Summary:They have never really known each other, but they never forget the time they met.
Warning: angst?! In the first part of the fic OC is 16 and Tommy is 19 so slight age gap.
A/N: I haven’t written in so long but I kinda got obsessed with Tommy again and I needed to write something. So LET'S GO. Maybe this will be multi-parts, we will see. Please remember, English is not my first language.
1909
He remembers the weather, it’s hard for him to think about those times before the war. His days back then were monotonous, he woke up, ate, work and slept. Even that days were long, there is only one memory that comes back to him.
It was four am, he liked to sneak into the stables and take a horse for a stroll. Escaping the smoke of Small Heath was the best part of his day.
There was a small forest where he liked to shield himself in summer, he felt peaceful there and that didn’t happen often. Having four siblings and living in a small home, there was no way for privacy.
He was surprised to find someone in the grass. At first he didn’t want to stop, but something maybe his conscious held him.
“Oi, what are you doing there?” he shouted but didn’t get any answer so slowly he made his way to the person, horse forgotten on the path. Coming closer, he saw long hair, on the grass. Then he saw a girl, a little younger than him. At first he thought that she was dead, but then he saw that she was playing with something. She had a locket in her hand and next to her was a crown made of daises.
“Are you deaf, I asked, what are you doing here,” the girl still didn’t acknowledge him, but after a while she turned her head and responded.
“Is this your property?” she had an accent, it was hard for him to pinpoint what type of an accent it was but he liked how she pronounced words.
“That’s what I thought, sit down,” he was quite perplexed but at the same time intrigued. Sitting down next to her, he felt her perfume, she smelt like vanilla. It reminded him of his mother.
“Did you run away?” it was a simple question but he saw in the corner of his eye that she smiled a little.
“No, I come here often, did you run away?” He completely forgot how he looked, he didn’t have a lot of time before going to work so he went to the stables straight from the bed. His shirt was ruffled and his pants, he quickly tried to fix his hair.
“No, but I must look like a clown” her laugh was contagious.
“Don’t laugh, I didn’t have any time to make myself presentable”
She gave him her hand, introducing herself. There was this strange aura about here, looking into her eyes he realized that she had eyes of a person who could look right through you.
“I’m Victoria, what is your name gentlemen? “
“Tommy Shelby, madam,” he nodded his head in her direction, the causality with they were talking was so interesting. They only knew each other few minutes, but it already felt like they knew each other for more.
“Come on, lay down and look at the sky”
It was still pretty early, but the color of the sky was wonderful. Tommy didn't have a lot of time to just lay and observe, so he left like it was an otherworldly experience.The weirdness of the situation and the girl made it a little bit hard to relax, but it was warm and the ground wasn’t that hard. He didn't remember when he fell asleep.
***
After he woke up, the girl wasn’t there anymore, he felt paralyzed like he woke up from a long dream. Looking at his watch, he saw that he only slept for no more than forty-five minutes. There was a small flask left where she lay and the crown, grass still bent to her shape. He took the flask with a promise made to himself to give it back.
***
Going back from work was always dreadful, he wanted more time for himself, today really made him feel like a spoiled person. His hand hurts, and he couldn’t feel his feet, black grease on his whole body.
His father surprisingly sat at the table nursing a beer.Trying to look like a boss but at the end of the day he was an alcoholic.
“Where were you at dawn?”
“Why do you care” he knew that he shouldn’t say anything back but he just couldn’t stop himself.
“You, boy, you know how not talk to your father. Have a little more respect”
Seeing his father get up, he was prepared for that slap, but not for the rest. Side of his face hurt lie hell, usually it ended at one slap but today was different.
“Let him go, he had enough” he heard aunt Polly, say, everyone was scared of the big Arthur Shelby, but there were times when if someone protests he will stop.
“He is my son and I will know if he had enough” he had his fist clamped in his shirt. ” Do you think you had enough boy”
The question made him want to answer, but Tommy knew not to say a word. In the corner of his eye he saw her coming to their side.
“Stop that’ the protest that fell from Polly’s mouth was abruptly stopped by his father's hand on her throat. He wouldn’t forgive himself if anything happened to Polly, so he pushed him off her.
That evening his father left them for an alcohol and whores, but he knew that the only thing that will help is him being obedient so he promised never to go back. Greta was waiting for him to make an honest girl and that’s what he will do. No more distractions.
***
1924
The club was dark, there wasn’t any visibility because of the thick fog of smoke. His head hurt from the music and loud voices, but he had business to conduct and he really needed a drink. They were already two hours in, his possibly partners more interested in drinking and snow.
They were whores sitting on the laps of the men he was with, one in particular looked very similar. Half of her face was hidden by dark hair, so he wasn’t sure if that was really her. He wasn’t very sentimental, but the memory in the back of the head, the one he made sure to lock out was trying to resurface.
There wasn’t any opportunity to talk with her because she took the man she was with to the room. He didn’t have energy to threaten anyone, so he decided to wait for her.
Cigarette after cigarette he now was sure that it was her, no one could forget her laugh. He saw her before she saw him, there were still residues of makeup on her face but she wore now a plain dress. She stopped near the door, the noise of them being closed made her shiver.
“I knew it was you,” he could see the surprise on her face, but quickly it fell.
“I recognized you too. Thomas Shelby, the devil of Small Heath,” he wanted to snore at that, he wasn’t no devil.
“The devil huh” there wasn’t any reaction on Victoria’s face. They never really knew each other, but he didn’t see the girl who he met almost fifteen years ago. The urge for cigarette was so strong that he gave up. Putting a cigarette in his mouth he proposed one to her, but she declined.
“That’s what they call you, what do you want” she was trying not to show any emotions but he saw her closing her fists.
“You are a whore now, that’s how you ended”
She scoffed at that, and he didn’t feel the need to apologies. It was the hard truth, maybe the nineteen year old that met her would be mad and it would pain him, but not this person. The loss of Grace was eating him alive, there wasn’t space for more guilt or remorse.
She passed him, but he saw her stopping, trying to say something. She started getting nervous.
“You know what, you don’t have any right to do that. There wasn’t a lot for me to do after the war, and I needed to make a living. You should understand that, with what you are doing now. ”
He stomped on the rest of the cigarette, coming closer to her. He saw her making a quick step back so he stopped.
“I know but you could have come to me, you knew where I lived”
“It’s too late now, I have to go,” she started to turn, making a step.
“This is my business card, call me if you ever need anything,” he thought that she won’t accept it but she did.
“I won’t” there was a ghost of a smile on her face but it again fell as quickly as it showed.
Getting into the car, he told his driver to drive around the neighborhood, the thought of finding out where she lived took all the space in his mind.
“Sir, you have a meeting with Mr. Churchill”
“Yes, we can go” lighting another cigarette helped him keeping the horrors in his head at bay.
GET. AI. OUT. OF. FANDOM. Stop making headcanons with it, stop making fanfic with it, stop making fanart with it. If I see one more "asking chatgpt *blank* about *character/characters in a fandom* I'm going to lose my goddamn mind. Use your own fucking brain, stop asking AI to do everything. You could even ask other real people what they think. Just. Stop. Using. AI. In. Creative. Spaces.
author's note: i work at the weekends in a hairdresser's, and this idea came to me this morning while i was running around like a lunatic like i'm not on minimum wage - anyways, i hope you enjoy this one! and thanks always for everyone's endless support 🤍🤍
pairing: jack abbot x hairdresser!reader
word count: 4.58k
warnings: girl literally nothing other than i'm jealous of you and your life
songs i listened to (and imagine are playing in the salon): nature boy by nat king cole, i'll look around by billy holiday, i fall in love too eaily by chet baker, autumn in new york by ella fitzgerald
description: you're literally a baddie hairdresser who owns your own boujee salon and your hot older doctor bf comes in for an overdue treatment and haircut that's it that's the fic / banner is by @uzmacchiato
Your salon is called Roots.
It had been a joke, originally. Your best friend from college had laughed for like five minutes when you told her the name, and your mother had said "very clever, sweetheart" in the tone she reserved for things she didn't entirely understand but was prepared to support anyway. You'd had the sign made in warm brass lettering, hung it above the door of the narrow Victorian building you'd spent three years saving for, and felt, on the morning you opened, like something had finally clicked into place.
That was four years ago. Now Roots takes up the ground floor of that building entirely, and has three other stylists working under you, and a waiting list that runs six weeks out, and walls painted the colour of soft cream with so many plants hanging from the ceiling and crowding the windowsills that you Saturday junior had once described walking in as like entering a very stylish jungle, which you had taken as the compliment it was intended to be.
It smells like good shampoo and coffee and something green and living, and the music is always something low and unhurried, and the light comes through the big front windows like your architect specifically designed it to. Which they did. You wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes thinking about the bill at the time. Whatever, it's cute.
You love it here.
You love it the way you love things that came from a long time of working toward them, with the specific satisfaction of someone who knows exactly what it is to not come from much, someone who's had to work really, really hard to get to feel comfortable enough to stock their salon exclusively with pink Parlux Elysium hairdryers.
The only thing you love more, at this particular point in your life, is considerably more complicated.
Considerably more grumpy.
And currently twelve minutes late.
You know he's arrived before you hear him, because Maya - twenty three, the best colourist you've ever trained, zero filter - calls from the reception desk that your four o'clock is here, in a voice that carries the particular briightness of someone who finds Jack Abbot's relationship with your salon deeply entertaining.
You set down the section of hair you'd been working on, your two o'clock had run long, a regular client who always came in with the very best gossip that you never could resist and a penchant for your signature round brush blowdry. You catch her eye in the mirror.
"Two minutes," you say. "I'm sorry."
"Take your time, hun," she says, with the easy grace of a woman who has been coming to you for the past year and knows, by now, that two minutes means you're not going anywhere until her blowdry is done.
You step around the partition that divides the main floor from the small waiting area near the door, and there he is.
Doctor Jack Abbot, standing in the middle of your salon with the expression he always has when he's somewhere that is not the PTMC, his apartment or some SWAT ambush - carefully neutral, taking everything in like this isn't a place he helped pick out the paint colour of. He's in a fresh shirt, but the same pants, which means he's probably come here after a night shift at the Pitt. You can smell your vanilla-and-oud body wash on his person from where you're standing, which means he's had a shower at your place on the way. He's looking at one of the larger hanging plants near the window with the focused attention of a man who has never entirely made peace with the quantity of foliage in this building.
"You're late," you say, your hand resting gently on your right hip.
"Twelve minutes," he says, which is not an apology but is, from Jack, the acknowledgement of a fact.
"Twelve minutes late."
"I was in the middle of something."
"You're kind of always in the middle of something."
"I work in an emergency department.", Jack smirks, crossing his arms over his chest.
"And I run a business," you say pleasantly, mirroring his movements. "Sit down. I'll be with you in ten."
He looks at the waiting chairs. They're round, velvet, the deep green colour you'd agonised over for two weeks before ordering. He sits in the one nearest the door with the particular economy of a man making the best of a situation he's decided not to argue with.
Maya intercepts you on your way back to your client, appearing at your elbow with the expression she gets when she has something to say and has assessed that you are currently unable to escape.
"He looked at the pothos for like forty-five seconds," she says.
"He does that every time."
"Like it personally offended him."
"Plants make him suspicious. Don't read into it."
Maya looks over her shoulder at Jack, who is now sitting with his elbows on his knees reading something on his phone with the grim focus of a man determined to be productive in a velvet chair.
"He's kind of intimidating," she says.
"He's fine."
"He looks like he's never smiled."
"He smiles," you say.
Maya raises both eyebrows.
"He does," you say. "It's just, kind of infrequent. It's more valuable that way." You pick up your brush. "Go ask him if he wants coffee. He'll say no and then drink it if you leave it near him."
She stares at you.
"That's— how do you know that?"
"A year of paying attention," you wink at her, and go back to your client.
You finish the blowout at around four twenty-seven, which is later than you'd like but better than it could have even been, and see your client to the door with the warmth that comes naturally to you in here. This is your place, your people, and you are good at making people feel like they're the only person in the room.
Jack's still waiting where you've left them. There is a coffee on the small table beside him. It is half empty.
You say nothing about it. You simply collect your kit, refresh your station, and pull the curtain that sections off the wash basin at the back of the salon. It's a private one you use for your deep scalp treatments, tucked away from the main floor, with the good overhead light and the deep basin chair and the shelf of products that costs more than some people's rent.
"Come on, then," you call.
He appears around the curtain thirty seconds later, jacket folded over his arm. He looks at the basin chair, reclined, padded, built for comfort, with the expression of a man being asked to do something he has accepted he cannot get out of.
"You don't have to look at it like that every time," you say.
"I'm not looking at it like anything."
"You are."
"It's a chair."
"It's a very comfortable chair and you know it." You pat the headrest. "Sit down, Jack."
It takes him a moment to actually recline into it, the way it always does, he doesn't do passive easily, doesn't do being taken care of easily, but eventually the chair wins, because the chair is very well made and you bought it specifically for this purpose, and he settles back with the controlled exhale of a man exercising deliberate surrender.
You drape the cape around him, fasten it at the back, and look at the top of his head.
"Okay," you say.
"Okay what?"
"When did you last condition this?"
A pause.
"Recently."
"Jack."
"Define recently."
"This month."
Another pause, marginally longer.
"In the broader sense of the word."
You pick up a curl and let it go. It springs back, but dully, without the elasticity it should have, and you make a sound that communicates your feelings on the matter without requiring words.
"I gave you the conditioner in February," you say.
"I use it."
"The bottle I gave you in February was full. You came in in March and it looked like this."
"It doesn't look like—"
"Jack. Your curl pattern is crying."
He closes his eyes briefly. "That's not a real thing."
"It absolutely is a real thing and yours is doing it." You reach for the pre-wash treatment from the shelf, the good one, the one with the protein blend you use for clients whose hair has been neglected past the point of a standard wash fixing it, and work it through the roots with your fingers, section by section. His hair is thick and the curls are genuinely beautiful when they're looked after, which they would be, if he would simply do what you tell him, which he doesn't, because he is Jack Abbott and doing what he's told is not in his nature. Despite all this, you watch him visibly relax under the touch of your fingers, almost battling with acepting the comforting feeling.
"This is what happens," you say, working the product through methodically, "when you don't maintain it between appointments."
"I'm busy."
"Everyone is busy. Dana finds time."
"Dana has her own routine."
"Which I designed for her. Which she follows." You move to the next section. "You know what Dana's hair looks like."
A pause.
"...yes."
"It looks like that because she does what I tell her. Imagine."
His mouth does something that isn't quite a smile but is aware of one. "You're very smug about Dana's hair."
"I'm professionally proud of Dana's hair. There's a difference." You check the distribution of the product, satisfied, and reach for the shower attachment. "Dennis, on the other hand—"
"What about Dennis?"
"He came in last month. I finally convinced him to go for the cut he actually wanted instead of the safe one he always asked for." You angle the water, testing the temperature against your wrist before bringing it to his hair. "He looks amazing, by the way. The mullet suits him enormously."
Jack opens one eye. "Whitaker has a mullet."
"He has a modern mullet. There's a distinction."
"Unbelievable."
"Everyone is very happy with it. He tipped me forty percent." You work the water through his hair with one hand, the other following to ensure even saturation, and feel him go incrementally, almost imperceptibly still under your hands. He always does this, this particular quality of settling, like something that's been held at tension all day finally being given permission to release. You don't think he's aware of it. You've never mentioned it.
You reach for the shampoo.
You've been doing this for years professionally, and for considerably longer if you count the teenage years spent doing everyone's hair at sleepovers because you simply couldn't help it. You know hands in hair can be neutral, clinical, transactional, the routine of a service. But you also know they can be something else entirely, and with Jack they have always been something else, from the first time he sat in this chair ten months into knowing him with the resigned expression of a man cashing in a favour and left forty-five minutes later looking like a different person and saying, gruffly, that was fine, which you had understood to mean considerably more than fine.
You work the shampoo through in slow, thorough circles, and he is very quiet.
"Long shift?" you ask.
"Aren't they all."
"Longer than usual?"
A beat. "MVA came in at two. Three patients."
"Everyone okay?"
"Two of them."
You keep your hands moving, steady and even, and don't push further because you know when to and when not to. He'll say more if he wants to. He always does, eventually. In here there's something about the chair and the warm water and the particular quiet of the back section that loosens things in him that don't loosen easily anywhere else.
"The third was nineteen," he says, after a moment. Quietly.
Your hands don't pause.
"I'm sorry," you say. Simply. Not trying to fix it or reframe it, because he doesn't need that and wouldn't thank you for it.
"Yeah," he says.
You work the shampoo through to the ends, rinse it clean, reach for the conditioner, the deep treatment, not the regular, because his hair needs it and you are not in the business of doing things halfway. You start working it through section by section with the same thorough care.
"You're using a lot of that," he says.
"Because you needed a lot of that."
"It smells expensive."
"It is expensive."
"How expensive?"
"Jack."
"I'm just—"
"It's my product, in my salon, on your hair, which I am fixing for free because I love you. Stop asking about the price."
A pause.
He does the almost-smile thing.
"Fine," he says.
"Thank you."
"You're very bossy in here."
"I'm very bossy everywhere. You've just accepted it more thoroughly in here." You work the conditioner through the last section and reach for the wide-tooth comb. "Hold still."
"I am holding still."
"You're tensing."
"I'm not tensing."
"Your shoulders are up around your ears, Jack."
A beat. His shoulders drop approximately an inch.
"There," you say. "Was that so hard?"
"Don't push it," he says, but there's nothing in it, no real edge, just the particular texture of his voice when he's comfortable and pretending he isn't.
You detangle from the ends up, working slowly, and by the time you've reached the roots he has gone fully, properly still, the real kind, the kind that takes him a while to find on any given day. His eyes are closed. The tension that lives in his jaw, that you have memorised the particular geography of over the last year, has smoothed out into something that looks almost like rest.
You let the conditioner sit.
"How's the back?" he says, after a while.
You pause, fractionally.
"Fine."
"Y/N."
"It's fine."
"You were standing differently when I came in."
You say nothing, because the answer is that you've had back to back clients since eight this morning and your lower back has been making its feelings known since approximately two, which is an occupational hazard of the job and something you manage and not something you need to make into a conversation.
"It's an occupational hazard," you say.
"That's not the same as fine."
"Jack—"
"How many clients today?"
"That's not—"
"How many."
You exhale. "Eight."
He opens his eyes and looks up at you from the reclined chair with the expression he has when he has received information he was expecting and is not pleased about nonetheless.
"Eight clients," he says. "On your feet since eight."
"This is my job."
"I know it's your job. I'm asking if you've sat down at any point today."
"I had lunch."
"Standing up?"
A pause.
"It was a busy day."
He makes a sound. It's low, unimpressed, the particular sound that means he has heard everything you've said and has decided none of it is a satisfactory answer. He shifts in the chair, sitting up slightly against the recline.
"After this," he says, "you're going to sit down."
"I have a five o'clock—"
"After your five o'clock."
"And then I need to close up—"
"I'll help you close up. And then you're going to sit down." He looks at you levelly. "And you're going to let me make dinner."
You look at him.
At the certainty of him, the absolute unmoving quality of it, the way he delivers care like a prescription, not performed, not particularly gentle in its delivery, just completely and utterly meant.
"You're going to make dinner," you say.
"Yes."
"You made dinner twice last week."
"I'm aware of that."
"Jack—"
"Y/N." He holds your gaze. "Sit down after your five o'clock. Let me make dinner. That's all I'm asking."
A beat.
"You're asking in a very non-asking way," you say.
"I know. I'm your boyfriend, but need I remind you, I'm also your doctor."
You look at him for a moment longer, this stubborn, careful, completely impossible man sitting in your salon basin chair with conditioner in his curls and your cape around his shoulders, who came straight from a shift where he lost a nineteen year old and still showed up twelve minutes late instead of not at all, and whose idea of tenderness is telling you to sit down in a tone that leaves no room for argument.
"Fine," you say.
Something in his face settles.
"Good," he says.
"You're insufferable."
"You've mentioned that."
"I'm mentioning it again."
"Noted," he says, and closes his eyes again, and you reach for the shower attachment to rinse the conditioner out, and the salon is warm around you both and the plants hang from the ceiling like they always have and the light is doing its golden late afternoon thing through the front windows, and you think, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that this, exactly this, is the thing.
You cut his hair the way you always do — with the focused, proprietary attention of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and knows exactly whose hair they're doing it to.
He's back at your main station now, your best chair, the one in front of the mirror with the warm lighting on either side. The rest of the salon has quieted — Maya's last client left twenty minutes ago, and it's just the two of you and the music and the particular easy intimacy of this, which never feels like nothing.
"Don't take too much off," he says.
"I never take too much off."
"Last time—"
"Last time you came in two months overdue and needed significantly more taken off than you thought. That's not me taking too much. That's physics." You comb through a section, assess it, reach for your scissors. "Hold still."
"I am holding still."
"You keep watching my hands in the mirror."
"I'm allowed to watch."
"It makes you tense."
"I'm not tense."
"Jack." You meet his eyes in the mirror. "Look at the plant."
He looks at the large fiddle-leaf fig in the corner, your favourite, the one that took three years to get to its current size, with an expression of profound reluctance.
"It's very big," he says.
"She's thriving," you agree, and make the first cut.
You work in comfortable silence after that, the scissors moving in the rhythm you've had for years, your hands knowing what they're doing without requiring your full conscious attention, which frees the rest of you to simply be here. To notice the way the tension has come back into his shoulders slightly in the chair, not as bad as before, but there, the residue of the day sitting in him the way it always does. To notice the way he watches you in the mirror when he thinks you're focused on his hair. To notice, and this is the one that always gets you, without fail, every single time, the way he looks in this chair, in your space, with your hands in his hair.
Like he belongs here.
Like this is just - where he is. Where he's supposed to be.
You've loved him for most of the year you've been together and you were in trouble long before that, and it still catches you sometimes, the simple fact of him.
"You're staring," he says.
"I'm assessing my work."
"You're staring at me in the mirror."
"Occupational necessity."
His mouth does the thing, the not-so-smile, kind of smirk that's so incredibly frustrating but so hot at the same time. "Sure."
You work the scissors through the last section, check the line, make two small adjustments that he will never notice but that you will, and step back.
"There," you say.
He looks at himself in the mirror.
He does this every time, this careful, slightly suspicious assessment, like he's checking for damage. His eyes move over the cut, the shape of it, the way the curls have fallen now that they've been properly washed and cut clean. You watch him do it in the reflection, this man who trusts very few things easily and is always, always checking.
He is quiet for a moment.
"Well?" you say.
"It's fine," he says.
You fold your arms. "It's fine."
"It looks good."
"I know it looks good. I did it."
"You're very confident."
"I'm very skilled. There's a difference."
He almost smiles. Almost.
You reach forward and adjust one curl at his temple, just slightly, just because you can, the way you always do at the end, that one small finishing touch that isn't strictly necessary but that you do anyway, for yourself as much as anything. You feel him go very still under your hand.
Neither of you says anything for a moment.
The salon is quiet around you. Maya has gone out for some late lunch. The music has drifted down to something low and barely there. The evening light is coming through the front windows at its best angle, warm and unhurried, and the plants are doing what plants do in good light, which is simply to be very present and very alive. You kind of forget that your 5 o'clock is late and probably not coming at this stage.
Jack is looking at you in the mirror.
Not at his hair. At you.
"This place," he says, after a moment.
"What about it?"
"You built it." He says it simply, like a fact being stated, like something being acknowledged. "From nothing."
You meet his eyes in the glass. "I had savings."
"You had savings and a plan and four years of work." He holds your gaze in the mirror, steady and direct. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Make it smaller than it is."
You look at him. At the particular quality of his expression right now — open in the way it gets in private, in the way it gets when he's decided to say the real thing rather than the managed version of it.
"Jack—"
"Eight clients today," he says. "On your feet since eight. A waiting list six weeks out." He glances around the salon, at the plants, the warm cream walls, the brass lettering visible through the front window in reverse. "Three stylists who work for you. Who you trained." He looks back at you. "You did that."
Your chest does something inconvenient.
"I had help," you say, quietly.
"You had yourself," he says. "Mostly."
You hold his gaze in the mirror for a long moment, this odd doubled version of looking at each other, both of you reflected back in the warm light of a Tuesday evening in a salon that smells like good shampoo and growing things.
"You never say stuff like that," you say.
"I'm saying it now."
"You're going to make me emotional in my own salon."
"You're allowed to be emotional in your own salon."
"Jack—"
"I'm proud of you," he says, and it comes out the way his most true things always do, plain and undecorated and completely without performance, just the thing itself, set down in the room like it was always going to land there eventually. "I don't say it enough. I know I don't." His jaw shifts slightly. "I'm not — I'm not always good at the saying part."
"You're getting better," you say, softly.
"That's a low bar."
"It's a bar you clear." You turn then, properly, away from the mirror and toward him, because this conversation deserves more than a reflection. He is right there, close enough that you have to tilt your head slightly to look at him properly, and his face is doing the fully open thing, the rare thing, the thing that belongs only to you and to rooms like this one. "You came here today. Straight from a shift that was — I know it was hard. And you still came."
"I had an appointment."
"Jack."
He looks at you.
"You still came," you say, again, gently. "You always come."
Something moves in his expression. That deep, quiet shift that happens in him sometimes when something has landed somewhere real.
His hands find your face — warm and certain and exactly where they always end up — and he tilts you toward him and looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the checking, grounding, finding-the-still-point way, and then he says, low and even:
"I love you."
He doesn't say it the way people say it when they're filling silence, or reaching for the expected thing, or performing the correct response to a tender moment. He says it the way Jack Abbott does everything that matters — like he has thought about it completely, decided on it fully, and intends to stand behind it without qualification.
"I love you," he says again, quieter. "And I'm proud of you. And I think you should sit down more."
You laugh, properly, suddenly, the kind that comes from somewhere warm, and he watches it happen with that almost-smile, the small tucked-away one that you have decided over the course of this year is one of your very favourite things in the world.
"Okay," you say, when the laugh has settled. "I love you too. And I'll try to sit down more."
"You won't."
"I'll try."
"You'll try for three days and then there'll be a busy Tuesday and you'll forget entirely."
"Then you can remind me."
"I will," he says, with the absolute certainty of someone making a commitment rather than a comment. "I'll be very annoying about it."
"I know you will."
"Good."
You reach up and straighten the collar of his t-shirt, just because it's there, just because your hands always find something to do when they're near him. He lets you, the way he lets you do the small things — the adjusting, the fixing, the tending — that he wouldn't accept from anyone else.
"Go see Maya," you say, eventually. "Sixweeks."
"Eight."
"Six. We've been through this."
"I'm a paying client."
"You have never once paid me."
"I pay in—"
"In what, Jack?"
He considers this. "Dinner."
"Dinner," you repeat.
"And emotional support."
You stare at him.
"You just admitted to paying me in emotional support."
"I'm very supportive."
"You told me to sit down and looked disapproving about my plant collection."
"The plant collection is excessive."
"The plant collection is thriving."
"They're everywhere."
"They're perfect." You point toward reception. "Six weeks. Go."
He goes, but slowly, the way he does when he's not quite ready to be done with the room yet, and you watch him cross the salon, past the hanging pothos and the trailing ivy and the enormous fiddle-leaf fig in the corner that has taken three years to reach its current magnificence and feel the thing in your chest that has lived there for the better part of a year and that you have stopped trying to find a sufficient word for.
You hear him reach the reception desk.
Hear the low exchange of voices. His, even and unhurried, and Maya's, which even from here carries the particular brightness of someone enormously entertained.
Then, clearly, because Maya has never once in her life modulated her volume appropriately: "She said six weeks and I'm not authorised to negotiate."
A pause.
"Fine," Jack says. "Six."
You press your lips together and look at the fiddle-leaf fig and say nothing.
The salon smells like good shampoo and coffee and something green and living.
Literally how Aerion was sleeping for few weeks after Maegor was born because the boy was ‘breathing weirdly’, Aerion just had a first time parent paranoia.
Baby Maegor is looking at Lady Arryn for help btw.
summary: no one at the pitt knows you and jack are separated when you show up to the emergency room during a particularly chaotic shift, with a number of dubious symptoms that force you and jack to reconcile. (4k)
characters: jack abbot / wife!reader, jack abbot, dana evans, the pittlings
contents: established relationship, grumpy!jack, protective!jack, angst, hurt/comfort, not proofread cw for mentions of divorce, medical procedures, and pregnancy
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
You make a reluctant trip to the PTMC with a two-week-old headache and the remnants of last night’s argument with Jack.
You don’t see the man when you first walk in, which you’re slightly grateful for, even though you know that a crowded E.R. is hardly ever a good sign. You feel the swelling noise and bustling bodies pressing hard on either side of you as you freeze in place by the entrance, trapped within a sea of rushing doctors and transporting patients. Dana, who had spotted you the second you walked in, rushes to your side to keep you from drowning in it entirely.
“Hey, hun,” the older woman greets in her usual gritty deadpan, wearing the weight of the long day all over her face as she rounds the work station to meet you.
“Hey, D— Lupe sent me through,” you murmur, just barely audible over the noisy emergency department. You point behind you to the double doors towards the waiting room, but don’t take your eyes off the surrounding chaos as Dana ushers you the short distance to the front desk. “Jeez, you guys are busy today, huh?”
“You don’t know the half of it, honey,” Santos huffs distantly, from where she stands before the overhead monitor with a few other residents. It takes her a second too long to realize her slip-up, and her half-up ponytail sways behind her as she flashes you an apologetic grimace. “Shit. Sorry. I just— I hear Jack calling you that all the time, and it just slipped.”
You burn at the mention of his name. You hope it doesn’t show on your face.
“It’s okay,” you assure her with a dismissive wave of your hand. “Trust me— I’m used to it.”
“We’re never too busy for you, hun. C’mon. Let’s find you a room,” Dana assures with a gentle pat on your arm. She cranes her neck and shouts across the work station, “We got anything open, Princess?”
The woman bends at the waist to check her computer, then calls over her shoulder, “Psych 1 should be.”
“One of you find Abbot, will ya?” Dana asks the younger residents, peering at them over the top of the glasses sitting low on her nose as she escorts you down the hall. “Tell him his wife is here.”
You tense instinctively under her touch at the turn of phrase — a bitter reminder of the stack of divorce papers on the coffee table back home, which says that pretty soon you won’t be Jack’s wife anymore, or his honey. You dread telling his coworkers almost as much as you dread signing the wretched thing.
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” you assure her with a wavering grin. “It’s nothing, D, really.”
“That’s what they all say, hun,” the woman rolls her eyes.
The remaining residents share weary looks once the two of you have disappeared into the crowd — because telling Abbot his wife is in is one thing, but telling him in the middle of the unforgiving chaos of a rather brutal shift is entirely another.
“Well, I have a patient to check on, so…” Santos trails off, ambling backward with her thumb cocked over her shoulder. She spins on her sneaker and dismisses herself with a curt wave. “Later, losers.”
“Look at this place, we all have patients to check on,” Whitaker scoffs, then cowers at the expectant looks he gets from the two women at his side. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing. “But, yeah, I… I have to go, too…”
Samira laughs as she watches the blonde scurry off behind Santos.
“What’s his deal?” she scoffs and turns over her shoulder to look at Mel. Her dark brows furrow when she finds the girl backing slowly away. “Dr. King?”
“Oh, I’ve already completed all my rounds, I just… don’t wanna do it,” Mel confesses, forgetting to lie. She grimaces and turns away. “Sorry…”
Samira watches them go with a confused look twisting her features. She doesn’t understand their apprehension, or their subtle looks of sympathy — as if she’d just gotten stuck diffusing a ticking time bomb.
“O-kay, I guess I’ll do it then…” she mumbles under her breath and turns on the heel of her sneaker, starting the hunt for Dr. Abbot.
Dana stashes you in a small room on the farthest end of the E.R., away from all the chaos on the opposite side, which has since been reduced to a muted droning behind the shut door. She leaves the curtains drawn and the lights dim to ease the unwavering migraine she knows you’ve been sporting for some days now — which inevitably means it’s been plaguing you for at least a week or more before you told anyone about it.
You lie back against the angled exam table with your knees bent and your arms crossed over your eyes, feeling the pounding in your skull down into your bones. You struggle to even out your breathing and harder to relax — you tense on instinct when the door clicks open, and not just because every noise feels like a knife right to your temple.
Your stomach twists with the anticipation of seeing Jack, a sick sort of feeling at potentially having to confront the night before and the uncertain future ahead. You exhale a breath of relief when Robby slides in instead, letting in a sliver of white-blue light and a trickle of noise.
“Dana told me you were in,” he says in lieu of any real greeting, shutting the door behind him with his elbow as he reaches for the hand sanitizer on the wall at his side. He rubs it between his palms and wonders aloud, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” you assure him despite the faint grimace that twists your features when you struggle to sit up straighter on the bed. “Don’t worry about me— What the hell’s going on out there?”
Robby exhales hard through his mouth, bearded cheeks puffing. “Huge wreck, right off the highway— You didn’t see it on the way here?”
“No,” you shake your head.
“Good…” he nods. “I damn near had a heart attack when Dana told me you were in— I’m sure Abbot’s head is gonna cave in when he finds out.”
He exhales a quiet laugh and waits for you to make another stupid joke in response, just like you always do. But you avert your gaze instead and shift uncomfortably on the thin mattress, like the mention of Jack’s name is enough to make you nervous.
“What’s going on?” the man wonders with furrowed brows. You give him a shocked sort of look in response, half-confused that he’d even know you and Jack were on the outs in the first place. He elaborates soon after, “Dana said you’ve been having headaches for a while now— so that means it’s been a week, at most.”
“You guys know me so well…” you deadpan with a pair of squinted eyes. “It’s nothing, Robby. Really. I just… Had another fainting spell. And usually I wouldn’t even come in for them, but Jack said if it happened again that he’d drag me down here himself, so… I figured I’d save him the trip.”
Robby’s dark eyes narrow at the cynical smile you give him.
“Well, I’m gonna save you the lecture about waiting this long to come in… Since I’m pretty sure you’re gonna hear it from Abbot anyway, so…”
“Thank you,” you sigh.
“You sure you don’t want me to tell him you’re in?” Robby presses tentatively. “He’s with another patient right now, but he’d drop it in a second if you—”
“No,” you shake your heavy head almost instantly, ‘cause you’re not so sure how true that is anymore — Jack hasn’t exactly been too keen on dropping his work these days, which is essentially the entire reason you’re in this mess to begin with. “I don’t wanna… worry him over nothing, you know?”
Robby has a sneaking suspicion that this isn’t nothing, and that there’s something you and Abbot aren’t exactly telling him, but he doesn’t press the issue now.
“Yes, ma’am…” he nods with a huff and drops down in the cushioned stool at your bedside, silently preparing himself for the hell Abbot’s gonna raise when he inevitably finds out you’re here.
Samira finds Dr. Abbot in Trauma 2, performing an emergency surgery on a patient whose pelvis was crushed in the crash, with Dr. Garcia and a crowd of other residents at his side. The younger girl slinks through the glass door into the windowless room, and doesn’t flinch at the overwhelming scent of blood and bitter antiseptic heavying the air inside.
She plucks a surgical mask from the dispenser beside the door and holds it over her mouth as she calls out a hesitant, “Dr. Abbot?”
“Little busy here, Mohan,” Jack answers without looking at her, elbows deep in the unconscious man’s open pelvis as he readjusts the metal clamps there. Bright crimson blood stains his gloves and the stomach of his blue PPE gown as he works with expert hands.
“It’s sort of important, sir…”
Jack says nothing in response; just gives the girl a silent, expectant look from behind the safety glasses sitting low on his nose.
“Your wife is here,” she tells him, dark eyes wild from behind the mask she holds over her mouth. “She’s totally fine, she’s in psych 1 with Dana, but she—”
“Since when?” Jack snaps before she can properly get the words out, flaring red-hot with an immediate worry and a suffocating tinge of regret despite Samira’s reassurances.
Flashes of the crash plague his anxious mind. He can’t help but picture you lying as limp and as bloody as the man before him now. The brutal image hits him as hard as the memory of the last thing he said to you the night before, right before you slept in separate bedrooms.
“Well, if my work schedule makes you so damn miserable, then why don’t you just sign the goddamn papers—?”
“Um… I’m not sure,” Samira answers with a waver in her voice. “About ten minutes ago, I think? I did a few rounds before I came in here, so—”
Jack stills suddenly in place. His head snaps in the younger girl’s direction, and Samira cowers at the hardened glare in his eyes.
“Is there a reason you didn’t come to me directly?”
Samira flinches at his unusually harsh tone. Her wide eyes flit between his stern ones and the anxious looks from the residents just behind him. “Well, she said not to… But then Dana said that I should, so I wasn’t exactly sure who to listen to—”
“Me,” Jack snaps. “You listen to the attending, who told everyone to come get him if his wife came in—”
He doesn’t have time to notice his slip-up, or otherwise correct it, when Garcia steps in.
“I’ll take over here,” the older woman says in her usual deadpan. “If you guys wanna argue like children somewhere else.”
Jack doesn’t argue as he steps back from the patient, peeling off his bloodied gown and gloves with suddenly anxious hands. He chucks the PPE in the biohazard bin with an obvious fire in his touch. The sudden shift in his usually calm disposition makes Samira’s chest ache, while Garcia grins behind her mask.
“Tell your wife I said hi, Dr. Rabbit,” the woman croons with a teasing lilt and a mischievous look behind her glasses.
“She’s still not interested, Garcia,” Abbot calls over his shoulder as he storms towards the door.
“Dammit…”
Samira cowers when Jack slides past her in the doorway, not looking at her once, like he barely recognizes that she’s there at all. She watches through the glass door as he disappears into the bustling crowd outside, hands balled into trembling fists at his sides.
“Don’t worry about him, kid,” Garcia sighs, half-distracted, as she fishes her bloodied hands in the unconscious man’s open pelvis. “He’s been on his period for about a week now, and we’re all paying the price for it…”
Samira’s chest deflates with a huff. “So, that’s why no one else wanted to do it…”
The two-minute trek across the E.R. feels nothing short of two years.
The entire walk there, Jack’s anxious mind struggles to discern what Mohan could’ve meant by totally fine. Were you just a little scraped up? Were you terribly injured, but at the very least alive? Was Samira trying to soften the blow, or did she truly mean totally fine?
Jack can’t help but picture the worst-case scenario, and he expects to find you hurt.
“No, I just kinda have this headache that comes and goes, you know?” he hears you say, right before he storms inside.
“Oh— And there it is,” Jack jokes when Abbot appears suddenly in the doorway, bringing in a wave of light and noise and unadulterated panic in with him.
Jack’s tight chest relaxes slightly when he finds you totally fine — lounging in a dim room with Robby at your side, laughing at his stupid joke as he draws dark red blood from the inside of your arm.
He’s relieved that you’re okay, of course, but the sight of you smiling — when Jack hasn’t quite been able to keep food down for days with the worry that you might be leaving him — hurts him in a completely different (and only slightly jealous) way.
“Oh, fuck…” you hear yourself say when Jack storms in like a white-hot flame. Because, sure, you’ve sort of made it a point to avoid the man at every turn, but you didn’t want him finding you like this.
You know what this looks like. You know it looks like you’re going behind his back and purposefully taunting him by going to his friends instead of straight to him. You know it hurts his feelings. And you may not like him so much right now, but you never want to see him sad.
“Yeah, 'oh fuck' is right,” Jack nods as he closes the door behind him, muffling the noise as the room goes dim again.
Robby inhales sharply through his nose. He can feel the sudden tension between the two of you pressing hard on either side of him. “Little pinch,” he murmurs to you, right before sliding the needle from your vein.
“Why didn’t you come get me?” Jack asks.
“Because you were busy,” you sigh, then mumble more quietly under your breath. “Go figure…”
“Why didn’t you call before you came—”
You fight the urge to rehash the fight from the night before and roll your eyes instead. “Because it’s not a big deal, Jack—”
“Yeah, I think I’ll be the judge of that,” the man concludes with narrowed eyes and biceps that strain against his scrubs when he crosses his arms over his chest.
Robby’s dark eyes flit between the two of you behind the glasses perched on his broad nose. When he’s sure the arguing has ceased, he looks over his shoulder at Abbot and begins to explain. “I’m doing an electrolyte panel to check for any imbalances— It’ll also help us rule out anemia and hypoglycemia.”
Jack nods, brows lowered in concentration. “Okay… What about—?”
“I was gonna do an ECG when the results came back,” Robby finishes for him. “Her heart sounds fine, but I’ll have to wait for a room to open up if the bloodwork comes back abnormal, and… Who knows how long that’s gonna be?”
“Alright,” Jack nods again. “Sounds good.”
Robby turns to you, brows raised expectantly. “Sound good?”
“You’re the boss, Robinavitch,” you shrug.
“Hear that, brother?” Robby scoffs as he rises from his stool, taking the vials of blood work with him as he heads for the door. He elbows Jack on the arm when he walks by and flashes the frowning man a smug grin. “I’m the boss.”
Robby opens and shuts the door behind him, and all the playful energy leaves with him. The subsequent silence feels borderline suffocating. You and Jack, barely breathing, try to break it at the same time.
“I’m fine, Jack—”
“I can’t believe this—”
You huff and tip your aching head back. “I’m fine. So you can go back and do whatever it is you were doing before. I’m sure it’s more important.”
Jack’s light eyes narrow into thin slits. His firm stature never wavers — arms crossed tight, sneakers spread shoulder-length apart — like he’s interrogating an enemy on the battlefield.
“What happened? Did you faint again?”
“Yeah…” you answer suddenly sheepishly, averting your gaze to a faded stain on the knee of your jeans. “It was in your shower chair this time. I think I had the water too hot.”
“I told you about the hot water—”
“I know,” you huff like a stubborn child. “And you also told me that if I passed out again that I needed to come in so… I came in.”
“I still wish you would’ve called me first,” he tells you — not angry this time, not truly, but still obviously hurt. “When Mohan told me you were here, I thought something bad happened to you.”
“Well, considering you told me to leave last night, I honestly didn’t think you really gave a shit anymore, Jack...” you confess with a smile you hardly mean.
“I told you to leave because you said you wanted to,” Jack argues through gritted teeth. “You act like I pulled that shit out of thin air— Like you haven’t been looking for an out for weeks.”
“An out?” you echo, a little louder than you mean to, as your face screws in offense. “You’re the one who’s never home, Jack. So if anyone’s been looking for a fucking out, it’s you— Fuck…”
You whimper when a white-hot flare surges suddenly across your skull, from temple to temple and down the base of your neck. You wince and close your eyes, tentatively tipping your head back against the bed once more.
Jack forgets to be angry in an instant. His chest stings at the pained look that etches across your features. His legs carry him to you before his brain has decided whether or not he should.
“What?” he presses, eyes wild. “What’s wrong?”
“My head…” you squeak out.
Jack huffs. “Here…”
You know he’s towering over you without having to open your eyes. You can feel him there, warm like a heater, and smelling of cologne and a long shift at the E.R. He braces himself with one hand on the mattress beside your head and covers your eyes with his free one. You don’t flinch when his gently calloused palm splays suddenly over the length of your forehead, pinky curving in the bend of your closed eyelids.
He couldn’t possibly count the number of times he’s done this over the years — hundreds, at least. It’s the only way he knew how to soothe your headaches when the medicine was taking its sweet time kicking in. It’s the pressure that helps, though you’ve always argued that Jack must have some secret healing superpowers that he isn’t telling you about.
You’re only able take your first good breath in two weeks when he’s finally touching you so gently.
“Better?” he wonders, half-detached but still strikingly soft.
You nod once beneath his palm and fight back the urge to cry when his thumb rubs softly over your temple.
“Contrary to popular belief, honey,” the older man murmurs. “I didn’t come in here to fight with you.”
“It always ends in a fight with us, Jack,” you sigh. “You know that.”
“I thought you were hurt,” he confesses, in a voice so soft it makes you feel like crying. “Bad hurt. When Mohan came and got me, I thought for sure you were involved with all the shit going on out there.”
“Well, I’m not… So you can go now…” you tell him in a trembling voice, which you’d rather blame on the lingering ache in your skull and not the fact that you don’t truly want him to leave — that you never really wanted him to leave.
You miss the quiet smile Jack gives you in response, because he can see right through you.
“Yeah, I’m not going anywhere, honey…” he says on a gentle exhale. “And I’m not signing those stupid papers.”
Your heart drops at the mention of them, at the bitter reminder of their existence, even though it’s been plaguing your every waking thought for some weeks now.
Your trembling hands reach for the one he holds over your eyes. You wrap your fingers around his wrist and knuckles, peeling his palm away to peer up at him with a glassy gaze.
“What do you mean?” you ask on bated breath.
Jack meets your weary look with a softer, sadder smile.
“Well, I just got about a… three-minute glimpse of what my life was gonna look like without you,” Jack sighs, in lieu of confessing all the gory worst-case scenarios he couldn’t quite get out of his head. “And, turns out, I’m not strong enough for that, so… I’m officially declining your divorce, honey.”
“Jack…” you protest feebly, features crumpling at his poor excuse for a joke, while his calloused palm slips from your forehead and cups gently over your warm cheek.
He ducks down to meet your gaze when you try to turn away, bending slightly at the waist and bracing himself with his free hand curled around the top of the mattress. His nose is mere inches from yours — you can feel each of his exhales fan across your chin. You couldn’t shy away from him if you tried.
“I’m serious, honey,” he says with a stern but no less sincere look swimming in his light eyes. “You were right— I’m working too much—”
“No, don’t…” you protest with a shake of your head, because the affirmation doesn’t feel as rewarding as you’d expected it to. Instead, it makes you feel a little sick. Your gaze falls to the dog tags slipping from the inside of his scrubs, glimmering in the darkness as they sway just ahead of you. Your fingers reach to fidget with the chain on muscle memory. “It’s your job, Jack. I shouldn’t dictate how much you work—”
“You’re my wife, honey. You shouldn’t feel second to my job, because you’re not,” he tells you, brows raised to his hairline. “So, I’ll— cut down on my hours, I’ll stop picking up so many shifts, I’ll… I’ll do whatever the hell you want me to do, baby, ‘cause I’m not going anywhere, alright?”
You feel his words physically, like a white-hot knife lodged in the center of your sternum and twisting.
You struggle to find the words to respond, just as you struggle to find the air in the room to breathe. Because you’ve spent weeks thinking you’d failed at your marriage, and now you’ve failed at failing your marriage. It’s a stupid tug of war that makes you hate yourself all the more.
“Well, maybe we should wait for Robby to get back…” you murmur quietly, shifting on the mattress beneath him. “You know, before we have this conversation or whatever…”
Jack ducks his head to chase your averted gaze, brows furrowing in confusion. “What the hell does Robby have to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug. “I might have, like, a super rare blood cancer or something—”
“Jesus,” Jack grimaces before you can properly get the words out, flinching away from you when you shatter the sincere moment. “Why would you say something like that?”
“I might only have a week left to live or something,” you retort with wide eyes, only partially playful. “So we might not even have to worry about any of this, you know? …Who knows?”
Jack meets your sparkling, half-crazed look with a firm scowl. “You’re real morbid, honey. You know that?”
“Well, what can I say?” you shrug and fight the urge to smile. “Your cynicism’s rubbing off on me, Abbot.”
Robby returns about a half hour later, to a room considerably less tense than it was when he left. He forgets to comment or otherwise pry about it when he slips inside, gaze averted to the glowing iPad resting on his palm. His free hand scratches at the grey patch in his beard — an anxious tic you’ve come to know well.
“Hey, uh—” he clears his throat behind his fist when the words get stuck there.
“Oh, shit…” you waver when the door clicks shuts behind him. “I was just kidding about the whole blood cancer thing, I swear—”
Robby’s brows lower in confusion. “…What?”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jack huffs, rising from the stool at your side for the first time in thirty minutes as he rushes to Robby in long strides — ‘cause he can feel the man’s trepidation like heat off a bonfire. “What did the blood work say?”
Robby inhales sharply through his nose as he passes the man the tablet. He crosses his arms over his chest and splays his right hand over the lower half of his bearded face. His wide eyes dart between the lit-up iPad and the edge of Jack’s profile, eagerly awaiting the man’s reaction.
You watch with your heart in your throat as Jack’s eyes flit wildly back and forth across the screen. His scruffy jaw slackens slightly in shock, and Robby nods slowly in a quiet concurrence.
“Okay, what the hell?” You shatter the heavy silence. “Are you guys just gonna communicate telepathically the whole time, or is someone gonna tell me what’s going on with me?”
“You’re fine— You’re totally fine,” Robby reassures you, gesturing wildly with his right hand. “Your bloodwork came back normal, but… There’s a high level of hCG in your bloodstream. And I think that’s what’s been causing your dizziness and fainting spells.”
“HCG?” you echo, eyes darting wildly between the two men in front of you. “What the hell is hCG?”
“Human chorionic gonadotropin,” Jack answers on instinct, half-strangled, and never once taking his eyes off the screen in his hands. “Means you’re pregnant, honey…”
You feel the world fall out from under you for the second or third or hundredth time that day. You hide your crumpling features behind your hands as your head falls back against the exam table. Your following words come out muffled.
summary: your relationship with jack has always been 50/50: he buys you everything, and you let him. this arrangement, as he calls it, works perfectly - until you start to worry that you may not be the only one who's doing it with. (4k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, mentor!michael robinavitch, baran al-hashimi, samira mohan
contents: friends with benefits, sugar daddy!jack, jealousy, angst, hurt/comfort, so much sexual tension cw for mentions of injuries, medical procedures, medical inaccuracies, heavy mentions of smut 18+ (MDNI)
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Jack Abbot rushes into the ER with a high-velocity GSW, a close call of his own, and a terribly smart mouth.
Splotches of dark crimson stain the camo of heavy-duty tactical gear as he bursts through the double doors of the ambulance bay, squeezing rhythmically at the intubation bag he holds in a bloodied hand. You rush instantly from the work station to meet him halfway without a second thought.
“I thought you were off today,” you tell him, in lieu of a greeting, as you escort him to the nearest open trauma room from the opposite side of the gurney.
“Well, my therapist said I needed a hobby, so…” he quips, with sweat dripping from his greying curls. He manages to flash you a playful look in the midst of all the chaos as you situate the unconscious policeman in the center of the room. “What about you, huh? You’re supposed to be off, too— What’s your excuse?”
“Well, I had a strange feeling that I might see a pretty man in uniform today,” you shrug, slipping on a pair of gloves. “So I decided to work a double— See if my wish would come true.”
The corner of Jack’s mouth lifts into a crooked, tight-lipped smile. “Well, if you like this, you should see me as a flight attendant—”
Robby rushes in with Dr. Al-Hashimi just behind him a second later, shattering the playful tension between the two of you with a thousand different questions. You’re left as the only resident in a sea of attendings and nurses; Dr. Al passes you the reins accordingly. “This is a learning hospital, right? Time for you to learn how to be the boss, R4.”
“Hear that, Abbot?” you joke as the older man migrates inevitably to your side, smelling of blood and sweat and the cologne he always leaves on your pillow. “I’m the boss here.”
“Well, you could try to be a little more humble about it, sweetheart,” he squints and tugs on a disposable PPE gown, which Perlah helps him tie in the back. “Let’s do some skin hooks— 4 Shiley. Sound good?”
You hiss through your teeth and drag the clear blue sleeves of your own gown over your shoulders, while Robby stands behind you to knot the garment in place. “I don’t really like the curve of a Shiley… Especially not if we’re about to rush him up to the O.R.”
“I didn’t know you were so picky.”
“Well, you should know better than anyone, Dr. Abbot,” you grin. “Cut me an ET tube, will you? 6-0?”
“Yes, ma’am…” the older man nods and holds back his giddy grin until he turns away from you.
Robby grumbles a noise of disgust in the back of his throat in the meanwhile — quickly realizing that the two of you were much easier to stomach when you were working night shifts together, and he only had to see you for half an hour in passing, at most.
“Jesus Christ— Get a room, you two.”
“Well, technically, this is a room,” Jack quips distantly as he returns to your side with the endotracheal tube in tow. You make room for him at the head of the gurney on instinct, and drape a thin blue cloth over the patient’s neck, centering the aperture over the gushing wound.
Robby moves to the opposite side of the bed and pulls the haphazardly placed intubation bag from the man’s mouth with careful hands. “One without me in it, preferably,” he argues.
“Ooh…” you lilt. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Dr. Robby.”
“Just focus,” he scolds in a gritty tone of voice.
“You need to find the second and third tracheal rings,” Dr. Al instructs, sliding between the crowd and motioning to his neck with her gloved pinky. “You’ll be able to feel them with your fingers— just make the incision through the cricoid cartilage and be careful to avoid hitting the vocal cords, yeah?”
She flashes you a dark, doe-eyed, and distantly unamused look, seemingly immune to the playful banter surrounding her.
You nod once, scalpel in hand. “Yes, ma’am.”
You make the incision while Jack preps the tube. You work together with deft hands and a relative silence, aside from a few procedural directions. For the most part, the two of you communicate without words — you locate the man’s ruptured trachea in a sea of bright red blood while Jack slides the thin tubing to make an airway.
“I’m in,” he blurts after a few tense minutes. “Balloon up.”
The rapid beeping of his dropping SATs begins to even out almost instantly.
“I’ll sew the tracheal to the skin,” you announce within a sigh of relief. “2-0 silk, please.”
Jack passes you the round of sutures with a proud nod and a quiet smile. “Not too shabby, Doc… We make a pretty good team.”
“Or maybe I’m just really good at telling you what to do, Abbot,” you quip.
“Yeah,” he shrugs. “That, too.”
Robby and Dr. Al take their leave when the chaos dissipates, and Garcia comes down from the O.R. for a consultation. They trade the crowded trauma room for an equally crowded emergency department — slowly filling to the brim, like a pot bound to boil over. But, even still, it’s not nearly as tense as whatever you and Abbot have going on.
“Are they always like that?” the woman wonders aloud, nodding her tied-back curls towards the room behind them.
“Yep…” Robby nods with a heavy sigh, rubbing hand sanitizer between his calloused palms. “But they’re not usually dayshift, so… My philosophy is— let the night crew deal with it.”
You and Jack decide to follow Robby’s advice and find a room of your own — on the half-abandoned wing of the eighth floor, where everything smells like dust and time gone by, and the dying overhead lights only work a quarter of the time. It’s a good enough place to be alone with him, though; it gives you ample time to patch up the wound on his shoulder, and saves Jack the trouble of getting caught with the injury and being forced to fill out a mountain of paperwork accordingly.
He sits on the edge of the hospital bed with his shirt off and his broad arms crossed over his chest. The tendons in his freckled back twitch despite himself when you smooth a fresh bandage over his freshly cleaned scrape.
“Does it feel okay?” you ask him.
“Yep…” he nods once, trying and failing to get a peek of the gauze from over his shoulder. “Fine.”
Your concern doesn’t waver. Your brows lower with it, in a palpable look of worry that etches across your face. “You’d tell me if you were, like, in pain, though, right?”
Jack ponders for a moment, lips jutting faintly. “No, probably not,” he answers, too blunt for his own good.
“Well. At least you’re honest…”
You sigh and turn on the heel of your sneaker to chuck the dirtied napkins and crumpled wrappers into the bin across the room. Jack watches you go with something mischievous glimmering in his gaze.
“But I am fine, though— If you’re really all that worried about me,” he assures you with a quiet smile. “I’m a little banged up, but… I’ll survive.”
“So I can still come over tonight?” you wonder, half-shy.
Jack nods slowly and tilts his scruffy chin to keep your gaze when you walk the short distance back over to him. “Yes, sweetheart— I still plan on buying you dinner tonight,” he answers in a dry, sarcastic lilt.
Because that’s usually how it goes nowadays. You keep him company for a night, and he gets you food, pays off your grocery bill, or covers your rent — and then you go to work the next day like none of it ever happened.
It didn’t always used to be that way, though, this quid pro quo thing that the two of you had struck up over time. Jack bought things for you because he cared about you, because he didn’t want you to go hungry or homeless when he knew he had the money to help. It was all a part of his job, he figured, to help his residents out whenever he could. But, somewhere down the line, he became more than just your attending, and a whole lot less than your boyfriend. It was more like a secret, third thing that the two of you never bothered to put a label on.
You frown. “That’s not why I was asking, smartass.”
“Well, that’s the arrangement, though, right?”
“Calling it an arrangement makes it sound like I’m your— mail-order bride or something,” you scoff and cross your arms over his chest, following his form with a squinted gaze as he reaches for his discarded shirt. “You don’t have to make it sound so formal, Jack. I know this is fun for you, too.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t…” he quips with a faint wince as he slides the thin black t-shirt over his head, grimacing at the burn that blooms beneath the bandage as he does so.
“And no pressure or anything, obviously, but, uh…” You trail off and swallow hard, struggling to find the courage to continue as your eyes flit everywhere but at the man before you. “My student loans are about to hit for this month, and I—”
“I know,” Jack interjects with a polite nod. “I already took care of it.”
You lose your breath almost instantly, for a reason you can’t quite name.
“…Seriously?”
He scoffs like it’s obvious and rises from the bed, towering several inches over you. “Well, yeah. I told you, sweetheart— You don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore. As per the arrangement...” he croons lowly, with a playful half-smile, before bending softly at the waist to press a fleeting kiss to your lips.
You’re too busy trying to remember how to breathe to respond.
You struggle to finish the rest of your charting through the thoughts of Jack still plaguing your mind. You don’t think you’ve been so taken care of before; so seen, so held. You’re not entirely sure what to do with all of it now — these feelings that you’re harboring for your boss, of which you’re almost certain there is no room for in such an arrangement, as he so lovingly calls it.
Because he doesn’t take care of you because he loves you. He takes care of you so you’ll come over at the end of every night, and remind him what it feels like to be a little less lonely. And even still, you run hopelessly to his side anyway — half-ashamed because you don’t even care that he’s using you; half-ashamed because you like it.
“Have you seen Dr. Abbot?” Samira wonders through panted breaths, disrupting your distracted train of thought. She enters your tunnel vision from the opposite side of the desk, and all of a sudden, you’re back in the E.R. The distant droning of constant noise fills your ears when you’re shoved back to reality again. “I’ve been trying to find him for, like, ten minutes at this point.”
“Uh… No— Not recently, no,” you stammer.
Her chest deflates with an exhaled breath. “Shit…”
Your eyes narrow as they scan over her form, frazzled and sweaty, with dark curls falling out of her claw clip to frame either side of her face. “You okay? What happened?”
She sighs and leans her elbows on the desk in front of her.
“Nothing, I just… I should’ve planned this better,” she murmurs, mostly to herself. She talks with her hands as she rambles, “My patient doesn’t have any insurance. And he’s already in a mountain of medical debt as it is, so I was gonna send him home with some supplies, right? But then I lost him, and I was gonna Uber the stuff to his house, but then Dr. Abbot said he’d pay for it, and… Now I can’t find either of them, so…”
She trails off with a deep huff.
You forget that it’s your turn to respond, too hung up on the fact that Jack had offered to help her pay. It shouldn’t bother you as much as it does, but it hits you like a punch to the stomach all the same. Because you weren’t special, Jack was just kind; and you’re only realizing now that this arrangement of yours was never exactly exclusive.
“Sorry,” Samira shakes her head. “I know I’m rambling. It’s just… been a long day.”
You blink rapidly, clearing the haze of hurt from your eyes. “No, I— I totally get it. You should check upstairs. He might be with Hiro in the O.R.”
“Thanks,” she says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, that disappears the second she heads back for the elevator across the room.
You return to your charting when she’s gone, but forget to do any of it. You lose yourself in the void of the stark white computer screen, instead, while your hurt and distant jealousy scratches at your chest from the inside out.
Robby watches from afar, giving you a few minutes alone, before dismissing himself from the interns and shattering your cynical stream of consciousness. “How’s the charting coming along?” he asks in lieu of a greeting as he walks to stand at your side.
“Great,” you deadpan, muffled into the hands holding up your heavy head.
He scoffs out a quiet laugh. “Not to say I told you so, but… I did kinda tell you so…”
You turn slowly, peeking at him with one glaring eye as he leans against the desk beside you with his arm crossed over his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you question in a gritty monotone.
“I told you not to get involved with Abbot,” Robby shrugs. “Not until you were done with your residency— ‘cause you already repeated one year, and if you want that neuro fellowship, you can’t have Jack screwing with your head.”
“Oh, yeah?” you squint, feigning interest as you slouch back in your chair. “The same way you screwed with Heather’s? When you got her pregnant when she was your resident?”
You say it to hurt him, and you can tell that it does, though it doesn’t feel as rewarding as you thought it would.
“Yeah, actually…” Robby nods and scratches at the greying patch in his beard. There’s a hurt look swimming in his dark eyes that almost makes you cower when he peers down at you. “Look, kid. I don’t care what you and Abbot get up to in your free time. That’s not what this is. But I’ve known you since you were an MS3— and I know you’re gonna go off to do great things, because I’m the one that taught you, right?”
Your frown deepens.
He smiles wider. “I just don’t want some relationship getting in your head, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s not, so…” you trail off with a less than convincing waver in your voice.
“Really?” he hums, eyes narrowing in a challenging squint. “Have you checked in with that fellowship you wanted?”
You smack your lips against your teeth. “Not yet…”
“And why’s that?”
“When did you become my mom, exactly, Dr. Robby?” you joke and spin in your chair to face him. “‘Cause it feels a little like you’re reprimanding me here—”
“I am reprimanding you,” he tells you, only partially joking, before turning at the distant call of his name. He stands to full height again and flashes you a playfully stern look as he walks away. “Take care of it, alright? Or else I’m grounding you.”
“For how long?” you call after him.
“However long it takes to get your head out of your ass—”
You’re left reeling for the rest of the day, trapped in a merciless cycle of want and unwavering doubt.
Jack is not yet close enough, even when he’s all but smothering you in the center of his bed, pressing you into the mussed sheets below with his broad body propped on top of yours. He smells distinctly of sweat, stale cologne, and the steak dinner he took you to after your shift ended.
You wrap your arms around his freckled shoulders in a feeble attempt to pull him impossibly closer, careful to avoid the bandage still stuck on his left shoulder blade. You bury your nose in his greying curls while he sprinkles warm, wet kisses along the tendons of your neck, relishing in the salty tang of sweat staining your skin.
But even as he slots himself between your spread thighs, even as he marks his territory in the lovebites he litters on your collarbone, you can’t shake the feeling that he’d rather be somewhere else — that there’s someone else he’s thinking of, someone else he’ll call after you’ve left for home, someone else he’ll take care of when you’re gone.
The train of thought leads you inevitably back to the root of your cynicism, which you struggle to shake out of your mind once the visual has entered it.
“Did you ever find Samira?” you hear yourself ask, shattering the honeyed quiet of his lamplit bedroom.
Jack’s head is far too cloudy to hear you properly the first time.
He pulls away from you with a quiet smack and sits back on his haunches. Your hands fall to your stomach, clad only in a thin white tank top, while his rest over your bare thighs, propped on either side of his waist. Your cotton panties are the only thing keeping you hidden from him now, and his form-fitting boxers cradle a hardening length that threatens to make your mouth water.
He wears a swirled look of confusion across his scruffy face, along with his spit on his swollen, kissbitten mouth, as he asks, “Did I ever find what?”
“Samira,” you echo, brows raised to your hairline. “She was looking for you a little bit before we left— Said she needed your help paying for something.”
“Oh. Yeah,” Jack hums, pale shoulders bouncing in a lazy shrug. “Her patient needed some supplies Ubered to his house, so… I took care of it. No big deal.”
He bends down to kiss you again, but freezes with his nose pressed against the bridge of yours when he feels you tense below him. His heavy sigh fans warm across your jaw before he sits back again, features screwed in a faint grimace.
“And I’m realizing now that that’s probably not the best phrase to use, but… I was just helping out a friend— a patient, actually,” he rambles. “That’s it.”
Your eyes narrow in a playful squint.
“That’s it?” you echo.
“Trust me, sweetheart,” Jack scoffs and shifts between your thighs, lifting your hips with his wide hands cradling your ass and bending at the waist to press his mouth over the bow in the center of your underwear. “The only girl getting her student loans paid off by me, is you.”
He leaves another chaste kiss on the cotton of your panties, right over the place where you throb like a heartbeat for him. Your stomach blooms with warmth.
“Because I’m special or because you don’t have the money to afford anyone else?” you ask.
Jack squints, light eyes glimmering with mischief in the low light. “Because you’re special and because I don’t have the money to afford anyone else. How about that?”
You roll your eyes despite the soft smile hinting at the corners of your mouth. “Just get to work, Dr. Abbot,” you scold in a distant monotone.
“With pleasure,” he mumbles, right before sliding his fingers through the hem of your underwear, pulling them to the side, and kissing your glittering pussy the way he would your mouth.
The lamplit bedroom swells with panted breaths and the heavy scent of sex.
Jack slouches against the headboard, heavy-eyed and wearing a mixture of your cum and spit down to his scruffy chin. His toned chest is coated in a thin layer of hair and glittering sweat. You watch a rogue bead trail down his sternum from where you’re perched on top of him — with the sheets bunched around your hips, and your thighs straddling his waist. Your pussy still clenches with the aftershocks of your orgasm while his spent cock softens slowly inside of you.
His calloused hands trail slowly up and down the length of your torso — from your shoulder blades, down to your ribs, over the bend of your waist, and up again. His touch is softer than summer rain, warmer than the cum leaking slowly out of you now.
“Do you think you could write me a letter of recommendation?” you ask, tracing the freckles on his chest with your pointer finger. “You know, for the neuro fellowship we talked about?”
“Wow…” Jack croons drily, brows raised to his hairline. His words slur slightly together as he comes down from the remnants of his high. “No aftercare, huh? Not even a little pillow talk? Just… straight to the point?”
You flash him a playfully stern look from beneath your lashes, lips quirking in a shy smile. “‘M just asking a question…”
“Yeah, while I’m still inside you,” he scoffs a tired laugh. “You know you don’t have to sex with me to get what you want—”
You frown. “That’s not what I was—”
“—You can just ask.”
“I’m having sex with you because I like it, Jack,” you blurt, very foreignly stern with him, as your eyes harden in a glare. “And I’m asking you for a letter of rec because I respect your opinion—”
“And because you don’t trust Robby to give you a good one, I’m assuming?” he quips with an arched brow.
“Exactly,” you nod.
Jack laughs. You can feel it rumbling in his chest beneath your palms. “I’ll e-mail it to you later. How about that?”
“There’s no rush,” you assure him. “Seriously. I haven’t even applied for it yet—”
“Don’t worry about it. I already wrote it.”
He steals the breath from your lungs for the second, third, or hundredth time that day.
“You already wrote it?” you echo, brows furrowed. “When?”
“When you told me about it the first time,” he confesses, bouncing a bare shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I knew you’d need a letter of rec eventually, so... I wrote while I had some free time and just… waited for you to ask, I guess.”
Your face screws with skepticism. It burns somewhere in your chest, too.
Even with him softening inside of you, leaking out of you, you can’t help but feel slightly suspicious of his sincerity. You still can’t quite believe that he cares about you this much.
“…Really?”
“Yeah,” he laughs and squeezes gently at your sides. “Why do you look so shocked? I do care about you outside of… all this. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t…” you confess, painfully shy, and lacking the courage to meet his gaze for several long moments. You focus instead on your hands, and the shapes you trace along his chest. “Not until now…”
“Well, what do I gotta do to prove it to you, huh?” Jack asks within a huff as he rises from his slouched position against the headboard.
The mattress creaks softly as his weight shifts. His warm chest presses firmly to yours, smothering your breasts against his heartbeat, as he cradles you to his chest. His glittering eyes dart back and forth between the two of yours as he says, “I’ve already given you everything, sweetheart…”
“I don’t want everything,” you murmur with a shake of your head, unable to tear your gaze from his attentive one. “I just want you.”
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