctor in him fought through the agony. He looked at your shaking hands and forced his voice to remain steady, though it came out as a strained, gravelly rasp.
"Hey, hey, look at me, sweetheart," Jack whispered, squeezing his eyes shut for a second as a fresh wave of pain hit him. "Don't look at the floor. Look at me. I need you to be my hands right now, okay? I slipped with the chisel. It’s deep."
"What do I do? Tell me what to do," you pleaded, your voice cracking as you tried to anchor yourself to his gaze.
"Go to the bathroom. Grab the first aid kit from the cabinet, and grab a clean towel," he instructed, his breath hitching as he shifted his weight. "Move fast, honey. Go on."
You scrambled to your feet, your socks skidding on the hallway runner as you burst into the bathroom. You grabbed the heavy medical kit and yanked a towel off the shelf, your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. Within seconds, you were back on the floor beside him, unfolding the towel with trembling fingers.
"Okay, I'm here. I have it," you said, your breath coming in short, panicked gasps.
"Good girl," Jack murmured, his head leaning back against the wallpaper. "I need you to open the kit and get the thickest trauma dressing in there. If not, the towel will do. You need to apply direct pressure right over my hand. Don't be gentle, sweetheart. You have to push down hard."
You nodded, swallowing down the rising panic. You folded the towel into a thick pad and placed it directly over his bleeding arm. As Jack slowly pulled his own crimson-stained hand away, the sight of the jagged, deep laceration made your vision swim, but you didn't hesitate. You placed both hands on the towel and leaned your entire body weight into his arm.
Jack let out a sharp, agonised groan, his fingers digging into the fabric of your jeans as his body went rigid.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," you sobbed, tears finally blurring your vision.
"Don't be sorry," he panted, his forehead resting against your shoulder now, his breath hot and ragged against your neck. "You're doing perfectly. Keep holding it like that. We need to stem the flow before I can try to stand up."
For a few minutes, the landing was silent save for the sound of your combined, ragged breathing. You kept every ounce of your weight pressed onto his arm, feeling the warm pulse of his blood beneath the heavy fabric. Slowly, the bright red seeping through the white towel seemed to slow down, the direct pressure doing its job.
"Is it stopping?" you whispered, looking down at his pale face.
"It's slowing," Jack managed, offering a weak, strained version of his usual reassuring smile. "You're amazing, you know that? My brilliant girl. Now, we need to tie it off tight. Use the roller bandage from the kit. Wrap it over the towel, as tight as you can manage."
Working with one hand while keeping pressure with the other, you managed to fish out the heavy bandage. Under his quiet, patient whispers, you wrapped the fabric securely around his arm, pulling it taut until Jack gave a tight nod of approval.
"That’s it. That’s got it for now," Jack breathed, leaning back against the wall with a sigh of sheer exhaustion. His face was still ghostly pale, but the immediate, terrifying torrent of blood had been contained. "Now, can you grab your phone? We need to get the crew out here."
"It's on the top step," you said, turning your head to look at the mobile device resting just a few feet away near the banister.
You started to shift your weight to stand up, your muscles stiff from the tension. But as you moved, your foot found the slick, wet patch of blood that had splattered onto the edge of the exposed, loose floorboards. Before you could even register the lack of friction, your foot shot out from under you.
"Whoa—!" you cried out, your hands flailing for a grip that wasn't there.
Your momentum carried you sideways, right over the lip of the top step. With a sharp gasp of terror, you tumbled awkwardly down the first half-flight of stairs, your body bouncing painfully against the carpeted steps before you landed with a dull, heavy thud against the wall of the half-landing.
A searing, white-hot pain immediately exploded in your left ankle, so intense that it stole the air right out of your lungs. You lay there on your side, pinned to the floor by the sudden, throbbing agony, clutching your leg as tears stung your eyes.
"Honey? Sweetheart, talk to me!" Jack’s voice echoed down the stairwell, completely stripped of its professional calm. It was pure, unadulterated panic. "Are you alright? Answer me!"
"My ankle," you gasped out, your voice small and choked with pain. "Jack, I can't move it. It hurts so bad."
From the top of the stairs, you heard a heavy drag and a grunt of pain as Jack, completely disregarding his own severe injury, began crawling toward the edge of the landing. He looked down at you, his eyes wide with horror as he saw you curled into a ball on the landing below.
"Don't move, honey. Just stay completely still," Jack commanded, his voice thick with emotion as he held his bandaged arm tightly against his chest. "I'm coming down to you."
"Stay there, Jack, don't move!" you cried out, looking up at him through a blur of tears. The sight of him dragging himself toward the edge of the stairs, his face entirely grey and his newly wrapped bandage already showing a fresh blossom of crimson, was almost worse than the white-hot agony radiating from your ankle.
"I'm not leaving you down there, sweetheart," Jack panted, his voice strained as he carefully manoeuvred his weight onto his good arm, slowly lowering himself down the first step. Every movement was a battle against shock, his breath catching sharply in his throat with each hitch of his body. "Just keep breathing. Nice, deep breaths for me."
It took him what felt like an eternity, but Jack finally managed to slide down the half-flight of stairs, collapsing heavily onto the landing beside you. He let out a ragged groan, leaning his back against the wall and immediately reaching out with his uninjured right hand to cup your face. His thumb brushed a tear from your cheek, his touch warm and desperate.
"Look at me, honey. Let me see you," he murmured, his eyes scanning your face, looking for any signs of a head injury before his gaze drifted down to your left leg. "Where does it hurt the most? Is it just the ankle?"
"Yeah," you choked out, squeezing his hand tightly. "I just slipped on the... on the blood, Jack. I tried to grab the phone and my foot just went. It snapped so loud."
"Okay, okay, let me have a look. I'm going to be very gentle, I promise," he whispered, leaning forward slightly. With practiced, tender precision, his steady fingers gently hovered over your ankle, barely brushing the skin. Even that tiny movement made you gasp, your fingers digging into his shoulder.
"I know, I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said softly, his brow furrowed in deep concern as he assessed the rapidly swelling, distorted joint. "It’s a nasty sprain, possibly a fracture. We need to get that elevated and iced, but first, we need to actually call the ambulance. Where's the phone?"
You pointed a shaking finger up toward the top step where your mobile was still resting, completely out of reach for both of you.
Jack let out a dry, breathless laugh, shaking his head. "Right. Plan B. My phone is in my back pocket. Do you think you can reach it? My left arm is completely useless right now."
Carefully shifting your weight while trying not to jar your leg, you slid your hand into the pocket of his jeans, pulling out his phone. Your fingers were still trembling so hard you almost dropped it, but you managed to unlock the screen and hand it over to him.
Jack didn't dial the standard emergency number; instead, he tapped in a direct line straight to the local ambulance dispatch handling the Pitt’s intake area. He pressed the speaker button, setting the phone down on the carpet between you. Within two rings, a familiar, crisp voice boomed through the speaker.
"Ambulance dispatch, what is the nature of the emergency?"
"Hey, it's Jack Abbot," Jack said, leaning his head back against the wall, his voice dropping into that calm, authoritative tone he used when directing a chaotic trauma bay. "Listen, I need a crew at my house. We've got a bit of a situation here."
There was a brief pause on the other end, followed by the sound of furious typing. "Jack? Dude, what’s gone on? You’re supposed to be off until Monday."
"Yeah, well, the world had other plans," Jack grunted, wincing as he shifted his bandaged arm. "I've managed to put a chisel through my left forearm. Deep laceration, heavy bleeding, but we've got a pressure dressing on it now. My wife just slipped on the landing trying to help me and has taken a tumble down the stairs. Suspected fractured left ankle, severe pain, non-weight bearing."
"Jesus, Jack, you don't do things by halves, do you?" he replied, his voice a mix of professional urgency and fond disbelief. "Alright, I’ve got a unit just three minutes away from your street. It’s Mac and Sally. They're en route now. Keep that pressure on your arm, and keep your wife still."
"Thanks. Tell them the front door is unlocked," Jack said before hanging up. He turned his attention back to you, his expression softening instantly as he tucked a stray lock of hair behind your ear. "Hear that? Three minutes, honey. You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you."
"I was trying to help you, and I just made it worse," you whispered, a fresh wave of tears spilling over your lashes. "Now you're stuck on the floor because of me."
"Don't you dare worry about that," Jack chided gently, his voice thick with emotion as he pulled you as close to his side as he could manage without hurting either of your injuries. He pressed a firm, lingering kiss to your temple, his breath warm against your skin. "You stopped the bleeding, sweetheart. You saved me from a massive haemorrhage. If anyone is to blame, it’s me and my DIY projects."
A few minutes later, the heavy thud of the front door swinging open echoed from downstairs, followed by the hurried footsteps of two paramedics moving into the hallway.
"Jack? Where are you, buddy?" a loud, cheerful voice called out from the bottom of the stairs.
"Up on the half-landing, Mac!" Jack shouted back, his voice cracking slightly with the effort. "Mind your step as you come up, it’s a bit of a disaster."
Two paramedics, loaded down with trauma bags and an extraction chair, rounded the corner and stopped dead in their tracks. Mac, a burly man with a thick beard, stared at the two of you huddled together on the small landing. Jack pale and blood-stained, and you clutching a ballooning ankle.
Sally, his partner, let out a loud, astonished bark of laughter, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Oh, you have got to be joking. Jack, what on earth have you done to your poor wife?"
"I didn't do anything to her, she was trying to rescue me!" Jack protested, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the way he winced as Mac knelt down beside him.
"Hm, likely story, doc," Mac teased, his hands already moving efficiently to check the pulse in Jack’s wrist below the bloody bandage. "Honestly, Jack, we leave you unsupervised for one weekend."
While Mac focused on Jack, Sally slid gracefully onto the floor next to you, opening her kit with a reassuring smile. "Alright, let's have a look at this leg. Jack’s a terrible patient, so you're my priority right now."
The next twenty minutes passed in a blur of efficient, careful movement. Sally administered a dose of medication for your pain, which finally took the sharp, agonizing edge off your ankle, while Mac reinforced Jack’s dressing and got him a dose of something strong.
Despite their teasing, the paramedics were incredibly gentle, carefully loading you both onto separate carrying chairs to navigate the rest of the stairs. Jack refused to be loaded into the ambulance first, stubbornly waiting until you were securely inside so he could have his stretcher positioned right next to yours. The entire drive to the hospital, his hand never left yours, his thumb rhythmically stroking the back of your knuckles as he murmured sweet, groggy assurances that everything was going to be fine.
The moment the ambulance doors burst open at the Pitt, the familiar, sterile smell of antiseptic and the hum of bleeping monitors washed over you. But the usual professional quiet of the admissions bay was shattered the instant Mac and Sally wheeled your matching gurneys through the automatic sliding doors.
"Heads up, team, we've got a double intake!" Mac called out at the top of his lungs, a massive, mischievous grin on his face. "Your best doctor has managed to incapacitate the entire Abbot household."
The reaction was instantaneous. Langdon, who had been charting at the central desk, dropped his pen entirely, his jaw hitting the floor. "What the... Dr Abbot?"
Dana emerged from Bay 4, a clipboard tucked under her arm, but stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes darting from Jack’s heavily bandaged, blood-stained arm to your elevated, ballooning ankle. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me. The hell did you do to this lovely lady, Jack?"
Within seconds, a small crowd of familiar faces converged on the two stretchers. Mel hurried over from the staff room, a half-eaten sandwich still in her hand, her eyes wide with a mix of horror and absolute amusement. "Oh my… are you okay? Well clearly not but… what happened?”
"I slipped on his blood!" you called out, the pain medication making you laugh weakly as the stretchers were wheeled side-by-side into the major trauma bays.
Robby walked out of the resuscitation unit, snapping off a pair of surgical gloves, his expression instantly melting into a look of profound, theatrical despair. He walked over to the foot of Jack’s bed, crossing his arms. "Abbot. I leave you in charge of your own home for twenty-four hours, and you bring your lovely wife into my ER on a stretcher? Explain yourself."
"It was a loose floorboard, Robby," Jack groaned, the morphine making his voice deep and slightly slurred, though he still managed to shoot a mean glare. "The chisel slipped. She was brilliant, actually. Total natural."
"And then she fell down the stairs because you're a terrible husband," Trinity chimed in, leaning against the doorframe of the bay with a massive smirk on her face. She looked over at you, giving you a sympathetic wink. "Don't worry, beautiful, we'll make sure his stitches hurt extra bad for making you go through this."
Samira pushed through the crowd, carrying a fresh bag of IV fluids and a splinting kit. She looked at the two of you, shaking her head in fond disbelief as she began setting up near your bed. "Right, let's get a look at this ankle, shall we?"
Despite the relentless teasing and the chorus of laughter echoing through the department, the underlying warmth and care from the staff were palpable. The curtains between your bays were pulled completely back, creating one large room so Jack could keep his eyes on you. Even as Samira gently examined your leg and Langdon began prepping Jack’s arm for a neat row of sutures, Jack kept his right hand stretched across the gap between the gurneys, his fingers hooked securely around yours.
"You're in good hands, sweetheart," Jack whispered, completely ignoring Trinity and Robby, who were currently debating which one of them got to write ‘DIY FAIL’ on his medical chart. He squeezed your hand tightly, his eyes soft with devotion. "They're going to fix us both up, and I promise you, I am never touching a tool again."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Abbot," Langdon chuckled, pouring sterile saline over Jack’s forearm to clear away the dried blood. He winced on Jack's behalf as the true depth of the laceration was revealed. "Though looking at this, you won't be holding a chisel or a scalpel for at least a few weeks. You've sliced right down. You're lucky you missed the important stuff."
"I told you, she stopped the bleeding," Jack said, his voice thick with pride despite the sharp intake of breath he let out as Langdon administered the local anaesthetic around the edges of the wound. He kept his eyes locked onto yours, his grip on your fingers tightening as the needle did its work. "She was incredible, Langdon. Didn't even faint."
Over on your side of the bay, Samira was carefully wrapping a temporary fiberglass splint around your rapidly bruising ankle, having just come back from reviewing the digital X-rays that Robby had rushed through the scanner. "Well, your brilliant wife has a nasty grade-three sprain and a tiny fracture. No surgery needed, thank goodness, but you're going to be on crutches and a boot for a while."
"Hear that, honey?" Jack murmured, a look of profound relief washing over his pale features as the morphine and the local numbing agent finally took the edge off his pain. "No surgery. You're going to be just fine."
"I'm more worried about you," you admitted, your voice still a little breathless from the lingering adrenaline and the effects of the medication. "You look like you've been through hell."
Dana walked back into the bay, holding a selection of takeaway menus, placing them on the bedside table between your gurneys. "Right, since you two managed to completely ruin your Saturday, the department is buying dinner. Santos wants pizza, Mel wants Thai, so you two get the deciding vote. Consider it a consolation prize for having the most embarrassing admissions of the year."
"Pizza," Jack grunted without hesitation, earning a loud cheer from Santos, who was still lingering near the desk. Jack looked back at you, his thumb smoothing over your knuckles. "We'll get the one you like, sweetheart."
As Langdon methodically began placing neat sutures into Jack’s arm, the initial chaotic energy of the department began to settle back into its usual professional rhythm. Robby and Dana headed back to the central desk to handle a new influx of patients from the waiting room, leaving the curtains open just enough for the staff to keep an eye on their favorite patient duo.
By the time Jack’s arm was neatly bandaged and your leg was securely immobilized in a heavy boot, the evening sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting long, warm shadows across the trauma bay. A delivery driver had dropped off three massive boxes of pizza, and Samira had kindly brought over two cups of tea, served in the mismatched mugs from the staff room.
Jack managed to shift his gurney a fraction closer to yours, his right arm slung comfortably over the metal guardrail so he could remain completely connected to you. The exhaustion of the day was finally catching up to both of you, the quiet hum of the hospital a strangely comforting background noise compared to the terror on the stairs just hours earlier.
"I really am sorry, honey," Jack whispered, his voice soft and entirely devoid of the bravado he had shown in front of his colleagues. He leaned his head against the side of his pillow, looking at you with an expression of pure, unfiltered devotion. "I wanted to fix that stupid floorboard so you wouldn't trip on it, and I ended up putting you in a cast instead."
"We're a matching set now," you teased gently, reaching over to squeeze his uninjured hand, gesturing to his heavily wrapped arm and your massive black boot. "Besides, you heard the crew. We really don't do things by halves."
Jack let out a low, rumbling laugh, the sound warm and familiar as he lifted your hand to his lips, pressing a tender, lingering kiss to your skin. "No, I suppose we don't. But from now on, we are hiring a professional for absolutely everything. Next weekend, you and I are staying on the couch."
Summary: After finding out a certain attending likes to gossip, you find yourself having a very unexpected Fourth of July shift.
Warnings: none really; TONS of fluff, age-gap, pre-relationship, mentions of injuries, mentions of PTSD, gossip!jack, & medical inaccuracies.
Word Count: 4k+
Author’s Note: my fourth of july fic is here !! so excited to introduce ya’ll to gossip jack !! i hope you guys enjoy !! <3
Jack Abbot is a lot of things; strong, intelligent, well-liked, level-headed, quick to react, reliable and good at his job. If you knew him well enough you’d find he’s pretty funny despite his dry sense of humor, very down to earth and has quite the sweet tooth. One thing you absolutely wouldn’t expect by just looking at him was his love for gossip.
With his sharp jawline and casually neutral face—grumpy in a way that was unfairly handsome—chin donned with grey stubble and hair to match. Sharp eyes that noticed everything. He’s an ex-army man with a night shift attending badge clipped to his pants pocket who only drinks his coffee black—he survived losing half his leg, and yet—Jack enjoyed using all of that to his advantage.
Any newcomer at the Pitt was quickly intimidated by him—almost choked to death anytime Robby or Dana, hell; even if Shen or Ellis picked on him or called him old. Desperately looking for a patient to tend to before they saw one of their coworkers die or get scolded. But it never came, just a small twitch at the corner of his lips that was quickly so uniquely Jack.
So no, looking at Jack you’d assume he probably kept to himself—and for the most part he did. But once you got to know him a little? It wouldn’t be long before the truth came out;
Jack Abbot is a big fat gossip.
He never started the conversations, he’d wait until someone else did and just…effortlessly slide himself right into them. But you could always tell when he’d heard something new.
Like now, as you’re walking in next to him for your shift; he’s practically vibrating. An extra bounce in his step, his hands closing and unclasping at his sides. He’s shifting on his feet way more than he usually does; and he keeps crossing and uncrossing his arms.
You try your best to keep your eyes on the board—an ever growing list of patients above you. You try to ignore him, try to start your shift and at least make an attempt to head towards your first patient; but when he leans against the counter with a rather obnoxious exhale through his nose and scratches at his scruff—you finally break.
“Alright Gossip Girl, what is it?”, You ask, crossing your own arms and lifting a brow.
Jack practically shoots off the counter, straightening up and stepping closer to you. He looks around once before speaking.
“Robby and Noelle are hooking up.”
He says it with both brows raised and eyes so wide you swear they’d pop out at any second.
Your mouth falls open before you can stop it; “SHUT UP—“
Eyes from every direction flick towards you, your reaction a little louder than you wanted it to be.
“Jesus kid-“, Jack shushes you quietly; nervously looking around before he gently pulls you into the empty break room.
His hand is still on your elbow when you speak up. You force the acknowledgement at the way your skin burns perfectly at his touch to the back of your mind; store it away for later.
“Robby and Noelle!?”
He nods; “Mhm.”
“How?? When?? Robby??”, All your questions tumble out at once.
Jack shrugs, slipping his hands in his scrub pockets; “Don’t know for sure, long enough that it set McKay’s alarm bells off.”
“…Oh this is too good”, You say, eyes focused on the floor as you comb through every thought that’s now popping into your head.
“It gets better”, Jack says, leaning closer; “Dana said Noelle told her Robby sleeps with the tv on.”
Your mouth opens. Closes. Then opens again. The smug smirk on Jack’s face does nothing to help you. Neither does the scrunch of your nose when you realize what you’re really hearing.
“That’s way more than I needed to know about Robby”, You say.
Jack grunts something close to a laugh; “You’d be surprised.”
“Wait”, You tilt your head; “Wouldn’t you already know that about him?”
Jack’s smirk deepens; “Well yeah, but”, He leans even closer; “How would she know that?”
The information hits you again, your brain swirling at a speed that’s too fast for before coffee.
“Oh my god”, You breathe.
Jack laughs across from you, actually laughs. You force yourself to ignore what that does to your heart.
“I don’t think I can even look at him now”, You say, “I’d laugh in his face, it’s too good. I’d-“
Jack’s hand on your shoulder stops you; “Woah, kid. Don’t go spiraling on me now.”
“I’m not…it’s just so?-“
“Strange? Weird? Bordering on haunting?”
“Well, yeah!”, You say, hands flying in the air.
Jack laughs again, you ignore what it does to your heart; again.
“Careful kid”, He says, leaning in way too close; “Gotta work on your poker face or I won’t be able to share with my favorite resident.”
Favorite resident.
Your heart does a somersault and the air leaves your lungs; heat rising to your cheeks.
His hand on your lower back lingers for a moment before he pulls away, leaving your skin cold and missing the contact.
“Cmon, gotta get back out there before Dana threatens to put us all in triage”, He says, that crooked smirk playing at his lips.
It stays there as you watch him push the break room door open with his shoulder, disappearing back into the noisy hum of the ED; leaving you standing there with your mouth parted and your heart beating way too fast to be close to normal.
─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─
Three hours and too many patient charts later, you finally get a moment to sit down and let your feet rest. You take a drink of your water, crack your back once and lean back in your chair; letting your eyes close and hoping you get at least a few minutes.
That dream is quickly wrecked within seconds.
You feel him before you see him, not even having to open your eyes to know who’s standing next to you—the shadow of his strong frame blocking out the blaring fluorescent lights above you. The heat you can always feel radiating off of him. Warmth you so desperately want to sink into, wrap your arms around him and nose into his neck. You briefly wonder if his cologne would smell stronger against his skin like that, or if there’d be something you’d learn to be so uniquely and purely him.
You sigh, snapping yourself out of it. Eyes still closed as you cling to the last remaining bit of peace you’ll get before he speaks and resumes his mission to annoy you as much as he can. Not that you mind in the least bit.
“What Jack?”, You breathe, fighting the smile that’s trying so hard to creep onto your lips.
“How’d you know it was me?”, You can hear the smirk in his voice.
“You reek of antiseptic and annoyance.”
A noise escapes him next to you, something between a laugh and a sound of disbelief.
“Oh so you know what I specifically smell like?”, He juts.
You feel your face heat up immediately, air leaving your nose. You fumble to keep yourself composed, a string of muttered words leaving your mouth.
You peek your eyes open, peering up at a way too smug Jack. Enjoying how flustered he’s made you. His strong arms crossed over his chest; biceps bulging under his too tight scrub top. Freckles decorating his skin all the way up his arms; grey curls looking unfairly good and framing his face in a way that should be illegal—
“What do you want, Jack?”, You feign annoyance.
“What makes you think I want something?”, His answer comes from pursed lips.
“You’re hovering.”
“I’m standing.”
“You have a look on your face”, You throw back.
“My face always looks like this.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Hey—“, His mouth opens, but you cut him off.
“Jack.”
“Hm?”
“What”, you sigh; “Do you want?”
His mouth is crooked in the way it gets when he’s trying to hide a smile or the fact that he’s amused; but it always gives him away. You know that look and all of his looks too well by now. Unconsciously memorized and stored away for later with all the other information you’ve filed away about him. Normal, completely casual.
It certainly has absolutely nothing to do with whatever feelings flutter to life inside your chest and set your very being alight each time you seem him. That certainly wasn’t the case, even now; when he’s standing so close you can smell his cologne and something underneath it that’s just uniquely Jack—
You snap yourself out of it before the heat climbing up your neck once again can reach your face. Forcing yourself to stay calm—steady.
Jack, who hasn’t moved from where he’s standing; that ridiculously and frustratingly adorable crooked smirk still on his face—takes a step closer to you.
“Did you know Shen has a secret supply of free drink vouchers from Dunkin?”, Jack says.
You roll your eyes; “Did you know you and Robby have matching tattoos?”
Jack falters for a moment, mouth falling open before heat pinkens the tips of his ears; “We do not!”
You shoot him a smirk, grabbing your drink and rising to your feet to walk around him. He’s following you half a stride later.
“W-Where did you even hear that?”, He gawks.
You shrug; “I’ve got my own sources.”
A second later he’s in front of you, arms up in defense as he shakes his head; eyes closing for a moment; “Woah. Woah—I—ok, you’re screwing with me, aren’t you?”
“How’s it feel?”, You muse.
You watch as his tongue peeks out to lick his bottom lip, a crooked twitch of his mouth as he rubs at the back of his neck; “You’re mean, kid.”
“And you’re a gossip”, You shoot back.
Jack pushes his hands into his pockets; “I might be.”
You can’t help rolling your eyes again; “Why would you even care if Shen’s was true? You hate Dunkin.”
“I’m nosey”, He shrugs.
“You’re something.”
But that only makes Jack’s smirk grow wider, twitching again in the way that sets your heart ablaze. God, he was gonna be the death of you.
─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─
A few weeks later, you’re strolling into the hustle and bustle of the ED for another shift. Bracing yourself for the incoming influx of patients from the holiday. The Fourth of July was always busy with firework accidents and heat stroke—among other injuries you didn’t even want to ask about.
You hoped it would at least be relatively smooth—close enough to a regular shift; that unfortunately would soon become the furthest from the truth.
You slid up next to Robby with a few patients, following Dana’s directions; having opted to come in a little early to help out day shift. The ED was already busy, already bustling with patients of all different kinds. McKay had a firework injury, Santos had a nun with gonorrhea in her eye that she deemed an “immaculate infection.” Donnie had a priaprism, Mel and Langdon had set up a cool room and Javadi was helping a girl with glue in her eye. Not to mention the fact that a baby had been found in triage and was now being lovingly referred to as baby Jane Doe. Never a dull moment.
As if the shift couldn’t get any crazier—an hour later the ambulance bay doors opened and who came rushing through with a gurney but Jack Abbot. A Jack Abbot in uniform, nonetheless.
Camo fatigues hugged his body close, sweat already peaking through the fabric. Damp hair matched as he called out to Robby. SWAT team rushing in behind him. You can’t help but stare.
“Intubated neck wound, stats not great. Is there a trauma room open?”, Jack calls out.
You’re quick to snap yourself out of it—joining him at the other side of the gurney, rushing along side him; “What’s the story?”
“My buddy Hiro, neck trauma. Warehouse robbery gone wrong”, Jack fills you in.
He doesn’t say much after that, setting up immediately once inside the trauma room. You can see he’s tense by his shoulders and jaw—worried for his friend. You jump into the chaos, helping any way you can.
“Did you intubate?”, Trinity asks, working alongside you.
“Yeah”, Jack says, not looking up; “Under active fire.”
You don’t miss the way he looks back over his shoulder, eyes flicking down as if looking for something that isn’t yet visible—or the way he winces when he rolls his shoulders.
“That’s badass”, Santos says, smiling to herself as she assists Robby.
You on the other hand; only have worry clinging to the back of your neck—hairs standing on end as you look at Jack.
It doesn’t take long for all the hands working on Hiro to get him stabilized enough to send him up to surgery. The room clears out, leaving Jack and Robby the last two lingering inside. You’re pulled into another case before you can get to Jack, forcing your worry down for later.
When you finally get a moment, Jack is nowhere to be found. The ED settling back into its regular busy hustle before SWAT had rolled in. You pick up another chart, going to check on one of your patients. What you find however when you pull the curtain back isn’t a patient—but rather the man you’ve been looking for the past few hours.
Jack Abbot stands shirtless, back to you with a very visible bruise forming on the back of his left shoulder. He turns at the sound of the curtain being pulled back, glancing around the room.
“Oh! I—sorry!”, You blurt out, cheeks heating up; “I was looking for my patient.”
Jack continues moving, sitting down on the exam bed—sliding the tray of sterilized tools he’d already set up towards him. He sets his black tee down on his lap, maneuvering the supplies.
“No patient here”, He says; “Room was empty when I got here.”
You furrow your brows, but push the thought to the back of your mind. All you can focus on is Jack—the injured Jack sitting in front of you.
“Shit, Jack”, You say, mind rushing back to the present; “You’re hurt, what happened?”
You’re already reaching for the glove dispenser on the wall, making your way around him as he reaches for his back with a swab—failing to reach far enough.
“Bullet grazed my vest”, He says, waving a hand.
“You got SHOT?”, You blurt.
“Shot at”, He says, brows raised with a shrug; “Anyways, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
But you do worry about him; more than he knows.
You ignore his words, taking the swab from his outstretched hand and gently clean the wound on his shoulder.
“Thank you”, He sighs, voice going soft.
You can’t help the smile that breaks onto your lips, soft and gentle just for him; “Anytime.”
Knowing he’s ok and safe, your mind drifts now—focusing more on the fact that he’s sitting shirtless in front of you. Thick and strong body built and freckled; just enough healthy fat around his mid-section that it settles over his belt when he sits down. Broad shoulders that stretch each scrub top he owns. You want to explore them, connect all the freckles that etch his skin—press kisses to the paleness of him.
You feel yourself bite your bottom lip, willing the heat returning to your cheeks to climb back down. To act normal.
“You ok?”, Jack asks, noticing your quietness.
“Yup, perfect”, You say.
You don’t see his quirked brow, and whatever he’s thinking—he keeps to himself. Shuffling to grab his t-shirt off his lap when you finish patching him up.
“Thanks for keeping this off the books”, He says, offering you a crooked smirk.
You nod, bottom lip still between your teeth; “Sure.”
He eyes you suspiciously when you don’t move, even after his shirt is pulled back on; “You sure you’re ok, kid?”
“Yeah!”, You answer to quickly; “I better go see if Dana needs anything, uh…I’ll see you later? For your shift?”
Jack huffs a laugh; “Yeah, see you there crawler.”
With that you spin on your feet, rushing out of the room; leaving a smiling and curious Jack behind.
─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─
You find yourself at the hub, hiding your face in your hands—elbows resting against the top of the counter.
“What’s got you so flustered?”, Santos asks, looking up from her charting beside you.
You groan; “I don’t even know if I can say.”
Princess perks up on the other side of you; “Ok, now we need to know.”
You groan again, looking around you once to make sure no one else can hear. Thankfully spotting Jack leaving through the ambulance bay doors.
Santos follows your line of sight; “Something happen with Dr. Abbot?”
You push your face back into your hands; “God. What didn’t happen.”
Both of them eye you with quirked brows.
“I saw him…shirtless”, You mumble.
Princess’ face lights up; “Oh you lucky girl!”
“And?”, Santos asks.
You can’t help but groan again; “He’s unfairly hot. Like, so built and fit it should be illegal. He has no business looking that good in an ER.”
The women next to you exchange glances, before bursting out into laughter beside you.
“Sounds like someone has a crush on Dr. Abbot”, Santos says.
“Who doesn’t?”, You quip back, like it’s common knowledge and not about you.
Princess sighs on the other side of you.
“He’s like the McDreamy of the Pitt…or the Clooney”, She sighs.
“He’s better than McDreamy and Clooney, he’s like…McClooney.”
Laughter erupts around you again.
“So you and Abbot, huh?”, Santos asks.
“God, I don’t know. I mean we’re friends yeah, but I don’t think he even knows how I feel. Or that he’d even feel the same”, You sigh.
“I don’t know, I’ve seen him look at you. Seems like something’s there”, Princess says; “You should talk to him.”
Your face heats up way too fast; “I can’t do that! Are you crazy?”
Princess shrugs; “You never know what he’ll say.”
You sigh, nodding. You know she’s right, but you can’t push past the nerves or the fear that you might ruin a friendship you deeply value.
“He’s gone for a few hours anyways, I just need to get back to work”, You say, reaching for a new iPad.
You turn on your feet with another sigh.
“Go get your McClooney!”, Princess calls out behind you, making you shush her.
You shrink under all the glances your way, hurrying along to find Dana and focus on literally anything besides your feelings towards Jack.
─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─
It’s a few hours later when Jack strolls back into the ED, camo backpack slung over one shoulder. Patients still bustle around him; Robby’s still forcing himself to work longer.
The hub is buzzing with a few staff; Princess, Santos, Nazely, Dana and Perlah all huddled together. Jack heads towards the staff room, but he stops when he hears your name.
“Oh she’s got it bad”, Santos says; “You should’ve seen her, she was absolutely flustered over seeing him shirtless. Poor girl can’t hide her crush if she tried.”
Jack feels his heartbeat pick up.
“Our girl’s got it for Abbot, huh?”, Dana says, smiling to herself; “Can’t believe I didn’t see it.”
Jack’s heart stops at the mention of his name—then quickly picks back up. A smile spreads on his face before he can stop it, ducking and shaking his head as he pushes the door to the staff room open. He knew how he felt about you, but hearing you felt the same way towards him? His entire shift just got a whole lot better.
He keeps it to himself during handoffs, even during his beginning of shift speech as everyone gathers around him. His eyes flick to you once; standing between Cruz and Ellis. His smile doesn’t falter, a warm feeling fluttering behind his ribs.
He lets you go about your shift, getting swept into a few cases of his own. It’s nearing nine when he finally comes face to face with you; a much needed silence in the break room.
He’s leaning up against the counter with a cup of coffee when you come in, stopping in your tracks when you see him.
“Oh! Sorry, didn’t know you were in here”, You say.
Jack scoffs a laugh; “What? You avoiding me now?”
“No”, You say, a little too quickly.
“Good.”
He watches you cross the room, opening the fridge and pulling out an energy drink. The noise of the can cracking open fills the room, a soft sigh escaping your lips as you lean up against the counter beside him—a little more space between you than usual.
Silence fills the air as you both drink, enjoying the few minutes of peace you might get before it’s interrupted. Jack, as if sensing your calm—decides now’s the time to get you all riled up.
“So”, He says, tracing the rim of his paper cup with his pointer finger; “I heard something interesting earlier.”
You scoff; “Of course you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”, He asks, brow quirked and faking offense.
“Jack”, You say; “Do you really want me to answer that?”
“No”, He shrugs, smiling to himself as he sets his cup on the counter behind him.
You shake your head, doing the same with your can; “Lay it on me, Abbot.”
Jack juts his chin out, scratching at his scruff.
“I heard…someone that works here has a crush on me”, He says.
You feel your stomach drop, embarrassment rushing to your cheeks and ears.
“Something about ‘unfairly hot, so built it should be illegal’”, He says; “‘Hotter than McDreamy and Clooney?’”
“Jack I-“, You try to rush something out, but no words come out.
Your brain has shut down. You blink away the tears brimming your eyes.
But Jack just takes a step towards you, hands settling on your arms. His thumbs rub up and down, digging softly into your scrubs.
Then he hooks a finger under your chin, guiding you to look up at him. What he finds is a look he can only describe as guilty.
“Hey”, He says softly, ducking his head down to meet your eyeline.
“I’m sorry, Jack”, You rush out; “It’s highly inappropriate and I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, we can just forget this ever happened and go back to being friends. If you even still want to be my friend. I’m so sorry—“
“No”, Jack says.
You freeze; “What?”
“I don’t think I can do that”, He says softly.
“I’m so sorry Jack…”, You mutter, fearing the worst.
“I’m not.”
You look up at him fully then, finding him gazing back at you fondly—a soft crooked twitch of his lips taking over his face.
“You’re not…?”
“No”, He says; “Not when it’s you.”
Your breath catches.
“Sweetheart, I’ve felt the same way about you for so long.”
Your mouth falls open. This time you can’t will it to shut again.
“God, you drive me crazy, kid. It’s always been you”, He confesses, voice soft and deep.
Your chest is heaving by now, mouth dry and eyes wide.
But then you smile; “It’s always been you too, Jack. For so long.”
His smile widens to match yours; “Cmere.”
He pulls you in close, wrapping his strong arms around you. He doesn’t kiss you yet, not here; he doesn’t want the first time to be in the ED. Not when you deserve a real date, to be treated right.
He lets his lips ghost over your hair, pressing softly once against your crown. He rubs his hand up and down your back, before laying his cheek against your hair.
When he pulls away, his thumbs rest softly on your hips; digging in just enough to let you know he’s still there. His smile hasn’t wavered, if anything it’s only grown fonder.
“So we’re ok?”, You finally ask.
Jack laughs softly; “More than ok, kid.”
Quiet settles between you both again, comfortable and warm as you take each other in with new awareness on both sides. Then Jack shifts once; pushing himself off the counter.
“C’mon”, He says, pulling you with him.
“Where?”, You ask.
“The roof”, He tells you; “Gonna watch the fireworks. I know how much you like them.”
You feel your heart melt with fondness, before the lingering concern for him creeps up behind it.
“Jack”, You say softly, stopping him; “It’s ok, we don’t have to. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“I’m not”, He says, offering you a smile and a small squeeze of his hand; “I want to watch them, with you.”
So you follow him up the stairs to the roof, heart pounding loud enough to echo—letting him guide you with a steady hand on your lower back.
Most of the dayshift is already up there, gathered towards the railing of the roof. Jack finds a spot just in front of the doorway, leaning up against the brick wall. Away from the crowd and somehow seeming a little more private.
You settle in next to him, closer than you were in the break room. The first few fireworks go off, and for the first time; Jack doesn’t flinch. By the tenth, he reaches quietly for your hand; interlacing his fingers with your own.
Not out of fear or bad memories, just grounding himself. That makes you fold; you let your head drift down softly to rest against his shoulder—watching the sparkles of blues and reds paint the sky above you.
Jack brushes his lips briefly against your hair again, pressing once before he turns his head back—squeezing your hand softly. You stay like that; cuddled up against him in the back of the day shift crowd—a new, stronger feeling blossoming between you. Sweetly intimate and warm. Something existing just for the two of you.
“Happy fourth, Jack”, You hum, pressing your lips to his shoulder.
He squeezes your hand again, looking back at you as a sparkle of blue illuminates his face; “You too, sweetheart.”
Pairing: Dr. Frank Langdon x nurse!reader
Warnings: angst, fall from heights, internal bleeding, medical emergencies, tension.
Summary: A rock climbing accident on your day off leaves you with life threatening injuries. What follows is a race against time at ER, an emergency surgery, and a hospital room confrontation.
Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.
🎀 based on this request 🎀
The thing about marrying a doctor when you’re a nurse is that you both know exactly how much the human body can endure before it snaps. The other more dangerous thing? You also know exactly how to fake being perfectly fine.
It was supposed to be a standard day off. While Frank was enduring the chaos of the day shift at the hospital, you were out with your crew. They were an adventurous bunch, one who spend a Tuesday scaling a sheer rock face because it was relaxing.
Everything was fine until it wasn't.
You fell. It wasn't a plunge from the peak, thank God, but a sheer fifteen foot drop onto hard earth and jagged rocks was more than enough.
You blacked out for a minute, the world rushing back in a blur of panicked voices and hands on your shoulders.
By the time your friends managed to scramble down to you, the adrenaline was already pumping through your veins, masking the trauma.
"I'm okay! I'm fine, seriously," you insisted, waving them off as you pushed yourself up. Your head spun, and your ribs throbbed, but you forced a laugh to quiet their terror.
Aside from some nasty scrapes and a deep ache, you looked intact.
"Don't call Frank," you ordered them strictly as you patched yourself up with the first aid kit. "He’s in the middle of his shift. I'll tell him tonight."
But you didn't.
By 8 PM, you were back home. The adrenaline had completely evaporated, leaving behind an exhaustion and sickening ache in your abdomen.
When Frank walked through the door, you offered him a weak smile from the couch, murmuring something about being tired from the hike, and told him you were going to take a hot shower to wash off the dirt.
Frank kissed the top of your head, completely unaware of the slight wince you hid against his chest. "Don't be too long, baby. I missed you," he murmured, heading to the kitchen to scrounge up some dinner.
While setting his keys on the counter, his phone buzzed.
Then it buzzed again.
It was a text from one of your friends.
Hey Frank, just checking in. Is she doing okay? She took a really nasty fall off the rock face today and knocked herself out for a second.
She swore she was fine and made us promise not to call you, but I've been feeling sick about it all night. Please tell me she's okay.
Frank’s blood turned to ice.
Knocked herself out? Fall?
His thumb smashed the call button before his brain could even process the panic. The friend answered on the first ring, sounding guilty.
"Frank, I—"
"How far did she fall?" Frank’s voice was authoritative. "Tell me exactly what happened. Now."
"About fifteen feet. Her rope snapped. She hit the ground hard, Frank. She was unconscious for at least a full minute, maybe two. But she woke up, got right up, and refused to go to the ER. She said she just had some scrapes..."
Frank didn't hear the rest. He immediately connected the dots. Blunt force trauma.
Brief loss of consciousness followed by a lucid interval.
Internal bleeding. Epidural hematoma.
"Baby?!" he roared, his voice cracking with terror.
He put the phone on his pocket and bolted down the hallway, throwing the bathroom door open. The room was thick with steam, the shower running at full blast, but you weren't under the stream.
You were collapsed against the wall. The hot water had washed away the dirt, exposing deep purple and black contusions mottling your entire right side and ribs.
Your eyes were open, but they were glossy and unfocused. The sudden drop in blood pressure from the hot water had completely betrayed your compromised body.
"Frank..." you breathed."J-Just got... dizzy..."
For a second, the fear of a husband seeing his wife bleeding and broken threatened to paralyze him. The panic was shoved into a corner of his mind; he had to save you first. He could break down later.
He was beside in an instant, turning off the shower.
"Okay, I've got you," he muttered. His fingers pressed against your carotid artery, your pulse was thready and dangerously fast.
He gently tilted your chin up, checking your pupils. One was sluggish.
"Frank," you whispered, your eyelids fluttering closed.
"Baby, hey, open your eyes, look at me," he commanded. He grabbed his phone from his pocket, dialing emergency and putting it on speaker, dropping it on the bathroom counter.
"This is Dr. Frank Langdon, I need an ambulance to my house," he barked at the dispatcher, never breaking eye contact with you. He rattled off your address, your symptoms, and his suspected diagnosis without a single tremor in his voice.
He grabbed a towel, gently wrapping it around your shivering shoulders, careful not to pressure your battered ribs. With one arm under your legs and one behind your back, he lifted you and laid you down on the cold bathroom floor.
"Keep your eyes open, baby, please." Frank pleaded, his hands cupping your face. "You stubborn, foolish woman... why didn't you tell me?"
"Tired..." you mumbled, your head rolling slightly against his palm.
"I know you are, but you have to stay awake. Let's count to 100, okay? Count with me, please."
As the distant wail of sirens finally began to echo in the night air, Frank held your face in his hands, fighting a silent battle against the dark to keep you with him.
-
Frank stayed by your side in the back of the rig, his hand gripping yours so tightly his knuckles were white.
The doors flew open, and the bright lights of the ER hit Frank’s face.
"What do we got?" one of the trauma residents called out, rushing forward with a gurney.
"Blunt force trauma from a fifteen foot fall," Frank barked as he walked alongside the gurney as they wheeled you in. "Brief LOC followed by a lucid interval. GCS is dropping, currently at a nine. Hypotensive, tachycardic, and extensive bruising to the right thoracic wall."
The trauma team immediately went to work, transferring you to the table. Seeing his own wife beneath the harsh resuscitation lights sent a visceral jolt of pure terror straight to Frank's chest.
"Hey, Langdon," Dr. Jack Abbot said, stepping into the bay and gently but firmly placing a hand on Frank's shoulder to stall him. "Frank. We’ve got her. You need to step back."
"Jack, I- I think she’s bleeding internally, her pupil is sluggish—"
"I know. I see it," Jack interrupted, his voice was calm. "Let us do our job. Be her husband, Frank. Let me be her doctor."
It took everything in Frank to take two steps backward, his chest heaving as he watched the team cut away your clothes.
The scans confirmed his worst nightmares: three fractured ribs on your right side, a minor splenic laceration that was thankfully clotting on its own, and the true threat: a brain hemorrhage.
The pressure in your skull was building, and if they didn't drain it immediately, the damage would be irreversible.
"We need to operate. Now," Jack called out, reviewing the scans on the monitor. "Call up to the OR. Tell neuro surgery we're coming up hot. I'm coming with her."
Frank was by your side again. He didn't care who was watching. He leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours, his hand gently cupping the uninjured side of your face.
"You fight, okay?" he whispered, his voice trembling, thick with tears he refused to let fall until you were safe. "You are the most stubborn person I have ever met in my life, baby. So use it now."
You couldn't speak, but your fingers gave a microscopic squeeze against his palm before the doors to the elevator slammed shut, taking you up to the operating room.
The next two hours were felt like hell. Frank sat in the surgical waiting room, staring blankly at his hands. Right now, he felt completely helpless. He kept replaying the night in his head, how you had smiled at him, how you had hidden your pain just to spare him a little stress.
If I had just looked closer, he thought, burying his face in his hands. If I hadn't been so tired, I would have seen it.
"Langdon."
He snapped his head up. Jack was walking through the double doors, he looked exhausted, but his expression was soft.
Frank stood up so fast his chair nearly flipped.
He couldn't even form the question.
"She's out," Jack said immediately, offering a reassuring nod. "The burr hole went smoothly. We evacuated the clot and relieved the pressure. The hemorrhage is completely drained, and there’s no sign of rebleeding. Her pupils are equal and reactive."
Frank let out a breath.
"The ribs are going to hurt like hell for a few weeks, and they're going to keep her sedated for the rest of the night to let her brain rest," Jack continued, clapping a hand on Frank's shoulder. "But she’s going to make a full recovery, Frank. Go see her."
The ICU room was quiet, saved for the sound of your heart monitor.
Frank sat in the armchair pulled flush against your bedside. He had your hand enveloped in both of his, pressing it against his lips. You looked peaceful now, the deathly pallor replaced by a healthier flush, sleeping off the heavy anesthesia.
He knew that when you woke up, he was going to give you the lecture of a lifetime about keeping secrets from him.
He was going to remind you exactly how dangerous head injuries were, and he was probably never going to let you go rock climbing again.
Next night, you blinked your eyes open and the lights of the ICU forced you to squint.
"Hey," a soft voice murmured.
You shifted your gaze to the side. Frank was sitting there. His clothes were wrinkled, his jaw was dark with stubble, and his eyes were bloodshot. He immediately leaned forward, kissing your forehead. "Welcome back, baby."
"Frank..." your voice was raspy.
He quickly poured a tiny sip of water from a plastic cup with a straw, holding it to your lips. "Easy. Take it slow."
As the water cleared the fog in your throat, the memories of the bathroom floor and the blinding dizziness came rushing back. You looked at him guiltily. "Why am I here?"
Frank’s expression hardened. "You have three broken ribs. And you had an acute epidural hematoma. Your brain was bleeding. They had to take you up to the OR for an emergency craniotomy to drain the clot and relieve the pressure."
Your eyes went wide. The weight of the medical diagnosis hit your nurse's brain, but then, a sudden realization struck you.
Your hand flew up toward your head, encountering a thick layer of sterile gauze wrapped around your skull.
"Oh my god," you gasped, winced immediately as the movement flared the pain in your broken ribs. "Frank. Oh my god, did they cut my hair?!"
Frank blinked, completely thrown off. Of all the reactions, this was absolutely not on his radar.
"They had to do a burr hole," you stammered, your eyes welling with tragic panic. "You have to shave the scalp to drain a hemorrhage! Frank, am I bald?!"
For a second, Frank just stared at you, utterly bewildered by how quickly you had shifted from a life threatening trauma patient to a woman mourning her haircut. Then, he let out a laugh. The sound thick with unadulterated joy that you were alive and well enough to care about your hair.
"It's not funny!" you protested weakly, pouting. "Tell me the truth!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Frank chuckled, wiping a stray tear of relief from the corner of his eye as he leaned over the bed rail, gently capturing your hand to stop you from picking at the bandages. "You're not bald, I promise. Just a little part. They were very neat, they only shaved a small strip near the incision site. The rest of your hair will cover it right up. You still look beautiful."
You let out a dramatic sigh of relief, sinking back into the pillows, though your eyes narrowed slightly. "You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"
"Doctor's honor," Frank smiled looking at you.
He leaned back in his chair and he couldn't resist a little payback for the sheer terror you had put him through. "Though... now that I think about it, they did mention they had a bit of a slip with the clippers. There might be a random bald patch right at the crown. Kind of looks like a reverse mohawk."
Your jaw dropped. The playful look on his face completely bypassed your foggy post op brain. Combined with the lingering anesthesia, the pain in your ribs, and the emotional exhaustion of the last twenty four hours, the thought of a botched hospital haircut was the final straw.
Your lower lip began to tremble. Your eyes welled up with tears. "A reverse mohawk?" you said, your voice cracking. "Frank, are you serious?"
Frank’s smile vanished in an instant. The teasing persona evaporated, replaced immediately by absolute panic as he realized his joke had completely backfired.
"Oh, baby, no, no, no," he immediately leaned over the bed and gently catched your face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I was joking. I swear to you, I was just joking."
"You're lying," you sniffled, a tear slipping down your cheek as you tried not to sob because it hurt your chest.
"I am a terrible liar, you know that," Frank cooed. He used his thumbs to wipe the tears from your cheeks, his heart aching at the sight of your distress. "Your hair is perfect. They didn't slip. There is no mohawk. I was just being an idiot."
He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then another to the tip of your nose, staying close so you could feel the warm comfort of his breath. He carefully combed his fingers through the intact strands of your hair that weren't covered by the gauze, showing you that it was all still there.
"See? It's all here," he murmured. "Every beautiful strand. No more jokes, I promise."
You sniffled one last time, leaning your head heavily into his palms as the panic subsided, replaced by the warm of his affection. "You're terrible," you whispered.
"I know," Frank chuckled softly, pressing his lips to your crown, completely consumed by the relief of having you safe in his arms. "But I'm your terrible husband."
Pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x girlfriend!reader
Warnings: fluff, emotional, mentions of medical cases, pregnancy.
Summary: A small gift box changes Jack's entire world forever.
Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.
It was just after 7 AM on a Sunday. You carefully balanced a wooden breakfast tray on your forearm. On it sat two plates of eggs and bacon, a stack of pancakes, and two mugs of black coffee.
Right on cue, the front door clicked open. A moment later, Jack appeared in the bedroom doorway.
"Tell me I'm not hallucinating," he murmured. "Did I die on the way home and go to heaven?"
"Not quite, handsome," you teased, setting the tray carefully on the nightstand. "Just a girlfriend who knows exactly what a twelve hour shift feels like. Come here."
He walked over, wrapping his arms tightly around your waist and left a soft kiss in your neck.
"You're my lifesaver," he whispered against your skin.
Jack sat down on the edge of the mattress. You watched as he leaned forward to unfasten the straps of his prosthetic leg. It was a routine as natural to the two of you as breathing. He slipped the socket off, setting the prosthetic carefully against the nightstand. He rubbed the residual limb with a sigh, the tension visibly leaving his lower back, before swinging his leg up and propping himself up against the pillows.
You slid into bed right beside him, pulling the duvet over both of your laps and settling the breakfast tray between you.
Jack immediately reached for the coffee, taking a long gulp. "God. I needed this so bad."
"Rough night?" you asked, cutting into a pancake.
He leaned his head back against the headboard. "The usual Saturday night madness. Two vehicle accidents, a couple of bar fights, and a teenager who thought fireworks in June were a brilliant idea. But..." He trailed off, his eyes turning a little distant as he stared at his coffee mug. "...there was one case right at the end of the shift that’s still sticking with me."
"Yeah? What happened?"
Jack took a slow breath. "A guy came in. Severe chest pains, classic myocardial infarction. We had to rush him straight to the cath lab. His kid was with him, must’ve been no older than seven or eight. Just sitting in the waiting room, crying, holding a handmade card he’d drawn."
Jack looked over at you. "The kid kept asking if his dad was gonna make it, because he couldn't give him his draw if he didn't wake up. It hit me right in the chest when I realized the date." He offered a poignant smile. "It’s Sunday. It’s Father’s Day."
You reached across the tray, slipping your hand into his. His fingers immediately intertwined with yours, squeezing tightly. "Did the dad make it?" you asked softly.
"Yeah," Jack nodded with relief. "We got the blockage in time. Stable, recovering in the ICU. Before I clocked out, I walked past the room and saw the kid sitting on the edge of the bed, helping his dad hold the draw. Just... totally protective of his old man."
The bedroom fell into a quiet silence. Jack stared down at your joined hands, his thumb tracing circles over your knuckles.
"Seeing them like that," Jack said, his voice dropping quieter now. "It made me think. I spent so many years just focusing on surviving, on the ER, on just making it through the day. I never really let myself look past the next shift."
He lifted his eyes to meet yours, intense and full of an emotion that made your heart skip a beat.
"But looking at that kid today… and then coming home to you, seeing you waiting for me like this… it made me want it, again. For some time, I've been thinking about it, really wanting it, you know?" He swallowed hard. "A family. With you. I want to be that guy one day. The one getting the messy handmade draws."
A sudden rush of warmth blooming in your chest.
"You're going to be an incredible father, Jack," you whispered looking into his eyes. "You’re already the most protective and caring man I know."
A radiant smile broke across Jack’s face, reaching all the way to his eyes and crinkling the corners.
"Yeah?" he murmured playing with your fingers.
"Yeah," you laughed softly, but a sudden wave of nerves and excitement fluttered in your stomach. You hesitated for a second, testing the waters. "How exactly do you see yourself as a father? You think you can handle diaper duty after a twelve hour trauma shift?"
Jack chuckled, leaning his head back against the pillows as he genuinely thought about it. "Honestly? I think I’d be the overprotective dad who checks their breathing every five minutes. And I’ll just use my trauma precision to handle the swaddling. And I'll probably be the guy teaching them how to throw a baseball while completely ruining my prosthetic." He smiled warmly, looking at you. "And with you by my side? I think I'd be a pretty damn good one."
You bit your lip, a wide smile breaking across your face that you couldn't suppress.
"Well," you said, your voice suddenly a little breathless, "I certainly hope you'll be a good father."
Before he could register the sudden shift in your tone, you abruptly moved the breakfast tray off your laps.
"Okay, why the rush? Where's the fire?" Jack blinked, startled, as you hurriedly carried the tray across the room and set it down on the small table by the window.
"Just clearing the blast zone," you teased, your hands shaking slightly with adrenaline. You walked over to your dresser, pulled a small wrapped gift box from the top drawer, and walked back to the bed.
Jack watched you, thoroughly confused now, his eyebrows furrowing as you slid back under the covers and handed him the box. "What’s this? Did you buy me a gift? Something on sale for Father's Day?"
"Shut up and open it," you chuckled, sitting next to him.
Jack gave you a suspicious look as he pulled the ribbon.
He lifted the lid, removing a layer of white tissue paper.
His tired look vanished from his face instantly.
Resting at the bottom of the box was a tiny small pair of knit newborn shoes. And resting right beside them was a white plastic stick with two distinct and undeniable pink lines.
The bedroom went completely silent.
Jack froze as his brain tried to process what he was looking at. He stared at the positive pregnancy test with his chest rising and falling in quick breaths.
"Are you..." Jack’s voice cracked completely, his throat tight. He looked up at you, his eyes suddenly glassy and swimming with tears. "Is this... are we...?"
"Happy first Father's Day, Jack," you choked out, tears of your own finally spilling over.
Jack carefully placed the box on the nightstand next to his bed, his hands trembling so badly he didn't want to risk dropping it.
The moment his hands were free, he lunged forward, catching your face. "I love you, i love you, i love you." he said placing kisses all over your face. "God, I'm so happy, I'm gonna be a dad," he muffled against your skin, his voice thick with emotion. "We're going to be a family."
"Yes, handsome, you're going to get a lot of messy handmade draws."
Jack hooked his arms under your thighs and waist. In one effortless motion, he lifted you directly onto his lap. You gasped in surprise, your hands instinctively flying to his shoulders to steady yourself as you straddled his good leg, your knees framing his waist.
Jack didn’t hesitate. He cupped the back of your neck with one hand, his fingers tangling in your hair, while his other hand anchored firmly around your lower back, pulling your hips flush against his.
Then, he leaned up and kissed you.
It was a passionate, deep, and utterly breathless kiss. His lips parted yours with possessive tenderness, tasting the salt of your shared tears as he poured everything he was feeling into the kiss.
It was a promise, a thank you, and a declaration of absolute devotion all wrapped into one.
You wrapped your arms tightly around his neck, leaning into him completely, melting against his chest. You could feel the emotional tremble in his lips.
When he pulled back, he didn't let you go, he kept his forehead pressed firmly against yours. His hand moved down to rest flat against your stomach, his fingers spreading wide over the fabric of your shirt, already protectively.
"You have no idea of the happiness I'm feeling right now," Jack whispered, his voice was so intense with emotions tjhat it made your heart ache. "You have absolutely no idea how much I love you."
Pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x wife!reader (ft Michael Robinavitch)
Warnings: bloody angst, hurt, domestic accident, falling down stairs, blood, facial injuries, medical procedures, angry Abbot.
Summary: A routine task like doing laundry turns into a nightmare when a sudden slip makes you trip on the stairs. With a deep cut on your face and an injured knee, you try to downplay your clumsiness, but for your husband, Jack, the accident is anything but funny.
🎀 based on this request 🎀
Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.
You were trying to balance a mountain of folded laundry in your arms, hurrying to get back downstairs before the timers on the kitchen stove went off.
Jack’s voice always echoed in your mind in these moments—“Stop running on the stairs, please.”
But you rushed anyway.
Your foot caught the edge of the third step. The laundry flew from your grip, sending sheets and towels flying as your weight shifted violently forward.
You launched. Your knee slammed hard against one step, and before you could even register the ache there, the sharp edge another one scraped violently across your cheekbone.
For a second, the world just went completely quiet. You were crumpled on the steps, the breath knocked clear out of your lungs, staring down. The pain in your knee was loud and throbbing, and your face felt… numb.
"Doll, what happened? Are you okay?"
Jack’s voice broke the silence. You looked at him, his gaze sweeping over the scene. Because of his leg, he couldn't just drop to his knees or rush up the stairs to scoop you up; he had to take each step deliberately. The frustration of his own physical limitations was already written in the tight line of his jaw.
"I'm fine!" you managed, your voice sounding small. "Just... dropped the towels. And added another bruise to the collection." You tried to laugh, pulling yourself up to sit straight.
Jack reached the step just below you. "Don't move. Stay exactly where you are."
His tone was rigid. Stripped of all warmth.
"Jack, seriously, it’s just a scrape—"
"I said, don't move," he snapped, his fingers gently but firmly clamping onto your chin to tilt your face upward into the dim stairwell light.
That was when you felt it. A strange trickling sensation creeping down your cheek. Something dripped past your jawline. You reached up to touch it, but Jack caught your wrist mid air, holding it tightly away from your face.
But your fingers were already stained red.
"Oh," you whispered, the adrenaline suddenly spiking. "That's... blood." You tried to deflect with a nervous laugh. "Does the cut matches the bruise on my knee? A matching set for the collection. I'm keeping you in business, Doc."
Jack didn't laugh. He didn't even smile.
"Shut up," he said. "Don't make a joke out of this."
"Jack, I'm just trying to—"
"I don't care what you're trying to do." He snapped, letting go of your chin. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it firmly against your cheek. "Apply pressure. Hold it there."
You took over, pressing the cloth to your face, the sting finally waking up beneath the numbness. "Don't talk to me like that. I just tripped."
"Because you were running! How many times do I have to ask you to slow down?" Jack’s hands were trembling slightly. "You treat your own safety like it’s a punchline. 'Another bruise to the collection.' Do you have any idea what it’s like for me to hear a crash and know I can't run down there to catch you? Do you know what went through my head when I saw you lying here?"
His voice cut through your defense mechanism. You looked at him, he was angry and terrified. And, you knew, he was trapped by a body that wouldn't let him be the protector he desperately wanted to be.
"I wasn't trying to minimize it," you said softly. "I joke because I'm embarrassed, Jack. I'm clumsy, and I hate that I make you worry."
"I don't care about being worried," Jack replied. "I care about you being safe. I spend all day at the hospital patching up people who didn't see the accident coming. And you... you're rushing through our own home like you're invincible. And I can't... if something happens to you, I can't get to you fast enough. You know that."
The silence returned, heavier this time.
Jack gently reached out, taking your hand away from the handkerchief to check the bleeding. The edge of the cut was clean, but it was deep enough that it would probably need a few butterflies, if not a stitch or two.
"It needs to be cleaned properly," he murmured. "Can you stand?"
"Yeah," you whispered, wincing as you shifted your weight onto your bruised knee. "I can stand."
"Good." Jack took a deep breath. Once he was stable on his good leg, he offered you his hand. "Let's go fix you up. No more jokes."
"Okay. No more jokes," you agreed, letting him pull you up into the kitchen.
Jack guided you to a stool by the kitchen island. Without a word, he moved around, pulling a first-aid kit from the cabinet and grabbing a damp washcloth from the sink.
"Keep pressure on it," he ordered softly, setting the kit down.
When he turned back to you, he pulled up another stool, carefully positioning his stiff leg out to the side so he could sit close enough to work.
"Okay, take the cloth away. Let me look."
You pulled the blood soaked handkerchief from your cheek. Almost instantly, a fresh crimson stream welled up from the split in your skin, tracing a rapid path down your jaw and dripping onto your collarbone.
Jack’s brow furrowed. He took the damp washcloth and gently tapped around the wound, trying to clear the area to see the actual depth of the laceration. "Hold still. I know it hurts."
The cold water hit the raw nerves, and you gasped, leaning back instinctively. "It stings—god, Jack."
"I know, I know. Don't pull away from me." His hand was firm on the back of your neck, holding you in place. But as he wiped a fresh layer of blood away, the wound immediately filled again, spilling over. The edge of the step had sliced deep, right over the prominent curve of your cheekbone where the skin was tight.
He waited a beat, pressing a clean piece of sterile gauze against it, counting silently under his breath. One minute. Two minutes. When he pulled it back to check, the blood welled up just as fast. It wasn't clotting. The edge of the cut was jagged, grinning open in a way that made his stomach do a sick flip.
Jack let out a frustrated breath. He didn't say anything, but the professional shift in his posture told you everything.
His ER doctor self had completely taken over.
"I-Is it bad?" you asked, your voice trembling.
"It’s deep," Jack said, his voice felt cold. "It tore right through the dermal layer. It’s too wide for butterflies, and because of the location on your face, it’s going to keep opening every time you talk or blink. I can't close this here. It needs a layered suture, and it won't stop bleeding until it gets one."
He packed a thick stack of sterile gauze against your cheek, taking your hand and forcing your fingers to hold it there with heavy pressure.
"We're going to the hospital," he said, already standing up. The sudden movement made his brace click sharply.
"Jack, can't you just do it? You have a kit, you're a doctor—"
"I don't have a local anesthetic or the proper fine gauge monofilament sutures in the kitchen cabinet," he snapped, his voice cracking with sudden panic. He grabbed his car keys and his and your jacket from the hook by the door. "If I try to patch this up with what I have here, you’re going to end up with a massive scar on your face. We’re going to the hospital. Now."
The drive was quiet. He kept his hand firmly on the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the road, while you sat in the passenger seat, pressing the now heavy gauze to your face.
You looked over at his profile, his jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle was jumping in his cheek.
"Jack," you whispered, the movement pulling painfully at the cut. "I'm sorry."
He didn't look at you, but his grip on the steering wheel tightened. "Just keep pressure on the wound, please. We're almost there."
-
The doors of The Pitt hissed open, swallowing you both into the familiar air of the emergency department.
Tonight, you were the intake.
"Jack? What the hell happened?"
Robby said from behind the central desk, his eyes darting instantly from Jack’s tense face down to you. He saw the blood soaked gauze you were holding tightly against your cheek and the dark stain on your collar.
"She took a fall on the stairs," Jack said, sounding entirely professional, though the tight grip he kept on your elbow betrayed him. "Laceration to the zygomatic arch. It’s deep. It’s been bleeding consistently for minutes. I couldn’t get it to clot at home."
"Alright, let's get her into Room 4, it's empty," Robby said, immediately stepping into gear, stepping beside you. "Can you walk okay? Did you hit your head? Lose consciousness?"
"My knee is a little banged up, but my head is fine," you muttered around the cloth, feeling a flush of embarrassment as a couple of nurses glanced your way. "Just... really clumsy."
Robby guided you onto the examination bed. "Let’s take a look."
You layed down and slowly pulled the gauzes away. Without the constant pressure, a fresh bead of dark blood immediately welled up. Robby leaned in, using a piece of sterile gauze to gently dab the edges of the wound. He winced slightly, assessing the deep split over the bone.
"Yeah, you really did a number on this," Robby murmured. "It’s a clean tear but it’s deep. It’s definitely going to need a few sutures. I'll get the lidocaine and—"
"I'll do it," Jack interrupted.
Robby paused, looking up at Jack, who was standing at the foot of the bed.
"Brother, you know the protocol," Robby said softly. "You don't treat family. Let me handle it. I'll make the lines clean, I promise."
"It’s my wife, Robby." Jack said, he stepped closer to the bedside, his eyes locked on the wound. "I’m doing the stitches. I need to do them."
The two doctors locked eyes for a long moment. Robby knew Jack, he knew his friend's frustrations, he knew how much Jack hated feeling helpless.
Letting Jack treat you wasn't standard, but Robby knew that forcing Jack to stand by and watch someone else patch you up would be worse.
Robby sighed, stepping back. "Fine. But I'm staying in the room to assist. And if your hands shake even a millimeter, I'm taking the needle."
"They won't shake," Jack said.
He moved to the side of the bed, carefully adjusting the stool so his rigid leg could extend comfortably.
Jack snap on a pair of sterile gloves, and when he pulled the tray of instruments closer, where a nurse put all the necessary.
"Look at me," Jack murmured softly. He picked up the syringe of lidocaine. "This is going to burn. A lot. Hold my knee if you need to. My good one."
You reached out, gripping his good knee tightly. He didn't flinch as your fingernails dug into his skin. "Okay, you're going to feel a little pinch."
The needle pierced the edge of the cut, and a sharp burning sensation flared across your cheek. You squeezed your eyes shut, gasping as the medicine flooded the tissue. Jack’s was completely steady as he repositioned the needle to numb the entire perimeter of the wound.
Within a minute, the burning subsided into a heavy weight.
Jack worked in absolute silence. He used a small suction tip to clear the pooling blood, exposing the deep layer of tissue beneath. With a needle driver, he began the meticulous process of closing the deep dermal layer first.
You only could feel the gentle tugging of the thread as he pulled the edges of your skin back together. You watched his face. His brow was furrowed, his eyes entirely locked on the millimeters of flesh he was mending. The anger from the stairwell was gone, completely replaced by an aching tenderness.
Every movement of his hands was incredibly precise, deliberate, and gentle.
Robby stood by, cutting the sutures as Jack tied off each knot. "Nice tension," Robby commented quietly, validating his friend's work. "That's going to heal beautifully."
Jack didn't reply. He just kept sewing, treating your face like the most fragile and precious thing in the world.
By the time he tied off the final knot, the wound was closed, reduced to a thin black line across your cheekbone.
Before Jack could even reach for the dressing supplies, Robby quietly stepped into his line of sight, a non adherent telfa pad and a strip of medical tape already in his gloved hands. "I've got the dressing, Jack. Step back for a second."
Jack blinked, the sharp medical tunnel vision breaking as he looked up at his friend.
He didn't argue.
His hands were just starting to develop a microscopic tremor from the adrenaline crash, and he knew it.
Robby offered you a warm smile as he leaned over the bed. He placed the small protective gauze pad directly over the neat row of black stitches, securing it firmly to your cheek with the clear tape. "There you go. That’ll keep it clean and protected. Excellent handiwork, by the way. You won't even be able to see the scar in a few months."
Jack dropped the instruments onto the tray. He pulled off his gloves, tossing them into the bin, and took a deep breath.
"All done, baby," he said softly. "You're okay."
"Thank you," you murmured, with an uncomfortable feeling in your chest.
The ride back home was calm. The dashboard clock glowed a late hour as Jack pulled the car into the driveway and cut the engine.
For a moment, neither of you moved.
"Let's get you inside," Jack said softly. He had the night off.
He got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. He opened the door and offered you his hand. As you stood up, your leg wobbled, and Jack immediately caught you. He held you close, bearing your weight as he carefully guided you into the house.
He led you straight to the living room, easing you down onto the couch. He disappeared for a few minutes, and when he returned, he was carrying a plush blanket, a fresh ice pack, and a glass of water.
He carefully lowered his weight onto the couch beside you and draped the blanket over your lap, then gently held the ice pack against your bruised knee.
Looking at him, seeing the dark circles of exhaustion, the faint smear of dried blood on his forearm that he hadn't fully washed off, and his unconditional care, the dam broke.
Tears slipped down your cheeks.
"Hey," Jack murmured, his brow furrowing as he set the ice pack down and instantly reached for your face. "Hey, what’s wrong? Is the local anesthetic wearing off? Is it hurting?"
"No," you choked out, your voice thick and trembling. You shook your head, immediately regretting it as the movement pulled at the tight stitches. "No, it doesn't hurt. Jack, I'm so sorry."
"Sweetheart, you don't need to-"
"I do," you interrupted, a sob catching in your throat. You reached out, taking his hand and squeezing it tightly. "I'm so, so sorry. I know I make a joke out of being clumsy, but I hate that I frightened you. I hate that I made you feel... helpless. I know how much you want to protect me, and I was careless. I didn't think about how it would affect you to hear me fall and not be able to just run down there. I'm so sorry for being reckless with myself."
Jack stared at you, his eyes softening.
He reached out, his thumb gently catching the tears on your cheek, careful not to touch your wound. He pulled you into his chest, wrapping his arms around you and holding you close. You buried your face into the crook of his neck, breathing in the comforting scent of his cologne.
"Thank you for being honest with me" Jack whispered into your hair, his hand gently stroking your back. "But you don't have to carry that guilt. I was angry because I was terrified. When I'm at work, I can control things. I have a team. But when it’s you... here... Seeing you hurt, and knowing my own body slows me down from getting to you... it scares me, baby."
He pulled back to look into your eyes.
"I know accidents happen," he said softly. "But I just need you to take care of yourself, because you are the most precious thing in my life. Okay?"
"Okay," you sniffled, wiping your nose with the edge of the blanket. "No more running on the stairs. I promise. I'll take them like a snail."
A smirk broke across Jack’s face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It was the first time he had smiled all night. "A snail might be a bit too slow, but I'll take it."
He leaned in, carefully placing a kiss on the uninjured side of your face, then another on the tip of your nose. "I love you, doll."
"I love you, my Jackie."
"Lay back, you need rest," he commanded gently, helping you settle on the couch. He placed the ice pack back on your knee and tucked the blanket securely around you. He picked up the TV remote and settled back against the cushions next to you.
As the soft sounds of a night time program filled the air, Jack's fingers gently stroked your head, lulling you to relax and close your eyes.
After a few seconds, you drifted off to sleep, feeling completely safe and secure in the tranquility of home.
Summary: Jack Abbot's relaxing day off takes a turn for the worse when he hears his phone ring. After all, his phone is on do not disturb and there's only one person that he's allowed to interrupt his peace — you. Even worse, your voice isn't the first thing he hears when he picks up.
Pairing: Jack Abbot x nurse!reader
Warnings: f!reader, violence against healthcare workers, language, mentions of bodily harm, mentions of blood, mentions of injuries sustained at the workplace, use of the word 'assault', Jack Abbot's dead wife mentioned, description of a drunk driving accident, Frank Langdon catches some strays, use of the nickname 'sweetheart', use of the nickname 'slugger', no use of y/n, mutual pining, fluff, hurt/comfort
Word Count: 5.5k
Author's Note: Yo — so I'm still alive. I have been stuck in The Pitt for awhile now. This one has been sitting unfinished in my drafts for a hot second. I also have a Robby fic sitting in there that I desperately need to finish. Those two men have truly bewitched me. Anyways, hope y'all are ready to be stuck in The Pitt with me for the time being. Hope you guys enjoy this one!
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
“Motherfucker!”
You angrily hit the coffee maker that has been causing the entire emergency department trouble for the majority of today’s shift. Langdon had watched you struggle earlier this morning before swooping in to fix the problem with a swift hit to the side of the machine and an off hand comment about having the ‘magic touch’. So, you imitate his actions now — hoping another dose of caffeine will help get you through the last couple hours of your shift. The machine stops its incessant beeping just as it had hours ago, but instead of brewing a fresh cup of mediocre coffee, the interactive screen goes completely black.
Great.
You squeeze your eyes shut and take in a deep breath. If Jack were here, he’d miraculously show up beside you with a latte in hand. You don’t know how he does it, but the man just knows exactly what you need and when you need it — you’ve taken to calling it his ‘sixth sense’. In reality, that’s Jack — observant and steadfast.
You miss the night shift.
It’s not that you dislike the day shift. In fact, you happily accepted Dana’s request for your help covering for Donnie during his paternity leave. In Robby’s words: they needed another nurse practitioner on the day shift and there’s only one that he trusts. A part of you thinks that it was just flattery to get you to come to the light side, but deep down you know that Robby only knows how to speak honestly. Lena wasn’t necessarily happy to let her best help switch shifts for an extended period of time, but she also knows that the ED is a team — sure the staff is split between day shift and night shift, but things only run smoothly when the shifts help each other out.
Jack wasn’t too keen on the idea.
He couldn’t stop you of course — Lena is your supervisor, not him. But that didn’t stop him from voicing his concerns. Jack Abbot has always been protective of his nightcrawlers, but there was something verging on possessive in the way he told Robby that this is simply a temporary arrangement after he realized he couldn’t change your mind.
“Should I call Ahmad to escort the caffeine criminal off the premises or do you have a handle on the situation?”
Robby’s voice breaks through your thoughts. You let out a sigh before turning to face the day shift’s senior attending. His expression, usually threaded with deep exhaustion and stoicism, is teetering on the edge of playfulness while a small smile tugs at his lips.
“Y’know what, Robinavitch? We never had this problem when we had the old machine. Mr. Coffee only had three buttons and never betrayed me.”
Robby lets out a breath through his nose — not quite a laugh, but the closest he’ll get to one this late into his shift. Gloria had decided to get the department a fancy new coffee maker that makes individual cups instead of a full pot a few weeks ago to celebrate improved patient satisfaction scores. What was meant to be a gesture of goodwill from upstairs has become the staff’s worst nightmare.
“You sound like Jack.”
You roll your eyes, but you also know no one has been more upset about this change than the night shift’s senior attending. Robby has always brought his own coffee from home, but Jack has been relying on the emergency department’s supply of shitty coffee for the entirety of his career at PTMC. You’d asked him about it once when you first started working together and he’d revealed under fluorescent lights that there was something comforting about the way it reminded him of the coffee rations he’d receive during his deployments.
“Have you talked to Jack recently?”
Robby attempts to sound nonchalant; however, you know him better than that. You’ve come to terms with the fact that he’s worse than the night shift nurses. Always needing to be in the know about everything and everyone. He swears that it’s because he’s the senior attending, so it’s his responsibility to keep an eye and ear on all of his staff. But Jack isn’t like that. He’s always been reserved and professional during shifts, always keeping his staff at a distance so he doesn’t get too attached — everyone except for you. In between cups of coffee and rooftop conversations, you managed to slip through the cracks of that cool, steely exterior.
“We talk during handover, but that’s not exactly the same as working a twelve hour shift with someone. Why? Anything I should be concerned about?”
Robby’s lips pull into a tight smile at your response, but anxiety finds its place in your chest. During handoff about a week ago, Mateo had pulled you aside to ask if you had any idea what was going on with Jack. Your brow furrowed as Mateo filled you in about Jack’s sudden change in demeanor with his staff — the once calm and collected attending has been increasingly impatient and scattered. You’d reassured Mateo that it was probably just stress related since Jack hadn’t had a day off in months — and even then he spent his rare off-call moments volunteering as a SWAT medic. You figured that Jack had finally hit a wall and was running on fumes, but Robby’s words were now making you second your assumptions.
“Nothing of concern, just looking out for you and Jack.”
Robby has this tone that makes it seem like he knows more about your relationship with Jack Abbot than you do. You know about his history with the night shift’s senior attending physician, but Robby hasn’t been there for the close calls at three o’clock in the morning when Jack puts his complete trust in your hands without a second thought. He hasn’t been there for the nights that seem to drag on for days when it seems like the sun will never rise again. He hasn’t been there for the hushed conversations in stairwells when the night feels darkest and the only comfort to be found in PTMC is in each other’s presence.
It’s not a bond built on flirtation — God knows, Jack Abbot flirts with everyone. And does that make you a little jealous? Maybe. And were you hoping that the distance created due to being on day shift for a few weeks would help you create some boundaries with the man? Possibly. But here you are, still infuriatingly infatuated with a man you have absolutely no chance with.
“I can assure you there’s no Jack and I.”
“Mhm.”
That damn tone again. You want to smack that smug look right off of his stupid face, but before you get the chance to fire back a commotion outside abruptly ends your conversation. The two of you move in tandem, Robby holding the door to the break room open as you duck under his arm before surveying the scene. Your eyes immediately widen as you spot Langdon attempting to keep two infuriated men on their separate gurneys as they yell over each other. He meets your eyes before moving his gaze to Robby, relief flooding his features.
“A little help here?”
You and Robby share a brief, knowing look before dividing and conquering the situation. Robby steps in, wheeling one of the men away while you follow after Landgon who is moving with the other.
“What’s the story here?”
You have to shout over the man’s incessant yelling, but Langdon ducks his head down slightly as he navigates the gurney through the ED to hear you better in the chaos. From not too far away, you hear Robby yell for Whitaker to take over his unruly patient so he can go find Ahmad for back up. Langdon’s shoulder bumping into yours pulls your attention back to your own situation.
“Bar argument gone ugly.”
The man laying on the gurney is bleeding profusely from lacerations on his forehead, but is cognescent enough to keep loudly threatening the other patient that came in with him. You manage to get a closer look at his wounds once Langdon locks the gurney in place and through the deep crimson you see little, semi-translucent pieces of debris. Your brow furrows as the light catches one of the pieces.
“Is that glass?”
Langdon nods before meeting your eyes with a crooked smile plastered on his face.
“Beer bottle to the head. Told you it got ugly.”
You let out a breath before gloving up with Langdon. As the two of you attempt to assess his injuries the man begins to fight you both off, pushing your hands away before either of you can start getting control of the bleeding. You pull back hoping to get the man’s attention so that Langdon can start giving him the care he needs.
“Sir, I’m gonna need you to calm down so that we can take a look at your injuries. Can you tell me your name?”
Finally, the man’s eyes land on you but they are filled with nothing but unbridled fury. You fight off the urge to take a step back from the situation and, instead, stand your ground.
“What I need is to get my hands on that son of a bitch who tried to fucking kill me. Can you help me with that?”
You raise both of your hands as the man fights off Langdon once again. He gives you an exasperated look as his shoulders slump in annoyance.
“I can not, this is a hospital not a fighting ring. What I can help you with is getting your bleeding under control and taking that glass out of your head before you get a nasty infection. How’s that sound?”
Your tone is stern but gentle as you attempt to talk the patient down. For a moment, his face softens in understanding and you almost let out a sigh of relief after having gotten through to him, but then Whitaker’s voice tears through the moment.
“I’ve got a runner, incoming!”
“Oh, shit.”
Langdon’s tone makes your heart rate spike, but before you get a chance to turn towards the commotion Whitaker’s very angry patient shoves you into the wall.
“We need some help in here! You good?”
Langdon’s worried eyes are locked on you as he tries to keep the two patients from tearing each other apart. Your shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but you had managed to stay on your feet which saved you from any additional trauma. After catching your breath, you leap in to help restrain the patient who just assaulted you.
“Sir, please. We need you to calm down!”
Your words fall on deaf ears as he continues to lunge at your patient who is now being held back by Langdon. What a fucking mess. You haven’t had a situation like this since last year’s Fourth of July night shift when two drunken men came into the E.D. after one of them practically eviscerated his buddy’s legs after shooting off a firework directly at him. Your eyes desperately meet Langdon’s, hoping he’s in the same boat as you, and he gives you a similar look of bewilderment.
“Whitaker! Ahmad! Anyone!”
Langdon’s voice is strained as the man in his arms struggles against his hold. You’re using all of your strength to pull Whitaker’s patient away from your own, but he’s got at least a foot and a hundred pounds on you. Keeping him restrained is taking all of your strength. Finally, Whitaker’s shoes squeak as he slides into the room.
“Woah, what can I do?”
Langdon gives him a ludicrous look before his eyes land on you.
“Give them a hand, will ya?”
Whitaker immediately jumps in to help you. You were hoping the additional body could help even the odds with these men; however, they seem to be getting more violent by the minute. The man in your grasp reels back and shoves Whitaker, who stumbles back. Now with only you holding him back, he takes this as a chance to take a swing on Langdon.
“Absolutely not!”
You grab his arm and pull back before he can land a punch. The man lets out a desperate, angry cry and swings his arm back hard. His elbow connects with your nose with a loud crack. The room explodes further than you thought was possible as you spit out the blood draining into your mouth due to the blow. The searing hot pain blooming across your face blinds your vision.
Fuck, that hurt.
You blink once, then twice — your eyes finally adjusting to the damage. Your patient has seemingly settled down enough to be left alone, while Langdon has your assailant in a chokehold as Whitaker tries to pin his arms behind his back.
“What the hell is going on in h—?”
Robby’s words die in his throat once his eyes land on you. His face twists into concern for a brief, fleeting moment before a dangerous rage washes over his hardened features.
“Knock it off before I knock you out.”
Robby’s voice is ice cold and it suddenly pauses the entire room. The only noise filling your ears is everyone’s heavy breathing. Robby lets everyone cool down for a moment before barking out orders.
“Ahmad, get this man out of here. Whitaker, take over the patient who didn’t attack one of our nurses. Langdon, with me.”
Everyone complies instantly and you let out a relieved sigh as the tension in the room finally dissipates. Robby makes his way to you in two large strides with Langdon behind him. He drops his head to meet your eyes which have regained their comforting warmth.
“How you doing, Slugger?”
“I’m fine. It’s nothing, really.”
Robby raises a brow as you spit more blood on to the floor, narrowly missing his sneaker. Langdon gives you a similar incredulous look. Obviously, your attempts to brush off their concern have fallen on deaf ears. Great. Two hours from shift change and now you’re a patient.
This day can’t get any worse.
Robby takes another step forward and carefully places a hand on your chin and gently tilts your head up toward the ceiling. You grimace immediately at the bright, fluorescent lights above you.
“You’ve got two black eyes, a broken nose, and you’re bleeding all over the floor. This isn’t nothing.”
His voice is surprisingly gentle and his features soften into a look you can only describe as brotherly concern. You sigh defeatedly, squeezing your eyes shut as the adrenaline in your body begins to subside giving way to an invasive and persistent shooting pain in your head. Robby’s hands find your shoulders — you aren’t sure if the physical contact is meant to provide you comfort or a precaution in case you pass out. Either way, you appreciate the way his delicate hold grounds you back into this moment.
“I’m going to have Langdon take you to an empty room and do a full exam. Okay?”
You open your eyes again and nod at his question. Robby’s posture relaxes slightly, obviously relieved that you didn’t stubbornly push back against his orders. He rubs your shoulders reassuringly for a moment before speaking again.
“We’re going to have to document all of this. Dana is dealing with a situation in chairs, but I’ll have her come find you when she’s done.”
You nod again, pursing your lips together into a straight line. You don’t love the idea of making a big deal out of this, but you also know that violence against health care professionals is at an all time high. The last thing this department needs is you trying to push this under the rug. Finally, Robby releases his hold on your shoulders and allows Langdon to step in.
Robby runs both his hands through his hair as he watches Langdon lead you towards a room at the back of the ED. He moves towards the hub in the center of the large room, gripping the countertop as he allows himself a moment to gather his thoughts. This is a nightmare. He needs to call Gloria about the situation that just happened. There’s a stack of paperwork that needs to be filled out. Someone has to alert the authorities. And worst of all, he needs to call Abbot.
Hopefully, the asshole that assaulted you will be off the premises before the night shift attending rips through the emergency department. Not because he cares for the wellbeing of your assailant — more so that he doesn’t necessarily want to bail his best friend out of jail tonight. Robby sighs as he digs his phone out of his pocket. He finds Jack’s contact easily in his favorites and presses the speaker to his ear. To his surprise, the call immediately goes to voicemail. Robby knows that Jack has the day off; however, he’s always easy to reach — especially if you’re on shift. So, he dials the number again and presses the phone to his ear. But just like before, he is once again met with Jack’s voice apologizing for missing the call. That’s odd. His brow furrows, but before he can think about his friend’s odd behavior further he’s distracted by a concerned voice behind him.
“I heard about what happened. Dana’s almost done in chairs. How can I help?”
Robby turns to look at Perlah who is currently trying to catch her breath from her obvious sprint over to him.
“Do you know who their emergency contact is?”
If he can’t get ahold of Jack, he might as well let your other loved ones know what happened. Perlah side steps the attending and logs in to one of the computers on the other side of the counter. It only takes a couple seconds to pull up your digital file and a smile spreads across the nurse’s features as she spots the name listed.
“Abbot.”
Of course he is.
“I can’t get a hold of him.”
Perlah’s expression reflects his own confusion for a moment until she remembers a conversation she had with you in the break room earlier this morning.
“He’s gone fishing.”
Robby’s eyes shoot to his hairline as a laugh bubbles in his chest. He attempts to picture his friend in a boat by himself on the river with a fishing rod in his hand, but his mind cannot seem to compute that absolutely ludicrous concept.
“Abbot is fishing?”
“Apparently they convinced Abbot to actually take a day off, put his phone on do not disturb, and find a hobby that doesn’t involve getting shot at.”
Robby’s eyes drift to the room he watched Langdon escort you to as he attempts to wrap his head around the information he was just given. Jack Abbot is fishing on his rare day off because you asked him to find a hobby that doesn’t involve putting himself in harm’s way — and he listened. He wants to be impressed, but instead he’s just annoyed at the two of you — he’s fucking tired of watching the two of you dance around your feelings for one another. He looks down at his phone again, still confused at how his paranoid best friend could actually relax when he’s unreachable while you’re still on the clock.
Oh.
The realization hits him like a slap to the face and he looks up at Perlah who is still anxiously waiting for the attending to start barking out orders.
“Do you think you can manage to get their phone?”
Perlah frowns for a moment, confused by his question. And then her face lights up as she comes to the same realization as the attending standing in front of her. A smile pulls at her lips as she nods at Robby’s request.
“I think I can manage that.”
Jack Abbot enters the emergency department like a hurricane — his presence immediately disrupting the fragile peace they’ve managed to establish since your assault. Robby meets him at the door, stopping him before he can cause any unnecessary damage.
“Where is she?”
Robby frowns. Abbot’s voice is lacking its usual warmth — in its place is a fiery, impatient intensity.
“Let’s just cool down for a second. She’s alright — getting checked out by Langdon as we speak. Okay, Jack?”
Abbot’s brown eyes darken at Robby’s words. His posture stiffens and he’s suddenly aware that he’s no longer looking at his best friend. No, the man standing before him is a devoted soldier with one mission and God help anyone who gets in his way — he certainly isn’t dumb enough to stand between the two of you.
“Exam room 11.”
Abbot brushes past Robby without another word and marches toward the back of the emergency department. He finally feels like he can breathe again as he enters the doorway and watches Langdon press an icepack to your nose. You flinch away from him and Frank lets out an exasperated sigh.
“You are a horrible patient.”
“Well, you’re a horrible nurse. You have to be gentle.”
Abbot leans against the doorframe, his body relaxing now that he’s heard the sound of your voice. A smile pulls at the corners of his lips at your defiance. Eventually, Langdon pulls the icepack away from your face and his blood runs cold as he gets a look at your injuries. It takes every ounce of what’s left of his self control to stay put, instead of forcing Robby to let him know who did this to you.
“I’ve got it from here, Langdon. You can get back to work.”
Both of your heads snap towards the attending standing in the doorway, but Jack’s eyes never leave yours. He watches as your expression shifts from confusion to relief before taking a few steps into the small exam room.
“Hey, Abbot. I’m actually almost done here. The rest of the exam will only take a minute.”
Jack finally regards the other man in the room, but his demeanor shifts to annoyance as Langdon continues to occupy your personal space — as he watches another man’s fingers glide gently over your cheek while he’s standing right there. The sight makes him sick to his stomach as a pervasive, ugly feeling claws at his chest.
“Langdon. Out. Now.”
Langdon’s movements suddenly still and the room immediately feels too small for the three of you. Luckily, the resident does what Jack says and exits the room without sparing you a second glance. Jack’s cold demeanor melts as soon as he hears the door close behind Langdon.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
Jack’s voice fills the room and you finally feel safe. You let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding as you hear his boots take careful, calculated footsteps move towards you. This is a dream — it must be. Jack’s fishing today, unreachable until after your shift ends. But then he’s standing in front of you, invading your personal space in a way that’s so undeniably him. You finally look up, meeting his piercing gaze and you swear his jaw ticks slightly as he takes in the full extent of your injuries.
“It looks worse than it is.”
It’s a lie, but all you want is to smooth out the worried creases on his forehead. Jack tilts his head slightly at your words — considering them for a moment. His hands move slowly allowing you time to pull away, but you let him cradle your face with a tenderness that feels misplaced in this environment. His thumb gently brushes under your eye, where deep purple bruising has made its temporary home, and you flinch away from his touch before he even makes it to the worst of your injuries. Jack pulls his hands away from you and you involuntarily frown — a smirk plays at the corner of his lips as he watches the way you chase his touch.
“Do me a favor?”
You nod at his question — not fully trusting your voice at this moment. Jack bows his head slightly, meeting you eye to eye. His gaze is a raging wildfire of emotions. It’s a stark contrast to his calm demeanor and steady hands.
“Don’t lie to me.”
You roll your eyes at this as he stands to his full height again. His hands find their way back to you again, settling on your knees as he begins assessing your injuries further. You lean in closer to him without even thinking about it — it’s like Jack Abbot is the sun and you’re simply a planet trapped in his orbit.
“How are you here?”
Jack’s brows knit together at your question, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. His thumb absentmindedly rubs gentle, grounding circles against your scrubs as his gaze trails over every visible wound on your face.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re supposed to be fishing.”
His face scrunches at your words, but he doesn’t stop his careful assessment of your condition.
“I got a call.”
“Your phone was on do not disturb — you were unreachable.”
“To everyone other than you.”
Your breath catches in your chest at his words. He says it nonchalantly, but the significance of that statement lands harder than the elbow you took to the face. You’re the only person that Jack would let interrupt his day off. Hell, you’re the only reason he took a day off to begin with.
“But how… Perlah.”
Jack’s head tilts as he watches you put the pieces together. Not too long after Langdon got you into the exam room, Perlah found the two of you. She helped Langdon with the exam for a few minutes before cursing that her phone had died before she made an important call. You had offered her your own, thinking nothing of the interaction. But now you understand exactly what transpired when Perlah left with your cell.
“Yeah, scared me half to death when it wasn’t your voice on the other end.”
Your frown deepens at that. You can only imagine the fear that clawed its way back into Jack’s chest — can only imagine the unwanted memories it brought up. Your eyes glance down at his left hand, where a silver wedding band permanently resides. You remember the morning on the roof when Jack finally told you about his late wife after a particularly difficult shift. The two of you had lost a young woman whose vehicle had been struck by a drunk driver. You watched Jack go above and beyond for the woman in a way you’d never seen before. And you noticed the way his entire demeanor shifted once he had to call it after an hour of compressions. Jack slipped out of the ED the moment that the day shift showed up and you followed after once you completed handoff. You found Jack on the edge of the roof — not surprising on any other day, but a concerning visual after what you just witnessed that night. He knew you’d find him — you always do. And as you took your usual place, leaning your elbows against the railing right behind him, he finally opened up about the worst day he’s ever experienced. You listened as he told you about how his wife was in an accident. How she was dead on impact and EMS found her phone on the scene. How Jack was her only emergency contact. How he despises that the last time his wife called him he never even got to hear her voice. How he knows he’s your emergency contact. How his heart can’t go through that again.
“I’m sorry, Jack. The last thing I wanted was for you to worry about me on your day off.”
Jack’s brow furrows at your words.
“Sweetheart, all I do when I’m not with you is worry.”
You both let that sentence linger in the room for a few moments. Jack continues to trace shapes into your shrubs as you attempt to calm your nerves as you realize how intimate this conversation feels. Finally, Jack breaks the silence.
“Can you just come back to the night shift so I can stop freaking out every time my phone rings throughout the day?”
You almost smile at that.
“Donnie comes back in two weeks.”
You mean for that to be comforting; however, this only makes Jack’s body stiffen in response. His head drops as he lets out a long sigh.
“Two weeks is too long.”
“You’re not my boss, Jack.”
Jack pulls his hands away and you watch as he runs them through his short, grey curls. He looks exhausted — and you suddenly feel guilty that his relaxing day off has turned into this.
“You’re right, but sweetheart, I can’t do this without you anymore.”
A part of you wants to throttle him because of that nickname and how easily it falls off his lips — how it’ll only feel right when it’s his voice saying it to you.
“Do what?”
Jack looks at you and his face twists into confusion as he realizes your question is genuine.
“Get through the fucking night.”
A beat passes. You desperately want to just say yes. It’s what you want isn’t it? Returning to the night shift — returning to him. But that’s also the problem. What is this? You thought your switch to day shift would give you some sort of explanation, but your time away has only made you more confused. Would it actually just be easier if the two of you only saw each other during handoff? No domestic moments between cups of coffee, no more mornings spent side-by-side on the rooftop, no more stolen, fleeting touches as he passes you on your way to the hub. You know what you are to Robby — to everyone on day shift. It’s simple. But with Jack — it’s never been simple and maybe that’s the problem.
“What if I want to stay on the day shift?”
Jack recoils like you just threw a punch at him. Guilt claws up your throat as you watch his face fall. It’s a lie — you know that it is. You love everything about the night shift, but you also don’t know how much longer you can keep playing this game with Jack before you simply fall apart.
“Why would you want that?”
“Because at least I know where I stand with everyone here.”
Jack’s brow furrows — you hate that it’s cute. That everything about him draws you in.
“You don’t know where you stand with me?”
You shake your head and he scoffs — the sound is surprisingly cold. He looks at you, brow pinched into a scowl. And then he realizes that you’re serious. Your expression is nothing but unashamed honesty and his head cocks to the side at that. Do you really think he’s been stringing you along this entire time? That this has all been meaningless flirtation? That you mean nothing to him?
He takes a step forward, slotting himself between your knees. Your breath catches as he reaches up and gently cradles your face. His touch is different than before — all professionalism has been cast aside and is now replaced with his overwhelming adoration. Without thinking your fingers grab the hem of his black t-shirt. He smiles as he feels you nervously pick at a loose stitch before he ducks his head and his lips finally meet your own. Your grip on his t-shirt tightens as he moves his hands through your hair. Now this is a dream. The kiss is soft and restrained — you know he’s holding back due to your injuries. The last thing he wants to do is hurt you. Jack pulls away too soon for your liking, but he doesn’t move away. Instead, he places his forehead against yours.
“Sweetheart, I’ve been yours since the minute you walked through the fucking door.”
You bite your lip as you attempt to hold back the giddy grin that begs to spread itself across your face.
“You never said anything.”
Jack pulls away at that, not far — just enough to get a good look at you. The look on his face is incredulous — like it’s absurd you don’t know that his entire life revolves around you at this point.
“I thought I made myself abundantly clear.”
You laugh at that and Jack steals a kiss from your lips just because he can.
“I take it Robby gave you the rest of the day off?”
You nod, smiling as you feel Jack thread his fingers through yours.
“He told me to go home after Langdon finished my exam — who you should apologize to.”
Jack’s jaw clenches slightly as his brow furrows.
“Him being here was unnecessary.”
You watch him for a moment, trying to understand what happened between the two men that never seemed to have any sort of animosity prior to today. And then your hand tightens around Jack’s as you realize what happened.
“You were jealous.”
Jack rolls his eyes.
“I have no reason to be jealous.”
You raise a brow at his statement. He’s not wrong — he has no reason to be jealous of Frank Langdon, but you know the resident somehow got under his skin. He may be able to maintain his facade of nonchalance to the rest of his staff, but you see right through him.
“What makes you so confident?”
“Because Langdon isn’t the one taking you home right now, is he?”
Pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x nurse!reader
Warnings: sensory overload, autism signs, meltdown, fever, illness, emotional exhaustion, high stress, fluff.
Summary: when you're pushed to your breaking point by a brutal shift and fever, Jack is there to catch you and guide you into the quiet dark.
Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.
🎀 based on this request 🎀 and this one 🎀
You had woken up with a fever that left your joints aching and your skin overly sensitive even to the friction of your own clothes.
But the hospital was understaffed, and calling out felt like a betrayal. So, you swallowed two ibuprofen and walked into the chaos.
Masking autism was exhausting when you were entirely healthy. And running on a fever, it was an ordeal.
The sound of ringing phones, groaning patients, and shouting doctors felt like a physical assault. Worse, the social exhaustion of constantly forcing eye contact, modulating your tone, and scripting polite interactions had drained your battery down to zero hours ago.
You had managed to hold it together for ten hours. But then, a trauma came in. It was messy and required a lot of communication. As you stood at the sink washing the blood from your hands, the bulb flickering above the mirror began to... sound loudly.
It was the final drop in a cup that was already overflowing. Your breath hitched as the sensory overload crashed over you.
You practically sprinted down the back hallway, slipping into an empty and dark exam room.
You sank on the stretcher.
The meltdown hit you violently.
Tears blurred your vision, your breathing turned into gasps, and you pressed your hands firmly into your ears.
You were rocking slightly, a self soothing stim you usually never allowed yourself to do outside the safety of your own apartment.
Suddenly, your throat felt completely locked. And you couldn't form a thought, couldn't explain the agony of your own body. And the panic directed itself outward. The fabric of your scrubs, usually manageable, now felt like sandpaper dragging across your feverish skin. Every fiber felt like a million tiny needles.
Desperate to get away from the sensation, you began fiercely scratching at your arms, your fingernails digging into the fabric and your bare skin, trying to scrape the torturous texture away.
The door clicked open. The brief influx of light and noise made you flinch.
"Hey. I thought I saw you slip in here."
It was Jack.
The two of you were close, closer than just a nurse-attending, but you had never let him see this.
Jack moved with urgency. He didn't grab you, but he slid closer, carefully extending his hands.
"Sweetheart, look at me," he murmured, his voice cutting through the ringing in your ears. "Hands off. Let's stop the scratching, okay?"
You couldn't answer. You just let out a choked sound, your fingers still frantically tearing at the scratchy sleeve of your scrub top.
It hurt, it was too hot, the texture was suffocating.
Understanding flashed in Jack's eyes. He, somehow, knew your signs. Gently, he reached out and captured your wrists, intercepting your hands before you could break the skin.
"What is going on? Are you okay?" he asked, worried.
The moment his fingers brushed your skin, he froze. He immediately used one hand to keep your wrists safely gathered, while the back of his other hand carefully pressed against your forehead.
You couldn't speak, tears spilled over your eyelashes, and you gave a frantic nod. You tried to pull your hands back to resume scratching, the panic making your chest heave.
"You're burning up," he noted softly, his brow furrowing with instant concern. "You have a fever."
"I- I'm fine," you choked out, your voice trembling terribly. "Just, just give me a minute, Jack. Please." You tried to sound fine but your voice betrayed you, sounding raspy.
"You have a fever. We need to check on you, get you some fluids—"
He was trying to be the doctor. He was trying to reason with you, to fix the physical symptoms, but the threat of being taken back out into the medical floor crossed the final wire in your brain.
The dam broke. The non verbal wall shattered under the weight of sheer desperation, and the truth came rushing out in frantic sobs as you burst.
"NO, okay, I’m sick, but please don't make go out there." you wept, the words spilling out of you in a desperate torrent. "I can’t think anymore. I can’t look at anyone. I need a calm playlist and I need everyone to stop, I want to go home, hug Duckie, and just stare at the wall. I'm sorry, Jack, I can't—"
"Hey, it's okay," Jack interrupted gently, cutting off the spiraling apology before it could swallow you whole. "Stop. You don't ever have to apologize."
He stayed a respectful distance, giving you space, but his eyes were filled with a protective warmth. "I know. You don't have to explain or be sorry."
A small smile touched his lips. "I pay attention to you. I see how you tap your fingers in a specific pattern when the alarms go off for too long. I know how much energy it takes for you to mask when the ER gets like this, let alone when you're running a fever. You don't have to hide it from me, okay? You can just be done."
He held his hands open, offering but not taking. "Can I touch you? Like I do when your shoulders are tense?"
You could only manage a small nod.
Jack moved in, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you tightly against his chest. He applied steady pressure, tucking your head under his chin.
"I'm going to tell Lena you're going home sick," he murmured after a long while, once your breathing had finally started to match the pace of his own. "And then, I'm going to take you to my car, drive you home, and make sure you get to your Duckie. Okay?"
You nodded against his chest, letting a long sigh out.
-
The cool leather of the passenger seat was a mercy against your feverish skin. Jack had practically carried you out the back exit of the hospital and now you were safely cocooned inside his car.
Jack opened the driver’s side door, the brief chime of the door alarm making you wince. He noticed immediately, slipping inside and shutting the door quickly to cut off the sound.
He didn't start the engine right away. He reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of water and two white pills.
"Fever reducers," he murmured, as he carefully placed the pills in your palm and unscrewed the cap of the water bottle for you.
You swallowed the medicine. Your throat felt locked. Your social battery was empty. Jack didn't press you to say thank you. He just took the bottle back and set it in the cup holder. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone along with his wireless earbuds.
"Here," he said softly, putting the case in your lap and holding out his phone. "It’s unlocked. Put on whatever you need."
You looked down at the screen, then up at him. Your eyes were still heavy and wet from the meltdown, your chest aching with exhaustion. You couldn't form the words to tell him how much this meant, so you just looked at him, letting your eyes communicate what your voice couldn't.
Jack’s expression softened. "I know. It's okay."
You carefully put the earbuds in, the active noise cancellation immediately kicking in. You tapped his phone, finding a familiar ambient track you always used to decompress.
It was perfect. It was the calm you needed.
Jack buckled his seatbelt and finally started the car, the headlights cutting through the dark parking lot. Before he shifted into drive, he turned his head to look at you. He tapped your leg so you would look at him.
"We're going straight to your place," he said, speaking a little clearer so you could read his lips. "I'm going to get you inside, and then I'm going to stay until the fever breaks. Sound like a plan?"
You looked right into his eyes and gave him a slow nod.
Jack smiled.
"Alright. Let's get you home."
The steady sound of the track in your ears blended seamlessly with the quiet rumble of the car's engine. The world outside the window was a blur of passing streetlights, melting into soft streaks of gold and white against the dark. Your eyes fluttered shut, your body finally succumbing to the heavy exhaustion of the fever. You floated in that peaceful limbo between awake and asleep.
Through the fog of your half-sleep, you felt the car slow down, idling at a quiet red light.
A moment later, Jack’s hand carefully brushed your face before the back of his fingers came to rest flat against your forehead.
He held it there for a few seconds. checking the heat radiating from your skin.
"Still a little hot," Jack murmured to himself. "But you're sweating it out. That's good."
He carefully pulled his hand back so he could shift the car into gear as the light changed.
As the car moved forward again, his hand returned across the center console, resting casually but securely on your thigh, a grounding weight to let you know he was still right there.
Your eyelids felt too heavy to open. Slowly, dragging your hand up from your lap, you slid your palm over the back of his hand. You slotted your fingers between his, squeezing weakly.
Jack was looking straight ahead at the road, but the moment your fingers intertwined with his, a small smile broke across his face.
He didn't say a word, respecting your quiet phase, but his thumb began to stroke the back of your hand. He squeezed back, a firm and reassuring promise.
You relaxed as you held onto him. The ER was miles behind you, the calm sound was filling your head, and Jack was driving you home.
synopsis 𓂃 ໒꒱ getting dragged out of bed before sunrise because jack wants you to “keep him company” was never something you agreed to, but somehow it still happens. you end up on the gym floor in his hoodie, half awake and pretending to read while he trains, only to realise he’d much rather bench press you instead of the barbell. (2.7k+)
pairing 𓂃 ໒꒱ jack abbot x fem!reader
content 𓂃 ໒꒱ established relationship, fluff, jack decides you're the workout instead, playful teasing, no reader weight or body type mentioned, not proof read (sorryy).
You don’t remember agreeing to this, though in fairness, Jack has always been annoyingly good at making things sound optional when they very clearly aren’t. Somewhere between him nudging you awake before sunrise and quietly telling you to “come keep me company,” you’d been coaxed out of bed with the promise that you didn’t have to do anything except sit there.
Now you’re cross legged on the rubber flooring with a book balanced across your lap, drowning inside one of his old hoodies while he goes through the last of his workout a few feet away, and you’re beginning to think “keep me company” was just a nicer way of saying watch me work out because I like knowing you’re here.
Not that you’d ever admit he was right.
The page in front of you hasn’t changed in at least five minutes. Every time you start reading, the dull clink of metal meeting metal pulls your attention away again, and before you know it you’re watching Jack instead, following the slow rhythm of another controlled lift before your eyes drift back to the book with all the guilt like a kid who’s just been caught staring out the classroom window.
“You gonna finish that chapter,” Jack asks, easing the bar back onto the rack before reaching for the towel slung over the bench beside him, “or do you plan on giving page twenty three your full attention for the rest of the morning?”
You glance down automatically, almost as though the book might have turned itself while you weren’t looking (it hasn’t)
“I’m reading,” you insist anyway, trying for something convincing and landing somewhere closer to stubborn.
“So I’ve noticed.”
“I am.”
He drags the towel across the back of his neck, the corner of his mouth lifting ever so slightly as he wanders over, looking far too pleased with himself for a man who’s done nothing but catch you in an embarrassingly obvious lie. “Honey,” he says, stopping in front of you, “I’ve watched you look at me more than you’ve looked at that book.”
You felt suddenly hot being in the room with him, “I was observing.”
“Observing.”
“Mhm.” You murmur, pursing your lips together.
“My technique?”
You shrug, making a show of considering it. “Among other things.” That earns you a proper smile, one that always appears when you’ve managed to catch him off guard.
“So,” he says after a moment, folding the towel over one shoulder, “what’s the verdict?”
You let your eyes travel over him with exaggerated seriousness, pretending to assess every possible flaw before giving a thoughtful little hum. “I think your form’s terrible.”
He looks down at himself as though he might actually find something wrong before his eyes settle back on you again, “my form?”
“You keep getting distracted.”
“I do?”
“You’ve looked over here at least six times.”
“I was checking on you.”
“You were absolutely not.”
“I was.”
“You were showing off.”
A laugh escapes him then, low enough that it almost disappears into the room. “I don’t have to show off.”
“Oh?”
“No.” His gaze lingers on you for just a second longer than necessary. “I’ve already got the girl.”
Your stomach betrays you immediately, “that,” you mutter, closing the book before he can see the smile threatening to appear, “was disgustingly smooth.”
Jack’s smile lingers for another second, subtle enough that most people would’ve missed it, but you're not most people, before he reaches for the towel again and drapes it over his shoulder.
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
“Oh, that’s even worse.”
He lets out a quiet laugh, rubbing the towel over the back of his neck before dropping it onto the bench beside him. “How’s that worse?”
“Because if you actually tried, I’d know you were putting it on.” You gesture vaguely in his direction. “When it just happens, it’s unfair.”
“Unfair,” he repeats, like he’s turning the word over in his head.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“You absolutely do.”
His grin grows just enough to tell you he’s enjoying this far more than he should, though he has the decency not to point it out. Instead, he nods toward the bench behind him, his expression settling back into that calm, unreadable look you’ve never quite figured out.
“C’mere for a second.”
“Come here for a second,” you mimic under your breath, lowering your voice in an admittedly terrible impression of him as a reluctant smile tugs at your lips. You’d learned very early on that those five words usually ended with you agreeing to something ridiculous, and the worst part was that you’d follow him anyway. “You know every questionable idea you’ve ever had has started exactly like that, right?”
“I don't think that's true.”
“Oh, really?” You fold your arms across your chest, giving him a look. “You got me to go camping with those exact words.”
A huff of laughter slips from him as he remembers it. “You liked camping.”
“I liked the cabin after we left the campsite,” you correct, unable to stop yourself from smiling. “There's a very important difference.”
“You still came.”
“I was manipulated.”
“You made a choice,” he says, far too calmly for someone revising history right in front of you.
“I made a mistake.”
His grin grows just enough to give him away. “You've made that mistake more than once.”
You try to hold your glare, but he has an annoying habit of waiting you out without saying much. It works far more often than you'd like to admit, and judging by the look on his face, he knows it.
“What is it?” you ask, setting the book beside you, “and don’t say ‘nothing,’ because you’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that gets me into trouble.”
Jack looks genuinely unconvinced. “I don’t get you into trouble.”
You don't even answer straight away. Instead, you just look at him, waiting for him to realise how ridiculous that statement is. He holds your stare without so much as a hint of guilt before the corner of his mouth finally gives him away.
“Often,” he concedes.
“There it is,” you mumble, unable to stop yourself from smiling. “I was wondering how long it'd take you.”
Rather than arguing his case any further, he simply holds out his hand. He never tells you to hurry or asks twice, and somehow that's exactly why it works. You eye his outstretched hand with as much suspicion as you can manage before looking back up at him. “I really should start saying no to you.”
“You do,” he reminds you. “You just never stick to it.”
You let out an exaggerated sigh, already reaching for his hand despite yourself. “I really need to start working on that.”
“That'd be new.”
“It would,” you admit, letting him pull you to your feet before pointing a finger at him. “Don't get used to it.”
“I wasn't planning on it.”
“I hate proving you right,” you grumble as he starts leading you toward the bench, though the complaint loses most of its bite the second his thumb brushes absentmindedly across the back of your hand.
Jack glances over at you with a smile. “No, you don't. If you really hated it, you'd still be sitting on the floor.”
You open your mouth with every intention of arguing, only to realise you're already standing exactly where he'd wanted you. “…Don't,” you say glaring at him.
“I didn't say anything,” he says, looking entirely too innocent.
“You were about to.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“That's close enough,” you decide before he can dig himself into an even deeper hole, earning a laugh from him as he finally lets go of your hand and nods toward the bench.
“Lie down for me.”
Your eyes flick from the bench to him again, suspicion settling in almost immediately. “I'm sorry... are we skipping the explanation entirely?”
“I'll explain in a second,” he promises.
You groan, already shaking your head. “You know, that sentence has never once made me feel better.”
“It'll make sense.”
“It better.”
He doesn't try to convince you after that, he just waits.
You've always admired that about Jack. He never pushes you into a decision or pesters you until you cave. He'll throw an idea your way, then stand back and let you come around on your own, even if the look on his face says he's already got a pretty good idea of how it's going to end.
You shake your head with a laugh as you climb onto the bench. “If this turns out to be one of your terrible ideas, you'll be hearing about it for the rest of your life.”
“I figured as much.”
You settle back folding your hands over your stomach as though you were preparing for surgery instead of whatever ridiculous plan he'd cooked up. Jack hangs back for a moment, looking you over to make sure you're comfortable before taking another step closer.
“So?” you ask, peeking up at him. “Are you finally gonna tell me what this master plan is, or are you just enjoying watching me panic?”
His mouth twitches ever so slightly. “I'm enjoying watching you overthink it.” He moves closer, resting a hand lightly against your side as he straightens the edge of your hoodie without really thinking about it. “I'm gonna lift you.”
You blink at him, waiting for him to laugh, thinking that maybe this was one of his usual awful jokes he tells you often. “You're gonna what?”
“I'm gonna lift you,” he repeats, like he's suggesting the two of you stop for coffee on the way home.
You stare at him for another second before a laugh escapes you, “no, you're not.”
“Yeah,” he replies, looking almost amused by your disbelief. “I am.”
“No.”
“Honey.”
“Jack.”
“You’ll be fine,” he says, like that's somehow the part you've got wrong.
You shake your head, trying not to laugh. “I'm not questioning whether I'll be fine. I'm questioning why this has suddenly become part of your workout.”
“It didn't. It became part of my morning.”
You narrow your eyes at him, “those are two different answers.”
“They're also both true.” The worst part is that he seems perfectly satisfied leaving it there.
“You are so lucky you're charming.”
“I've been told.”
“By who?”
“You.”
That earns him an immediate frown. “I don't remember saying that.”
“You implied it.”
“I absolutely did not.”
A laugh escapes him as he reaches over to fix the sleeve of your hoodie. “Just stay still for me.”
“You say that like I'm a flight risk.”
“You fidget.”
“I do not fidget.” You say mouth agape at the accusation he chucks at you. “You've moved three times since you laid down,” he reminds you, entirely too pleased with himself. “I'd say that counts.”
You scoff, shaking your head slightly like the whole conversation is already getting away from you. “That’s different.”
“How?” he asks, like he’s genuinely willing to wait you out on this.
“I don’t know, it just is,” you say after a second, dragging it out a little because you refuse to give him anything better than that.
“Convenient,” he replies immediately, and you can practically hear the grin in his voice before you even look at him.
“Oh, don’t start,” you warn, though it comes out more tired than threatening, because he’s already in that mood where everything you say is going to make it worse for you. His grin only grows at that, like you’ve confirmed exactly what he wanted. “I can’t stand you.”
“I know,” you say, without missing a beat, though there’s no real bite to it. Then, because he clearly enjoys pushing it too far, he adds, “That wasn’t an invitation to be sweet, by the way.”
“I know that too,” you shoot back immediately, and the second it leaves your mouth you regret it when you catch his expression, which was far too pleased, like he’s just won something he didn’t even have to try for.
That look alone makes you roll your eyes again. “You’re insufferable.”
“Ready?” he asks after a moment, like none of the previous exchange mattered at all, already shifting the focus back to what he actually came here to do.
You exhale, still half annoyed, half amused despite yourself. “As I’ll ever be.”
He slips an arm beneath your shoulders and another beneath your legs, pausing long enough to make sure you're settled before he moves. Even now, with whatever ridiculous idea he's got planned, he's paying more attention to whether you're comfortable than anything else. “Don’t laugh if I scream,” you warn him, narrowing your eyes.
“I wasn’t planning on laughing,” he says, like that alone should settle it.
“You definitely were,” you answer immediately.
“I was planning on smiling.”
“That’s somehow worse,” you mutter, already regretting whatever this is about to turn into.
“It usually is,” he says, like he’s entirely unbothered by your judgement. That’s all the warning you get before everything shifts at once.
One moment you’re lying back on the bench looking up at him, and the next you’re moving with him in one smooth motion that knocks the air out of you more from surprise than anything else. A laugh slips out before you can stop it, half disbelief and half shock, because your brain doesn’t quite catch up fast enough to process how easy it feels. “Oh my God,” you blurt, staring up at him like he’s done something completely unreasonable.
Jack looks down at you, that familiar curve of his mouth showing up the second he hears you laugh. “You alright?”
“Am I alright?” you repeat, still staring at him like he’s lost his mind. “Jack, this is insane.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m saying it again because I mean it.”
He doesn’t respond, just lowers you back down and brings you up again like it’s nothing more than a simple motion, showing no signs of struggle or hesitation , just the steady rhythm that makes it look far too easy to question.
“You keep looking at me,” you point out, laughing when you catch him doing it again.
“I’m making sure you’re comfortable.”
“You’ve checked like five times.”
“I’m checking again.”
“You are the most cautious reckless person I’ve ever met.”
That gets a proper laugh out of him, his head shaking slightly. “I don’t think those words belong together.”
“They do when they’re describing you.”
“They really don’t.”
“They absolutely do.” He lowers you again, and by the time he brings you back up, you’re already laughing before you’ve even reached the top, mostly because of the look on his face, far too satisfied with himself for someone acting like this is normal.
“You planned this,” you accuse immediately.
“I had the idea,” he says, like that somehow clears him of everything.
“Don’t push it,” you warn, though it barely holds any weight, especially not with the way he looks at you when he says, “I wasn’t,” which is obviously a lie you both ignore.
You shake your head, a laugh slipping out as you glance at him properly, “I know exactly what you’re doing,” and he hums like he’s entertained, asking, “Oh yeah?” even though he already knows the answer.
“You want me to admit you were right,” you say, because there’s no point pretending otherwise when he’s standing there like that.
“You didn’t have to,” you shoot back immediately, which is what finally gets him, his expression shifting just enough for a smile to settle in as he holds out his hand like he’s been waiting for this exact ending the whole time, “I still won.”
You take it with a dramatic sigh, letting him pull you up before giving his shoulder a light shove that he barely reacts to, “you are never going to let me forget this, are you?”
“Probably not.”
“I knew it.”
“But,” he adds, slipping an arm around your shoulders as you head toward the door like it’s the most natural thing in the world, “I’ll let you tell everybody it was your idea.”
You look up at him immediately, narrowing your eyes as a laugh slips out of you. “Oh, you are unbelievable.”
