Summary: After months of shameless flirting and undeniable chemistry in the ED, Jack finally stops fighting the pull between you — and gives in to the feelings he’s spent so long trying to bury, admitting just how badly he wants you.
Tags: Fluffy idiots in love, Mutual pining between colleagues, Workplace romance, Endless banter, Flirting, Kissing.
Word count: 5.6k.
The night shift started the way it always did, with controlled chaos. Monitors chimed in uneven rhythms, stretchers rolled through the ambulance bay doors, and somewhere down the hall someone was already asking where Dr. Abbot was.
You found him exactly where you expected. He was standing in front of the patient board, coffee cup in one hand, tablet in the other, with his reading glasses perched low on his nose.
“You know,” you said, walking up beside him, “those make you look old.”
Without looking away from the board, he replied, “And you’re late.”
You checked the clock. “I’m three minutes early.”
“You were supposed to relieve McKay seven minutes ago.”
“Are you counting?”
That got his attention. His eyes flicked toward you, the corner of his mouth twitching. “…Yeah.”
You grinned. “That’s kind of cute.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“No?”
“No.” He took a sip of coffee, finally looking you over. “Did you eat yet?”
You blinked. “Good evening to you too.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“I had a coffee.”
“Caffeine isn’t a meal.”
“It’s close enough.”
Jack sighed through his nose. “You’ve got about twenty minutes before it’ll start getting busy in here. Go eat something.”
“Are you giving me orders now?”
“I’m your attending.”
“Only in here,” you said, gesturing around the department.
He looked at you for a beat, then shook his head with a quiet laugh. “Go.”
“Bossy.”
“And yet, you’re still standing here.”
You held his gaze for another second before turning away. “You like me.”
“I tolerate you.”
“Liar.”
“I’ll page you if I change my mind.”
⸻
An hour later, the ambulance bay exploded, just like Jack had predicted.
“Incoming trauma! Male, twenty-three, high-speed MVC. Hypotensive en route.”
The doors burst open, and everything else disappeared.
“Trauma Two,” Jack barked. “Move.”
You were already moving. The room filled in seconds with doctors, nurses, and trauma surgery on standby.
Jack snapped on a pair of gloves. “You with me?”
“Always.”
He didn’t even look to see if you were ready. He knew you were. “Airway?”
“Secure.”
“Pressure?”
“Eighty systolic.”
“FAST-exam?”
“Negative.”
“Hang the second unit.”
“Already running.”
Every order was followed before he finished saying it. Every instrument he reached for was already in your hand. You worked perfectly in tandem with barely any verbal communication. At some point your shoulder slammed into his as you switched sides of the bed. Neither of you apologized. There wasn’t time.
Then, the patient’s pressure tanked.
“He’s crashing.”
“I know.”
“No pulse.”
“Start compressions.”
The room blurred into muscle memory. Minutes stretched. Then, time stopped. A heavy silence settled over the trauma bay in the worst way. Jack looked at the clock. Nobody spoke while he called it. Not until the family liaison quietly asked for the time.
⸻
The room had slowly emptied. You stood at the sink, scrubbing blood from your hands harder than necessary. The water was almost too hot.
“You’ll take your skin off.” Jack’s voice was quieter now.
You didn’t look up. “I missed something.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
“I should’ve caught the bleed sooner.”
Jack stepped beside you, washing his own hands. “You did catch it. It was a hard one. ”
“It wasn’t enough to save him.”
“No.” His honesty made you finally look at him. “It wasn’t.” He dried his hands. “But that doesn’t mean you missed it.”
You hated when he did that—refused to sugarcoat anything. Somehow, it always made you feel better anyway.
“You okay?” he asked.
You shrugged. “I will be.”
He studied you for a second too long, then reached over without thinking. His thumb brushed across your cheek.
“What—”
“You had blood on you.” His hand dropped immediately.
“Oh.” You touched the spot yourself.
Neither of you moved. For one suspended second, the noise of the department disappeared.
Then, someone called Jack’s name from the hallway.
He cleared his throat. “I need you to finish the chart.”
You nodded. “Yeah.”
“And eat something.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“You almost had a nice moment.”
He huffed a laugh. “Don’t push it.”
You watched him leave, trying very hard not to think about the warmth of his thumb against your skin. Over at The Hub across the corridor, Dana, who was working a double, watched the entire exchange.
She caught your eye and raised one eyebrow. You immediately looked away.
“Oh, shut up,” you muttered.
“I didn’t say anything!” she exclaimed, her accent thick as usual.
“You didn’t have to.”
She smirked. “You two are getting worse.”
“We’re coworkers.”
“Mhm.”
“He’s my attending.”
“Mhm.”
“Are you done?”
She picked up a chart. “When one of you finally kisses the other, I expect flowers for putting up with this for ages.”
You scoffed. “As if.”
On the other side of The Hub, Jack was observing the patient board again. He looked away for the briefest moment, and his eyes met yours. He smiled. Small. Barely there. It was enough to make your stomach tighten. You smiled back before you could stop yourself.
Dana groaned loud enough for both of you to hear. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
Neither of you acknowledged her. Neither of you stopped looking.
You walked over to him with the intent of joining him on his next case. You were both staring at the board when another patient popped up.
“Central Eight,” he said without looking at you.
You glanced over his shoulder. “Abdominal pain?”
“Seventy-two-year-old. Spiked a fever in triage.”
“You always give me the fun ones.”
“You always steal the fun ones.”
“I learned from the best.”
He snorted. “Doubtful.”
You bumped his shoulder as you passed. “That’s almost a compliment.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
⸻
Mrs. Alvarez smiled weakly when the two of you walked into the room.
“Good evening,” you said, pulling the curtain closed. “I’m Dr. Y/L/N, and this is—”
Jack shot you a look.
You smiled innocently. “…my attending.”
Mrs. Alvarez laughed. “So you’re the important one?”
Jack sighed. “Unfortunately.”
You finished taking the history while Jack listened, occasionally jumping in with a question you’d missed. By now, the rhythm between you was automatic. He knew when to let you lead, and you knew exactly when he wanted more information without him having to ask.
By the time you stepped back into the hallway, he’d started putting orders in.
“CT, labs, lactate,” he said.
“Already did that.”
He stopped typing. “You did?”
“I was standing next to you. I’m good at multitasking.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“You look surprised.”
“I am impressed.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“I'm pretty sure that was an actual compliment.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You make a terrible liar,” you said smugly, nudging him lightly in the side with your elbow.
“I make an excellent attending.”
“You can be both.”
Before he could answer, Dana waved the two of you over. “Abbot, EMS just called. Two minutes out.”
“What’ve we got?”
“Possible overdose. Found unresponsive. Given Narcan on scene with no effect.”
Jack nodded once before looking at you. “You with me?”
You looked back at him like he’d asked something ridiculous. “Since when am I not?”
For the briefest moment, something softened in his expression. Then it was gone. “Let’s go.”
⸻
The patient rolled in, still unconscious and with blue lips. The room shifted instantly into motion.
“One, two, three.”
Transfer.
“Bagging?”
“Respiratory’s got it.”
“IV access?”
“Working on a second line.”
Jack moved around the bed with practiced calm, calling out orders as the team responded around him. You were half a step behind, anticipating what he needed before he said it.
“I have the naloxone,” you said, already connecting the syringe to the patient’s IV.
“Push it.”
A beat. Nothing. Another. Then the patient jerked, coughing violently. The room collectively exhaled.
“Welcome back,” you muttered under your breath.
Jack heard you anyway. “Professional.”
“I am.”
“You absolutely are not.” The corner of his mouth lifted.
“You smiled.”
“I did not.”
“I saw it.”
“You imagined it.”
“You smile at my jokes all the time.”
“I tolerate them.”
“That’s not what your face says.”
He looked at you for a long second. “My face doesn’t say anything.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
The monitor chimed as the patient’s oxygen saturation climbed. Jack turned back toward the bed, but you caught the ghost of a smile before it disappeared. You counted that as a win.
⸻
The next couple of hours refused to slow down. A toddler with a febrile seizure. A college kid who’d managed to dislocate his shoulder trying to impress his friends. A chest pain that turned out to be anxiety. The board filled. Emptied. Filled again.
By two in the morning, the department had settled into that strange rhythm only the night shift understood—everyone exhausted, nobody slowing down.
You were finishing a note when Jack’s voice carried across the station. “I need another set of eyes.”
You rolled your chair over. “What’ve you got?”
He turned the monitor toward you. “EKG.”
You studied it. “…No STEMI.”
“No. But something’s off.”
You leaned closer. “So that’s why you called me.”
“I called you because you’re good.” His words came so matter-of-factly that they almost slipped past you. Almost.
You looked up at him. “Wow, Abbot, again with the compliments?”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“There he is.”
“Who?”
“The grumpy old man.”
“I’m fifty.”
“I didn’t say ancient.”
“You implied it.”
“I absolutely did.”
He shook his head, reaching for his coffee. Empty. He frowned into the cup like it had personally offended him.
“You’ve got that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re about to steal mine.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was considering it.”
You slid your coffee across the desk before you could think better of it. He looked from the cup to you.
“I’ve had half,” you stated.
“I know.”
“You don’t mind?”
“I’ll survive.”
Jack hesitated. Actually hesitated. Then he picked it up and took a sip.
“You know,” he said, setting it back down, “that’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever done.”
You scoffed. “I covered your shift last month.”
“That benefited you too.”
“It did not.”
“You got overtime.”
“I got yelled at.”
“You did.”
“And you didn’t even thank me.”
“I bought you breakfast.”
“You bought everyone breakfast.”
“I bought you an extra hash brown.”
“…You remembered that?”
“I remember everything.”
The sentence hung there a second longer than either of you intended. Jack looked back at the computer.
“So…”
“So.”
Neither of you finished the thought.
“Abbot!” Dana poked her head over the monitors. “EMS. Three minutes.”
Jack stood immediately. “What’ve we got this time?”
“Industrial accident. Crush injury.”
His expression changed in an instant. Focused. Calm. Professional. “Trauma Two.”
⸻
The patient came in awake. That almost made it worse. He was young, early thirties, gripping your wrist hard enough to hurt while you cut away the shredded sleeve of his work jacket.
“I can’t feel my legs.”
“I know,” you said evenly. “Stay with me.”
Jack arrived at the bedside a short while later. “Walk me through it.”
You rattled off the vitals while the nurses worked. He listened without interrupting.
“Compartment syndrome?” you asked quietly.
“Maybe. Call ortho.”
You nodded once. “They’re already on their way.”
Everything moved fast after that. X-rays, pain control, consults, phone calls. The room gradually emptied as the patient was stabilized for transfer upstairs. You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.
Jack was stripping off his gloves. “You called ortho before I asked.”
“You were going to.”
“I was.” He looked at you for a second. “You’ve started anticipating me.”
“I’ve worked with you long enough.”
“It’s getting annoying.”
“You mean helpful.”
“I mean annoying.”
You laughed. “I’ll try to be less competent.”
“Don’t.” The answer came too quickly. Too honestly.
Jack rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I mean…”
“I know what you meant.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I think I do.”
Before either of you could say another word, Dana leaned through the doorway. “There you are. I’ve been lookin’ for ya.”
You both looked at her simultaneously. “What happened?” Jack asked.
She folded her arms. “The vending machine ate my five dollars.”
You blinked. “…That’s why you interrupted us?”
“I need an attending,” she said, winking at you.
Jack stared at her. “For the vending machine?”
“It’s a crime scene.”
You laughed hard enough to bend over.
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. “I went to medical school for this.”
Dana pointed at him. “See? She laughs at your jokes.”
“I didn’t make a joke.”
“You exist. Close enough.” As she walked away, she tossed one last look over her shoulder. “And if you two are done making heart eyes at each other, Central Nine’s waiting.”
You and Jack answered at exactly the same time. “We’re not.”
Dana just laughed and kept walking.
Jack sighed. “This department is unbearable.”
“You could transfer.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re the problem.”
You stepped backward toward Central Nine, walking in reverse. “And yet you keep asking for me.”
His eyes followed you all the way down the hall.
“Yeah,” he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else. “I do.”
You didn’t hear him. He was almost glad you hadn’t.
⸻
By four in the morning, the waiting room had thinned. Not emptied—that never happened. But for the first time all night, there wasn’t an ambulance backing into the bay or a trauma paging overhead. The lull lasted exactly eleven minutes.
Jack was halfway through signing off on an admission when you dropped into the chair beside him.
“Tell me you’ve got something interesting.”
He didn’t look up from the chart. “You volunteering?”
“Depends. For what?”
He swiped the screen of his tablet. “South Twenty.”
“What is it?”
“Foreign body.”
You groaned. “No.”
“Yep,” he said, popping the final p.
“Please tell me it’s a kid who swallowed a Lego.”
“You wish.”
You closed your eyes. “…It’s not.”
“It is not.”
“You can go by yourself.”
“I’m the attending.”
“So attend.”
He finally looked over at you, fighting a smile. “You scared?”
“I’m tired. It’s four in the morning.”
He stood, grabbing the chart from the printer. “C’mon.”
You stayed exactly where you were.
Jack stopped after a few steps. He turned, raising an eyebrow. “You coming?”
“You can’t make me.”
“I can.”
“You literally can’t.”
“I’ll assign you to hallway admits for the rest of the shift.”
Your eyes narrowed. “…You fight dirty.”
“I learned from you.”
You pushed yourself out of the chair with an exaggerated sigh. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You sound awfully confident.”
“I am.”
⸻
By the time the patient had been evaluated, reassured, and referred to the appropriate service, nearly half an hour had disappeared. You stripped off your gloves and stepped back into the hallway.
“I don’t get paid enough.”
Jack fell into step beside you. “You got to tell someone not to put random objects where they don’t belong.”
“I’d rather not have that conversation ever again.”
He laughed. A real laugh—the kind that made the fine lines around his eyes crinkle in that way you adored. It was rare enough to make you glance over at him.
“What?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“You laughed.”
“So?”
“So you usually don't.”
“I laugh.”
“You smirk.”
“I laugh.”
“You exhale slightly harder through your nose.”
“I don’t—”
“You do.”
He looked genuinely offended. “I laugh.”
“Do it again.”
“I’m not performing.”
“Coward.”
“You done?”
“Never.”
The Hub came into view again. Jack had stopped by the break room to pick up two fresh coffees while he waited for you. He held one out.
You blinked. “I didn’t ask.”
“I know.”
“You got this for me?”
“I got two.”
“You hate this roast.”
“I do.”
“So…”
“So take the coffee.”
You accepted it, your fingers brushing his for the briefest second. Neither of you pulled away immediately. The touch lasted just long enough to notice.
Then, a monitor alarm started blaring in Central Eleven, breaking the spell.
“I’ll get it,” you said, chugging the lukewarm coffee as you went.
Jack nodded. “I know you will.”
⸻
Central Eleven turned out to be nothing more than a loose lead. When you stepped back into the hallway, Jack was standing at The Hub, elbows braced against the counter, tablet in front of him as he scrolled through lab results.
You walked up beside him and nudged his arm with your shoulder. “Crisis averted.”
“The ECG lead survived?”
“Barely.”
“I’ll notify its family.”
You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “That was terrible.”
“You laughed.”
“I pitied you.”
“Sure.”
He was still smiling when he pulled up the next chart. Before he could read it, you reached over and turned the tablet your way. You quickly skimmed through the information while Jack still held onto his end of the device.
“How come you’re always stealing my patients?” Jack asked, letting out an exaggerated sigh.
“I read the chart first.”
“I was literally holding it.”
“Possession isn’t ownership.”
“You making legal arguments now?”
“I’m making winning arguments.”
For a second, neither of you let go of the tablet. It was stupid. Childish. Completely unnecessary.
Jack looked down at your hand over his, then back up at you. “You planning on letting go?”
“Are you planning on asking nicely?”
“I’ve never asked you nicely.”
“I’ve noticed.”
His head tilted just slightly. “You like pushing my buttons.”
“You have so many.”
“And one day that’s going to get you in trouble.”
You smiled. “With you?”
His gaze held yours. “Yeah.”
The answer came low and easy. Not a joke, and not quite a warning, either. Before either of you could decide what it meant, the overhead speaker crackled: “Dr. Abbot to the ambulance bay.”
He let go of the tablet first.
“Saved by the pager,” you said.
Jack didn’t answer. He just looked at you for one lingering beat before turning toward the ambulance doors. “You coming?”
You fell into step beside him. “Always.”
The doors opened before either of you reached them. “Incoming.”
Jack’s expression changed immediately. The teasing disappeared. That was the thing about him—no matter how much you pushed him, no matter how much you got under his skin, the second someone needed him, he was exactly who he was supposed to be. Calm. Focused. Unshakable.
“Give me your report.”
The paramedic rattled off the details. Forty-five-year-old female. Found unconscious at home. Unknown downtime. Family on scene. You moved into position beside Jack without thinking. The two of you had done this enough times that there was no hesitation. You just knew where you belonged.
“On my count.”
The stretcher moved.
“One, two, three.”
The room filled. Orders, numbers, questions, hands moving, voices overlapping. Jack stood at the center of it all, directing the chaos into something controlled. You watched him do what he did best, not because you had to, but because you always did.
“Pressure’s coming up.”
“Good.”
“Glucose is low.”
“Treat it.”
“Getting a response.”
The patient’s eyes fluttered. The room exhaled. Not relief exactly—not yet—but enough to keep going.
⸻
When the patient was finally admitted, you found yourself standing at the sink again. Same place as earlier. Same fluorescent lights. Same exhaustion settling into your bones.
“You have a favorite spot in this department or something?” Jack’s voice made you look over.
“You keep finding me here.”
“Because you keep coming here.”
“Maybe I like the sink.”
“Interesting choice.”
“Are you judging my taste?”
“I am.”
“Rude.” You smiled despite yourself.
For a moment, neither of you moved. The shift was catching up with both of you now. The adrenaline had worn thin, the jokes were quieter, and the space between you felt different.
Jack leaned against the counter beside you. “You were good tonight.”
You looked over. “That’s thrice.”
“What?”
“You’ve complimented me three times this shift.”
“I compliment people.”
“Not like that.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Like what?”
“Like you mean it.”
A beat. Then another.
“I do mean it.”
The answer was simple. No teasing, no deflection. Somehow, that was worse.
You looked away first. “You’re dangerous when you’re tired.”
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You get honest.”
“I’m always honest.”
“No.” You glanced back at him. “You’re careful.”
Something in his expression shifted, because he knew you were right. Jack Abbot was careful. With patients, with decisions, with people. Especially with people.
“Maybe careful is a good thing.”
“Sometimes.”
“And sometimes?”
You shrugged. “Sometimes it just means you spend a lot of time not saying things.”
The silence after that was louder than the department. A monitor beeped down the hall. A nurse laughed somewhere near triage. The world kept moving.
Jack looked at you. “You always this difficult?”
“Only with you.”
There it was. The thing neither of you acknowledged. The line—the one you kept walking toward and then stepping back from.
His mouth twitched. “That’s what I thought.”
“You think you know everything.”
“I know enough.”
“Do you?”
His gaze stayed on yours. Long enough that your heartbeat changed. Long enough that you remembered exactly how close you were standing.
Then, someone called his name. Again. Always again.
Jack looked toward the sound, then back at you. “Saved.”
You smiled. “You say that like you’re disappointed.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I have work.”
“You always have work.”
“That’s because I work here.”
“Convenient excuse.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling. “Central Six.”
“Are you assigning me?”
“Yes.”
“Bossy.”
“Yes.”
“Enjoying it?”
“Maybe.”
The honesty surprised both of you. His smile faded slightly, not because he regretted it, but because he realized you noticed.
“Careful, Abbot.”
His eyebrows lifted. “With what?”
“Getting honest.”
For once, he didn’t have a comeback. You walked away before he could find one. And you hated how much you wanted him to.
⸻
Five-thirty came around without either of you noticing. That was the dangerous part of the night shift. Time stopped meaning anything. There was only the next patient, the next call, the next thing that needed doing—until suddenly there was a clock on the wall telling you the sun was going to come up soon.
You were finishing a chart when Jack appeared beside the workstation.
“You’re still alive.”
You looked up. “So are you.”
“I’m the attending.”
“You say that like it’s a personality trait.”
“It might be.”
You smiled. “That’s actually concerning.”
He ignored that. “How many charts left?”
You glanced at your screen. “Three.”
“Three?”
“Don’t sound so offended.”
“You’ve been here all night.”
“So have you.”
“I finished mine twenty minutes ago.”
“Congratulations.”
“You’re welcome.”
“No one thanked you.”
“They should.”
“For doing your job?”
“For doing it efficiently.”
“You mean quickly.”
“I mean efficiently.” Jack shook his head. “You make everything more complicated.”
“And yet you keep talking to me.”
The words slipped out easily. Too easily. Neither of you laughed this time. Jack looked at you for a second.
Then, the familiar voice of the overhead speaker filled the space once more: “Dr. Abbot to the ambulance bay.”
He looked toward the doors, then back at you. “You’re enjoying this.”
“What?”
“Winning arguments.”
“You make it very easy.”
“One day that’s going to backfire.”
You leaned back in your chair. “Is that a threat?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
His eyes held yours. “No.”
Something about that answer made you forget your next smart remark. Thankfully, the ambulance bay doors opened before you had to find one.
⸻
The final case of the night was never really final. There was always something standing between you and going home.
This time, it was a woman in her sixties with shortness of breath, a husband who wouldn’t stop apologizing for bringing her in, and a room full of worry. You took the lead on questions while Jack examined her. Between the two of you, the diagnosis came together piece by piece. Medication history, recent symptoms—you caught the detail everyone else had missed.
Jack saw you catch it. He didn’t interrupt or step in. He just let you work. That was one of the things about him that you appreciated. He never needed to prove he was the smartest person in the room.
After the patient was stabilized and admitted, the room finally emptied.
You exhaled. “Done.”
Jack checked the chart one last time. “For now.”
“You ruin everything.”
“It’s the ED. ‘Done’ isn’t really a thing.”
“Let me have my moment.”
“Fine.” He stepped back.
“Done.” You looked at him.
“That sounded painful.”
“It was.” You laughed.
And there it was again. That look—the one where he forgot to look away. The one where the attending disappeared for a second and he was just Jack. Tired. Human. Standing too close.
“You know,” you said quietly, “you’re not as intimidating as everyone thinks.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“It’s an observation.”
“Even worse.”
“You have a reputation.”
“I know.”
“And then you do things like buy people breakfast and remember their coffee order.”
He shrugged. “People work better when they’re well taken care of.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
He knew. You could tell by the way his expression changed, the way he looked down briefly before looking back at you.
“You should go home,” he said.
“You’re avoiding the conversation.”
“I’m telling you to get some sleep.”
“You should too.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
The silence stretched. Jack looked away first. It was a small victory, but you took it.
“You do that a lot,” you noted.
“What?”
“Change the subject when something gets too close.”
His jaw tightened. “You do that too.”
That caught you off guard. “What?”
“Make a joke,” he said, pausing. “Make it easier.”
You didn’t have an answer. Because he was right. He always was.
Dana walked past the doorway. “Either of you planning on leaving today?”
You both stepped back at the same time. The moment broke.
“Eventually,” Jack said.
Dana looked between you. “Sure.” She walked away.
You grabbed the last chart from the counter. “People are annoying.”
“People notice things.”
“People should mind their own business.”
“Maybe.”
You looked at him. “Maybe?”
“Maybe they’re not wrong.”
Your heartbeat kicked. But before you could answer, Mateo called out from nearby, “Abbot, your sign-outs.”
He sighed. “Saved by paperwork.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I sound tired.”
“Liar.”
He looked at you with a tired smile on his face. A real one. “Finish your charts.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“And eat before you leave.”
“There he is.”
“What?”
“Bossy.”
“You’re welcome.”
You watched him walk away. For the first time all night, you didn’t make a joke. The truth was becoming harder to ignore. The shift was almost over—and somehow that felt more dangerous than anything that had happened inside the ED.
⸻
Six-fifteen. It was the hour where everyone started moving slower. Not because they were lazy, but because hours of alarms, trauma calls, admissions, and impossible decisions had finally caught up with them.
The ED was still alive, but the edges had softened. The waiting room had emptied, and the board was finally clear—a miracle.
You finished your last note and leaned back in your chair. “Tell me we’re almost done.”
Jack was at the workstation beside you, signing off charts. “We’re almost done.”
You narrowed your eyes. “That was suspiciously easy.”
“It was a simple question.”
“You never answer simple questions simply.”
“I just did.”
“Exactly.”
He glanced over. “You always this paranoid?”
“Only when you’re involved.”
A small smile pulled at his mouth before he caught it.
“There.”
“What?”
“You smiled.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t.”
“Jack.”
His eyes flicked up. Not doctor. Not Abbot. Jack. It was a tiny reaction—barely anything—but you noticed. And judging by the way he looked away, he noticed too.
“Your chart is missing a medication list,” he said.
You stared at him. “That’s your move?”
“My move?”
“Changing the subject.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“You’re such a coward.”
That got a quiet laugh out of him. “Careful.”
“Why?”
“Because one day you’ll say something you can’t take back.”
You leaned back in your chair. “Maybe I already have.”
The words landed heavier than you expected. Jack looked at you. Really looked. Then, the printer started up—loud, obnoxious, and perfectly timed. You both looked away.
“Saved by office equipment,” you muttered.
“Apparently.”
⸻
By seven-fifteen, the last sign-outs were done. You grabbed your bag from the locker room while Jack finished his handoff to Robby in front of the board. Neither of you seemed in a hurry to leave. That should have been the first sign.
“You leaving?” Jack asked.
“Eventually.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because you avoid answering.”
“You’re good at noticing things.”
A pause.
“Yeah,” he said.
The quiet honesty of it made you look over. Jack seemed to realize what he’d said. Neither of you moved.
He looked toward the hallway. “You should go home.”
“So should you.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
For once, neither of you laughed. The supply room door stood open down the hall—empty, quiet, and private. Jack noticed you looking. You nodded toward the door and began walking without turning around to check if he was following.
You knew he was.
The door clicked shut behind the two of you.
“You know this is the part where we’re supposed to make the smart decision,” Jack murmured.
You stepped closer. “Are we?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m trying to be.”
“Trying?”
A tired laugh escaped him. “You really don’t make anything easy.”
“You like that.”
His eyes met yours. “I do.”
The answer was immediate. Too immediate. The silence afterward was different—not awkward, just honest.
Jack shook his head. “You know how long I’ve been trying not to?”
You tilted your head. “Not to what?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make me say it.”
You held his gaze. “Maybe I want you to.”
That was it. Not some dramatic moment, nor some perfect confession. Just the last bit of restraint finally wearing thin.
Jack looked away for a second, rubbing a hand over his face. “You’re unbelievable.”
“And yet, you’re still here.”
“Yeah.” He paused, looking back at you. “Yeah, I am.”
The supply room light hummed. The hospital carried on around you, but for once, nobody needed anything from him. No patients, no decisions. Just this.
“You think I haven’t noticed?” he asked.
“Noticed what?”
“Every excuse you find to come by the board. Every argument you drag out longer than it needs to be. Every time you look at me like you know exactly what you’re doing.”
Your mouth curved. “Maybe I do.”
His eyes dropped briefly before finding yours again. “That’s the problem.”
“Why?”
When he answered, there was no teasing left in his voice. “‘Cause I want ya.”
The words were quiet, but they were everything he’d been refusing to say.
You didn’t move.
Jack exhaled, almost like admitting it had taken something out of him. “I want ya, and I’ve been trying not to.”
The space between you felt smaller.
“Because you’re my coworker,” he added after a pause. “Because I’m supposed to know better.”
You looked at him. “And now?”
His eyes stayed on yours. “Now I think I’m tired of pretending.”
Neither of you said anything after that. You didn’t need to. The kiss happened because there was simply nothing left to argue about. Months of almost. Months of looks across the department. Months of pretending the pull between you was just banter. Gone.
His lips were soft against yours, and you couldn’t help the small sigh that escaped you. Finally.
Your hand came up to tangle in the graying curls at the nape of his neck. His hands were steady at your waist, keeping you grounded. For a moment, neither of you moved, like you were both waiting for the other person to realize what was happening and pull away.
Neither of you did.
The kiss deepened slowly, carefully. Not rushed, and not uncertain, exactly. More like both of you were trying to memorize something you had spent too long pretending you didn’t want.
One of his hands left your waist, coming up to cradle your face. His thumb brushed along your cheek with a gentleness that almost undid you more than the kiss itself. Jack was always steady, always controlled. But here, with you, there was something softer. Something honest.
You leaned into his touch without thinking. His forehead rested briefly against yours when he pulled back just enough to breathe. His eyes stayed closed for a second longer than they needed to.
For a moment, the ED disappeared. The noise, the exhaustion, the rules you had both been so careful about—all of it vanished.
When you finally pulled back, Jack stayed close. He took a quiet breath, a small, disbelieving smile touching his lips. “This is still a bad idea.”
You smiled. “Probably.”
“You’re agreeing?”
“Absolutely.”
He let out a quiet laugh. “That’s not reassuring.”
“It should be.”
“Why?”
“Because it means you were right.”
He shook his head. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re still here.”
This time, he didn’t argue.
The sound of footsteps outside the door reminded both of you where you were. Reality came back. The hospital was still there, and the shift was still ending. Jack stepped back first, because of course he did. Control. Always control.
But the look in his eyes said it wasn't as easy as it used to be. “Tomorrow,” he said, his voice a quiet invitation.
Summary: At a wedding, Jack can’t help but feel so lucky to be the one who gets to take you home.
Tags: tooth rotting fluff, partners also being friends, smut!, rough sex, unprotected sex, dirty talk, light dom/sub, brief mention of “daddy”, reader and jack have a happy healthy relationship, idk man it’s joyful and fun
WC: 2.8k
Author’s Note: I’ve been wanting to write shorter blurbs here and there to keep my lovely readers fed in between my 20k nightmare fics.
————
Jack Abbot was normal. He was fine. He was definitely not seething watching you dance with friends. The problem with dating the hottest woman in existence was that he couldn’t exclusively monopolize your time. He barely knew anyone at this wedding, it was your friend’s wedding.
She had too many sisters to have you as a bridesmaid and in the comfort and secrecy of your bedroom you had whispered to him that you just didn’t have it in you to be in so many weddings—most of your twenties had been spent traveling around the country to be in friends’ weddings.
Now, he was watching you in a gorgeous plum dress dancing around barefoot with girls you’ve known for over a decade. Some of their husbands were tolerable. Your best friend and her husband were here. Most of the time Ted was fine. Drunk Ted cared a lot about golf and Jack, drunk or sober, couldn’t give a shit.
When P!nk’s “So What” ended you meandered back over to Jack and to his surprise (and delight), collapsed in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” you mumbled. “I’m a little tipsy.”
“So I see,” he replied, lightly pushing your hair back away from your face. Your nice hairdo had long since come unraveled and kept falling in your face.
“I like you so much,” you said leaning into him.
“You don’t love me?” He asked with a smile on his face. You snorted.
“Of course I love you. But I also like you.”
“Thanks?”
“I don’t think all my friends like their husbands,” you whispered a little too wet in his ear. He had to resist the urge to push you away to wipe it off.
“What makes you say that?”
“Take me back to the hotel and I’ll tell you,” you said laying your head on his shoulder. It definitely didn’t look comfortable, largely speaking to your exhaustion. You had been dancing and jumping with your friends for multiple hours.
“C’mon, babe,” he said shifting your legs off his lap.
“Ugh,” you groaned standing again. “I need to tell Claire goodnight.”
“I’ll get our stuff,” he said.
The send off had been a few hours ago, before the elderly relatives had left. Now, it was just a fun party with friends. He loved watching you light up and enjoy being around your people. He loved his people, but they were far more subdued than yours.
Across the dance floor you approached your friend who threw her arms around you with heartfelt but drunken balance and coordination. It made his heart swell, watching how happy you were. Fuck, he loved making you happy. All he wanted in life was to make each day just a little easier; he wanted to do his best to make you happy.
By the time you’d extricated yourself from your friend’s embrace and made your way back to him, Jack had a hold of your purse and coat. He also had already dug your ugly Birkenstocks out of your purse so you didn’t have to put your heels back on.
“Fuck you’re so good to me,” you said, holding onto him while you slipped the shoes on.
“Well if that’s all it takes,” he replied, helping you into your coat.
He kept a hold of your bag when walking out to the parking lot. Just like his mother taught him, he held the door open on the rental car and shut it gently behind you. When he got into the drivers seat, you had dug your water bottle out of your purse.
“Ugh, I’m already sobering up,” you complained.
“So you don’t want drunk fast food?”
You gasped dramatically. “Do you kiss your mother with that dirty mouth?”
Jack laughed and grabbed your hand as he turned out of the parking lot heading back to the hotel.
“What did you mean earlier about your girlfriends not liking their husbands?” He asked pulling into a greasy fast food joint. It rarely mattered which one as the point was disgusting food.
Once the French fries and chicken and burgers had been acquired, Jack pulled into a parking spot towards the back of the lot. One of the first things you both discovered you’d had in common was growing up in small towns. It meant that you both had fond memories of idling car conversations and the occasional makeout. Even now, a long away from your teen years, you both adored your post party ritual.
“So,” you began, curling your legs up. “Abigail, not technically my friend, but she’s a good time. Was talking to me about how glad she was that her husband couldn’t come and that was fucking bonkers to me. Why would you marry someone you don’t like?”
“You would be sad if I couldn’t come?”
“Sure, I like spending time with you. It’s not like it would ruin it for me, I basically barely hung out with you tonight, but it’s fun coming back and kissing you before dancing to Pitbull songs with everyone.”
“I think that’s a compliment,” he laughed.
“But seriously!” You said nudging him. “I like being around you. It’s fun. You’re just as fun as my friends.”
“Even though I can’t dance with the energy of a drunk college girl?”
“Even then,” you laughed. “Hear anything good with the spouses?”
“Ted likes golf,” Jack sighed.
“God he’s so boring,” you laughed. “But she needs boring after the shit head she used to be married to.”
“Do your friends think I’m boring?”
You scoffed. “No, they think you’re a crazy adrenaline junky, not boring. Did you notice the groom’s sister had a fucking weird speech?”
For the next hour you both sat in the car, eating food that would clog your arteries and gossiping about the wedding. It was life giving and comforting in ways you never wanted to lose. You’d had this with friends but Jack was the first man you’d ever dated who wanted to do stupid shit with you. He wanted to go to weddings of people he didn’t know. He wanted to sit in a slightly too heated car talking shit about speeches. He wanted to do nothing and everything with you.
“What’s that look?” Jack asked.
“I dunno,” you sighed. “I just really fucking like you.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I really fucking like you, too,” he said. “Even if you dance like a baby giraffe.”
“Fuck off!”
When you both got back to the hotel, Jack helped you search for the various pins hidden somewhere in your hair.
“You’re so pretty,” he said mouth at your bare shoulder.
“Are you trying to get in my pants, Dr. Abbot?”
“You’re not wearing pants,” he said, bracketing your body against the counter of the bathroom. “You are, however, wearing a gorgeous dress I’ve wanted to peel off with my teeth all night.”
“Your teeth, huh?” You asked making eye contact with him in the mirror.
“God I’ve wanted to touch you so bad all night,” he whispered in your ear, pressing a soft kiss right near your hairline.
“You look so good in that suit,” you grumbled, pushing your ass back against his groin. “Kept coming back to kiss you so everyone knew you were mine.”
Jack’s eyes fluttered closed as he buried his face in your neck. Being wanted by you was intoxicating. Knowing that you coveted him as much as he coveted you was more than enough to turn him on. He could feel the ghost of your cunt clenching around him. It had been two weeks since he last fucked you. Both of your jobs had been hectic.
But now, in the privacy of the too expensive hotel room, he had you at his mercy.
“Look at me baby,” he said softly against your ear, relishing in how you shivered against him. “All mine, right?”
“Only yours,” you breathed. “I’ve missed your hands.”
He ran his hands from your thighs up your dress to cup your tits. The strapless dress was held up by tape and some intricate ties in the back. He pulled the tape off your chest gently and then yanked the fabric down under your tits, bra and all. You looked so good. In the dim light of the bathroom, he drank in your heedy gaze.
“Beautiful,” he said attacking your neck again.
Having you in his bed for so long, meant Jack knew just how to kiss you and play with your chest to make you soaked. It’s like he had a cheat code to turning you on. It helped that most of the night had been subtle foreplay between you both. During dinner his hand was definitely too high on your thigh but he couldn’t bear to move it.
“Fuck, baby, take me to bed. It’s cold as shit in here,” you groaned.
“Anything for you,” he said. “How hard do you want tonight?”
“Rough,” you replied.
He wove his fingers through your hair, close to the roots and pulled. He drug you back into the main room and tossed you on the bed face first. Holding you down with one hand on your upper back, he slowly pulled the zipper of your dress down.
“Look at this sexy body,” he said. “All for me.”
You wiggled a little as he unhooked the strapless bra with one hand. It had taken him nearly a year to master, but it was one of his most used bedroom skills. Letting you go, he pulled off the dress harshly, taking your underwear with it. Then you were face down on the bed, naked and already dripping for him.
You had arched your back, preening under his gaze. With a sharp smack to the meaty part of your glute, he watched you jump and settle back into your skin. A few more spanks and he quickly shoved his fingers inside you making you gasp.
He loved all the noises and movements you made during sex. For the duration of your relationship, he had been making a running catalog of how to get you to do a sound or movement. While he harshly fingered you, enjoying the way you squirmed under him, he began unbuckling his belt and pants.
“Feel good, baby?”
“Fuck me, please,” you panted against the comforter.
Shoving his pants down just low enough let out his dick, he pulled his fingers out of you and rubbed your wetness along his cock. Just the smell of you was sending him over the edge. He made sure to clamp down on your hips tightly, hoping to leave a bruise for you to enjoy, before careening his hips into yours aggressively.
There was a grunt as the air was knocked out of you. For a moment he paused, enjoying how you felt. Your cunt always felt so fucking good against his dick. You were so warm and wet and you clenched so beautifully when he spanked you. As much as he loved to be the one furiously fucking you, he also loved having you in charge.
He always enjoyed feeling your nails rake down his back. He was desperate to feel you closer against his skin, so while he had your hips pinned to the bed, he quickly ripped off his button up and undershirt so he could wrap his arm around your neck and pull you up against his body.
Once he felt you against his chest, he began to thrust ferociously against your cunt. He loved how it fluttered and the grunts and groans you released as he harshly pounded into you.
“Fuck, baby,” Jack growled harshly. “You feel so good. Made for me. Carved for my fucking dick, isn’t that right?”
“Just for you,” you said breathlessly.
You were clutching onto the bicep his had wrapped around your neck (more so your chest than neck, but it had the same effect). He felt you meeting his thrusts sending shockwaves through both of you.
“I love it when you’re rough with me,” you heaved against his assault. “Harder, please.”
Your tone was always so breathy and almost whiny when you got worked up like this.
“Anything for my naughty girl. Do you like this dick pounding into you. Does it feel good to have someone treat you so meanly?”
“Fuuuck,” you groaned arching against his grasp more. “You feel so good inside of me.”
“You make me so fucking crazy, pretty girl,” he hissed against your ear. “Watching you tonight was like my own personal dream. The prettiest girl in the world dancing and jumping but always coming back to me. Can’t be without me can you?”
“No, I can’t,” you whined as one of Jack’s hands roughly kneaded your tits. “Your hands are so good.”
“Rub your clit for me, baby. I want to feel you cum on my dick. I’m going to fuck you so hard you can’t walk tomorrow.”
“Yes please,” you mumbled. He felt one of your hands leave its iron grasp on his arm. “You fill me up so good.”
Jack felt himself getting close so he pulled out and finished taking off his pants. Getting his prosthetic off quickly was a hard fought for skill, but he managed to push you flat on the bed covering your body with his own before slipping back inside of your warmth.
He wrapped his arm around your throat again and grinned at how you moaned wantonly.
“So pretty when you’re being used by me.”
“Please,” you managed.
“Prop your hips up, baby,” he said getting on his knees to allow you room.
The harsh sounds of him slamming into you filled the room while he kept whispering debauched things in your ear:
“You’re made for me and only me.”
“Using you feels so sweet.”
“Are you going to cum on my dick?”
“I’m so fucking deep, baby.”
“I’m going to make you cum so hard.”
He was so focused on making sure you came, he didn’t noticed how you turned your face.
“Please, daddy, harder,” you moaned.
His hips stuttered and to control himself, he bit into the muscle of your shoulder. He almost felt guilty for how hot he found your cry of pain to be.
“Rub your clit and say it again,” he mumbled against your skin.
Your hand snaked underneath your body, and gasping under his assault you said,
“Harder, daddy. I want to feel you cum inside me.”
“Fuck, baby,” he groaned.
He was so close when he felt the tell tale flutters of your cunt against him. He nearly wept with relief you finally were close enough for him to say,
“Cum on my dick, pretty girl. Show me how good I make you feel. Milk me. Milk daddy.”
You cried out as you tensed and gasped underneath him. He made sure to keep moving as you clenched against him until your shaking thighs collapsed. He continued his furious pace until he felt himself orgasm. It felt like he came forever. When he finally collapsed and rolled over next to you, he chest was heaving.
“Daddy, huh?” He asked.
“I don’t know where it came from,” you laughed. “But you clearly liked it.”
“Surprise for me, too,” he huffed. He pulled you against him, reveling in how your naked skin felt against his.
“You’re sweaty and hot,” you grumbled, nuzzling your face against his chest. It was said like a complaint but you weren’t moving away.
“So are you,” he laughed. You tweaked his nipple.
“I’m fresh as a daisy.”
He laughed and kissed the top of your head. “Want to shower first?”
“Yes please,” you said. “Will you keep me company?”
He snorted and nodded.
The accessible bathroom had a removable shower chair that he used while he waited for you. Unlike the shower at home, it wasn’t big enough for Jack, his shower chair, and you. So he watched as you tied your hair up and quickly rinsed off. He noticed your wince when you gently cleaned your vagina.
“Do you want me to check it?” He asked a little concerned.
“Nah, just sensitive. You did a good job.”
“Wow, did I get an A-plus in sex?”
“Fuck off,” you laughed.
While Jack showered, you began working through your nighttime routine. You took off whatever make up hadn’t been sweated off during the wedding or the following sex and washed your face. By the time Jack got out, you were brushing your teeth.
Before leaving the bathroom you kissed him and said, “I love you.”
“Wuv yew,” he said with his toothbrush in his mouth.
Using his crutches, he made his way back to the bed, pulling on a pair of clean boxers before sliding into bed with you. Like you always did, you slept on the side farthest from the door. It was one of the many things that lingered from the war. Jack wanted to be between you and anything unexpected.
He pulled you against him, in the dark, enjoying how warm and soft you were.
“A good night,” he mumbled.
“And good sex,” you said.
He laughed and closed his eyes, feeling so much love and affection for you leaking out of his chest.
summary — jack has seen you leave a trail of broken hearts and bad dates, and he’s determined to prove to you that you’re looking for love in all the wrong places.
warnings — 12.6k words. age gap (jack’s around 50; reader’s a 4th year resident, so 20s), attending/resident power dynamic; mentor/mentee relationship, idiots in love maybe?? yearning!jack, jealous!jack, jack ‘i’ll pay for it’ abbot strikes Again!!!! hurt + comfort (one instance of jack being an ass, but he smooths it over during the same shift - they can’t stay mad at each other), mild angst, patient death, jack’s leg - reader helps him adjust the prosthetic and takes care of him during a long shift, canon-typical medical scenes and probably lots of inaccuracies (i’m an english major reddit is my best friend) ; on-page patient death, reader performing compressions, reader DATES DATES and may be unprofessional (affectionately she just wants to find love and her entire life revolves around the hospital who can blame her), reader’s written to have hair she brushes and can pin up, she also gets on her toes to kiss him but that can be ignored i just liked the image jack basically bribes her into a date, no smut but they’re So very much thinking about it, rushed-ish ending i think?
notes — wrote this in a slump it took so Unbelievably long and i’m not even sure i like it but i wanted to post something before i give up on writing anything ever again!!!!
It was midnight and a peds nurse was lingering by the ambulance doors, and Jack knew that he wasn’t meant to be there. Lewis was his name, maybe, but Jack couldn’t even be sure of that — and knew he had no reason to be sure of it, because the guy wasn’t meant to be there. Running the ER in the middle of the night, with all of the day’s patients handed off, and the night’s still finding their way through triage, was difficult in itself, and he didn’t have the energy to also babysit Ryan-or-Lewis-or-whoever hovering there like a little boy waiting to be picked up from school.
“Is he meant to be here?” Jack asked, closing the space toward the desk where Lena was pointing something, jutting his thumb in the direction of the guy.
Lena flattened a printout on the desk with two fingers, hardly sparing him a glance.
“Him. Peds. Why is he there?” he tried again.
“Couldn’t tell you,” she said, but the corner of her mouth had flicked up, proving that she was simply choosing not to tell him.
“He’s off his unit,” he said. He knew he sounded just slightly silly stating the obvious.
“Seems so.”
“Send him back, then,” Jack drawled, incredulous, hands finding his hips. “There’s enough shit going on here.”
“You send him back,” she retorted, amused just slightly. “If you’re so concerned.”
Jack looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head as his hands went to rest on his hips. When he looked back down, he found you walking toward the nurse and it suddenly made complete sense.
He let out a sigh. “This has to be a joke.”
His eyes, as they did more often than was appropriate, caught on you, hair coming down loose from where you’d pinned it, the scrubs lopsided at one hip, riding lower than where they’d started at the beginning of the night. You turned to say something to the guy quickly, and the movement caught the slip, your scrub top moving up half an inch, and Jack’s eyes went there before his brain could tell him that was wrong, some groove in him that noticed you before it noticed anything useful. He had a second of pure, unhelpful distraction before his brain reminded him that he was an attending and had things to do.
“I actually think it’s funny,” Lena said, shrugging.
Of course it had something to do with you. He should’ve figured it out the second he saw the guy standing there with his hands in the pouch of his scrubs, rocking heel to toe like the floor was just too exciting to be standing on. Nobody loitered around the ambulance bay at midnight for good reason. People came through those doors bleeding or they didn’t come through them at all, and this guy had shown up with nothing wrong with him, except maybe a case for some lovesickness.
“I’m gonna make this stop,” Jack said, already pushing himself away from the nurse’s station.
Lena’s eyes widened slightly. “Don’t say anything that gets you sat down with HR.”
“She can goddamn try me,” he said, and went. Also because Jack was fairly sure you would never report him to HR.
He crossed the floor and caught the tail-end of your conversation as he closed in.
“ — just tell me when you’re free, that’s all I’m asking,” the guy was saying.
You were already half-turned, already gone as you waved a hand loosely beside you. “I don’t know, I just don’t think we should try again.”
Jack blew out a breath, standing a few feet short of you, your back facing him. Why was he not surprised? He’d been keeping tally without meaning to, and he knew that was embarrassing. There was the radiology fellow who’d started hand-delivering films that very well could’ve gone through the system; the travel nurse who’d washed through in six weeks and left the floor faintly weird in his wake; the anaesthesia resident who now took the long way around the department if he saw you at the end of it, as though he were a dog who’d learned the fence was electric. And now this one, apparently, Peds with his whole hopeful heart hanging out in Jack’s department.
“You’re so sweet for coming down here,” you practically crooned at him, shifting on your heels, eyes flicking down to the form in your hand. “But I really do have a whole long night ahead of me, and I know my answer’s not gonna change, so I won’t make you wait around for it, okay?”
Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes when you said the words with the upward lilt of a woman sending a toddler back to his mother. He wanted to laugh a little when he saw that the guy had taken it standing up like it was a gift.
The hell of it was that Jack understood the man. He understood every last one of them because he stood next to you fifty hours a week, had been doing so for three years, and whatever the department thought of him after his consistent therapy, he was not carved out of stone.
Jack was afraid that if he hadn’t been your attending these last four years and a little younger, wearing his heart on his sleeve, he’d have been eating out of the palm of your hand.
You gave the guy a there-there pat, and it was only then did his eyes land on Jack, who he probably knew was your fucking attending. You turned then, and immediately said, “Oh, Dr. Abbot, I’ve got the guy in six’s labs back, the potassium —”
“Mhm.” Jack’s hands came up and landed on your shoulders before you’d finished the sentence, squaring you off the spot where you stood and turning you bodily back toward the floor like you were a gurney.
“It is four-point-nine, but the EKG’s good, so I was gonna recheck in —”
“Let’s recheck it now,” he said. He kept you moving, his palms broad through the cotton of your scrubs, steering you a few feet till your own feet caught onto the idea.
You grumbled something under your breath, and once he’d stopped you right in front of six, you turned to face him with your brows raised.
“Say something?” he asked, tipping his chin down.
“You seem like you’re mad at me,” you said.
“Huh. I do?” He let go of your shoulders — noticing, distantly, the exact second his hands came off and suddenly felt too empty — and reached past you to pluck six’s chart off the tray, more to have something to do with them than needing it. “You’re right. You should recheck in ten minutes.”
“You’re mad at me,” you said again, crossing your arms over your chest.
He blew out a breath, and suddenly felt just a little silly at getting worked up over a nurse by the doors when there was a large, glowing board behind him full of names that needed his complete, undivided attention.
You were a senior resident, after all, four years deep, one of his sharpest — you’d treated the guy in six, hadn’t you, you’d flagged it and called for the EKG and made the right call on the recheck before he’d even asked, all while dismantling some man’s hopes. Somehow, your mess and competence ran on the same current. You never let the first touch the second. He’d have loved, some nights, to have an excuse to be mad — a missed lab, a blown line, anything he could write up and point at — and you kept declining to hand him one. All of this meant he was left with this vague swampy irritation, and Jack wasn’t the sort of mentor who liked to hound upon that.
“No, sweetheart, I just love it when you get random men hanging around the department,” he settled on saying, feeling his shoulders visibly loosen a fraction.
You winced, eyes darting over to the emptiness in front of the doors now. “Sorry.”
“You’d say it won’t happen again, but we both know better.” He shrugged. Then, he reached out his hand — he wasn’t sure why, except that it just happened naturally — and patted you once on the shoulder, then on the second turned you to face the curtains leading to your patient. “Doctor up.”
And you did, the loose, embarrassed shape of you being replaced in the space of a single breath, being replaced by something Jack had watched grow into you over the years and still hadn’t quite gotten used to.
Trauma called it in nine minutes later, an MVC, unrestrained driver, GCS dropping in the field. Jack was working on a laceration in four when he heard the crackled warning, and by the time he’d looked up out the curtains, you were already moving, gowned and at the head of the bay calling out assignments like you’d been doing this for a decade.
“I need two units O-neg before he rolls in,” you said, voice pitched high enough to carry without yelling, cutting clean through the perpetual noise of the department. “Somebody get me a second eighteen-gauge ready, and I want an ultrasound in here.”
Donnie and Mateo were already moving, and so were the people around you, falling into your orbit like the room had easily reorganized itself around your voice the second it went up. Jack stood by the curtain, gloves from the lac still on, and found he couldn’t make himself move just yet.
The doors banged open. EMS wheeled the stretcher through fast, calling out vitals over each other, and you were already on the patient’s side before the gurney had fully stopped moving, hands moving on his neck, chest, eyes scanning his pupils in a matter of ten seconds. He began walking over, catching your voice as you called out your reads as someone hung the blood and someone else prepped the ultrasound wand. “Page neuro now.”
“On it,” Mateo said, already moving.
You had both hands on the patient, running the primary survey quickly, confirming, checking, discarding possibilities out in short, clipped sentences Jack recognized as the sound of your brain running six steps ahead of your mouth. Sweat had started on your hairline. You called out for OR to be on standby, eyes flickering around the room and landing on Jack. “OR, please,” you said, aimed at him, brows going up.
“On it,” Jack said, because there was no way he was going to let you be wrong about needing something and didn’t make sure you got it.
The next six minutes went by fast and loud, in bursts and then suddenly quiet, the room narrowing down on functionality. You stood at the center of it; you called it and ran it. You got the man upstairs stable enough that Walsh didn’t sound worried for one second, and that was a compliment from her.
Jack watched the whole thing from four feet back, arms crossed, and chipping in when your brain had snagged. He was feeling a heat in his chest helplessly and entirely unprofessional, it was always present when he was able to see, in real-time, how far you’d come from your first day of residency when your hands were a second too slow on the central line and how your voice would pitch up at the end of every read, asking for permission every time instead of stating it like a fact, eyes finding him across the room each time, checking.
There was none of that left in you now, he realized, had done so a long time ago. He thought, watching you now, that this was the closest thing he’d let himself do to falling in years, standing uselessly riveted as he watched a woman he’d taught outgrow the need for him in real time, and finding that instead of the loss he’d expected to feel when the day finally came, all he felt was warm and terrifying and too much like pride.
When the room had started clearing out, he watched your mouth drop open as you let out a heavy breath, eyes going over to him. The second he watched you realize he was still there, your face shifted, the relief turning into something sharper.
“Why didn’t you jump in?” You crossed the floor toward him in four hard strides, gloves already peeled off and balled tight in one fist, snapping the second one free with a motion that looked terrifyingly like it wanted to be aimed at him. “His pressure tanked for thirty seconds and you just watched.”
“You had it.”
“You didn’t know that,” you said, voice going up an octave, adrenaline still thrumming through you, hands coming up the gesture at the blood-streaked floor. “I could’ve missed something. You’re the attending, Jack, you’re supposed to catch if I missed something —”
“I would’ve,” he interrupted, stepping in close enough that you had to tilt your head back to keep glaring at him properly. “The second you needed me, I would’ve stepped in. I wasn’t gonna take it from you before you did.”
“You can’t gamble like that with a patient —” Your chest was rising and falling fast, gloves now crushed in your fist, and he could see the fear catching up now that everything around you had gone quiet enough to let it, something that looked more like fear of yourself than for the patient. “What if I’d frozen —?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.” He reached his hand out, thumb catching a smear of the blood at your jaw you’d accidentally smeared on yourself, wiping it off carefully with the pad of his thumb, and felt you go still under it. “You don’t trust my judgement?”
“You know I do. You just could’ve said something.”
“I could’ve. He dropped his hand from your jaw only to catch your wrist instead. “Didn’t wanna interrupt you being brilliant. Kinda liked watching it happen.”
Your mouth opened, surely to let out some unnecessary retort, and died there when he pressed one slow stroke of his thumb against your wrist, raising a brow.
“Relax,” he said, voice going rough as he leaned in a little, forcing you to meet his eyes properly. “Just take the win. That’s an order.”
“Now you wanna give orders,” you mumbled.
He barked out a short laugh, letting go of your wrist. “Only when you’re being stubborn for no reason.”
It was sometime during the second year of your residency when he’d started catching your drift. It had started with a random Friday shift. He’d seen you at the station, elbows on the counter, telling Lena something conspiratorially. Jack was meant to be reading a chart but couldn’t help how his ears had perked up. Anything to get through the shift, he supposed.
“ — no, but he was perfect on paper,” you were saying, “kept his house clean and everything. He told me he kept his plant alive for six years —”
“So, what happened?” Lena said flatly, like she already knew what you were going to say but wanted to hear anyway.
“He wanted to take me bowling on the second date,” you said through a sigh. “I know how it sounds, but you’ve gotta hear me out —”
“I’m genuinely not going anywhere.”
“ — for the first date, bowling’s fun. But he took me to a nice dinner the first time, he set a standard, and then the second date he goes bowling, which means the effort’s already —” You created a little downward slope with your hand. “And if it’s already sliding on date two, where’s it at on date two hundred? I can already see my marriage with him and it’s bad.”
It seemed you had a criteria, Jack learned then. It was proven even more when he’d heard you talk about your other failed dates, seen them, and learned — without ever wanting to — what they were, to an extent.
He knew you couldn’t stand a man who ordered for you without asking. He knew you’d written off a fellow for the way he talked about his mother, and another one — an accountant, a rare specimen who had no clue what an EKG was — over a text message you’d read aloud to Ellis in a voice of complete horror, though Jack had never caught what it actually said, only your face while you read it. He knew you gave people precisely three dates, that this was a rule you held if the first and second date went well, three apparently being the magic number at which a person could no longer hide the demon they were going to turn out to be (your words).
He knew, too, that you only allowed one kiss after the first date, if even that. It was never up for negotiation, no matter how beautifully the night had gone, for you never wanted to end up “emotionally overdrawn on an account you hadn’t even opened yet.”
He knew you a man lost real points if, over the three dates, if it involved drinks, he ordered the same one. He knew a man gained them, silently and instantly, for being able to sit in a lull without narrating his way out of it, and that you considered this the single rarest trait in modern dating.
He knew you were looking for something you had no name for and would recognize on sight, which struck him as a hell of a way to run a search.
He’d have told you, if you asked, that he tuned most of the station chatter out as a matter of survival, for while he enjoyed the occasional gossip, he couldn’t very well absorb everyone’s business. And that was true about everyone’s business but yours, apparently, because yours came in clear.
Your business he retained against his own better judgement, and he realized — once, during a slow shift — that he could’ve drawn you a better map of your taste than you seemed to carry yourself. He could’ve told you, if you asked, exactly the kind of man who’d finally clear your bar, and exactly why he had yet to show up.
It was almost nice, some nights, watching you try anyway. The ER was a place where everyone was kept tethered to the world by a thread, and everyone who worked in it long enough to develop some version of the same calluses. Jack had grown his years ago, and he wore them invisible, occasionally aching, and had come to terms with it being permanent.
Love, for Jack, had stopped being a real noun before you’d shown up, somewhere between things he used to want and things he’d decided weren’t for him anymore.
You still believed in it. You’d watched this place take everything soft out of grown men twice your seniority and somehow walked through the same fire hopeful, still convinced, against every scrap of evidence, that somewhere there was a person worth all that hoping.
For that reason, he had decided to not interrupt your endeavors, not until now, when he noticed you during hand-off before your night shift with him started, in front of Robby, of all people.
While Jack loved Robby like a brother, he had a documented, department-wide, actuarially reliable seven-week expiration date on every woman he charmed out of this building. He’d heard intra-departmental gossip about him. There was, Jack was fairly sure, a running joke about it that predated your residency by years.
He knew you definitely were not finding love in his best friend. But Jack felt the buzzing in his mind go quiet and mean watching how you with him.
You laughed at something and Jack lost, for one humiliating second, the thread of what he’d walked over to say. It happened sometimes, more than he’d admit to anyone. Ordinary noises out of you hit him somewhere in his chest before the better part of him flagged it as a problem, and he had to physically clear his throat before finding his footing again.
“ — Italian’s always good after pulling a double,” Robby was saying. “But I do love some microwave ramen, too, when I’m missing my med student days.”
“Oh, so your standards have been raised being chief?” you said, and Jack could hear the smile and wariness in it.
“For sure —”
Jack let out a huff, something resembling a laugh, as his feet planted him between the two of you. He was close enough that his shoulder nudged yours and you had to step back to keep your balance. He felt your weight land for a second against him with a satisfaction he had no, absolutely no business feeling for something so small. So childish.
He turned to Robby, spreading his hands wide, mock outrage. “My resident.”
Robby looked mildly amused, unbothered, so Jack added, before he could respond, “Go home before I report you to HR.”
“You’d do that to me?”
“In a heartbeat. Have some shame.” Jack kept his shoulder where it was still angled half in front of you, an old, unexamined instinct keeping the line drawn even though Robby had already backed off.
He tipped his head toward the doors, toward the gold light coming up in them, the day shift draining out around you both. “There’s a whole rich life waitin’ for you out there.”
Robby just smiled and pushed off the counter, giving you a small wave before he left.
Jack turned to you then, brows furrowed. “Seriously?”
You let out a short laugh. “Work hard, play hard?”
“Soundin’ a lot like a frat brother right now. Never have those words been said in an ER,” Jack said.
“I wasn’t actually going to do it,” you said, rushing the words out with something more honest in them. “For the record. I know what — he’s got a reputation.” You picked at the counter. “I was just talking to him. He’s funny.”
Jack had to recalibrate for a second. “You were talkin’ sweet to him.”
“I talk sweet to everyone.” You lifted a shoulder, completely unbothered. “You should try it sometime.”
He rolled his eyes at that. He reached over for your cup of coffee sitting between you — closer to his elbow than yours — and drank a sip, eyes going up to the ceiling at the sheer volume of syrup you’d decided you needed in your bloodstream today. “The hell?” he muttered, turning the cup slightly as if that would help. “Are you trying to embalm yourself?”
“Give it back.”
“In a minute.” He took a second sip, slower this time, and watched you over the rim of the cup. Then, he set it back a few degrees off how you’d had it, just to see your jaw tick.
You pulled the cup back in, thumbed it around until the lid faced you again, and drank from it without breaking your explanation. “I’m offended you think I’ll get wine and dined by the chief attending.” You tilted your head. “Give me some credit here. I won’t be his seven weeks.”
“Huh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which was warm. “Well, good. Don’t think he’ll clear your bar anyway.”
“See, you get it,” you said, pointing a finger at him. “At least someone around here does.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his head slightly forward that even he hadn’t realized that he had shifted the distance just slightly. “Better than most.”
Your eyes widened slightly at that, and Jack took that as his cue to step back, clear his throat, as he jerked his chin toward the board.
“Alright, time to work. Stop the play,” he said, trying to get his voice the right level. “Go look at chest pain on three.”
“So bossy,” you said, but you were already turning around to go to three.
Well, that’s what he was, wasn’t he? For some reason, he had to remind himself that.
It was what he had to remind himself as his hands hovered your trembling ones as you tried to pump air into Mrs. Foley’s lungs, knowing she was already gone — had been for a while now, if he was honest — longer than it took you to admit. He knew it, he’d grown the grim ability to recognize when a body stopped being a patient and being someone you were performing compressions on for the family’s sake, for your own need to have done everything.
He’d let it run anyway, because you hadn’t accepted it yet, and he’d wanted to give you that extra minute to arrive at it on your own.
Mateo had come up to Jack’s side, snapping his gloves off, the sound of it overshadowed by your own heaving.
“She has to call it,” he murmured. “You want me to —”
“No.” Jack’s eyes, he felt, could not move away from your distress. “I’ve got her.”
Mateo looked at him for a moment longer than the moment warranted, and then he stepped back and let Jack be. You were still going, your compressions had gone harder, faster, less like genuine medicine and more like you were pleading with Mrs. Foley herself now. Sweat had gone to the hair at your temple. Your jaw was set in a clench Jack recognized all too well, and for a moment, Jack wished that he didn’t have to be so acutely tuned into watching what the job did to others, the same way it did to him.
He stepped in behind your shoulder, close, and brought his hand down over yours where they were locked on the old woman’s chest.
“Look at the clock,” he said quietly into your ear.
“One more round —”
“You’ve done plenty.” He pressed, gently, until your hands stilled under his, and felt your entire body resist it. “You know she was gone before we could’ve even done anything —”
“She’s been my patient for years —”
Jack knew then that while you may have been an excellent doctor, his senior resident that had bloomed under his mentorship but still could’ve gone without him and done just the same, it wasn’t a good feeling to wonder if the job would dim you the way it had him.
“I know.” He kept his hands over yours with enough pressure so as to not let you drive them down again. “That’s why it’s yours to call. But you’ve gotta call it, Doctor.”
Your breath hitched as you turned your neck to face him, and there was a pool brimming on your lashline that you kept at bay, nodding. Your hands under his stopped straining upward, and he felt the exact second you accepted it, for it moved through your shoulders and down your spine and left you a little smaller standing there, the fight trickling into the moment after, which Jack always thought was worse.
“Time of death,” you said, forcing your voice back into the procedural tone, “oh-three-forty-one.” You peeled your gloves off finger-by-finger.
His hand found the small of your back after taking the minute, leading you to the little family consult room with the boxed tissues and fake ficus with a couch that had absorbed more bad news since longer than you or he had worked there. He shut the door with the flat of his hand and let the floor’s noise cut to a hum through the drywall.
You stood in the middle of the room with your arms crossed, holding yourself, and stayed silent.
Jack propped himself against the table, arms folded, as he breathed out a small sigh through his nose. He knew you weren’t a talker after the bad ones. Some residents came out of a loss with their mouths running, narrating it into something survivable, and some went quiet and small and had to be waited out, and you were the second kind. So he waited.
You broke it eventually, like he always knew you would have. “I’ve got a butterscotch she gave me seven months ago in my locker still,” you murmured, craning your neck so you were looking at the ceiling. You wiped under your eyes with the heel of your hand roughly.
“Think I’ve got one, too,” he murmured, wincing as he tried to shift his weight.
It had been building up for the past few hours, a hot ring of wrong down below the knee where the socket had gone slick and furnace-warm because it was past hour fourteen, when he’d sweated the fit and never changed the liner because there’d been no window that wasn’t already accounted for. He shifted his weight off it, trying again, and reached down to thumb the release, breaking the seal.
He let out a short, punched out sigh as he pulled himself down onto the chair behind him, one hand balancing himself on the table. “Sorry,” he gruffed out, jaw clenching.
Your eyes flickered down to the prosthetic limb he was balancing against the pole of the table and you were already moving before he could finish apologizing. You never asked if he needed a hand. You’d learned sometime during your second year that asking him gave him a chance to say no, and you’d quit handing him that chance sometime during your second year, so now you just came. You went down on one knee at the pole of the table.
“Don’t say sorry,” you mumbled, eyes not meeting him.
His jaw stayed tight and he didn’t fight it, fight you. That was a formality and you both knew it, a thing he did with his shoulders and not his hands, but he watched the top of your head and thought — like he always did, each time, and never said out loud — there was no one else on god’s green earth he’d let do this in the way you did. Not the prosthetist, who did it clinically. Not the VA, who did it tired. You did it each time like it was nothing and everything at once, as though this something not worth remarking on.
He very badly wanted to thank you, despite how small he always felt when you did this. He wanted to tell you that you were, without question, better at this than anyone who was paid to do it.
Your fingers found the socket and went for the liner because you knew the fit went bad and the sweat before it went bad anywhere a person could see, knew he’d have to run it slick and furnace-hot than spend the fourteen minutes off the floor. You rolled it back with the flat of your thumb, easing the trapped heat out of it, and he felt the pressure of the ring of raw below his knee and had to clench his jaw to not let the relief show on his face. You spared him anyway by keeping your eyes down where they’d been.
“You’ll strip your skin doing this,” you said conversationally, the roughness still present in your voice from the code. “You know that. You keep running it past twelve and one of these nights it’s cellulitis and I’m admitting you.”
“If only I could be so lucky.”
He ducked his head slightly, a part of him wanting to catch the reaction, and he saw how one corner of your lip was barely turned up.
You thumbed a line of red where the socket’s edge had bitten in, checking it, and your touch went careful around there. “This is new. The edge is catching higher than it was.”
“Went to a new liner last month,” he said, voice low. “Not broke in yet.”
“Then you break it on your days off. Not on a fourteen hour.” You finally looked up at him, shaking your head with this flat, fond expression he’d come to realize was your favorite way to look at him. “You’d write me up for less.”
“I’d write you up for a lot less,” he agreed, thinking back on the time you’d fought him tooth-and-nail over staying through a migraine, refusing, point-blank, to hand off a soft rule-out chest pain at eleven when the migraine had started very visibly began creeping up on you.
He’d caught you before you’d said a word about it because you’d begun squinting at the numbers and pressed the heel of your hand against one eye for a moment too long between patients, thinking nobody was watching. He was, he realized, always watching you in some way.
“Go home,” he’d said quietly, catching you by the elbow outside the curtain. “That’s not a request.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve got a migraine.”
“I’ve got a job.” Your jaw had clenched, stubbornly, and Jack had thought that even if he’d put all his strength into it, he wouldn’t have been able to unclench it for you. “I’m not handing off a chest pain because my head hurts. This guy has waited long enough for a bed. I’m not the priority here.”
He’d wanted to tell you that you were, actually, that you were exactly the priority, and watching you white-knuckle forms with your pupils blown different sizes from pain scared him more than any board full of critical pains ever had. But he’d just pulled down the light two notches, told the nurses to shadow eleven’s discharge, and put a bottle of water and two Tylenol on your desk without a word. And thank god, you’d taken the Tylenol and finished the shift standing up because sitting made the room tilt worse, and only taken on non-critical cases. You’d refused until the end that you should’ve gone home three hours earlier.
Now, you huffed something that was nearly a laugh, your first real once since the code, and went back to setting. And Jack sat there with his arms crossed in the dark with your hands on the worst-guarded part of him and the door shut against the whole floor, and thought about how he believed nobody deserved you. People were vile and sucked and cut in line and let doors swing shut behind them, and you handed out three dates to men who wrote sonnets in your voicemail and couldn’t clear a bar you’d never once lowered for anyone. He’d thought, more nights than he liked to admit, that these people had no idea what they were auditioning for.
His eyes snagged on you because there was nothing else in this small room worth looking at. There was still salt dried in your lashline from the code. You were a wreck and you were fixing his leg anyway, still half-shaking from a woman you couldn’t save, and it hadn’t occurred to you to stop and put yourself back together first. It never did. Jack had seen the care run out of you before you ever decided to spend it.
“I’m sorry about Mrs. Foley,” he said.
You shook your head, face still angled down, thumb pausing mid-motion. “I’ll be okay,” you murmured, lifting up one shoulder. “I just hate that she couldn’t get here sooner.”
“You did nothing wrong,” he said plainly. “Family said she’s been feeling off for two days now.”
“I know.” Your voice cracked, betraying the flatness you were trying to present. “Doesn’t make it easier.”
You lifted your head for a moment, then, looking at him with a sad smile he knew you were painting on to get him to stop talking.
He nodded stiffly, tipping his chin down. “Alright. Finish my leg and we’ll run this floor together.”
Up in radiology a few nights later, Jack had gone himself to sort out a reading that had been sitting long and he’d cornered a tech and got what he needed and was already halfway out the door, jacket sleeves still rolled from the last set of compressions, when he saw the guy standing off by the light boxes.
Younger. A resident, he supposed, in scrubs a size too crisp for someone who’d actually been on the shift long enough to earn wrinkles in them. He’d been watching Jack the whole time — Jack could feel it, the itch of being observed — shifting his weight heel to toe against the linoleum floor.
“Somethin’ on my face?” Jack said flatly because he really did have to get back to the floor.
“You’re — sorry, you’re Dr. Abbot, right?”
“Last I checked.”
The guy’s hand came out of his jacket’s pocket, and there was a piece of folded paper in it. Jack looked at it like it was a spider, hoping — no, praying — it had something to do with work.
“Could you give this to her?” the guy asked, and Jack’s hope died, as he stepped closer. “The senior resident on your shift. She’ll — she’ll know who it’s from.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack murmured, brows pulling in together. “You ever heard of texting, kid?”
“I did,” he said, and Jack could practically feel the heat radiating off of him. “She stopped answering, so I figured, maybe on paper, she’d actually —”
“Take the hint,” Jack grumbled, snatching the paper out of his hand. Then, as he turned to the door, he said, “You know I work in the ER?” When the guy only nodded quickly, he added, “You know she works in the ER?”
“I — yeah. Obviously.”
“Then you know she doesn’t need this.” He held up the paper between him and the guy. “She’s got enough on her plate without some guy too chicken to call her handing me a note like I’m her mailman.”
The guy opened his mouth, nose scrunching at Jack’s words, but nothing came out.
“Yeah.” Jack was already walking, note tucked in his pocket, done with the conversation. “Try calling next time. Or don’t.”
The guy looked at least a little sheepish, a little ashamed, and Jack thought good, he should feel ashamed. He wasn’t sure what the protocol in dating was now — he’d been just a little rusty and out of the stretch for a stretch of years he preferred not to count in single digits — but he was fairly certain that whatever the rules had curdled up to, this could not possibly be inside them.
He rode the elevator down with the note in his pockets, and he could feel the small stiff square of another man’s hope pressing over the outside of his thigh.
He found you at your desk, hands running restlessly through your hair as you spoke into the microphone, charting. The words were coming out of you bluntly, mechanic and after saying the same variation a thousand times over. There was a pen behind your ear you’d forgotten about and the residue of a lab value gone blue across the back of your hand where you’d scrawled it hours ago and never washed off.
He stood there for a second before you noticed him, and thought — not for the first time and with the same low irritation he always felt about it — that he had no earthly business being the man this got routed to.
Jack leaned down so his head hovered beside yours, scanning your work on the screen, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, head tilted to read your screen at an angle that had nothing to do with actually needing to see it.
“The man wants an espresso martini?” he asked, furrowing his brows as he read over your notes, right by your ear.
You jumped just slightly and swivelled on your stool to face him, then back at the screen. “Shit — Jack. Announce yourself.” You scanned the words on your notes, shaking your head and already backspacing. “No, that was me talking to myself. Stupid mic picked it up.”
“Long as it’s just the one,” he drawled, staying there in your space a little longer, watching the side of your face instead of the screen now. “Those things sneak up on you.”
“Speaking from experience?” You turned on your stool to face him fully, chin tilting up to meet his eyes, something playful and a little challenging in it.
“I’ve got a couple decades on you. Everything’s snuck up on me.”
You held his gaze a little longer, then looked away first, tongue coming out over your lips for a second. He took a small satisfaction in not being the one who blinked first.
He blew out a breath through his nose, remembering, with reluctance now, what he’d actually come here to do. “Speaking of sneaking up.” He pulled out the note from his pocket. “I got something to deliver to you —”
You furrowed your brows when he handed it to you. “Secret admirer?” you asked jokingly.
He barked out a short laugh. “Nothin’ secret about it. You ignoring some radiology fellow?”
You grimaced, opening the note and scanning over the words quickly. He could’ve left, but stayed instead and watched you read it. The frown only pulled deeper, and he saw your eye twitch once as you scanned the words.
Against his better judgement, he murmured, “That bad?”
“Uh — no, it’s okay.” You shrugged stiffly.
“Huh,” he breathed out, studying you outright now. “Wonder what you’re doin’ to these guys to get them so wound up.”
You chuckled, mostly to yourself. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
His chest tightened at that. It was unfair how you could make anything to him sound like something he’d been waiting to hear. He swallowed. “Suppose I would.”
“That an offer, Dr. Abbot?”
“Might be,” he said, shrugging one shoulder.
You laughed — surprised, the tension in your shoulders breaking slightly — and shook your head, folding the note back up. “You’re ridiculous. Well, thank you for getting it to me. I’m sorry he bothered you with this —” You swivelled, placing the note on your desk before picking up your phone. “That’s really weird.”
“That’s one word for it,” Jack said, and left it there, because you’d already turned and had your phone in one hand and the microphone in the other. The small furrow was back between your brows, and he’d learned there was a point past which pushing you got him a brighter, smaller version of whatever you were covering.
He drifted toward the far end of the station where Mateo was crouched at the crash cart running his palm along the drawers, checking seals, restocking and checking the fact of it on slower nights like this.
“She okay?” Mateo asked, snapping the drawer, seemingly having caught the interaction.
“Oh, you know.” Jack leaned a shoulder into the wall, arms crossing. “The belle of our ball. Can’t clock in without collecting a proposal.”
Mateo huffed. “She loves love.”
“That she does.” Jack watched you across the station, the phone lit against your ear now. “Don’t know why she keeps doing that to herself, though.”
“She’s an optimist.” Mateo clicked a seal into place, then moved down the cart. “Thinks someone’s gonna turn out different.”
Jack hummed, then, because the question had been sitting low and unlovely for a couple hours, he asked, “You two give it a run ever?”
Mateo turned his neck to look up at Jack. “Me and —” He jutted his thumb behind him to vaguely gesture at you. “Her?”
“Mhm.” Jack kept his eyes on you. “You’re close.”
“Nah.” Mateo went back to the cart, shaking his head as he chuckled softly. “I don’t think I’d pass a single one of her tests. Besides, I got my eye on someone.”
“Apparently I don’t make the list either, I guess,” Jack murmured.
Mateo laughed through his nose, eyeing Jack with something new now. “You want to?”
Jack caught it, reaching his palm and smacking it against Mateo’s curls with no force. “No. Now, do your job.”
“I am —” He laughed through the words, eyes scanning over Jack’s stiffened posture now. “It’s good you don’t, then. Couldn’t handle her anyway.”
“Sure, I could,” Jack said immediately.
Mateo’s head turned again, lips curving upwards at Jack’s words, and he felt momentarily blindsided by his own mouth, entirely too honest for something that had started as a joke.
“Sure, you could,” Mateo teased, drawing out the words.
“Shut it.” Jack grabbed a box of gloves off the cart and set it down two shelves lower than it needed to go, purely to do something with his hands that didn’t involve reaching for Mateo’s collar. “Wasn’t a real question.”
Couldn’t handle you? As if he didn’t know, without having to think about it, that you took the stairs two at a time instead of the elevator when you were annoyed and needed somewhere to put your extra energy, or that you’d started drinking your coffee black on nights a patient reminded you of someone, syrup and cream abandoned, like sweetness felt wrong to have that shift. As if he hadn’t noticed, months ago, that you hummed the same four off-key notes from a jingle neither you nor Jack could place when a chart was boring you to death, or that you double-checked every single IV line now, ever since one bad mistake in your first year. He could very well handle you, he simply hadn’t been given the chance to do so.
Most of the time, Jack was fine with watching your love life play out in 3D. More often than not, he knew they’d never work out. You were just too good for anyone who came sniffing, and there was a grim comfort in that, in knowing the fellows and the nurses would wash through and out and leave you exactly where he found you, three feet down the counter from him, close enough to keep.
Tonight the comfort wasn’t coming. Mateo’s accidental interrogation had rubbed Jack wrongly, somewhere he had yet to fully locate yet, and was sitting in his chest like a splinter he kept forgetting was there until he turned the corner over the night, saw you, and noticed it was there. He should’ve let it stay as nothing, but his brain had apparently decided three hours later was the correct time to relitigate the whole exchange, turning it over at odd intervals between patients like a tongue worrying a chipped tooth.
It was the bad sort of slow in the ER, the sort that let his brain fill up with things he’d have no time for on a real night. Ellis had wandered over to your desk with two energy drinks and placed her arms loosely beside your computer.
Jack was distantly aware he had misplaced labs to hand back to you because they’d gotten lost in the system, and he told himself that was the whole reason his body had started moving in your direction.
“I got a rundown from Marge,” Ellis said, dropping into an empty stool beside you. “Apparently he wrote it out of the OR.”
“You’re joking,” you muttered. “I don’t understand it.”
Jack stood there with the labs in his hand, close enough to hear it.
“I’m still wondering if I should respond,” you were saying, half into your hands. “Is this romantic? This one’s never happened before.”
Ellis laughed slightly with you, and the two of you had built one of those small pockets that slow nights sometimes allowed, thirty seconds of being people instead of clinicians.
Jack set the labs down at the edge of your keyboard harder than he meant to, the papers slapping flat against the desk, and both of you looked up at him like he’d grown two heads. Fuck — had he? It sure felt like he was operating off of whatever chemical cocktail his brain had whipped up for nights like this, some ugly little compound of jealousy and exhaustion. He was fairly sure if you pulled his labs right now they’d look like a man in the middle of a bad reaction to something not yet figured out in the scientific world.
“Labs on eight got lost.” His palm stayed on the sheet for a few seconds too long, some instinct telling him to keep his hand on something solid before the rest of him did something stupid. “You’ll want to recheck the trop.”
His eyes cut, against every ounce of better judgement he had left, to the note still folded in your hand, the same one he’d carried down like it was radioactive, the same note that had clearly done something for you that four years of Jack standing next to you clearly hadn’t. An unreasonable, low feeling creeped up behind his ribs at the sight of it, hot and out of proportion to a piece of folded-fucking-paper.
Ellis’s smile went uncertain as he felt her gaze snag on him.
You blinked up at him, and whatever had been sitting easy in your face a second ago curdled itself away, the corners of your mouth retreating. He knew this same retreat, had watched you recalibrate your muscles, swiftly, built to be unreadable against anyone who hadn’t spent four years learning your face.
His stomach dropped and heat climbed up the back of his neck, jaw tightening on its own. He hated that his body had learned to answer you the way it answered a motor alarm. He hated more that some raw, cornered part in him — still smarting about Mateo’s offhand comment and sore from that folded note — felt it wasn’t soothed.
You blinked up at him, and the laugh faded off your face, and you said, easily, warm, “Yeah — course. I’ll get right on that.”
He shrugged up one shoulder, lips pressing into a thin line. He turned, already walking away. “Whenever there’s a gap on your social calendar, I guess.”
He heard the small silence that opened behind him, and he could practically imagine you and Ellis looking at each other. Then, he heard you push back from the desk, the stool wheels catching, and your footsteps coming after him like he’d known they would, because you were the last person to let something like that go.
“Hey.” You fell into step beside him, voice pitched low, still giving him more benefit than the doubt had earned in the last ten seconds. “What was that about?”
“Nothing.” He tilted his neck up slightly to do a quick scan of the board, some stubborn muscle in his neck refusing to let him meet your eyes. “Got a department to run.”
“And you’ve been running it great. You just became weird right now.” He could feel you working it over beside him, shifting on your feet as you toed the line between resident and the hard-won territory neither of you had ever named. “Jack.”
“You want to laugh about your shitty dates, that’s your business,” he said instead of letting it go, sounding too far from the man who’d had his hands hovering over yours an hour ago, watching you put in a chest tube, telling you that you’d done well. “Do it a little quieter. This is an ER, not a lunch table.”
His words stopped you for half a step. Jack kept walking, an ugly, cowardly momentum carrying him three more steps before you caught back up.
He heard you recalibrate your voice in real time when you said, “I was charting on a slow shift,” carefully. “You’ve made worse jokes when it’s even more busy. What’s this about?”
“It’s about you treating this place like it’s your dating pool and not your place of work.” The words came out much uglier than he meant, and he didn’t have it in him to call them back. “It’s not professional. It reflects on the department. Reflects on me. Somebody’s gotta say it, and apparently that’s me, since you clearly enjoy it too much to stop.”
You stopped walking altogether this time. He turned to face your stillness whole, then, and found your eyes narrowed at him, looking like you’d been hit from a direction you hadn’t been completely guarding against.
He let out a breath, fingers going up to his forehead to wipe at sweat that wasn’t there. “I’m just saying what —”
“I’m sorry,” you said, voice going level and courteous, as you nodded quickly. “You’re right. You’re my attending, it reflects on you. I’ll keep my personal life out of work.”
“That’s not —” he tried, but you were already turning away, shoulders squared and chin level, professional armor snapping into place just like he’d told you to. It should have made him feel better to watch you take it so cleanly, to not make a big deal out of it. All it made him feel was like something had been surgically removed from him.
“Stop —” he tried again, to your back now, and the sentence died somewhere between his teeth and the air. That was okay. There was no end to the sentence that didn’t sound worse than the beginning anyway.
He blew out a sharp breath through his nose, standing in the middle of the floor with his hand still half-raised toward you, fingers curling back into his palm when he realized you weren’t there to reach. Jack felt, distantly, uselessly, like the only thing standing still in the entire building.
“Great going,” he heard Lena say, trailing past him, a tray tucked against her hip, not even breaking stride. “You got rid of the one entertainment we’ve got around here.”
His shoulders stiffened, and he caught up with her in three steps, jaw working around words that wanted to spill out defensively and came out simply tired. “It’s not entertainment if she keeps getting hurt,” he grumbled. “She’s not a show. Stop treating her like one.”
“Didn’t look like she was the one getting hurt tonight,” she said, rounding a corner and leaving him standing there.
Jack let out a low groan, running a palm down the lower half of his face, and dropped his hand only when he’d scrubbed enough friction into his jaw to feel it sting a little, which was at least a sensation he’d chosen, at least tonight. He stood there a second longer, staring at nothing in particular. His hands found his hips on reflex.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, and dragged both hands back through his hair, gripping once at the roots before letting go.
He rolled his neck, felt it pop unsatisfyingly, and pushed off the wall he hadn’t even realized he was leaning against. His leg fucking ached, the burn starting behind his knee. He ignored it like he always did and started walking anyway, jaw still held tight, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he could physically hold himself together with the seams of his own black scrubs.
It was by the lockers after hand-off that Jack saw you next. Both of you had conveniently managed to work over-time; he because there was nothing to get home to, and you — he’d heard through the grapevine — because one of your patient’s little sister was coming in toward close, and you simply wanted to talk with her instead of handing the situation off to one of the day residents.
Usually, nobody had asked you to stay when you did. Most times, there was no version of staying that showed up in your favor; he and Shen were gone, so there was no attending grading you on it; no hours that counted. It was just for a kid who was going to get bad news from a face she’d seen before, so you cost yourself hours of sleep you most definitely needed to be the soft spot for a stranger’s little sister, and hadn’t mentioned it to a soul, and he knew you would’ve been embarrassed if he brought it up.
He found you using the little mirror inside your locker to apply some kind of pink-tubed gloss with one hand while the other ran its fingers through your hair. Jack pursed his lips, eyeing you from the doorway, because he was pretty sure you’d done something different to it in the last ten minutes.
“Look nice,” he tried, biting the bullet and walking toward his own locker. “Goin’ somewhere?”
You caught his eyes in the mirror instead of turning around. “Just breakfast,” you said, and there was none of the earlier lilt in it, the warmth that you’d always aimed at him gone functional. You capped the gloss with more force than it needed and dropped it into your bag.
Jack stood there a second too long with his hand over his own locker without opening it. He’d expected — and he knew he was more optimistic than usual for doing so — your easy back-and-forth, his slip-up from earlier forgotten. He wasn’t sure what to do with the quiet or you not looking at him properly, hairbrush working through your hair in short strokes.
He’d saved around thirty lives tonight, and that was what he was good at. He was not good, and had never claimed to be good, at the aftermath of hurting a person he’d have put his own body between a stretcher and wall for, without meaning to, over something that had never been about the radiology fellow at all.
He opted out of opening his locker and chose instead to lean his bicep against the locker, eyeing you in front of him. “Mad at me?” he murmured.
You let out a short breath, shaking your head, and he tracked all your micro-expressions through the mirror. “On the clock?”
“Well, we’ve both been off it for a while now,” he said, watching the shape of your mouth in the mirror, waiting for it to give something away. It didn’t. “But no. Asking as your —” He stopped himself, because ‘friend’ seemed not to be the honest word though it was the first one that popped up. “Off the clock. Whatever I am to you right now.”
You set the hairbrush down on the little shelf with more care than the moment needed. “It’s okay, Jack,” you said, shaking your head.
“Don’t think it is. Try again.”
You watched him for a second in the mirror, then you turned.
“It’s just embarrassing,” you said, and the words came out smaller than anything he’d heard out of you in years. You crossed your arms over your chest. “I respect you and I hate that you’d think for one second I don’t take this place seriously.” Your voice cracked on the last word, just barely, and you pressed your lips together. “So, yeah. It’s embarrassing to have my attending confirming I’m exactly what people think I am.”
He was shaking his head before you could even finish the sentence. “Nobody thinks —”
“You do,” you said, voice rising slightly. “So, off the clock, I’m embarrassed, and tonight, I’m going to be your resident. Because I agree with you. It’s been unprofessional of me to keep dating within the hospital —” You threw your arms up halfway by your side, and you let out a short laugh that came out dry and wrong. “And I hate that you’ve probably been thinking it for four years.”
“I haven’t,” he said too fast. God, he’d come here to make tonight better for you, not to make you re-evaluate all your years working with him. “Sure, I thought it was none of my business how you spend your good nights off. Didn’t stop me from thinking they didn’t deserve ‘em.”
You rolled your eyes. “You’re just saying that now ‘cause you feel bad.”
“Wish it were that simple,” he said, and chose to leave it unelaborated because it wasn’t that simple and he had no intention of explaining exactly why. “Half the time, you know it’s not gonna work out. You’re breaking my heart by making me watch you break yours.”
You blinked, and he watched the fight loosen out of you by inches. “It’s just a free breakfast, Jack. Nothing to get your heart broken over.”
Jack let out a huff through his nose, mouth opening to say what, he didn’t know. “Is that all? ‘Cause I can get you free breakfast for the rest of your life.”
You laughed, disbelieving, through your nose, some of the night’s weight finally cracking off of you. “You’ve got a weird way of apologizing.”
“Just to my favorite resident.” He pointed his index finger at you, lazy, and pushed himself off the lockers. His shoulder blades left a faint dust-print on the metal where he’d been leaning. He thumbed in the combination without looking at the dial — muscle memory, years of the same locker — and the door swung open with a rusted squeak. He pulled out his bag. “So?”
“So what?”
“You ditch the fellow.” He slung the bag up over his shoulder, close enough now that he caught the tail-end of the perfume you’d lightly spritzed over yourself. “I buy.”
You looked at him for a second too long, lips pushing to one side, as though you were gauging whether this was a bit or not, another line he’d tossed and wanted to let die on its own. He stood there, jaw set and features relaxing to show you he did mean it, more than he wanted to admit, if he was being honest with himself.
“You’re serious.”
“Do I look like I’m not?” He nodded once at your locker, your bag sitting on the shelf. “Grab your stuff. We’re going.”
“Fine,” you said finally, reaching over and zipping your backpack all the way before throwing it over one shoulder. “Can you drive? I’ve been taking the subway.”
“Why?” he asked drily. “You’ve got a car.”
Jack realized, as he watched you slide in across from him and folding both hands around the coffee before it was all the way poured, that he’d never once been on a date where the woman had no idea it was one.
It wasn’t lost on him what that made him, a man old enough to know better, letting a thing be one thing on his side of the table and another thing entirely on yours, saying nothing to square the difference. But he’d meant what he’d said, and he was going to feed you.
You ordered a short stack, eggs, hash brown, decaf on loop. She wrote it down, definitely having heard worse from better.
“Thanks for the treat, Jack,” you said when Dina left, bringing the rim of your cup to your lips. “Don’t think I could’ve done another breakfast to let him down gently.”
“We have to make some changes to your lifestyle,” Jack replied, voice rough, as he eyed you.
“Oh, yeah?” you murmured. “We?”
“Well, I did have to deliver a note to you today. In all my life working here, that’s never happened.”
You laughed around the rim of your cup. “In my defense, I don’t think anyone’s wrote me a note out of an OR either. That’s a first for both of us.”
“Glad we share the experience.”
Dina came by with a pot and topped you off without being asked, and placed the food in front of you. Jack watched you reach for the salt before your fork had even touched the eggs, shaking it twice over the plate.
“You’re gonna give yourself a stroke by forty.”
“You’re gonna give me a stroke right now if you comment on my food.” But you set the shaker down after the third shake, which he noticed and had to bite back a smile.
Dina dropped his plate in front of him — bacon, eggs, no pancakes — and you were reaching for it with a piece of your fork before she’d even finished setting his fork down. He gave you a faux-frown, picking up his fork and, without looking, spreading a piece of your hashbrown off the opposite plate in trade. He wasn’t sure when the two of you had started stealing bites and sips off of each other’s stuff, only that it’d started somewhere and calcified into something neither of you mentioned.
“Rude,” you said, mouth already full.
“Learned it from you,” he muttered, nudging his plate an inch closer to your side of the table, which you took full advantage of.
Dina’s radio crackled through something twangy and close-to-familiar behind the counter, competing with the clatter of a skillet somewhere in the back, the whole place smelling like batter and grease soaked into decades of countertop, syrup that had dried a hundred small amber rings nobody had ever fully scrubbed off.
“I’ve never been here before.” You absentmindedly cut the hashbrown in half as your eyes raked over the place. “This a regular spot for you?”
“Since before you joined,” he said easily, but his brows furrowed as he realized he’d been coming here alone for years. He was in the same booth when he could get it, ordered the same order, and it struck to him only now, watching you eat your hashbrowns, how much smaller and less lonely a booth felt with you taking up the other half of it. “Used to be the only quiet I got on some weeks.”
You hummed. “And now?”
“Guess the quiet’s pretty negotiable.” He shrugged. “I can go without it.”
You smiled down at your plate, something easy working at the corner of your mouth. A thread of syrup had gathered at the seam of your lips — you hadn’t noticed, too busy considering his answer — and before he’d cleared the impulse with the rest of himself, his thumb was already moving, catching it at the corner quickly, no different than when he swiped under your lashline for salt after a bad night.
You stayed still, having gotten used to his hands somewhere during your residency.
“You’re a mess,” he said, wiping his thumb off on the paper napkin folded under his elbow.
“You’ve got coffee on your scrub top,” you said, eyes flicking down to his chest. His brows furrowed and he looked down, and you were right. “Pot, kettle.”
He’d been about to say something else, he could’ve sworn it, but had lost every word of it watching you smile so unguarded, free enough to let him look at you. He had to reach for his coffee just to have something to do with his hands.
When the check came, folded in its little plastic tray, you both reached for it at once. Your hand landed flat over his knuckles. Neither of you moved it for a second, for his hand stayed exactly where it was, broad and unmoving under yours, and something unspoken passed through the two inches of fornica between your faces as he raised a brow at you. He slid the tray out from under you slowly.
“Said I’m buying,” he said, shaking his head slightly.
The drive back had been quieter than the one there had been. It was nearing ten in the morning, and he knew both of you had stayed up longer than intended, especially for two people who had to clock back in in a shorter amount of time than he deemed plausible to reset completely.
He’d cracked the window down an inch, and the air coming through carried the smell of wet pavement and the sound of a garbage truck grinding its gears three streets over. Your neighborhood, he was learning, woke up slow; there was a paperboy on a bike, a guy in scrubs different from yours locking up his own car after a shift that wasn’t at the PTMC, and Jack drove through it with two fingers loose over the wheel. Neither of you had bothered with the radio.
You’d gone somewhere billowy around your third cup of decaf, all the sharp edges of the night replaced with something looser and sleepier, and you gave him directions in a voice gone thick from exhaustion as you were likely starting to feel it behind your eyes.
He pulled his car along the curb and let it idle, one shoe braced against the floorboard, watching the numbers of your building.
“Gonna sleep?” he asked.
“Gonna try.” You were already working the bag strap over your shoulder, hair falling loose out of the knot you’d put it up in at some point at the diner, strands of it catching the early light. “I’ve got no idea how you do this then take SWAT calls.”
“You’d be able to do it, too, if I put you on the field.”
You mumbled something, letting your head drop against the window for a second, before picking itself back up. “Stop threatening me, Jack.”
He watched you fight your eyelids, his mouth pulling up at the corners at the sight. “C’mon. Get inside before I gotta carry you up.”
You snorted, half-hearted. “You can’t. You’d throw your hip out.”
“Try me.” He was already rounding the hood before you’d gathered your bearings, boots loud on the quiet street, and you let out another laugh and let him get there first, too tired to argue about who gets to open what.
He walked you up the cracked path, palm settling at the small of your back, and you leaned back into it, half your weight given over without you noticing it.
At the door, you fumbled with your keys out from under a granola wrapper and a capless pen, missed the lock twice, and gave up trying on the third. You turned to face him instead with your back against the frame and your bag slowly sliding off one shoulder.
“Thank you,” you said, words coming out loose and filtered by the exhaustion even as you tried to meet his eyes head-on. “For the — everything. The explanation. And the breakfast.”
Jack felt his lips curve up, fingers flexing at his sides. “Anytime.”
“And for driving me there — thank you. And for the drive back.”
“Uh-huh. You gonna go inside?” he said, voice going quieter as he looked down at the ground, at how the toes of your shoes were almost touching. “Or keep thanking me until you fall asleep standing up?”
You cocked your head to the side, your lips moving upwards into a fuller smile. His own mouth curved as he shifted on his feet slightly, closing the barely-there inch between his shoes and yours.
“Jack?”
He hummed, and you went up slightly onto your toes before he’d finished deciding what to do with you. Or maybe he’d moved in first, or maybe there was no real order to it at all. His mouth found yours somewhere in that uncertainty, slowly despite it, because he’d already worked out every version of this moment and this one had simply appeared in front of him.
His hand came up to cradle the side of your jaw, thumb settling into the soft hollow just beneath your ears. Your skin was warm despite the cold snap in the air, much softer than he’d let himself imagine, and he felt the exact second your breath caught against his mouth, a small stutter that made his fingers curve around your jaw, index resting against your cheekbone.
He kept it slow, it was the only thing he had any real control over right now, the pace of it instead of the fact of it. He used what little he had left, dragging his mouth against yours, like he could somehow make up for four years of nothing by refusing to rush the first thirty seconds of something. His other hand found your waist, and his palm felt how your back curved into him, the hitch of your ribs on an inhale, and he pressed you back the last inch against the doorframe more to ground himself.
Your fist found the front of his canvas jacket, dragging him in the last stubborn space he’d been too careful to close himself, and a sound came out of his chest that embarrassed him a little. He felt you smile against his mouth, and his entire body felt warm at having been caught enjoying this entirely as much as he was.
He tilted his head so his forehead pressed against yours and pulled his mouth away. His lips jutted out slightly, feeling suddenly empty and unwilling to put the full distance back between the two of you.
Your eyes were still shut, and you were breathing unevenly. “Thank you,” you murmured.
He huffed a short laugh, and in it, realized how breathless he, too, was.
You tipped your chin back up, already chasing him.
Jack felt the want knot up inside him, greedy and unreasonably leaning back in to meet you halfway before the rest of him had caught up and made him stop. He made a small sound in his throat and pinched his eyes shut, letting you get right up to the edge of it, breath already tangling with his, wanting so badly to just let it happen, before his finger came up between you, pressed light against your bottom lip to stop you a hair short. It was more for his own sake than the words he remembered you telling someone years ago ringing in his head.
“Ah-ah.” His voice came out rough with want, entirely at odds with his actions. “Your rule. Only one kiss after the first date. I’m trying —” he exhaled hard, almost dramatically, “— trying real hard here to make it to the second.”
“Huh?” Your eyes peeled open. “This was a date?”
“Best one you’ve had I’m guessing, with the way you’re breaking your rules.” His finger stayed right where it was, and he watched your eyes struggle to focus, still glassy from the kiss. He could feel the warm huff of breath breaking unsteady against his fingertip, could feel your mouth soft and parted underneath it, waiting on him.
You pressed a peck against his finger instead, your mouth barely dragging against his skin as a shy smile formed behind it that he felt more than saw. “Maybe.”
“Well, good.” He smiled, despite himself, and pushed himself off your forehead, opting instead to press his lips there. “Get some sleep,” he murmured against your hairline, lips lingering a little longer there. “Might be able to get a full seven hours.”
“Will you?”
“Doubt it.” He pulled back enough to look at you properly, thumb tracing a line along your cheekbone — his touch feather-light, tracking the exact curve of it, memorizing the route — before he made himself drop his hand entirely, fingers curling loosely at his sides because suddenly he had no idea what to do with them without you under them. “Kinda got a lot on my mind now.”
“Yeah?” You bit back a smile, still not quite steady on your feet. “Anything you wanna share with the class?”
“Not a chance.” He bent a fraction and hooked two fingers under the strap of your bag where it’d slid down to your elbow, dragging it slowly back up to your shoulders, knuckles grazing your arms the whole way. “You’ll find out. Eventually.”
He forced himself to step off the mat — one step back, then the second, putting real distance between you now — forcing ease into his expression that he definitely wasn’t feeling. He stopped a few feet away from you anyway, unable to fully commit to walking away, watching you stunned and still in your doorway, mouth a little kiss-soft. He felt so completely helpless and pleased at the sight. “Text me when you’re up and I’ll get to planning date two.”
You raised a hand into a wave, fingers curling in the air.
“Bye, Jack,” you said, and his name came out of your mouth softer than you probably meant it to, smooth and cushy the way it never sounded on shift.
He lifted his chin up at you once and made himself turn, finally, finding the path back to his car. He made it to the curb before he looked back again, and you were still standing there, one hand braced on the door, watching him go with an expression he was sure he was going to think of the entire drive home.
summary: the three times jack abbot compared you to someone else vs. the one time you were exactly who he wanted but couldn't have anymore.
tags: jack abbot x reader, angst, deep insecurities, jack compares you to samira, robby, and his late-wife (I named her alice), a few scene changes but it's for the plot, trying out [name] but if I don't like it, it's back to y/n for all of you, jack is lowkey an asshole on accident (thinks he's meaning well by complimenting others, but tears you apart in the process), medical inaccuracies, hurt/no comfort (at least for jack), eventual breakup, special end scene guest star, age gape (28-32/50), heavily inspired by lacy by olivia rodrigo (which I suggest listening to while you read) and all the feels that come with that, 18+ MDNI
notes: this hurt to write, and this better hurt y'all in the best angsty way possible! just a reminder that my requests for the hatosyverse are open, and that I'm doing smutty blurbs to build my writing abilities, enjoy!
word count: 7.4k
You didn't understand how you'd been able to score Jack Abbot.
Somehow, the universe decided that you'd be his match, the one he chose to go home to at the end of a bad shift, the one who'd been able to give him the most comfort during his darkest days. You knew what you'd be getting into: the PTSD, the depression, shifts where he felt more like your boss than your partner. But you believed you could get through it; Jack was older, and you liked to think you were mature enough to handle anything thrown your way.
For almost a year, your relationship bloomed in stolen glances across the Pitt, hidden moments in supply closets, and late-night baths spent at his house trying to bury yourself next to his heart. Jack was it for you, and you let yourself dream about a future, ring on your finger, possible children running around the house you shared. The two of you rarely fought, often choosing to apologize for anything under the sun before arguments grew too large for your feelings.
Never once did Jack make you feel inadequate, even if you had voiced early on that you truly didn't understand why he picked you. Compared to his gorgeous salt-and-pepper curls and freckled skin and large stature, you felt plain. Your hair was always pulled into a slick ponytail, makeup caused acne breakouts after 12-hour shifts, and what little time you had to yourself, you spent it at home, reading a book, instead of going out with friends and colleagues. People looked at you without so much as a second glance. Jack, on the other hand, made heads turn and nurses blush if they somehow caught his attention long enough for him to send a look their way. You couldn't remember the last time you went through a shift where a female (or sometimes male) patient failed to make a comment about the sexy, silver fox doctor.
You never made it more than it was: harmless flirting from people Jack would never think about again once they got discharged.
After, you and he had gone through the HR meetings, the contract signings, and the swearing that your relationship wouldn't get in the way of saving lives or have Jack start playing favorites. To further this, around the 9-month mark of being Jack's, they plucked you from the safety of the nightshift and dropped you right into Robby's hands. But this was how it was going to be from now on; there was no point in arguing as long as you got to keep Jack.
For three months, you persevered. Finding a groove with an already well-oiled shift proved to be harder than it looked. People talked. Nurses gossiped. Doctors speculated. You, through it all, kept your chin high. Their words didn't get to dictate your relationship. During handoffs, Jack still swept you into his arms and kissed you like a man coming back from war. He still told you that dinner was in the fridge once you got home and napped. He still continued to send updates during his shift, text messages from the separate night-shift group chat made after your departure chiming loudly while you ate. And most important of all, he still loved you.
However, nothing could have prepared you for the three times you felt the most unloved.
I care, I care, I care, like perfume that you wear, I linger all the time, watchin', hidden in plain sight, ooh, I try, I try, I try, but it takes over my life, I see you everywhere, the sweetest torture one could bear
"Hey, Dana," you called out while swimming through the chaos only brought on by a 4th of July shift.
At her name, Dana looked up over the thin frames of her glasses, pausing momentarily to look your way before going back to her board. "Please don't tell me that the 36 hot dog guy is back."
You shook your head, hands coming to rest on top of the vinyl counter. "Not that I'm aware of."
"Thank heavens. What can I do for ya, hun?"
Leaning in, you did a quick glance around the department. "I heard Jack was here early?"
Her eyebrows almost rose to her hairline. "Yeah; he came in with one of his SWAT buddies. GSW to the man's neck, but it looks like he's going to be okay." She reached over and grabbed a tablet. "Actually, can you find Jack for me? He wanted an update ASAP."
Your fingers drummed against the counter anxiously before you took the tablet from her. "I was just about to ask if you'd seen him."
Dana glanced over your shoulder and stuck out her chin in the same direction. "Saw him duck into Room 15. Might be taking a breather; Lord knows he needs one after that raid." She gave you a knowing look, eyes twinkling with mischief. "Maybe you're exactly what he needs."
A rush of heat flooded your face, eyes darting away from hers. "I'll see if I can find him."
You turned away before she could say anything more, hands desperately holding the tablet to your chest. Your shoes squeaked against the tile floor, steps bringing you closer to the room Jack was supposedly in. Once at the door, you raised a hand to draw the curtain away, but the sound of voices—plural—had you stopping. Saliva pooled between your teeth as you listened closely.
"—is the hospital going to pay for it?"
There was a pause before Jack clearly grumbled, "I'll pay for it."
You slowly moved to the side next to the wall where the curtain didn't completely cut the room off. Through the slot, your eyes widened at the sight of a Jack, shirt off, pale chest, wound-care swab twirling in his fingers with Samira sitting in one of the chairs. In the next beat, she stood and walked right past the curtain slot, completely oblivious that you were right behind it. She stopped near the wall and grabbed a pair of gloves before snapping them on.
His brows furrowed. "What are you doing?"
She smiled before rounding to stand behind him. "What you clearly can't."
Begrudgingly, he handed over the swab.
"Did you make a chart?" she asked while dipping the cotton end into a wound cream.
Jack crossed his arms, and his shoulders rolled and dipped. "No. This can stay off the books. Don't need the paperwork from the hospital or police department."
Samira paused. "Would you rather me go get Dr. [Name]? I'm sure she could do this much better than I could."
"No," Jack responded, shaking his head. "She'd just panic about this. There's no need to throw her off her game."
Your stomach flipped. He thought you'd panic? Sure, you'd be worried, but it wasn't like you hadn't seem him hurt before. Whatever wound he had on his back wouldn't be the worst thing he'd come home with after a SWAT shift.
"Isn't she your girlfriend?" She began dabbing at his back, the swab coming back bloodied.
"Yeah, but it's different with you. I don't have to worry about you taking your time or being indifferent about this." He winced at a deeper brush into the graze. "She's not like you, Dr. Mohan. She wears everything on her sleeve. Really, she could learn how to be more level headed like you, Dr. Mohan. I've seen the way you handle traumas. We wouldn't be so in the low if we had about 10 more of you."
He ended with a chuckle like what he just said didn't feel like a knives to your stomach.
Is that what he really thought about you? That you should be more like Samira and her ability to stay cool through anything thrown at her? With a blink, your eyes glossed over.
Jack turned his head, neck twisting to he could meet Samira's eyes. "You won't tell her about this, right? Our little secret?"
You didn't stay to hear what she said, choosing to turn around before you could watch any longer. It was incredible that you were able to stay for so long, submitting yourself to a new kind of torture. Walking back to the nurses station, your steps slowed as if molasses coated the floor, its stickiness clinging to your shoes.
At your oncoming presence, Dana looked over. "Did you find him, hun?"
You forced yourself to not look back at the closed curtain. "Yeah, but he's in the middle of something right now. I'll just catch up with him later."
The tablet gave a small thud as you placed it back into the holder, and you desperately tried to find another patient to busy yourself with, specifically one furthest from Room 15. However, before you could grab one, a hand wrapped around your elbow and tugged.
"Hey, I need you for the incoming trauma," Langdon said as he dragged you with him. "Twenty-year-old female, unconscious for an unknown matter of time."
You nodded silently, allowing him to keep walking you like a dog on a leash until he stopped in front of the ambulance bay sliding doors. Your lungs expanded in a deep, wavering breath.
Now was not the time to panic. You could do this. You could be like Samira. You could show Jack that you could handle a trauma.
During your internal pep talk, the doors slid open, giving way for the gurney and two paramedics.
"BP is 140-over-92 and climbing. No relevant medical history. She woke up once on the way over and vomited before passing out again."
You quickly followed Langdon into the first trauma room and helped transfer her over onto the bed. Immediately, numbers started being shouted while you started your initial exam.
When nothing seemed to blare any red flags, Langdon started impatient as the woman kept deteriorating. Through it all, you willed your hands to stay steady, your mind calm while you mentally went through what could be the matter. You took a step forward, body positioning near her head so you could look at her pupils one more time, and that's when you smelled it: the acrid, fruity smell puffing out of her mouth as she struggled to breath.
You jerked back quickly. "Dr. Langdon, is there a history of diabetes or hyperglycemia? Her breath smells like rotting fruit."
Langdon looked over at you before leaning toward her face. He hissed a curse before barking for a blood sugar test. Your eyes widened when the screen flashed a 450 mg/dL.
"She's experiencing diabetic ketoacidosis," you breathed.
"Let's get her on an insulin drip, now," Langdon hissed, face pinched until he looked over at you with a softer expression. "Great job catching that and staying calm." He chuckled slightly. "Never seen you like this but keep it up."
You knew his words were meant to be encouraging, but all they did was send bile up your throat. Without saying anything more, you tore off the gloves and shoved them deep into a biohazard bin. You wanted to cry, wanted to find the nearest restroom and tug at your hair.
But that's not what Samira would do your mind provided; the thought ugly and green. She'd shrug it all off and keep working like nothing was the matter.
Your teeth ground together, shoulders squaring in tandem. If everyone would rather have you calm, you'd be calm. You'd tuck your heart away rather than show it to the patients who needed someone that wore it on their sleeve. You picked up another tablet at the nurses station and got back to work.
The rest of the fourth went by in a tornado. Systems went down after a cyberattack; fireworks boomed off in the distance; you stayed busy. Each of your patients were in and out at a lightning speed, and by the start of the night shift, you were ready to go home and cry your heart out into a pillow.
You'd seen Samira every so often in between patients and a small lunch break. Like always, she smiled at you and waved and chatted when she could, but her actions made you want to wither up like a dead flower. You couldn't help but stare at her, thinking that you should be more like the woman in front of you, mind comparing your features to hers at a rapid speed you couldn't stop. She somehow looked like an angel in the middle of a place jokingly nicknamed one of the seven layers of hell, skin clear and hair somehow perfectly put in a bun. You tried your best to match her enthusiasm, but the poison had already been drank.
On the contrary, the only time you really saw Jack was at the start of handoffs. He had helped with one trauma before going to the on-call room for a needed nap, and you hadn't wanted to talk to him then, scared of how he'd act around you.
"There you are, sweetheart," you heard him say as you finished up converting with Lena about the man in Room 5. "I've been looking for you. Thought you might have left without saying goodbye."
You winced slightly. "No; I've just been busy."
Jack hummed and smiled warmly at you, but the expression was tainted by his words earlier. "I heard. Langdon's been nothing but praising you for earlier. I'm proud of you."
"Sure you are," you muttered too lowly for him to catch. Your lips thinly stretched into a smile that didn't meet your tired eyes. "Thank you, Jack," you settled on instead.
His hazel eyes scanned over your face, and his smile slightly dropped. "Are you okay, though? You look a little down."
"I'm fine," you shot out. "Today's just been long, and I'm ready to get home."
Jack nodded. "I left food in the fridge for you, so make sure you eat it after you sleep for a bit."
"Got it."
He looked at you expectantly before rolling his eyes. "Come here."
Like it had been etched into your DNA, you listened and fell into his open arms, face tucking into his chest. He squeezed you tightly before placing a kiss to your temple.
"Proud of you," he said. "You do such a good job. We need so many doctors like you, my perfect girl."
Perfect felt like a twist of the knife, because if you were so perfect, why had he told Samira that he wished you were more like her?
I feel your compliments like bullets on skin. Dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnate, well, aren't you the greatest thing to ever exist?
As the weeks went on, Jack's words never left your soul, the damage irreparable in everything that you did.
Second guessing yourself had been a struggle you'd dealt with since an earlier age. Normally, Jack would be able to quiet all those thoughts; he had chosen you; he loved you. But now, as you second guessed everything you did, you also second guessed everything Jack said. You picked apart every encouragement, every compliment, every sweet promise he whispered in your ear.
What he said now couldn't be taken at face value, and you wondered if that feeling would ever go away. You'd asked him about the bullet graze a few days after the 4th, acting completely oblivious to what you knew. Like you thought, Jack assured you that he got it handled and for you to not worry about it, like that did anything to settle the rolling feelings in your stomach.
You tried your best to move on, knowing you'd only bring yourself down more if you dwelled too long about really how much Jack's words had affected you while he never said anything directly to your face. The idea that he wanted you to be like someone else made your heart clench tightly to the point you often wanted to call off work, hoping that you could just wallow in self pity for hours and hours.
But the Pitt did not care for you like that; it demanded twelve hour shifts and grueling doubles. So every day, you rolled out of bed before Jack got home and pulled up your big girl pants.
You worked through it. You'd learned how to stay calm, how to not panic under duress, and it killed you to admit that you'd become a better doctor because of it. You hardly ever hiccuped during a trauma, gaining compliments from the surgeons and Robby for your techniques that were close to flawless. For the smallest second, you would preen under their words before the ugly, repulsive reminder that they might not be real swallowed you down in a nasty gulp.
"Dr. [Name] follow me please," Robby called as he brushed past the nurses station where you were currently typing away at a chart, hands clutching a chart out in front of him to read. "Quickly."
You pushed up from the desk, chair rolling far behind you from the force of your legs. Not wanting to lose him, you rounded the counter and jumped into his long stride.
"Yes, Dr. Robby?" you asked.
As far as you knew, there weren't any incoming traumas and it was too late in the day for him to have questions about your patients that were currently waiting for a room.
Robby paused in front of an empty trauma room. "Jack just let me know that he found a man in need of medical attention and is bringing him in before handoffs, and I thought you could help him out." He handed you the tablet, already ready to go with updated information.
You took a quick glance over this. "Um, Dr. Robby, it looks like he'll need a pericardiocentesis."
"It's good that you know exactly what he'll need. What's the issue?"
Your eyes looked from the screen to his brown eyes. "I've never done one before."
He simply smiled at you and patted your shoulder. "That's why Jack's going to lead you through it. I would stay, but since he's coming in early, I'm going to head out."
You tried to quirk a smile. "Got a hot date waiting for you?"
A low chuckle shook his shoulders. "You got jokes. My bike needs some repairs, and today's the only day I can get it into the shop. But I know you'll be just fine. Your improvement in traumas will only grow if you step out of your comfort zone."
The automatic sliding doors slid open, and Jack plus a nurse wheeled a man through on a gurney. Jack's eyes lit up at the sight of you, but his brows pinched when he noticed Robby's bag slung over the taller man's shoulder.
"You leaving early, brother?" Jack questioned as he stepped past the two of you.
Robby's hand gently rested on your shoulder. "Yeah, but you two will have this handled."
You inhaled deeply, the weight of his hand and words pushing down on your chest.
Robby was counting on you. Don't fuck this up. Don't panic.
With the tablet tucked under your arm, you walked into the trauma room before pulling on a pair of gloves. Jack had already cut through the man's shirt.
"I need two 18-gage needles, one 9cm and one 15cm, a guidewire, dilator, and 8Fr pigtail catheter." He looked up toward Jesse. "Let's give him 10ml lignocaine 1%."
You quickly gather what he needed and placed him on the dressing that covered the side tray.
"Okay, Dr. [Name]," Jack said, lips twitching upwards at using your official name, "I need you to place an ECG electrode on the pericardiocentesis needle with a crocodile clip and insert. Once the tip touches the myocardium, the trace should show immediate ST elevation. Once that comes up, insert the wire to aspirate the fluid."
His words tumbled through your mind much too fast to the point that you wondered if he didn't know you'd never done this before. You pursed your lips as you tried to remember everything. In the grand scheme of things, your training provided everything that needed to be done.
Yet, there was a big difference between studying and actually doing the procedure.
You kept your breath steady as you readied the needle, clamping on a clip before turning the pointed end toward the man's chest. The first part went smoothly, and the needle went right through. However, instead of the consistent beeping that should have followed if the needle was in properly, an onslaught of alarms sounded through your ears.
You had missed something.
Jack whipped his head toward you and sneered. "You went too deep. I told you that the needle needed to touch the myocardium not go all the way through. Give it here."
He didn't even wait for you to transfer the needle over, hands already grabbing at it. His head bent down so he could see what was happening. With a practiced ease, he maneuvered the needle exactly where it should have been.
"Fuck," he whispered, "Robby wouldn't have done that. I don't know why he handed this off to you if he knew the patient would need a pericardiocentesis for tamponade."
You thickly swallowed pooling saliva to clear your throat. "Sorry."
"Just—" He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. "I'll finish up here. You go home."
You jolted just a bit. Go home?
"Jack, I can still assist. You're going to need—"
"We have it covered. Catheter is in place, and you'd just be standing around. You're good."
Suddenly, a wave of anguish flowed through your body. It was happening again. Jack had just added fuel to the ever growing fire of jealousy and self-loathing. The feeling sized your chest, and you stepped back from the bed, shaky hands ripping off the nitrile gloves.
You couldn't help the stressed wheeze that pushed from your lungs.
Don't panic. Don't panic. He didn't mean it. He was just stressed. He didn't know that you'd never done that before.
Numbly, you walked back to the nurses station and sat back down in front of the computer, but your hands didn't raise to the keyboard. Your mind had already taken over, spewing rotten things about yourself that you could fix.
Be like Samira. Be like Robby. Jack won't keep wanting you if you aren't like them.
Your tongue ran across your dry lips in an attempt to wet them, but even your mouth had gone parched.
"Is charting really that bad?" you heard Dennis ask you as she sat down at a computer to your left. "You look like someone just told you they flushed your fish down the drain."
In a jerky motion, you turned towards him and did your best to compose yourself. "Oh no. I, uh, I didn't do well on a procedure with Dr. Abbot, and he asked me to leave."
Dennis at least had the decency to look sorry for you. "I bet you didn't do too bad. What was the procedure?"
"A pericardiocentesis," you said shyly.
He nodded slowly. " Shit, that's like one of the first things Robby let us do." He turned towards his own chart. "I could probably do them in my sleep by now."
Because he wasn't looking at you, Dennis missed the way your shoulders dropped and tears welled in your lash line. Jack's comment had been bad, but he just completely shattered any confidence you had left for the day.
"Right," you muttered. "Of course it'd be that easy if Robby taught you."
And you'd be right. On the night shift, patients like that rarely if not ever needed such a complex procedure. You could only think to one time that a woman came through almost needing one before they were able to use a different method to get her stable enough to be transferred to the OR.
With keys clacking loudly, you quickly finished up the chart before turning the whole thing off. You didn't even try to find Jack before you left, choosing to slip out before he even noticed you'd left without saying goodbye.
Once you were home, you stormed past the fridge and went straight to yours and Jack's shared room. Your scrubs hit the floor, and you didn't even bother to put on pajamas. The bed dipped under your weight as you pulled the duvet up over your body in a sad attempt at being comforted by its weight.
Sleep came quickly, only being interrupted by the door opening, a signal that Jack had gotten home. Blearily, you listened to him walk around the room before his edge of the bed sunk after he sat. The familiar hiss and pop of his prosthesis preceded him turning to lie down. You kept still as he scooted closer before wrapping an arm around your middle and molding your back to his chest.
"Sorry if I woke you up," he muttered sleepily. "Tried to find you before you left, but I guess I missed you. Wanted to say good job for that trauma. You helped so much."
You clamped your eyes shut, squeezing a fresh round of tears that dripped down your cheeks to puddle on your pillowcase.
After Samira, you had done your best to convince yourself it had been a slip of his tongue. But now after Robby, you weren't too sure that Jack would keep you around for much longer before finding someone better. Because there was no way you could ever amount to someone like Robby.
It was impossible.
I care, I care, I care, like ribbons in your hair, my stomach's all in knots, you got the one thing that I want. Ooh, I try, I try, I try, try to rationalize people are people, but it's like you're made of angel dust.
You were trying but failing to pretend Jack's words and comparisons hadn't left a giant, bleeding gap in your heart. Before everything happened, you never ever wondered if Jack loved you. Except now, you waited with bated breath for him to just drop the bucket and break up with you. You walked on eggshells around him.
Don't panic. Be put together. Keep your heart to yourself. Be calm like Samira. Don't fuck up. Know how to do your job. Be confident like Robby.
Those thought became your mantra and lifeline. No one seemed to think twice about your recent personality change. They loved the way they could count on you, the way you had an answer ready for everything. To the day and night shift, you were the epitome of composure. But behind closed doors, you were falling apart and into a pit you didn't think you'd be able to climb out of.
Jack didn't help with that either. You guessed he didn't even know what he had done to you, going on with his life like he hadn't given yours so many potholes that you couldn't continue on without falling behind. Everything you did was carefully thought out, every patient you talked to met a version of you that didn't reflect what you felt inside or outside.
You avoided mirrors the most, their reflections showing you exactly what you weren't. You weren't Samira with her lovely thick hair and clear skin. And you weren't Robby who carried years of trauma like it was apart of his body.
You were you, and you loathed it entirely.
You hated the glances you caught between Jack and Samira across the department. You hated the way they looked like they knew what the other was thinking before they spoke. You hated how you felt like on onlooker to a relationship that wasn't even happening.
You also hated the way Robby changed from a mentor to an idol. He had soon morphed into someone you wanted to so desperately be to the point you lost yourself in ambition.
And the worst part? You held nothing against them personally.
They didn't know what Jack had said. They didn't know that you were dying on the inside every time they raised you up during shifts. Bits of you crumbled away while they continued to glow.
Every morning you woke up, you wondered if the day would provide the straw that broke the camel's back with the way you felt like a stretched out rubber band waiting to fly.
A soft, savory aroma wafted through your kitchen. You absentmindedly stirred the spatula through the sauce, eyes glancing back and forth from the pan to the recipe. The instructions were written in beautiful, slanted cursive with curled letters that danced together. You'd found the card mixed in with a bunch of recipes Jack kept in his drawer. With a quick read told you that the owner of this one was his late wife, and the heart next to the title had you guessing if this was a favorite for the two of them.
Without thinking, you plucked it from the drawer and started working. After a week of back to back cases that ended in more loss than wins, a homemade meal was exactly what you and Jack needed after a day off. He was currently out getting his truck washed, and you wanted to be finished by the time he came home.
Quickly, the separate parts of the recipe—the chicken and veggies basting in the oven, the sauce on the stove top, and the wine chilling in the fridge—all came together right as Jack walked through the door.
"Hi, baby!" you called out as you pulled the pan from the oven. "Dinner's almost ready!"
You picked up on Jack's slightly clompy gate as he got farther into the house.
"Smells good," he said, walking over to stand behind you. "What did you make?"
Suddenly, you got nervous. What if it didn't taste correct? What if Jack didn't want you to make something so special between him and his wife. What if you ruined everything.
You didn't meet his eyes and poured the sauce over the top of the chicken. "Uh, a recipe from the drawer. It looked good, and we already had the ingredients."
He grabbed the card and held it up to his face, and you held your breath. When he didn't seem to get angry or sad, you counted it at a win.
"There's a bottle of white in the fridge if you want to get it out," you offered.
Jack stayed quiet. You didn't dare look even as the sound of a cork popping echoed in the room. While his immediate lack of response didn't cause concern to rise, your stomach still churned. To mirror him, you also didn't speak while you set the table.
He sat down, and so did you, your chairs facing the other like you'd done so many times in the past. Your heart pounded against your sternum as he took the first bite.
Loudly, he smacked his lips, setting his fork down at he chewed. The noise felt like nails on a chalkboard in the silence.
After a minute, he finally spoke. "Did you change anything in this?"
Your racing heart plummeted to your feet. "No. I kept it just like the card had it."
His brows furrowed. "Really? It tastes different than how I remembered it last."
You dug your nails into the fabric of the table running. "Does it not taste good?"
Jack looked up from his plate with wide, hazel eyes. "No, no, it's just different."
"But not good," you scoffed.
"I'm just trying to say that maybe you missed something. I know Alice's handwriting isn't the easiest to read."
"I know how to read cursive, Jack," you spat lowly. "I followed every single instruction on the card. It's the exact same recipe."
"It's not that big of a deal, sweetheart," he tried. "Maybe if you had a bit more practice like her, it might have come out the same. You're a good cook, don't get me wrong, but—"
Your hands slammed on the table in frustration, causing Jack's eyebrows to pinch as his words died in his mouth. He went to keep talking but stopped when he noticed the frustrated tears fall from your eyes.
"I'm done," you breathed, eyes darting around the room.
"Done?" Jack echoed. "What are you done with?"
"Everything," you hissed. "I'm done with this—" You gestured to the food with a wave of your hand. "I'm done with-with you. I'm done with it all."
You pushed up from the table and walked away, leaving Jack to scramble out of his chair and follow you.
"Sweetheart, what's going on?" he loudly asked, but you ignored him.
By the time he made it into the bedroom, you had already ripped out a suitcase from the closet and were pushing clothes into it without making them neat.
"Hey," Jack said gently. "Look, I'm sorry for saying that. I didn't think it'd upset you this much, but you don't have to leave."
You paused in a mid-throw of your shirts and spun to face him. A disbelieving laugh bubbled wetly through your throat. "That's the problem," you muttered, "you don't think."
He crossed his arms, biceps resting against his chest. A need to defend himself bloomed in his stomach. "What's that supposed to fucking mean."
You threw your arms up with an exasperated scoff. "Oh, so now you're concerned for what I'm saying. Maybe you should be concerned more with your words." You sucked in a deep breath. "Just go on and say it."
Jack took a step forward. "Say what?"
"That you'd rather me be someone else!" you screamed. "That-that I'm not enough by myself for you anymore." Pants heaved in your chest. "I'm sick and tired of standing here stuck listening to you compare me and wish that I'd be like or act like someone else."
Your words stole the breath from Jack's lungs as confusion and dread washed over him. "What?"
You closed your eyes and dropped your shoulders. "I heard you; I keep hearing you."
In another step forward, Jack was within two feet of you. He swallowed thickly, but you beat him to more words.
"On the fourth," you began to explain through tears, "I saw Samira patch you up, and I heard the way you told her that I could learn how to be more level headed like her."
A chill crept up Jack's spine. "Sweetheart—"
"Don't," you ordered. "Don't do that where you try to make it all better. I heard you loud and clear, Jack. And that's fine. I knew I could be more calm during traumas, so that's exactly what I did, but apparently—" You chocked out a laugh. "That wasn't enough for you."
He shook his head, hazel eyes swimming with guilt already.
"And I really thought that if I could be anything like Samira, your words wouldn't hurt as much. But then you had to go and tell me that you wished Robby had been there instead of me to do a pericardiocentesis." Your breath shuddered in the next exhale. "Did you even know that was the first time I'd ever been asked to do one? And instead of teaching at a teaching hospital, you threw me to the side saying Robby—the fucking chief attending—could have done the job. No fucking duh, Jack."
You threw a hand in the direction of the kitchen. "And now this? I thought that maybe I could be like Samira or study enough to be like Robby, but h-how am I supposed to compare to the woman who had your love first." You turned back toward the bed and haphazardly packed suitcase. "That's unfair to me. So, like I said, I'm done."
A pleading sound ripped from Jack's throat at the sound of your suitcase zipper closing.
"No, sweetheart, please. Let me fix this; tell me how to fix this," he begged.
"That's just it, Jack. I don't think this can be fixed. I've spent weeks with your words in my head wondering how I can be the perfect person for you. And I don't know if I can keep going on pretending."
Jack's body shook under a small sob as everything came crashing down. He absolutely had no clue what he had done to you, but thinking back, he understood that his careless words wracked irreparable damage to you and your personality.
"I'm sorry," he managed, voice breaking in a whisper.
"I know you are,' you responded, "and somehow that makes it hurt worse. Because while you were trying to compliment everyone else, you made me feel inadequate in every aspect of my life." Your fingers wrapped around the suitcase handle and tugged it off the bed. "I can't stay with someone who keeps hoping I'll be a conglomeration of all the best parts of others; that's not me. And I'll be honest, I don't even really know who me is anymore."
He inhaled sharply, eyes tearing from your face to look down at the floor. "So this is it? You're leaving?"
Another round of tears spilled down your cheeks as you choked on a sob of your own. "I don't want to, but I need to."
"But I love you," he croaked, eyes coming back up to meet yours.
"You love the best parts of me, Jack," you said, already moving to walk past him. "And that's never going to be enough to make me stay."
Your shoulder lightly brushed by his as you walked out of the room and all the way out the front door, leaving Jack behind in a house he realized he didn't want empty.
You poison every little thing that I do, Lacy, oh, Lacy, I just loathe you lately, and I despise my jealous eyes and how hard they fell for you, yeah, I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you
Jack didn't truly realize what he'd done until almost six months after you left him crying in his bedroom.
Your absence in his life gave him a lot to think about, and the only conclusion he could come up with was that you were absolutely right. It didn't matter if he'd compared you to others unconsciously; he made you feel like that: worthless, in need of self change, inadequate; the list went on.
He'd seen the small changes too late.
The next shift he worked with you, Jack tracked every minuscule thing you did, and it felt like one big punch to the gut. He saw the way you constantly checked your hair, ponytail pulled tight enough to give you a headache, skin, and scrubs and the way you straightened your stethoscope so it rested perfectly across your collarbones.
His stomach dropped when he watched you pause before a trauma and gulp down air before heading inside like someone who needed to take control before it could get out of hand. Before him, you weren't like that. Yes, you could be nervous to mess up, but you didn't act like you had to be the smartest person in the room.
He did that to you. He made you feel the need to change. And it killed him. It killed him once he learned you transferred over to a specialty in orthopedics, and his mind made him think you did it just to get away from him.
He was slightly correct, but not entirely.
You needed a fresh start, somewhere where you knew no on had any high expectation of you. And somehow, orthopedics gave you just that. And you thrived in the environment, only coming down to the Pitt when they needed a transfer or second opinion. Sure, you had to accompany Park the Shark more than you'd liked to, but through your time there, the old you was coming back, the one who worked through her panic instead of shutting it down, the one who only got frazzled when she cared about patients and their needs.
It was never weakness you showed, and you had to learn that all over again.
Someone helped you see that along the way as well.
"What do got here?" Park asked while snapping on a pair of gloves, eyes predatory as he walked into Trauma Room 1.
Jack looked up with pinched brows when he realized that you didn't walk in behind the larger man. "Where's Dr. [Name]?"
Park didn't even acknowledge his question. "For fucks sake man, you didn't even pack this right."
"You should know how to put a detached leg together even if I missed the pressure of the wrapping by an inch," Jack shot back.
"Abbot, you should know that I can't fucking put your patient back together after you decided to play Barbies. It's not as easy as popping a joint back in place."
"Dr. [Name] could do it."
Except for the monitors, everyone went quiet. Jack tore his eyes away from Park and looked back down at his blood soaked gloves. Reality crashed down on him as he realized he just did to Park what he'd done to you. Even if he knew he probably didn't hurt Park's feelings at all, it sucked to know that he was still so quit to throw out words like that.
Park's shoulders rose in a shrug. "She could, but she isn't here right now. She switched shifts and won't be in until 7." He smirked. "Think she said she had plans with someone."
An ugly roar of jealousy clawed at Jack's insides, nails sinking deep in his gut.
You were with someone?
He went through the motions of his shift, mind still on the fact that you weren't on call because someone had taken your time and attention away from the hospital. His knuckles turned white around the tablet he held while going through handoffs. He didn't know if his body was still trained to look for you, forever waiting for your soft lips against his, but Jack couldn't help but keep his head on a swivel and ears open to catch the sound of your voice.
Like a laugh in his face from the universe, your laugh fluttered through the ER, and his head whipped hard enough that his neck hurt in order to find you. When he finally saw you walking in, his heart dropped to his feet, because there you were, smiling brighter than he'd seen in a long while, hand enclasped with a man's.
Jack swallowed thickly. He instantly hated the way his blood boiled at the sight. He looked back down at the tablet after your voice seemed to draw closer to where he was standing.
"Andy," you sighed wistfully, "you didn't have to walk me all the way in here. I know you're weary of the germs."
"I know," the man—Andy (you gave him a fucking nickname?)—muttered back, wide, hazel eyes looking down at you like you hung the moon. "But I wanted to."
You pouted playfully. "You're so sweet. Am I going to see you tomorrow morning, or are you working again?"
He hummed. "My morning's yours if you want it."
"You know I always do."
Jack watched the corner of the man's mouth twitch into an almost-there smile, and he had to look away when his head started leaning in toward yours.
The small smack of your lips on his made bile gurgle in Jack's stomach.
"Okay, you gotta go save lives."
You giggled again. "I just put people back together, and technically, Park's the one doing all the procedures. You know my hands start shaking."
From the corner of his eye, Jack watched him lift your hands to his lips and kiss the tops of your knuckles.
"Just breathe and know that you alone can do this. You were the one to get into the program, so they want you, shaky hands and all."
Jack's heart clenched to the point of a physical reaction to the pain. He should have been the one saying that to you, standing in your corner and building you up one compliment at a time.
But now, he had to stand on the sideline and watch a man (someone who scarily looked a bit like him) give you all the praise and love you deserved. And while Jack could do everything in his power to let people know how good of a doctor you were, it wouldn't ever be the same, forever stuck loathing the moment he lost you without knowing.
content warning: fluff, probably medically inaccurate, mention of blood, reader accidentally gets hurt, jack is overprotective and patches her up!, idk don’t question why dana robby and jack are here all at once
a/n: ts was lowk like self indulgent and its kinda horrible but whatever! hope u enjoy :3 not proofread!
masterlist
there were two things you knew for certain in your life.
one was that jack abbot was your soulmate, and the other was that sometimes becoming a nurse was something you deeply regretted.
right now was one of those moments.
you were helping dr ellis with a 6 year old who had ended up in the ER with a broken leg. he was flailing around quite destructively in an attempt to fight off the needles and medical equipment.
the room was loud and small, and everything happened in one quick moment, so much so it took you a second to realise you were on the floor.
the boy had kicked you with his good leg. the surprising amount of force sent you flying against the wall, hitting an IV pole on the way down.
you had only registered the throbbing on the back of your head and the cut on your arm when you had steadied yourself back up.
ellis insisted you leave to go patch yourself up, and after a lot of back and forth, you relented and attempted to slip away to an empty exam room.
unfortunately for you, your boyfriend intercepted you on the way.
“hey, sweetheart!” he called out down the hall, squinting and frowning when he approached you and took in your appearance.
jack raised an eyebrow and looked you up and down before almost jumping up into place. “are you bleeding? what happened?!” he demanded instantly, grabbing your shoulder and practically dragged you to an exam room.
“it was an accident.” you began to explain. “it was an agitated little kid, he accidentally kicked me. i got launched into the wall.” you murmured, giving jack a half hearted smile as he gave you a stern glare.
he began his clinical checks, checking your vitals and pupils, hands gentle as ever as he held you steady. “shit, did you hurt your head? your hair is bloody.” jack said firmly.
“yeah, i did. but i’m fine!” you were quick to reassure him, but he didn’t listen. his eyes were determined and worried as he worked to check if there was truth to your words.
it took jack twenty minutes to ensure you were okay. the excessive treatment was more for him than it was you.
you had a bandage over the cut on your arm and your head had luckily ended up not being serious. jack seemed satisfied with your condition when you laughed at one of his stupid jokes.
“i’m glad you’re okay, honey. i was really worried for a minute.” he said seriously looking at you with what could only he described as pure devotion.
you smiled weakly, shrugging at his words. “i’m tough. toughest nurse you know.” you joked, leaning up on your toes to kiss his cheek.
you two were never really openly affectionate at work, but it was nice to feel the comfort and familiarity of your secure relationship once and awhile.
but even when you were quiet, you both knew you loved each other.
little did you both know, dana and robby were watching you both from the central station.
“god, i love the way he looks at her.” dana sighed. robby chuckled and shook his head. “you’re not even apart of the relationship.”
“i don’t care. i’ve never seen jack care so much.” dana argued, smiling at you when you caught her eye.
drabble synopsis 𓂃 ໒꒱ you accidentally kick jack in the crotch while you’re asleep, and he’s left questioning whether he’ll ever recover. (0.7k)
pairing 𓂃 ໒꒱ jack abbot x fem!reader.
content 𓂃 ໒꒱ established relationship, fluff, sleepy antics, dry jack humour.
Jack had come to the conclusion that you somehow became an entirely different person once you fell asleep.
Awake, you were always looking for him. Whether it was your hand finding his while you watched a movie or absentmindedly leaning against him while you brushed your teeth, you always seemed to gravitate towards him without thinking.
Asleep, however, you were a genuine hazard.
It never started that way. Every night, you’d curl into his side, stealing his body heat and mumbling something incoherent before drifting off. He’d lie awake for another ten or fifteen minutes, listening to the steady rhythm of your breathing until he was certain you were asleep.
Then the adventure began.
Sometimes you stole every inch of the blanket. Other nights, you’d somehow end up lying across the mattress at an angle that defied basic human anatomy. More than once he’d woken up with your arm thrown over his face or your foot pressed into his ribs, leaving him wondering how someone so peaceful looking could move so much without ever waking.
Jack usually found it amusing.
Usually.
Tonight was no different.
You’d fallen asleep tucked beneath his arm, one hand loosely gripping the front of his shirt as if letting go wasn’t an option. Jack smiled to himself, brushing a few strands of hair away from your face before settling back into the pillows. The apartment was quiet, the only sound the occasional hum of the heater and your soft breathing against his chest.
It didn’t take long before he started drifting off himself, but then you moved.
At first, it was nothing more than a sleepy stretch, your shoulder nudging against his side before your legs shifted beneath the blankets.
Jack barely noticed.
The next movement came out of nowhere.
Your knee drove straight up between his legs.
The air disappeared from his lungs so quickly he wasn’t even sure he’d made a sound until a strangled groan escaped him. Every muscle in his body locked as he instinctively curled forward, one hand gripping the comforter while the other clamped over his face.
“Jesus…”
The sound startled you awake almost instantly. You blinked blearily into the darkness, pushing yourself up on one elbow, your hair sticking out in every direction as you looked over at him.
“Jack?” you mumbled. “What’s wrong?”
He stayed exactly where he was for another few seconds, taking one slow, painful breath before finally answering.
“…You got me.”
Your brows knitted together in sleepy confusion. “Whhat do you mean?”
“You kneed me.”
You frowned, still trying to wake yourself up, “where?”
Jack slowly cracked one eye open to look at you. “If I have to answer that, I’m even more concerned.”
It took a second before the realisation crashed into you, “oh my god.” Your hand flew to your mouth as your eyes widened. “Jack, I’m so sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean to,” he said, finally managing to lean back against the headboard. He let out a slow breath, still wincing. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
You were already reaching for his arm, your brows pinched together with guilt. “I was asleep, I swear. I didn’t even know I moved.”
“I know.” He turned his hand over so your fingers laced together, giving yours a small squeeze. “You’re okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’ll survive.”
You searched his face for a second, trying to figure out whether he was saying that just to make you feel better. “Are you sure?”
Jack glanced down at the blankets, then back at you, one corner of his mouth twitching despite himself as he shrugged. “I’d still like to have kids with you someday, babe,” he said dryly. “So maybe we retire the flying knees.”
A horrified noise left you before another apology could tumble out, but Jack was already chuckling under his breath.
“Hey.” He brushed a loose strand of hair behind your ear before tugging you back against his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “I’m kidding.”
“You better be.”
“I am.” His hand resumed its lazy path up and down your back, waiting until he felt you finally relax against him. He let the room fall quiet again, listening to your breathing even out as you settled against him.
After a moment, he looked down at you with a smile he couldn’t quite hide. As much as he knew he probably shouldn’t, he couldn’t help slipping in one last joke. “I’m still trying to cope with the fact my girlfriend nearly ended my bloodline in her sleep.”
“Jack,” you murmured in warning, your eyes still closed.
He only laughed, pressing another kiss to the top of your head before settling comfortably back into the pillows with you tucked against his side.
a no-touch rule sounds smart on a beach vacation with your secret boyfriend, especially when he happens to be your brother's best friend and twenty years your senior. unfortunately, neither of you is very good at keeping your hands to yourselves.
MASTERLIST | RULES | INBOX
PAIRING jack abbot x robinavitch!reader
WARNINGS 18+ MDNI explicit smut, age gap (reader is late 20s), girly girl reader, reader is robby’s little sister (and reader and jack play in this man's FACEEEE), reader wears sunscreen but no mention of burning/redness/etc, jack applies sunscreen to reader, jack and reader just tease each other all day every day, reader and jack take a shower together!, brief inspection kink mention, flirty!jack abbot, flirty!reader, sexting, lots of pet name usage (baby, doll, sweetheart, honey, etc), munch!abbot, oral (f receiving), reader wears a dress, jealous!abbot, someone mistakes jack for your dad, reader goes along with it soooo lowkey dad!bf jack??? but not really it’s more of just a joke, alcohol mention, tipsy!reader, lowkey some angst, hurt/comfort, miscommunication, p in v, unprotected sex (wrap it b4 u tap it folks), twinkie (creampie is a banned word in this household), light breeding kink, kitchen sex, jack gets punched
WC 9.5k | REQUEST here!
You had no ill intentions when you sought Jack out on the beach. Truly. None whatsoever.
Your conscience was pristine. Clean enough to eat off of, if a person were inclined toward that sort of thing. And Jack would more than likely be inclined toward that sort of thing.
Which is neither here nor there and definitely not the point.
The point is that he happened to be the first available person you spotted who wasn’t elbow-deep in the cooler, manning the grill, hauling folding chairs closer to the water or otherwise occupied in some way that would’ve made your request an imposition.
He happened to be seated in the shade, sand-dusted calves stretched out and both hands conveniently free. You happened to wander over with your sunscreen and your very normal, very defensible need for help reaching the center of your back.
Never mind that your eyes tend to find him first everywhere.
Your first choice, always. In the hospital, in crowded rooms, in Friday-night bars, and now here, on a stretch of beach sand full of towels, melting ice cubes and boozy coworkers.
If Jack is there the geometry of the universe settles.
Noise levels drop. Potential catastrophe politely steps back in line. Statistically, things improve by, what, twenty percent when he’s within arms reach?
The only time Jack’s presence ever seems to tip from reassurance into danger is when Robby is nearby.
Your brother, his best friend, currently planted beside the grill with a pair of tongs in one hand and a beer sweating in the other, wholly unaware of just how intimately you know the man sitting a few yards away from you reading a book.
No idea that you even know Jack beyond hospital stories and holiday small talk. No idea that you’ve counted the freckles on Jack’s torso the way other people count blessings. No idea you know the small mole just above Jack’s hip because you’ve watched it disappear beneath the push of his own thigh when he’s folded you open beneath him. No idea you know how his forearm looks when it flexes beside your head, that raised vein appearing when your heels hook into his back and he grunts your name into his mouth. No fucking idea you know the pale scar on his ribs that becomes your personal tactical obsession whenever he cages you against a doorframe and breathes against your ear, quiet, sweetheart, unless you want your brother to ask questions.
You slip into the little wedge of shade cast by Jack’s umbrella, hip brushing the arm of his chair.
It takes half a second for Jack’s gaze to lift. First to your face, because he is decent, or because he has spent forty-nine years perfecting the performance of decency and can probably do it under sedation.
Then his eyes dip lower, catching on your chest and the heroic and doomed labor of your bikini top, the poor thing doing its absolute best with limited resources and no meaningful administrative support, and for one brief, gorgeous second, Jack Abbot’s whole face goes blank.
You unscrew the sunscreen cap with the patience of a saint and the moral character of someone much worse, pretending you don’t see a thing. It’s easy. You’ve been playing dumb your whole life, and Jack happens to make it especially rewarding.
“Hi, Jack.”
He blinks as though dragged out of a dream he has no intention of describing in mixed company.
The paperback folds around one finger; he swallows civility into a single neutral “Hey,” though his ears are flaming traitors.
You bounce once on your toes just to watch his eyes track the up-and-down movement. “Mind helping me with my back?”
A phantom movement ripples down his arm, the muscle memory that usually ends with his thumb sliding up the tender inside of your knee.
Half-second later he remembers the clause you made him swear to the night before you left, the one you recited while sitting on the edge of his bed in nothing but your earrings and a very serious expression: no contact during this trip. Not in front of Robby. Not in private. Not even the little absent-minded touches Jack was so fond of giving and so terrible at pretending were accidental.
He had listened with the patient, faintly amused face — oh, of course, let’s discuss boundaries — all while his hands were already easing your thighs apart, palm spanning half your quads. “That’s smart, sweetheart,” he had murmured, barely out of his mouth before he fucked you so hard you spent the first two days of this trip remembering him every time you sat down, crossed your legs, climbed stairs, breathed wrong, existed.
Day one started with Robby squinting at the careful, not-at-all-in-pain way you eased into the passenger seat.
“Pull something?” he asked, suspicion crinkling the corners of his eyes.
Jack, loading your suitcase into the trunk, had only said, “She’s fine — just overdid the beach volleyball warm-up.”
Now, beneath the umbrella, he eyes the bottle in your hand.
“You’re asking me to put sunscreen on you while I’m currently under express orders not to touch you,” he clarifies, mouth twitching. “Little contradictory, don’t you think?”
“It’s medicinal, Jack. Doctor-ordered sun safety. That puts it squarely under the ‘acts of basic care’ exemption we definitely agreed on.”
There is, of course, no exemption. But you say it with such polished confidence, such gorgeous little liar convocation, and Jack’s eyes keep distractedly slipping to your cleavage, you figure you might be able to gaslight him into believing otherwise.
Jack tilts in, voice dropping to bedside-manner dark. “Preventive exams are also acts of basic care, sweetheart. I offered to give you one last night. Head to toe. Very thorough. You didn’t seem to keen on the idea. Funny how selective you are with these exemptions.”
He knows perfectly well keenness was never the issue.
Keenness had been present and accounted for, actually, sitting upright in bed with a racing pulse while Jack spent nearly forty minutes vibrating your phone off the nightstand at one in the morning, apparently deciding the no-contact was less a boundary and more a diagnostic puzzle he could brute-force with persistence, semantics, and an irresponsible number of filthy hypotheticals.
How firm is the rule?
You had answered, Very.
Define very.
Jack.
I’m serious. Are we talking legally blinding or more of a strong suggestion?
I can’t sleep knowing you’re down the hall.
I keep thinking about your ass in that tiny fucking bikini.
And your mouth.
And the noise you make when I’m tasting your pretty pussy.
So if "very" has any flexibility, now would be an excellent time to disclose it.
You had flushed at that, instinct dragging your hand south, fingertips tucking beneath the elastic of your pajama shorts, privately checking how much trouble you were in.
Spoiler: a lot. Still, you forced your breathing steady and tapped out the grown-up response you promised yourself you’d give him.
Too risky. Robby’s awake.
Riskier to ignore symptoms.
You seemed flushed at dinner, baby. Could be heat exhaustion.
Standard protocol is immediate evaluation. Full tactical assessment of any sensitive areas.
Better I handle it now than you collapse tomorrow, right?
“The walls here are paper thin. I just didn’t want everyone to hear you,” you murmur, eyes flicking toward the grill where Robby still holds court.
Jack’s gaze drags over your face, patience fraying.
His head cants. “Me?”
An accusation rather than a question.
You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning too hard.
It’s bullshit.
Jack makes sounds in bed, sure, these low rough little things he tries to swallow down into silence, but you are, historically, the problem. You are the one who forgets walls even exist, who gets whiny and breathless, saying his name too sweet and loud.
Still, riling him up is half the fun.
“Mhm. All those grunts you do? Very compromising. You really should work on that. I was just protecting your reputation.”
His mouth tugs into that bare-bones smile, parched and cutting, like a fence post bleached under Georgia sun.
“That’s interesting, doll, because I seem to remember you nearly getting us thrown out of that hotel in Atlanta.” He pauses, eyes steady on yours. “Had to clamp a palm over your mouth halfway through just so the folks next door would quit pounding on the wall.”
You make a thoughtful, entirely disingenuous sound. “I don’t recall.”
Liar, you think, but only to yourself, because the scene is seared onto the backs of your eyelids: big palm, slick with sweat; your own pulse popping under his thumb.
“Convenient,” he says. “Concerning, too. Memory loss at your age.”
The urge to fire back — your age, grandpa — sparks under your tongue, but you swallow it, knowing you’ve already won.
He’s picturing that night, too. You can see it in the way his jaw resets, in the way his fingers flex like they’re aching to reprise the role of impromptu gag.
“Memory loss and melanoma.” Your fingers skim your collarbone, then your shoulder, making a tiny show of your poor exposed skin. “That’ll be on your conscience, and you have so many sins already, Jack.”
Jack’s glare fractures, concern muscling past amusement.
“Turn around,” he orders.
His palm resignedly lands on your back and the first sweep of cool lotion is an instant balm, a hush in every raw, sun-tight cell that’s been screaming since day one of this self-inflicted separation.
Water to a dying flower. Oxygen after a held breath.
The peppermint chill kisses the nape of your neck, then fans outward in broad strokes, each pass ironing the ache right out of your skin.
Three whole days without his hands, seventy-two hours of pretending you didn’t need this, and now his thumbs slip beneath your bikini straps like they own the territory, tracing the warmed skin that’s been begging for him with every salty breeze.
“Missed you,” you murmur under your breath, words a little wobbly and petulant.
He huffs a soft laugh and bends to brush his mouth against your shoulder blade. “Yeah, missed you, too, angel.”
He smooths another cool ribbon down your spine.
You angle yourself towards the grill to allow him better access only to see Robby nudging the spatula at Mateo like a relay baton. Take over, man.
Mateo blinks, grabs the grill tools, and Robby wipes his palms on a dish towel as he starts striding across the sand.
Panic sparks hot in your belly. Abort, abort —
Jack’s fingers press reassuringly at the base of your neck. “Easy.”
Robby arrives, squinting against the glare.
Jack doesn’t miss a beat, straightening just enough to greet him over your head, palms still settling the lotion. “Need a second set of tongs, man? You were talking about that pineapple glaze.”
“Yeah, figured you could baste while I flip,” Robby says, oblivious.
“Sure thing.” Jack rubs the last of the lotion on your shoulder before flicking the cap back on the bottle.
Robby tips his chin at you, hooks an arm around Jack’s neck like a big brother claiming turf. “And watch it, man. Give her an inch and she’ll have you painting her toes next.”
Jack shoots you a wink. “Wouldn’t put it past her, bit on the spoiled side, isn’t she?”
You don’t get to be alone with Jack again until later that evening.
After a twelve-hour gauntlet of being herded from one little duty to the next, karmic punishment apparently being less fire-and-brimstone and more Robby glued to your elbow, Samira asking about plates, Dana hunting for towels.
The house had stayed swollen with noise, doors opening, voices carrying, bodies constantly moving through every room, leaving nowhere private enough to breathe, let alone get a second with your secret boyfriend.
And you would find some sort of humor in it all if it didn’t feel like torture, spending the whole day brushing past Jack close enough to catch bits and pieces of him but never close enough to keep it, catching his stare across the deck and breaking first because if you hold it too long, even for one more second, your face will say everything your mouth has forbidden to.
By the time you get into the shower, you’re wound so tight you feel one wrong move might split you straight down the middle. Steam flattens the bathroom, fogging the mirror in milky layers while condensation beads along the floor beneath your heels.
The water comes down nearly scalding over skin still balmy from the sun, rinsing the day off you in slow, glittering streams. Salt, sunscreen, sweat, sexual frustration, little crescents of sand, all of it spiraling together toward the drain.
You brace both palms against the wall and hiss when the spray finds the tender knot tucked between your shoulder blade and spine.
You don’t have time to decide whether the sting is pleasure or pain because suddenly the door latch is clicking.
You spin, palms crossing over your breasts, ready to apologize for… something (what, exactly? You’re not sure, because last time you checked you weren’t the person barging into an occupied bathroom.)
But then the silhouette resolves into Jack and the apology dies on your tongue.
He shuts and locks the door with a soft snick, arching a brow through the haze.
You hiss under your breath, “What — Jack, what are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He just looks. His gaze drags leisurely, like a hand down your body, over your breasts, the water-glossed dip of your waist, the slick shimmer on your thighs, then hovering at your bare pussy before climbing back to your face.
He looks utterly unhurried. A man content to feast with his eyes first and speak when the hunger becomes unbearable.
Fire pools low in your belly and you shift, thighs pressing together in a useless bid for modesty. “Seriously, what if someone saw you come in?”
He closes the distance until your breath clouds a small circle on the glass pane between you.
“Just grabbing my razor,” he says, offhand, like you’re the one overreacting as he tips his head toward the shelf behind you. “Promise I’ll be two seconds. In, out.”
You give him a long, squinting once-over, as though you can spot the lie on his skin. He just wiggles his fingers — see? Harmless — so you huff a tiny laugh and shift aside.
“Fine. Two seconds,” you mutter, watching him carefully.
You pull the slider door open.
The instant rush of cooler air leaves gooseflesh in its wake, and Jack’s shoulders seem suddenly much broader than you remember as he steps through.
“Appreciate it, honey.”
He ducks under the spray, and the stall feels two sizes too small.
Jack plants himself in front of you, torso filling your peripheral vision, trunks plastered to powerful thighs.
He doesn’t touch you, but the warmth radiating from his body seems to crowd every spare inch of space.
When his chest rises you feel the ripple in each breath through yours.
“You okay?” His tone drips false innocence as he reaches around you for the razor, the damp fabric of his trunks gliding over the sensitive swell of nerves between your legs in a feather-light pass.
You suck in a harsh breath.
He straightens as if nothing happened, twirling the razor between his fingers, eyes glinting with pleased mischief.
Dick-Face.
Your vision goes momentarily starry, the lost friction leaving you empty.
You rally with a shaky grin. “‘M fine.”
“Mind if I shave in here, then? Better water pressure and keeps the sink hair-free. Know you hate that.”
You squint up at him, water streaking your lashes.
“Jack…” One elongated syllable loaded with I know exactly what you’re doing.
“Relax, angel. Two seconds,” he reminds, though the slight tilt of his hips say otherwise.
He angles the razor at his jaw, drawing the first careful stroke. You watch the silver path he leaves on skin, the way tiny beads of water race after the blade. His face, stripped of stubble in increments, is almost too handsome. Straight nose, freckles you could count, lips made for kissing yours.
He catches you gawking and smirks. “Gonna nick myself if you keep staring like that.”
You tilt your chin, droplets collecting at the curve of your collarbone, mustering your usual sparkle, “Then focus, doctor. I won’t be held responsible for self-inflicted injuries.”
He lets the razor dangle forgotten at his side as he studies you a beat longer. His hand slides forward, knuckles skimming the silky bloom of your hip, then dipping inward to follow the hollow where muscle meets bone.
A shiver flutters through you. He feels it and grins, this slow, predatory spread of lips.
“Focus is a tall order,” he says, thumb brushing a streak of water off your stomach. “Pretty as you are.”
Your breath stutters as his thumb skims lower, and you grab his wrist. “Uh-uh. Hands to yourself, remember?”
“Don’t make me beg, sweetheart.” The husk in his voice slips through you from head to toe. “Because I will, if that’s what you want — say please a thousand times, just to prove how badly I need you.”
Before you can answer, he sinks to his knees.
Once again he doesn’t touch, free hand splayed on the grout, but his mouth hovers near the crease of your hip, close enough that every exhale fans liquid fire over your pussy.
His eyes flick to yours, desperate, waiting for the single syllable that will break every rule you set.
“I can keep my hands to myself, if that’s the rule. Just let me use my mouth, please. Need to taste you, angel.”
“I — Jack, we said —”
Your grip on his wrist feels fragile, ceremonial.
“That a yes, baby? Gotta hear the word.”
Steam curls between your bodies and it’s almost suffocating now, filling up your throat and nose and ears until you start to feel a little dizzy.
Rules clang in your skull — not here, not now — but the week-long ache in your belly chants louder: need, need, need.
You bite your lip hard enough to taste copper, eyes slipping shut.
When they open again, the answer is already there, shining in resignation. “Yes. Please — yes.”
He doesn’t waste another second.
He dives in like a man reprieved from drought. Three days and three nights and water turned to wine in his tongue. He presses it flat, dragging through your folds until your knees threaten to buckle.
The first targeted flick to your clit punches a helpless cry out of your throat and the second has you clawing for purchase on the handlebar to your left.
Jack mumbles something that feels like so sweet against you, vibration sparkling up your spine, then seals his lips and sucks hard, alternating pressure in prodding intervals.
You don’t think you’ve ever gotten to that blissful edge so fast before, seconds away from splintering, vision tunneling as pink and blue stars flare behind your lids.
It all comes crashing down when a brisk tap-tap-tap cuts through your near-climax.
Jack freezes, mouth still full of you and hot on your cunt but now motionless, eyes snapping up to meets yours. Beautiful eyes with pupils blown.
Santos’s voice filters through: “Whoever’s in there, hurry up!”
The pulse that was about to break erupts into silent, aching stasis instead. You bite your fist, whole body trembling on the cliff-edge he’s left you hanging from.
You choke back a whimper and call, “Be out in a sec!”
And like you said, you would find some sort of humor in it all if it didn’t feel like pure fucking torture.
Jack tries to remind himself that he has, by every measurable standard, survived worse things than this.
War, for one. Heat that cooked straight through the soles of his boots, nights sawn open by rotor blades and gunfire. The terror of deciding who needed his hands first when everyone needed them at once.
He lost a leg and learned how to walk again, then somehow went back to medicine because apparently nearly dying had not cured him of the instinct to run toward other people’s emergencies. He has cracked chests, led resuscitations, talked shaking interns through their first patient death, spent his free time embedded with SWAT because golf had always seemed both dull and something he wouldn’t thrive at.
He knows pressure. He understands discipline. He has built an entire life around refusing to be governed by fear, pain, adrenaline, or lesser impulses.
None of those facts seem to feel reassuring right now as he watches you from across the bar.
You’re burrowed into the center of a brand-new constellation of people you just met, telling one of your well-worn stories with the same sparkling conviction you gave it the first time, chin tipped up, bracelets chiming as your hands sketch the scene into the air.
Jack knows every beat.
Knows when your eyes will widen, when your mouth will pull into that scandalized little O, when you will pause just long enough to make everyone lean closer before delivering the line that sends the table into laughter.
And they do lean closer. Even the bartender’s polishing rag pauses mid-swipe.
That is the thing about you. You make strangers feel chosen. Make a whole room feel handpicked, lit from within, as if you opened the door just for them and meant it. Then you’ll drift away, leaving them there in the aftershocks, still facing the space you occupied like worshippers after the god has already one.
Jack knows exactly how dangerous that is because he has made that mistake himself.
More than once.
Sat across from you and read too much into every smile, every soft little lock of your focus, every gooey, honey-thick stretch of your attention. Mistook being seen by you for being chosen.
And then life, perverse as ever, let him be chosen after all. Let him earn the real thing.
Which only makes watching other men bask in the counterfeit version feel worse.
The feeling metastasizes when one of the men catches the opening after your final line and moves into it, all expensive veneer-looking teeth and effortless posture, bending toward you as though the room has naturally made space for him there.
He says something Jack cannot hear over the bass, punctuates it with a small, self-satisfied shrug, and wears the expression of a person who thinks being near you is already a kind of accomplishment.
Jack studies him.
Young. Smooth. Unscarred, at least where the world can see. A body that has probably never needed to be negotiated with before something as simple as walking barefoot across a beach. No prosthetic to strap on before dawn, no phantom pain flaring where flesh ends, no inventory of what still works and what must be accommodated.
He looks right beside you. No one would glance twice, no one would do the math. Robby could clap him on the shoulder, laugh at his jokes, maybe even approve.
Certainly wouldn’t have to excavate a grave under the rental deck.
Jack counts that as strike three.
“Jack.” Robby’s voice breaks across the table, dragging him back by the collar. “Tell ‘em I’m not making this up.”
Jack blinks, wrestles his gaze off you, and pretends he’s been part of the conversation all along. Dana and Baran blink back at him.
“You’re usually making something up,” he says and it earns Victoria’s laugh, though he hasn’t the faintest idea what improbable tale he’s just failed to corroborate.
It seems to be enough of an answer for Robby though, because he laughs too, his hand thumping Jack’s shoulder hard enough to slosh the liquor.
Jack drinks anyway, holds the bourbon like a tongue depressor to his worst instincts. Swallows. The burn chars every jittery nerve that wants to turn around and see if Mr. Linen Shirt is still siphoning oxygen out of your orbit.
But he wants to know. Wants to know whether the man has moved closer, whether you’re still smiling, whether Jack is about to make a decision that leaves the bastard sipping his own drink through a wired jaw.
He shouldn’t go that far. Healing hands and all. But he can make exceptions.
He lets boredom rasp across his tongue as he clears his throat. “Your sister know those guys?”
Robby looks over on reflex. Jack doesn’t move. Doesn’t need to. Robby’s face will tell him everything. “What guys?”
“Dunno. Thought one of ‘em looked familiar.”
Robby squints past the crowd.
“Nope. Don’t think I recognize any of them.” Robby decides, pushing a tired breath through his teeth, knuckles rasping over two-day stubble. “She does this everywhere she goes. Draws attention like wildfire. I swear, half my blood pressure medication is because of her.”
Jack’s arteries would corroborate that, but he lets the confession smolder unheard behind the rim of his glass.
“Well, can you blame ‘em? She looks like that.”
And Dana’s comment is the invitation he’s been waiting for. Lets him gorge on the sight without raising suspicion.
The little dress, the glossed-up lips, the endless stretch of your legs under the bar light. Your hair falling loose around your shoulders, your face animated as you talk, every feature sharpened by laughter into something almost indecently alive.
A cherry-red straw clacks against your teeth when you sip your rum punch, each drag leaving a perfect lipstick crescent on the plastic rim.
You are beautiful in every standard category and several highly specific ones Jack suspects may exist solely to inconvenience him.
“Don’t mean she needs a swarm,” Robby grumbles, waving his bottle at the cluster around you. “She treats everybody like they’ve known her ten years, then acts shocked when half the room starts trailing after her. And somehow I’m the prick when I tell ’em to give her some space.”
“I don’t mind being the asshole,” Jack pipes up. Across the table, Dana’s attention narrows, and Jack realizes, half a beat too late, that he may have sounded a little too willing. So he adds, “If you’re tired of the job, I mean.”
Robby snorts. “You’d scare the hell of ‘em.”
“That’s generally the point.”
He lifts his bourbon before the thought can show on his face, lets the rim conceal the faint tightening at the corner of his mouth.
Robby, thankfully, is already smiling, visibly seduced by the prospect of outsourcing his least charming brotherly obligation.
“Be my guest,” he says. “Tell her I sent you.”
Jack tips his glass, drains what remains, then taps the rim against the tabletop.
Signal received. Assignment accepted. He doesn’t need to be told twice.
By the time he is halfway across the room, you’ve already noticed him.
Your eyes flare with a brightness he can feel from here, and whatever polished little nothing Mr. Smooth is feeding you dies unattended between one word and the next.
He keeps talking anyway, poor guy, unaware that you’ve left the conversation without moving an inch. By the time Jack reaches the bar rail, your attention has funneled to one point, him, and nothing else.
It stirs something dormant in him, the same dark pull he felt in the shower, his pants suddenly tighter, less cooperative. He sees exactly what he would do without the table of coworkers and one eagle-eyed best friend behind him.
He would hook a hand around the back of your neck, pull you flush to his chest, and kiss every little thought clean out of your head. Kiss you until the gloss smeared, until your lipstick feathered over his mouth, until your lips went swollen and every polished stranger nearby understood, without needing it explained, who had put that dazed look in your eyes.
Instead, he leans one forearm against the bar and says, pleasantly, “You drinking enough water, sweetheart?”
“I could be persuaded to drink more.” Your lips curl around the straw again, eyes fixed on Jack with a private little shine.
The younger man follows your attention to Jack and gives him an affable nod. “Man, your dad’s on top of it. Mine would’ve let me dehydrate out of spite.”
Jack nearly coughs up his previously swallowed drink.
He can feel every one of his years arrange themselves in descending order between you. The gray at his temples. The scars. The apparently paternal concern over your fluid intake.
Fuck’s sake.
He parts his lips to correct the record, a dry little execution already waiting on his tongue, but you beat him to the trigger.
“Oh, he’s the best,” you gush, peering at him sideways. “Always checking on me. Sunscreen, hydration, curfew. Super over-protective.”
Jack gives you a long, level look, one that says he knows exactly what you’re doing and plans to deal with it later.
“She keeps me busy. Full time job, most days,” he finally says, playing along.
And it is a full-time job.
Just not remotely in the way this poor kid is imagining. You are a twenty-four-hour on-call position with no protected sleep and an astonishingly generous benefits package.
You need to be kissed before he leaves the room, touched whenever he passes within arm’s reach, listened to with grave concentration while you explain some internet drama involving some show he’s never watched and a man named Sincere he will never meet.
Then there is the other hunger, the one that wakes beside him already stretching toward his body, that has you squirming into his lap after dinner or whispering again against his mouth when any reasonable person would be asleep.
Jack is always on his toes with you, anticipating needs you have not articulated yet, figuring out whether a pout means hungry, horny, tired, or all three braided together.
It is exhausting in the way a life worth living is exhausting.
He has never minded work when the work matters, and taking care of you has become the most selfish labor he has ever loved.
The younger guy clears his throat, trying to recapture the momentum. “Anyway, like I was saying about the jet-ski tomorrow —”
“Actually,” Jack interrupts, “we’ve got to get back. Curfew, you know.” He aims a polite nod at the man, who now looks decidedly dejected, then drapes a guiding hand along the back of your stool in perfect over-protective-father form. “Appreciate you keeping her company.”
Your mouth twitches around the straw. Jack can already tell you’re going to make him suffer for this. The prospect improves his mood considerably.
He starts to walk you back to the table, when he spots Robby, who’s laughing much too loudly at something the new intern just whispered in his ear.
The girl is angled toward him, smiling with that shy, pleased little tilt people get when they think they’ve successfully surprised him, and Robby, miracle of miracles, looks genuinely interested.
That is information worth preserving. Worth interrogating later, too.
But for now he takes that opportunity for what it is and herds you into a corner out of view.
As soon as you’re tucked between a stack of surfboards and the dim EXIT sign, his fingers close over the curve of your backside, giving a quick pinch.
A startled “hey!” pops out, alcohol-loose and breathy, and you bat at his knuckles.
He catches your wrist, holding it against his chest as amusement darkens his gaze. “You’re testing me, angel. Missed me so much you had to start getting other men’s attention just to see if I’d come take you back?”
“Missed who? The pervert or the overprotective dad?”
Jack clicks his tongue and leans in until the tips of your noses nearly touch, crowding the joke right back into your mouth.
“Hated every damn second of that. Couldn’t lay a finger on you while that kid flirted his ass off. And you knew exactly what you were doing. Wanted to see how fast you could make your old man lose his cool?”
“Thought you liked being challenged?” You tilt your chin, lashes dipping. “Besides, you’d been ignoring me all night. What was I supposed to do, sit there looking pretty for no one?”
“You know that isn’t how it is. I’ve been following the rules you set, angel. Your rules.”
“Yeah, well, last night kind of blew those up, don’t you think?” You lean closer. “The line’s already smudged. Seems silly to keep pretending we can still see it.”
“Trust me, sweetheart, I’ve got no attachment to that line. I’ve wanted my hands on you from the second I saw that dress.” He leans closer, voice dropping into something meant only for you. “But you’d better mean it. You don’t get to rile me up all night and then act surprised when I collect.”
Your eyes flick toward the neon Restrooms sign, then back to him, lashes heavy. “Meet me by the bathroom in sixty seconds. If you’re late, I’m starting without you.”
One quick sweep confirms the coast is clear.
“Bought and paid for, angel. Be there in fifty-nine.”
You giggle, turning on your heel with a bounce that sets your dress fluttering. He tracks every inch as you stroll off, head cocked like you know he’s staring; the last thing he sees is the curve of your ass rounding the corner.
He waits just long enough not to make it obvious, then starts toward the hall, pulse already ticking off the seconds.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven.
“Jack.”
Shit.
Dana catches him mid-stride. When he turns, she is watching him over one lifted brow, empty glass raised loosely in her hand. “You getting another round?”
His gaze flicks toward the corridor before he can stop it. Mistake. Dana follows it, then looks back at him.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he says.
“Could’ve fooled me. You look like you’re on a mission.”
And what can he say to that?
Yeah, Dana, good eye. I am on a mission to follow my girlfriend into a seedy beach-bar bathroom and fuck the living daylights out of her before Robby notices either of us are gone. By the way, she is his little sister and young enough that, from a distance, strangers apparently assume I helped raise her.
So Jack does what any sensible man would do under pressure.
He lies.
“Just gotta take a leak.”
Dana lets out a low hum, the kind that says she believes exactly none of him. “Sure.” And Jack thinks that’s it, but suddenly she shakes her head. “Just do yourself a favor and be careful.”
“Careful about what, exactly?” Irritation flicks hot across his scalp, mostly because it coats the thin, unfamiliar ache of fear.
She tips her chin, eyes dull with shift-long exhaustion, offering him nothing but that tired little smile that says You already know.
“Don’t make me say it out loud.” Her gaze dips toward the restroom sign, subtle enough that anyone else would miss it. Jack doesn’t. “I don’t care about the sordid details. But secrets like this don’t stay contained forever. People get hurt when they come out.” Her expression softens by a fraction. “And she has more to lose than you do.”
He doesn’t get the chance to answer before Dana slips past him, already lifting two fingers toward the bartender and calling for another round.
She has more to lose than you do.
Jack knows that. Or at least, he should’ve.
He is established. Difficult to shame in any lasting way. People already know who he is, have decided what sort of man he is, and most days he can live with that.
You, meanwhile, are still being decided. Every room you enter is another jury, every mistake fresh evidence for peers and others alike.
And men tend to survive a scandal differently.
Jack might lose Robby, take a hit to his reputation, become the subject of a few whispered conversations at work. Then the weeks would pass, another crisis would arrive, and people would remember he was useful.
The world permits men to outlive their mistakes.
It does not extend women the same courtesy.
You would be remembered through it, reduced to it. People would search backward through every bright smile and short skirt as if the proof had always been there, call you foolish where they called him weak, promiscuous where they called him lonely.
Even the people defending you would talk as though you needed defending from your own decision.
Jack suddenly feels sick because Dana is right, and because somewhere along the way he let himself pretend the risk belonged equally to both of you.
Half his, half yours. Fair.
It never had.
Jack lets the sixty seconds expire and stays exactly where he is, rooted with his hands by his sides and the first honest understanding of what protecting you might actually require.
Tonight, when you go looking for Jack, your intentions are not merely ill.
They are terminal. Premeditated. Your conscience is nowhere to be found, certainly not sparkling, certainly not clean enough to eat off.
Whatever small moral voice usually lives in you has been smothered beneath a white-hot blend of anger and a bruised ego, two things currently holding hands and skipping merrily through your bloodstream.
The house has only just begun to settle after several hours of drunk postmortems, everyone still riding the bar’s momentum and apparently determined to delay sleep through sheer noise pollution alone. Somebody had thrown up in the upstairs toilet, although nobody was admitting to it and Whitaker had somehow staggered into Jack’s room and passed out starfished across his bed, fully clothed, one shoe still on, leaving Jack exiled to the downstairs couch.
It’s almost completely dark when you creep down the stairs.
A small lamp glows beside the sofa, casting a little island over Jack and the book open in his hands.
The rest of the room dissolves into shadow, cluttered with the aftermath of everyone else’s good time: cups lined along the coffee table, half-empty glasses, plates abandoned with crusts and smears of dip.
You ghost past him without a glance, feet soundless on the hardwood.
Only when he murmurs, “Can we talk?” do you pause, but only long enough to throw a breezy, “Later — busy,” over your shoulder.
Jack pushes off the sofa, trailing you a step. “Busy with what, exactly?”
Busy making your life a living hell, you think, scrubbing dried food from a plate. Busy returning the favor. Busy ensuring he experiences even a fraction of the private humiliation you swallowed in that bar bathroom, standing beneath a flickering light panel while sixty seconds stretched into two minutes, then five, your invitation curdled into foolishness.
And when you had finally emerged, Jack was back at the table with the others, but every stiff line of him betrayed where his attention really was. Fresh drink in hand, barely touched. Shoulders set. Gaze locked on the corridor.
He had chosen not to come, but he had not stopped watching.
Jack would sooner lose his other leg than abandon you tipsy in a strange bar, and even furious, you knew that. He had been keeping vigil over the door, tracking who went in, who came out, waiting for your face to appear. But that garnered no brownie points from you.
When you approached, confused and annoyed and still stupidly hopeful, he had only leaned close enough to breathe, “Later,” against your ear.
As if it were of no significance. You were of no significance.
You snatch up another abandoned cup and tip its watery remains into the sink.
“This,” you say. “Some of us respect shared spaces.”
“Mm. At two in the morning?” Jack leans one hip against the counter, arms folding over his chest. When you dont stop, he adds, “All right. Scoot over. I’ll help.”
Jack has never encountered a mess, emotional or otherwise, that he did not believe could be improved by putting his hands on it. A wound, a crisis, a woman mad enough to scrub ceramic like she means to erase the glaze. Same instinct. Reach. Steady. Fix.
You turn before he can.
Dishwater slips from your fingers in clear little tracks, the oversized sleep shirt grazing high over your thighs as you square yourself toward him.
“No, thank you.” Your gaze stays fixed on his. “I’ve learned I can manage without help.”
He comes closer, and closer still, until your damp fingers have nowhere sensible to go except flat against the edge of the sink.
“That’s very independent of you, honey,” he says. “Always loved that about you.” His hand lands beside your hip, bracketing you in. His gaze searches your face, lightening at the edges. “But I don’t think we’re talking about dishes anymore, are we?”
You tip your chin up, refusing to let the gentling in his eyes sand down your irritation. “No, we’re not. We’re talking about you saying one thing and doing another. Apparently promises are more of a loose suggestion when they’re coming from you.”
“Give me a chance to explain, sweetheart.” The words slip out on a breath, softer than the rattle of the faucet. “You can be mad after. Hell, you probably still will be. Just hear me out first.”
You do not want to hear him out.
Explanations are unpredictable things, doors that open both ways, and you already have the sickening suspicion that whatever is waiting on the other side will hurt worse than not knowing.
Because yes, objectively, Jack failing to follow you into a bathroom means very little.
No fidelity breached, no grand betrayal, no concrete proof of anything beyond bad timing and worse communication.
But the small flutter in your stomach does not care about what your mind tries to litigate away.
It knows this feeling. Knows this small retreat before someone leaves, the subtle cooling, the moment affection starts becoming obligation.
Maybe he has simply had his fill of you. Maybe the novelty wore off and now you are no longer the bright, entertaining little thing he wanted to sneak around with, only a woman who talks too much and needs too much and has begun expecting permanence from something built in shadows.
And maybe now he has seen enough of the real thing to know he cannot imagine building a life around it.
So you do not give him the chance.
“Nothing to explain,” you say, seizing the sponge and escaping the cage of his arms for the opposite counter.
You start cleaning with theatrical diligence, collecting bottles, stacking plates, wiping crumbs into your palm as though the fate of the rental deposit rests entirely on you.
But you did not come downstairs to rescue countertops. You came because you need proof that Jack still wants you.
Any kind of proof. Emotional, physical, desperate, selfish. You would take whatever he gives you.
And if you cannot bring yourself to ask whether he still sees a future with you, then you can at least find out whether he still wants to put his hands on you.
So when you bend to retrieve a fallen fork from the ground, you let the hem of your sleep shirt climb unchecked over the backs of your legs until it bares you completely, exposes that you are wearing no underwear, your thighs parted just enough for Jack to see every soft, private inch you left uncovered for him.
Cool air brushes your pussy.
His stare burns hotter.
“Jesus Christ, honey.” The words leave him rough and disbelieving, dragged up from the well below his throat. Behind you, the counter creaks faintly beneath the sudden weight of his hands. “What the hell are you doing?”
You count to one before straightening.
You turn with the fork still balanced between two fingers, arranging your face into its sweetest approximation of confusion.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right,” he murmurs. “Must’ve imagined the whole thing.”
You drop the fork into the sink with an accusing clatter. “Probably. Memory goes with age, remember?”
He steps in behind you before you can turn away, chest brushing your back, one palm flattening over your stomach while the other slides beneath your shirt.
His knuckles skim the soft inside of your thigh, then settle exactly where you’re naked.
“Yeah,” he growls against your ear. “Didn’t imagine a damn thing.”
A whimper threatens and you bite it back so hard your jaw aches. In that stilled heartbeat the fight drains out of your muscles and your body answers him first, arching back, begging in the only language it trusts.
But the panic bubbles back up in fiery waves.
“Please don’t,” you say, and the plea is not the one he expects.
Jack’s hand freezes.
You close your eyes.
“If you’ve changed your mind about me, just say it.” Every word hurts your throat. You turn your face just enough for him to see what the anger has been hiding all night. Fear. “If you don’t want me anymore, then don’t touch me like you do. Don’t make it harder than it already is.”
Jack’s hand vanishes so abruptly from beneath your shirt, your knees dip with the loss.
Then he’s turning you, big palms framing your cheeks, thumbs parked just under your cheekbones. Your own slick glosses his knuckles. He tips your chin up so you can’t look anywhere but straight into the brown storm of his.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, baby?”
Your mouth opens, but what escapes first is a wet, hitching breath.
The tears rise fast, flood-waters breaching the levee before you can blink them back, Jack’s outline smearing into watercolor.
“I don’t know,” you hiccup, which is not true at all. You know too much. “You left me there. And then you acted like I was being dramatic for expecting you to show up when you said you would.” Your fingers curl around his wrists, not pushing him away, just holding on. “And maybe it’s not about that. Maybe it’s about how easy it would be for you to wake up and realize I’m not… serious-person material. I’m fun, I know that. I’m pretty and I make you laugh and I’m good in bed, but that’s not the same as being someone you actually want a life with.” Your lips tremble. “People always like me better at first.”
Immediately his face caves, all the structure in it imploding: brows hitching, mouth parting, a stricken slackness that makes him look ten years younger and infinitely more breakable.
“Don’t say that,” he says, too sharp at first, then immediately dampens. “No, sweetheart. I’m sorry. Say whatever you need to say. I’m just…” He shakes his head, jaw tight, eyes shining with something close to a fear that matches yours. “I hate that I made you feel like that.”
His hands slide from your face to your shoulders, holding you there as if he needs you to understand this with your whole body.
“You are serious to me. More serious than anything I’ve let myself have in a long time.” He exhales shakily. “You think I don’t picture a life with you? I picture it constantly.”
You just stare, lungs cinched tight, tears marooned mid-cheek as though gravity’s on pause. The room narrows to the pulse thudding in your ears.
“You’re… you’re serious about me?”
Jack makes a quiet, wounded sound. His hands come back to your face, thumbs stroking the wet tracks beneath your eyes.
“Christ, baby. Yes. Of course I am.” He bends closer, as though proximity might help drive the truth into you. “I don’t know how I let you believe otherwise… I didn’t follow after you tonight because I got scared for you, not of you. I should have told you. I should have found you, explained, apologized. Instead I left you alone with your worst thoughts. That was cruel, even if I didn’t mean it to be. Please let me fix it.”
Another hiccup rattles through you as you try to process the words at face-value. “Scared for me how?”
“Because if this blew up, I didn’t want you caught in it.” He says it simply, like there is no question which of you matters more. “I don’t give a damn what people think of me, baby. I care what it does to you.”
You shake your head inside the cradle of his hands.
“I don’t care what people think either. I don’t care about any of it.” Your voice snags, but you push through. “I love you, Jack. That matters more.”
His eyes close for half a second, like the words are almost too much to take standing up.
When they open again, he kisses you senselessly soft, both hands still holding your face as though you might vanish.
He kisses you once, twice, a third time, each one a little messier than the last.
“Love you too, baby,” he whispers, lips brushing yours. “Love you so much it scares the hell out of me.”
The brine of your tears slick the seam of your mouth. Jack doesn’t flinch, drinks it in like proof of living.
You surface for one ragged sip of air, barely enough, your lips still grazing his, fists knotted in his shirt like ballast against weightlessness.
“You mean it? You’re really serious about me?” you whisper again, softer this time, almost shy with it.
Jack lets out a low, guttural sound and grazes the corner of your mouth.
“So serious, honey.” Another kiss, deeper now, his hands sliding from your face to your waist, pulling you flush. “Want to put a ring on that pretty little hand. Want a house with your clothes everywhere and your shoes in places I’m gonna trip over.” His mouth finds yours again, swallowing your gasp before he adds, rougher, “Want a kid, if you want one. You want a baby with me, angel?”
“Yes, please, Jack.”
The words are still warm in the air when he fits his mouth to yours, a groan vibrating through both of you.
His palms squeeze your waist, then lift, your stomach swooping as he sets you on the cleared stretch of counter. Cool laminate kisses the backs of your thighs, shocking against the furnace heat of him stepping between your legs.
Your sleep-shirt scrunches between his hands, creeping, creeping, until the hem gathers at your hips and you’re bared to him again.
“Yeah?” he murmurs against your lips. “You’d give me that?”
You nod so eagerly the room tilts, fists in his collar, yanking him closer. “Anything.”
“My perfect girl,” he breathes, kissing you again, softer now, as if the tenderness makes what follows any less filthy.
His hand slips beneath the gathered cotton at your waist, fingers gliding south until one settles between your folds. He drags the wetness up in a lazy sweep, humming appreciation that burns brighter than the touch itself.
“And what’s all this, hm?” he asks, studying your face while his finger toys idly with your clit. His eyes darken, attention dropping to where his hand disappears between your legs. “You sittin’ here imagining me filling you up with a baby, sweetheart?”
Your hips lift helplessly into his hand, chasing pressure he has no intention of giving you yet.
“No teasing,” you whimper, breath breaking around the words. “Please, Jack. I need you inside me.”
Jack swears under his breath, hand leaving your clit only long enough to undo his pants. The zipper drops. Fabric loosens. Then he is back between your thighs, dragging the thick head of his cock through your folds once, twice, gathering the wetness you have made for him.
The sight of him nearly makes you stupid.
It has only been a few days, which is nothing, really, barely enough time for a normal person to miss anything, but your body has become accustomed to him, used to the heavy stretch of his cock at least once a day, sometimes twice when neither of you has somewhere to be.
You’re practically drooling, inner muscles fluttering around emptiness while he takes his sweet, sweet time wetting himself in what you’ve made for him.
You shift on the counter, thighs widening of their own accord, a needy sound slipping free when the head catches against your entrance and pulls away again.
“I know, honey. I know.” His voice roughens as he traces the head up your inner thigh. “Should’ve given you what you needed hours ago.”
Then he finally does.
He braces one hand at your hip and pushes forward in one long, steady stroke, the thick head breaching you first, then every heavy inch following.
Your cunt flutters, welcoming, molding around him until there’s no space left unexplored.
The counter shudders with the low sound that tears out of both of you.
The inexorable pressure sutures the empty ache that’s haunted you, stuffing it full until there’s no room for jealousy, no space for worst-case scenarios.
There is only Jack.
Your thighs cinch hard around his waist, heels gouging into the backs of his legs like spurs demanding more.
He doesn’t stop until pelvis meets pelvis, forehead thunking against yours while both of you gasp as if you’ve sprinted a mile in the sand.
He retreats a heartbeat’s width and your walls seize around him, possessive. He curses under his breath.
“This tight little cunt missed me, didn’t it?” he asks, already driving back in.
He starts pumping into you at a saint’s tempo, each drag of his cock thick and thorough, his hips grinding flush against you at the end of every thrust.
Your arms lock around his shoulders as your body rocks with him, bare thighs trembling against his sides.
Pleasure gathers everywhere at once, starting at your pussy and climbing until your whole body feels tuned to the rhythm of his hips.
You try to tell him that. Try to say yes, missed you, feels so good, but what comes out is a breathless spill of syllables, half his name and half a sound you would be embarrassed by if your brain were still capable of embarrassment.
His hand slips between your bodies, two fingers finding your clit.
“You’re mine, aren’t you? All mine,” he growls, cock still working inside you. “And I’m yours. Never gonna be anybody else’s, you hear me?”
Your answer is a helpless chain of nods and breathy mewls, but he isn’t satisfied with that.
He catches your jaw, thumb pressing your cheek until your eyes snap to his.
“Look at me. Hear me.”
“Y-yes, Jack… yours — love you, love you s’much,” you babble.
“Love you, angel.” He presses a kiss to your trembling lips. “Want me to fill this pretty pussy up? Want me to leave every drop inside where it belongs?”
“Yes, please. Need it — need you — m’so close.”
The first warning licks up your spine. A trembling in your calves, nipples pebbling hard against your shirt.
Pleasure stacks in breath-stealing layers, so heavy it feels like quicksand pulling you under.
Jack’s tells flare with yours. His hips snapping hard, hands tightening on your waist until his knuckles blanch.
Sweat beads at his hairline, drops down to your skin, and your walls clamp down in greedy pulses, each flex beginning for the flood he’s a second away from letting go.
“Keep looking at me,” Jack pants, curling a hand from your waist to the back of your neck. “Need to watch you fall apart.”
“Can’t — can’t hold it,” you whimper, thighs shaking.
“Don’t hold a damn thing,” he growls. “Give it to me, come on, baby.”
The quicksand finally liquefies and the world folds to white noise.
Jack breaks with you, a strangled — fuck — on your lips, thrusts turning short as he empties himself in thick bursts.
You cling to one another, quake for heartbeat after heartbeat, until the tremors fade into breathless, boneless warmth.
When Jack’s breathing finally steadies, his mouth roams in slow increments. First your collarbones, up the column of your throat, over the quiver of your lips.
He eases back only to reach for a paper towel, thumb already swiping at the mess seeping down your thighs.
“Don’t,” you plead, catching his wrist. “Wanna keep it.”
Jack huffs a low laugh before moving to kiss away your protest. “Sweetheart, you’re not making it five steps up those stairs with that sliding down your legs.”
Even as he says it, he dabs gently between them.
The light friction has your hips ticking forward, little whimpers breaking free.
“Sensitive, huh?” he tuts.
“Thought you wanted to put a baby in me?” you argue.
Jack’s thumb circles your thigh. “Oh, I plan on it — but not until there’s some extra hardware shining on your hand. One thing at a time, yeah?”
Old-fashioned as he is, you probably should’ve expected that.
Jack Abbot is the kind of man who still opens doors, calls restaurants instead of booking online, and apparently requires jewelry before intentional procreation. There is probably a proper sequence filed away in that stubborn head of his: ring, vows, house, baby.
You find, to your own surprise, that you do not mind the order at all.
You tap his chest with a teasing finger and dopey smile. “I can live with that. I do love shiny things, after all.”
What he does not tell you is that the shiny thing already exists, hidden in his sock drawer, waiting for the right moment.
You won’t find that out for another two months, until after the two of you finally sit Robby down and tell him everything, until after Jack takes one clean punch to the face without even trying to dodge it, because fair is fair, and until after Robby’s anger burns itself down into something survivable.
By the time Jack slips the ring onto your finger, his lip is healed, your brother is calling him Jack instead of Dick-Face (you can’t be sure where he learned that insult from), and the future no longer feels like something borrowed.
It is yours.
MARIA NOTE this lowkey was supposed to be like 1k words and the ideas just kept flowing and it turned into a full psychological case study on why making ur brother's best friend jealous is both a terrible idea and, unfortunately, very effective. also jack saying ring first, baby later made me briefly black out. hope u enjoyed!! <3
You ask Jack for a picture--a selfie to be precise--and who is he to say 'no' to you?
My penance for not posting anything for The Pitt in what feels like a century. Sorry if it's bad, I just needed something to get me back into it :) cheers
Jack likes it when you send him pictures during the day. It’s one of the many “rules” he has for keeping you at home, on his payroll, so to speak. He likes seeing the evidence of his hard work splayed across the screen in the form of snapshots of your daily activities.
Working out, wearing the skin-tight spandex outfits he buys for you. Picking up an overpriced coffee from whatever cute coffee shop you stumble upon during your morning strolls. Trying on dresses for occasions that have yet to appear on your calendar, snapping photos in the dressing room mirror.
And your face. It’s those damn selfies he loves so much. Seeing your smile appear on his phone during the far-and-few breaks he gets during his back-breaking shifts on the E.D. floor.
He’s perfectly content responding with a heart emoticon or a quippy phrase, nothing more. And you don’t ask for anything more, for which he is mighty grateful.
Until today.
Beneath a photo of your bright face, grinning wide beneath the buttery afternoon sun, is a request. It’s not for a new pair of shoes, or a set of lingerie he can later remove with his teeth. It’s not for another trinket to add to your collection–those little naked babes that stare at him from the windowsill whenever he sneaks into the bedroom, home from a shift. No, it’s not for a toy or an expensive piece of sparkle you can wear on your neck.
It’s for a photo.
Of him.
Now! Pretty please!
When there’s a lull, he takes advantage of the break in the chaos to slink out to an empty on-call room. He angles his phone just right, and thinks way too much about what to do with his lips, his eyes, his teeth. He presses the button, capturing his face in the frame. Before giving the photo a second thought, he sends it, and treks back to the floor.
Sitting at lunch, you practically launch like a rocket off your chair when the notification pops up on your lockscreen. It has you giggling like a schoolgirl.
Attachment: 1 Image
You waste no time navigating to your messages with Jack, laying eyes on a selfie taken from an angle you wouldn’t necessarily have chosen–but what does that matter–and practically salivating at the sight of him. Black scrubs, unidentified stains on his neck, and those delicious salt-and-pepper curls you just love to weave your fingers through.
Flipping the phone over to a table full of your closest friends, you await their oos and ahhs.
Jack's been on a health kick ever since he turned fifty. So much so, he decides to drag you along with him to the gym.
A/N: Finally back!!!
Warnings: SELF-INDULGENT! Reader is female/fem presenting. A bit of backstory for this reader: she forged a doctor's note, her mum is a nurse practitioner, past insecurity (she's still insecure, but a little less), implication of reader being chubby, important-ish flashback, understandable hatred for cross-country. Self-deprecating jokes. Lots of leg jokes. Jack is 50, reader's age isn't specified, but around early thirties. Jack and reader live together, but aren't married (yet). Flirty Jack, what's new? Reader daydreams about Jack; kinda suggestive, but nothing you can't read in public. Mostly correct tenses, your girl's a genius! Half-assed ending because I have not been able to post anything lately and I'm having the jitters!
WC: 2.1k
You were never the athletic type, considered ‘weird’ in your younger years.
Cross-country was the worst.
Not only were you forced to unnecessarily run seven and a half miles, but must train daily to prevent muscle stitches and cramps. During the dead of winter, no less.
Convinced it was torture; you forged a doctor’s note just to escape.
And it would’ve earned you a four-week suspension, too.
The principle was furious, obviously well-read on your hatred for any physical activity.
You overheard his secretary murmur about a possible expulsion – just imagining it caused you to spiral.
Luckily, your mother claimed the clinic’s printer at was defective, the ink often exploding, deeming the documents illegible. So, to alleviate the situation, she chose to print the note at the department store instead.
Suspicion was evident on the principle’s face, but how was he supposed to argue that? He had no proof that your mother was fabricating the story – she was a law-abiding citizen of the community!
Not to mention, she was a nurse practitioner. Who works at said clinic.
You got off scot-free that day. For the most part.
Slamming the car door, causing the windows to rattle, “Grounded. For three months!” Your mother screeched, a mere inch away from cursing at your face.
“You’ve made a liar out of me!”
The lecture continued for a majority of the drive. You stared out the window, eyes welling, barely containing sobs.
Your mother noticed. She always did.
Her eyes softened at the sight of you picking the skin of your lip.
Stroking your cheek with her knuckles, she gently asks, “Why’d you do it, honey?”
“Because I look stupid.” You sniffled, rubbing mucus across the sleeve of your hoodie. “I get so gross after running. My hair’s a mess, my clothes soaked with sweat, and my breathing so laboured it’s the reason Antarctica's icecaps are melting!”
She snickers, “That’s to be expected, bub.”
“No, it’s not! You don’t get it, mum. All the other girls finish training looking like Victoria Secret models; running with their hair down, clothes completely dry, and without so much as a lick of sweat on them! It’s as if they remained still.”
“Then they aren’t doing it right,” your mother huffs, parking the car in your garage.
Waterworks were always effective when it came to your mother. She couldn’t stand the sight of her little girl (you’re still her baby, no matter what) weeping, especially if she raised her voice beforehand.
So effective that it lessened your grounding from three months to a week.
You never forged again.
However, you did plead your mother to write up a sick note whenever cross-country rolled around.
It surprises you that the memory returns nearly two decades later.
All because your fifty-year-old ‘boyfriend’ (he feels far too old for that term) proposes that you accompany him to the gym.
Jack’s been on a health kick ever since he hit the big five-zero, determined to remain agile for as long as possible. Protein shakes, vitamins, supplements, and nutritious meals are commodities in your household.
“This is all for you, sweetheart. If doing all of this will grant us more time together, every disgusting salad I eat will be worth every bite.”He says with a wink, grimacing while taking a large gulp of his green smoothie.
Jack never said he enjoyed eating healthily.
But hitting the gym regularly? That he can do.
He usually follows a PPL routine: Push, Pull, Legs (or in his case, just Leg), Mondays are for cardio, and Fridays focus on full body (somewhat, anyway).
He spends hours on the power rack, lifting almost double your weight – and it shows. You can see it when he crosses his arms; shirt straining at the motion, and you swear you can hear threads snapping.
Or when he kneels to pick something up, his left calf bulging due to the amount of muscle. To be honest, it scares you sometimes. It looks as if it could pop under the slightest pressure.
And don’t get started on his torso. You relish at the thought of it.
So, while you don’t participate in rigorous exercises like Jack, you can appreciate the effort he puts in to look delectable while keeping his body in good shape.
That is, until today.
“Although… you gotta suffer with me, buttercup. It’s only fair. In sickness and in health, right?”
“Hold on! First, we aren’t married-”
“Yet.”
“-and second, you choose to do this! So, in return, I should get the choice to opt out of it.”
The older man shakes his head, “That’s not how this works, sweetheart.”
Placing his smoothie on the marble countertop, he drops his hands onto either side of your hips, “Just think about it! You get to ogle me, and I get to ogle you. The both of us hot and heaving, getting some exercise in. It’s a win-win situation,” Jack moves his thumbs back and forth, massaging the plump skin of your waist.
Your eyes dart to the cupboard behind Jack’s head, pondering his offer. On one hand, you’d be delighted to watch the magic happen in front of you, rather than just witnessing the aftermath.
On the other... the same emotions you felt all those years ago come rushing back. Feeling inadequate for not being as fit as your peers, anxiety coursing through your veins when putting on sports gear - the curvier sections of your body suddenly exposed – looking like a soggy meatball after every P.E. class.
But this is Jack we’re talking about.
Your Jack.
The same man who dreaded revealing his amputation when you first met; worried it would scare you, worried it would show how damaged he is, worried you’d leave him for someone complete.
Always so critical of himself, while adulating every detail of your existence – each tucked away in the depths of his heart, cemented there, perpetually storing new information.
Flitting your gaze to meet his, you cave.
Sighing, you tug at his silver curls, "Fine. But if you find yourself thinking I look like an obese swine while working out, it’s your fault.”
Jack’s breath hitches at the pull, “Buttercup, if I ever think like that I want you to smack me into next Tuesday, you hear?” He arches a brow, urging you to comply.
“Oh, I’d do far worse than that, hon.” You retort, mockingly patting his chest.
He titters, pressing a delicate kiss to your temple, “Good.”
Upon entering the ginormous gymnasium, the little confidence you had dissipates.
Brawny men and women surround the space, performing various activities that make you shrink inside.
You barely know how any of the machines function; resembling torture devices from the Renaissance period, or death-traps designed by Jigsaw himself.
“Stay with me now.” A snap echoes through your ears, Jack eyeing you with a concerned expression.
He slots his fingers between your shoulder blades, “This doesn’t have to be a whole thing, okay? If you just wanna jog on a treadmill today, that’s totally fine. I don’t expect you to throw yourself into the deep end.”
Jack’s got that love-sick smile on his face, the kind that conveys more than words ever could.
‘I’m proud of you for trying.’
‘You being here is enough.’
‘Thank you for entertaining my silly ideas.’
The calming effect is instantaneous; better than any herbal tea or white noise you’ve tried.
Suddenly, the task didn’t seem so daunting.
Despite Jack’s encouragement, it resumes to feel like a humiliation ritual.
Truly.
You’re currently running (if you could even call it that) on a treadmill, per his advice, feeling like an absolute buffoon.
Feet ablaze, heels of your shoe gnawing at your ankles, socks sopping thanks to heavy perspiration. Breathing is agony; like your lungs are the size of twisty balloons, hardly expanding from the harsh intake of oxygen. With every step, you anticipate a burst.
What an experience, am I right?
You can’t recall the last time you were this drained - you’d rather cosy up with a book or binge twenty-season TV shows as a pastime.
But most humiliating of all, Jack’s putting the other gym-goers to shame. He’s executing his routine with extreme precision, with very few intervals between sets.
There’s a sheen of moisture coating his physique, casting a youthful glow.
If the treadmill wasn’t already rendering you breathless, you’re sure just the sight of Jack would leave you winded.
A trail of dampness falls down his chest and back. His navy-blue singlet is an entirely different shade – in fact, if you had no idea what colour it was originally, you’d think it’s black.
God, the things you’d do to swipe back his ash-grey hair. It’s sticking to Jack’s forehead, and he makes no move to fix it.
Thoroughly ‘in the zone,’ as he’d say.
~
Shifting your attention from your quaking legs, you will yourself to picture more pleasurable situations.
Particularly about Jack.
Maybe if you’re lucky, he’d allow you to pat him down later. Dabbing a towel along his form, removing any leftover residue or grime. Then, you’d give him a massage to relieve his aching muscles – focusing on Jack’s nub.
Just the way he likes.
Soft gasps would escape his lips, eyelids falling shut, the back of his head melting into the mattress. When you hit a spot that’s too tender, he’d grab your wrist in a frenzy – halting your actions. He’d practically beg, ‘Don’t stop. Just... be gentle.’
Better yet, washing his hair in the bathtub. You’d lather it up with his favourite shampoo (your vanilla shampoo), and knead into his temples. He’d be humming and praising you the whole time; rambling sleepily about how he ‘needed this.’
At the peak of relaxation, Jack would lean his head back - situating himself on your kneecaps - and he’d ask for a kiss, all sweet-like. Yearning apparent in his eyes, a desire for his buttercup to know just how much he loves her.
And who are you to deny him?
Hunching your back, you’d let your lips meet his. Jack would grin into the kiss, the velvety exchange flooding his body with warmth. ‘I love you,’ he’d whisper, toying with your fingertips.
~
A click shatters your stupor; hundreds of pinpricks riddling your limbs. Your foot misses the running belt, stomping on the thin deck lining the sides of the machine. The sole of your shoe catches onto the tiny divot between the components, creasing the rubber.
Balance faltering, your palms scrape against the surface of the treadmill’s console, narrowly evading a tumble. Scrambling to release your sneaker, you stretch a leg to the floor – anchoring half of your body, preparing to yank the trapped foot.
With the belt still circling, it makes it near impossible to free yourself. Groaning frustratedly, you reach over, slamming the bright red ‘STOP’ button with a balled fist.
“I need to stop envisioning these scenarios before I twist my ankle!” Scolding yourself, clasping onto the handlebars, eyes downcast.
You just wish this ordeal would end, never wanting to be in a gym again.
If Jack wants you to exercise so bad, he can buy as much equipment he wants. Creating a personal gym would come with so many perks!
Like being able to gawk at Jack in the privacy of your home.
Goodness knows it’ll be cheaper in the long run – these memberships pile up even with his military discount.
Jack’s aware of the way your eyes linger on his biceps whenever they flex - it’s why he’s been on the pull-up bar for the entire duration of your session. All the while grunting much louder than needed; even detaching his prosthetic to heave himself higher.
Is he meant to be using the leg-press today? Yes, but Jack isn’t gonna miss seeing his pretty girl openly gawking at his figure for the world.
‘Leg day can wait; besides, I only have one.’ He muses.
He’s also aware of your lack of concentration, silently observing your unsteady gait and glossy eyes – often spacing out while staring in his direction, lips slightly parted.
You’re exactly where he wants you.
Hopping off the bar, Jack tips onto a railing on the wall, stabilising himself just enough to grab the bottom half of his leg. Slipping it on swiftly, dashing to your side once it’s secured.
“Whoo! I think we deserve a break, don’t you?” He huffs, leaning all his weight onto his forearm, causing the plastic of the control panel to creak.
“Thank God.” You utter under your breath.
“Hah, you look positively spent, buttercup.” Jack pulls the bottom of his singlet to his face, wiping the excess sweat, exposing his abdomen.
You stifle a groan at the action, eyes tipping upwards to the ceiling.
Lord have mercy.
“You are so getting it when we get home.”
The man only giggles, leaving his shirt half-off on his chest – looking like the pinnacle of mischief. “Holdin’ you to it, hon.”
content warning: jack abbot x gn!reader. no use of y/n. fluff!!!! reader is referred to as 'bunny' once.
word count: 0.4k.
"so, you hate me?" you ask, straightening up as jack walks right past you in the kitchen. you were bent down to get something from the cabinet beneath the sink — he walked right behind you... and didn't slap your butt.
not even a soft pat.
that obviously means your boyfriend hates you.
because not once since you've been going out, for a good chunk of months now, had this man walked past you and did not slap your ass. every single time. washing the dishes? slap. making dinner? slap. sweeping? slap. drinking water? slap. if you two were simply hanging out on the couch, the moment you stand up, slap. jack is simply obsessed with your ass, and it shows. sometimes even in public — those were obviously less of a slap and more of a gentle pat. like he just needed to put his hands on you, and somehow, it always on your butt.
jack stops mid step, turning around to face you. his handsome, wrinkled face has confused written all over it. "what?"
"you didn't slap my butt," you say, as if it's obvious. "you hate me."
"sweetheart—"
"you don't love me anymore!" you cut him off dramatically, throwing your arm up like a damsel in distress.
jack watches you, trying to figure out if you're serious or not. when he catches that slight tilt of your lips, he huffs out a chuckle, shaking his head. he walks back into the kitchen with that slow gait that makes you weak in the knees. because he knows the effect he has on you.
"i hate you, mhm?" jack says when he's close enough, trapping you between his body and the counter behind you. your heart picks up the pace, but you're not gonna let him throw you off just yet.
you tilt your chin up defiantly, crossing your arms over your chest. "yes, you do—" now, you're the one being cut off. by his lips.
jack grabs your jaw with one of his big hands, bringing you to his lips so he can devour you. his kiss is demanding, his tongue licking the seam of his lips. his other hand trails down your body, down to you hip. he grabs your ass, squeezing the flesh there. you melt against him, all that defiance leaving your body.
the bastard laughs into the kiss when you moan softly at his handling, his other hand going down to grab at your ass, too. he's rough, and you yelp against his lips when jack smacks your ass-cheek. "ouch,"
"you asked for it, bunny," he says, kissing down your neck.
Summary: Standing at the altar, Jack lets his heart speak in his handwritten vows.
Jack stood across from you. As the priest nodded toward him, signaling it was time, he took a deep breath. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. His hands had a slight tremor as he unfolded it. He didn't look at the guests. He kept his eyes fixed on yours, wanting to make sure this moment was more yours than theirs.
"I have spent a big time of my life looking for answers, trying to understand the world," Jack began with nervous smile touching his lips as he glanced down at his handwritten lines. "And when I think of love, for a long time it meant loneliness knocking at my door and the silence of my house deafening me at night. The cold punishing me because a love like yours, I believed, was forbidden. I cried many nights longing and begging to find a love… your kind of love. Something that was even beginning to seem like an illusion. Until you arrived. And standing here with you, all those dreams become reality, a beautifully simple reality."
He took one of your hands, his thumb gently tracing the back of your knuckles, trying to hold himself and you up.
"Now that I've found you, I promise to protect and take care of you. I will be the one who is there with you when the world is ending. I will be the one there when paths become difficult. I will be the one who heals your wounds when you are hurting, and I will be the one who stays by your side when everyone else decides to leave."
You caught the slight break in his voice, a testament to how deeply he meant every word.
"Because when I look at you, I see my entire destiny. I see everything I dreamed of. So I will be the honored one who kisses your lips, tasting the sweetness of your love, and I will be the one who embraces you so tightly that the cold of the world can never touch you. I want to be the one who gives you peace when you are anxious, and the one who watches over your dreams while you sleep."
"I will be your cry and your silence, your earth and your sky. Your cold and your heat. Your golden tale. Your kingdom and your king. I will be your dream man, what you have longed for. You're my queen and my kingdom doesn't function without you."
A soft murmur of emotion rippled through the few guests, but Jack didn't notice. His focus was entirely narrowed down to the space between the two of you. He folded the paper back up, pressing it into his palm as he delivered the final lines straight from the heart.
"I swear to you, here and now, that I will be the guardian of your smile. I will be the one who protects your heart from any pain, and I will be the one who loves you through every single sunrise and every single nightfall. And I could go for hours making promises, and every single one of them would be a declaration of my love for you. Because you are my home. My destiny. And my life and all my heart is yours… from the first time I saw you, from this moment on and for all eternity."
As the last word left his lips, the weight of the moment caught up to him. A tear slipped down Jack’s cheek. He could see your tear-filled eyes and how your breath caught in your throat at the depth of his promises.
Jack brought your trembling hand up to his lips, closing his eyes as he pressed a comforting kiss to your knuckles.
It was a warm and silent reassurance: he was right there, holding you, and the future you were building was entirely real.
