You Never Asked
Prologue: Before The Pitt
Pairing: Jack Abbot x wife!Reader
Quick note before we start: Reader is a child life specialist, so she works with kids and families in the hospital to make scary medical things feel a little less scary. Also, present-day Reader will be pregnant in this fic. It’s very much soft/established-marriage pregnancy content, but if pregnancy fics aren’t your thing, totally okay to skip this one. Protect your peace, besties.
Summary: Years before PTMC, before night shift, before anyone would mistake your marriage for a new crush, Jack Abbot met you in a military hospital hallway outside room 417. He was tired of being treated like something breakable. You were the first person all day who didn’t.
Warnings: references to limb loss/prosthetics appointment, military hospital setting, injury recovery, emotional vulnerability, Jack being deeply allergic to pity, child scared to see an injured parent, soft meet-cute energy
Author’s Note: Welcome to You Never Asked, aka the secretly-married Jack Abbot fic my brain latched onto and refused to let go of. This prologue starts before PTMC, before the workplace chaos, before everyone else is hilariously late to the truth. It’s the beginning of Jack and Reader: a military hospital hallway, a stuffed rabbit, a child life specialist who sees too much, and Jack trying very hard to pretend he is not immediately interested. This one is softer and quieter, but the present-day chapters will bring the secret marriage, shift-change overlap, Robby knowing everything because of course he does, and Jack being absolutely normal about his pregnant wife. Which is to say: not normal at all.
Xoxo, Del
Prologue: Before The Pitt
Jack Abbot hated these appointments.
He hated the waiting room. He hated the clipboard. He hated the fluorescent lights and the cheerful laminated signs reminding him to ask questions, as if he had ever needed encouragement to interrogate a medical professional doing something inefficient near his body.
Mostly, he hated the way appointments made him feel like a thing being adjusted.
A socket.
A gait.
A residual limb.
A pain scale.
Useful words. Clinical words. Words he understood perfectly and still resented.
By the time he left prosthetics, his jaw ached from clenching it.
The new fit was better. That was the irritating part. The adjustment had helped. His stride felt cleaner, less pull through his hip, less pressure where the skin had been threatening to break down.
He should have been pleased.
Instead, he stood in the hallway of the military hospital with his discharge papers folded in one hand and the particular fury of a man who had gotten what he needed and still hated needing it.
He was supposed to go home.
Instead, he went up two floors to visit Miller.
Then Torres.
Then maybe Kline, if Kline wasn’t asleep or pretending to be asleep to avoid talking to people.
Jack told himself it was because they were his people. Because visiting was practical. Because nobody in recovery needed another civilian standing at their bedside making sad eyes and saying thank you for your service, like grief was customer service.
It was not because the hospital was easier when he had a reason to stay inside it.
It was not because outside the building, everyone looked too long or too quickly away.
Inside, at least, people had the decency to be clinical about it.
Usually.
Outside, there were softer voices. Averted eyes. Too much gratitude. Too much careful space. Men who had once shoulder-checked him in doorways now moved around him like he was made of something breakable. Women at grocery stores looked at him like he had carried tragedy home in his hands and might drop it if startled.
Jack did not want to be pitied.
He did not want to be inspirational.
He did not want someone else’s discomfort dressed up as kindness and handed to him like a casserole.
He wanted his body to be his body without the whole world acting like it had become a public service announcement.
He turned the corner toward the rehab wing and stopped.
A little girl was sitting on the floor outside room 417.
She couldn’t have been older than seven. Maybe eight. Her hair was in two uneven braids, one already half coming loose, and she had a stuffed rabbit clutched so tightly against her chest that one of its ears had folded over its face.
You sat cross-legged beside her.
That was the first thing Jack noticed.
Not the badge. Not the child life kit open on the floor near your knee. Not the laminated cards spread between you with pictures of IV poles, monitors, oxygen tubing, and bandages.
You.
Soft scrubs. Cardigan sleeves pushed to your elbows. Hair slipping loose near your cheek. Warm eyes focused completely on the little girl beside you, like the hallway could fill with officers, alarms, doctors, ghosts, and you would still make sure that child had somewhere safe to look.
Jack noticed that you were beautiful.
It hit him plainly, almost inconveniently.
Then you started talking, and the beauty became the least interesting thing about you.
“Your dad might look a little different than he did the last time you saw him,” you said gently.
The little girl’s fingers tightened around the rabbit.
You noticed, but you didn’t rush to fix it.
“He has some bandages,” you continued. “And some machines near his bed. The machines are there to help the nurses and doctors take care of him. They can look scary if you don’t know what they’re for.”
The little girl looked down at one of the laminated cards. “Will he be asleep?”
“He might be,” you said.
You touched the edge of the card with one finger and turned it slightly so the little girl could see it better.
“Or he might be awake and tired,” you added. “Sometimes bodies need a lot of rest after they get hurt.”
The girl’s mouth trembled. “What if he doesn’t look like my dad?”
Something moved behind Jack’s ribs.
He should have kept walking.
He didn’t.
You leaned a little closer, your voice low enough that the whole hallway seemed to quiet around it.
“Then you can take your time,” you told her. “You don’t have to decide how you feel right away. You can look. You can ask questions. You can step back out with me if you need to.”
The little girl sniffed.
You touched the rabbit’s folded ear and smoothed it down.
“He’s still your dad,” you said. “Even if some things look different today.”
Jack looked away.
Too late.
You had already seen him.
Your eyes lifted to his, and for one strange second, Jack had the unnerving sense that you had caught more than a man standing in a hallway.
You had caught the flinch.
You did not soften your face with pity.
You did not glance down at his leg.
You did not give him the careful, wounded-veteran smile people used when they wanted him to know his existence moved them.
You just looked at him.
Then your mouth curved slightly.
“You need something?” you asked.
Jack blinked once. “No.”
You stayed seated on the floor beside the little girl. “Okay.”
Jack waited.
You tilted your head. “Then you’re hovering.”
His eyebrows lifted.
The little girl looked at him, then back at you.
“I don’t hover,” Jack said.
You nodded toward him, solemn as a judge. “What do you think?”
The little girl studied him with the ruthless honesty of children and commanding officers.
“He’s hovering,” she decided.
Your smile widened.
Jack should have hated that.
He didn’t.
“I was walking by,” he said.
You raised your brows. “You stopped.”
“People stop,” Jack said, mirroring your expression.
“Near doorways,” you replied. “Usually for a reason.”
The little girl’s rabbit drooped in her lap as she watched the exchange, her fear interrupted by curiosity.
Jack looked at you for another beat.
Most people in the hospital now handled him carefully. Not obviously. That would have been easier to despise. They did it in little ways. Softer voices. Averted eyes. Too much gratitude. Too much space.
You did none of that.
You looked at him like he was just a man who had been caught doing something mildly annoying in a hallway.
It was the first normal thing that had happened to him all day.
Maybe all month.
“I’m visiting someone,” he said.
“Ah.” You nodded. “Then you’re hovering with purpose.”
The little girl giggled.
Jack’s gaze flicked to her.
You noticed that too.
“See?” you said softly to the girl. “People can be nervous and still go into rooms.”
The child looked toward the closed door.
Jack understood then that you had not been teasing him only for sport.
You had used him.
Efficiently.
He should have minded that too.
He didn’t.
The door opened a few inches, and a nurse stepped out. Her eyes went to you first.
“He’s ready when you are,” the nurse said.
You nodded, then turned back to the little girl.
“Do you want to bring Rabbit in first,” you asked, “or should I carry him?”
The girl hesitated.
Jack stood very still.
Then she held the rabbit out to you. “You.”
“I can do that,” you said.
You took the rabbit carefully, as if it were a sacred thing and not a toy with one plastic eye scratched nearly white. Then you gathered your cards with one hand and stood.
Jack was tall enough, broad enough, and used to people adjusting around him.
You didn’t.
You rose into the space like you belonged in it, child life badge swinging from your lanyard, one hand full of laminated hospital equipment pictures, the other holding Rabbit by his soft, battered middle.
As you passed Jack, you paused.
“Try not to scare anyone else while you’re hovering with purpose,” you said.
His mouth twitched before he could stop it. “I’ll do my best.”
You gave him one last look, quick and assessing and entirely unintimidated.
“Do better than that,” you said.
Then you turned back to the little girl.
Your voice changed immediately. Not fake. Not sugary. Just warmer.
“Ready?” you asked.
The girl reached for your hand.
Jack watched her take it. He watched the way your fingers closed around hers. Not tight. Not leading. Just there.
An offered thing.
Steady enough to trust. Gentle enough not to trap.
Jack had seen plenty of people mistake softness for weakness.
This was not weak.
He could see it in the pause before you answered hard questions. In the careful breath you took before choosing the next right words. In the way you let the little girl be afraid without trying to rush her out of it.
You were not calm because none of it touched you.
You were calm because it did.
You walked the little girl into room 417.
Jack watched the door close behind you.
For a moment, the hallway seemed louder than it had before.
Monitors. Footsteps. A cart rattling somewhere near the elevators. Someone laughing too hard at the nurses’ station because hospitals made people laugh strangely when the alternative was worse.
Jack looked down at the papers in his hand.
Then he kept walking.
Miller was awake when Jack got there, which was unfortunate for both of them.
He was sitting propped against three pillows, one arm braced in a sling, bruising yellowed along the side of his face. His grin appeared the second Jack stepped through the door.
“You’re late,” Miller said.
Jack pulled the visitor chair closer with his foot. “You’re ugly.”
Miller smiled. “Doctors say it’s temporary.”
“They’re lying,” Jack replied.
Miller laughed, then winced. “Still charming. Good to know the leg didn’t take that from you.”
Jack sat.
Miller watched him for half a second too long.
Jack hated that too.
“How’d the appointment go?” Miller asked.
“Fine,” Jack said.
Miller squinted at him. “Fine as in fine, or fine as in you’re being an asshole about it?”
Jack looked at him.
Miller grinned. “Second one.”
Jack leaned back in the chair and stretched his bad leg out carefully enough that Miller’s eyes tracked the movement despite his best effort not to.
“Fit’s better,” Jack said.
Miller nodded once. “Good.”
That was why Jack liked him.
No speech. No pity. No swelling orchestral score.
Just good.
A comfortable silence settled for almost thirty seconds.
Then Jack ruined it.
“Who was the woman in the scrubs and cardigan?” Jack asked.
Miller’s grin returned slowly.
Jack immediately regretted every decision that had led him into this room.
“You’re going to have to narrow that down,” Miller said.
Jack gave him a flat look. “Outside 417. With the kid.”
“Oh,” Miller said, brightening. “The pretty one who can smell bullshit a mile away?”
Jack looked toward the door.
Miller’s grin widened. “Yeah. She got you.”
“She was preparing a kid to see her father.”
“And catching you hovering.”
“Hovering with purpose,” Jack corrected.
Miller laughed, then winced. “God, she really did get you.”
Jack looked toward the door.
Miller made a sound of deep, delighted pain. “You got called out by Child Life.”
Jack sighed. “She was working with a kid outside 417.”
“Yeah,” Miller said, softer now. “That’s Harris’s daughter.”
Jack looked back at him.
Miller’s expression shifted, humor thinning around the edges. “She’s been scared to go in. Mom’s trying, but it’s a lot.”
Jack thought of the rabbit in your hand.
“She any good?” he asked.
Miller huffed. “You saw her, didn’t you?”
That was answer enough.
Jack looked toward the hallway again.
Miller was quiet for a beat.
Then, because he was Miller, he added, “Her name’s on her badge, you know.”
“It was flipped,” Jack said.
Miller pressed his lips together. “Tragic.”
Jack gave him a flat look.
Miller smiled like a man who had found a reason to live another day.
“You want me to tell you?” Miller asked.
“No,” Jack replied immediately.
Miller stared at him for half a second. Then his grin went dangerous.
“Oh,” Miller said.
Jack narrowed his eyes. “No.”
Miller raised his hands, “I didn’t say anything.”
“You said oh.”
Miller settled deeper into his pillows. “Because there was an oh.”
Jack stood.
Miller laughed and winced again. “Careful, Abbot. She’s nice.”
Jack paused at the foot of the bed.
Miller’s smile gentled into something more knowing.
“And she’s not scared of you,” Miller said.
Jack’s fingers tightened once around the folded discharge papers.
No.
He could still hear your voice. Not gentle because you were afraid of what might break. Gentle because you knew things broke and still deserved to be touched carefully.
“No,” Jack said. “She isn’t.”
Miller watched him for another second.
Then he told Jack your name.
Jack did not ask him to repeat it.
He heard it clearly the first time.
He found you again forty minutes later near the elevators.
Jack told himself that was not why he had taken the long way out.
It was a hospital. There were only so many exits.
Technically.
You stood beside the coffee cart with your bag hooked over one shoulder, flipping through a stack of laminated cards while the line moved at the pace of federal infrastructure.
The stuffed rabbit was gone.
Returned to its owner, probably.
Jack found himself glad about that before he could decide it was a ridiculous thing to be glad about.
You looked up before he could walk past.
Your mouth curved. “Hovering again?”
Jack stopped beside you like he had meant to be there. “Leaving.”
“Near the coffee cart?” you asked.
Jack shrugged a shoulder, “Scenic route.”
Your eyes narrowed with amusement. “Through caffeine?”
Jack glanced at the menu board, then back at you. “You drink coffee?”
“Religiously,” you said.
That should not have pleased him.
It did.
Jack slid one hand into his pocket because apparently his body had decided to act casual even if the inside of his chest had become a tactical failure.
“Good,” he said.
You waited.
Jack waited too, because he was stubborn and because some doomed part of him wanted to see what you would do with silence.
You tilted your head. “Was that the whole question?”
His mouth twitched. “No.”
“Okay.” You shifted the cards against your chest. “I’m invested now.”
Jack looked at you for half a second longer than he should have.
“Have coffee with me,” he said.
Your eyebrows lifted. “That wasn’t a question.”
“No,” Jack said. “It was an invitation.”
You studied him, and for the first time all day, he did not feel assessed like a patient.
He felt assessed like a man who had walked up to a beautiful woman and made his interest known.
It was inconveniently terrifying.
You looked calm.
Jack did not trust that.
He had already seen what your calm could do.
“You always this confident?” you asked.
“When I’m right,” Jack answered.
“And you’re right about me wanting coffee with you?”
Jack let one shoulder lift. “Religiously seemed promising.”
You laughed then.
Not politely. Not because you thought he needed it.
A real laugh, warm and quick, and Jack felt it somewhere lower than his ribs.
“I didn’t say yes,” you reminded him.
Jack raised his brows, “You also didn’t say no.”
The line moved forward. You did not. Jack counted that as a victory.
“You don’t even know my name,” you said.
He did.
Miller had told him. Jack had held onto it with the grim determination of a man refusing to admit he had been handed something he wanted.
But he looked at your badge anyway.
This time, it was facing out.
Jack said your name like he had only just learned it. Like it had not been sitting in his head for the last half hour.
Your expression shifted, pleased despite yourself.
“And you are?” you asked.
“Jack,” he answered.
“Just Jack?”
“For coffee, yeah.”
You looked at him for another beat, making him stand there in it.
Making him wait.
He did not fidget.
He was proud of that.
Finally, you reached into the side pocket of your bag, pulled out a pen and a stack of Post-Its, and you wrote your number.
Jack watched you do it with an amount of attention he would later claim was unnecessary.
You handed it to him. “Coffee. Sometime.”
Jack took the Post It.
Your fingers brushed.
It was nothing.
It was not nothing.
“Sometime,” he repeated.
Your eyes flicked over him, bright and unafraid. “Try not to hover until then.”
Jack tucked the paper into his jacket pocket. “I’ll do my best.”
You started toward the elevators, then glanced back.
“Do better than that, Jack,” you said.
He stood there after you left, one hand still in his pocket, the other resting over the Post-It like it might disappear if he stopped paying attention.
For the first time all day, he did not feel like something being adjusted.
He felt like something had started.
Years later, people at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center would make a hundred wrong assumptions before they ever made the right one.
They would see you walk into the ER with your child life badge, your soft sweaters, and your calm voice, and they would see Jack Abbot look up like some part of him had known you were coming before the doors opened.
They would know you by your first name because children trusted first names faster than last ones.
They would know Jack mostly as Abbot because the ER had a way of sanding people down to the sharpest syllable.
They would not think to put the two together.
You worked days.
Jack worked nights.
Most of what anyone saw of you together happened in the seams: shift change, late consults, cafeteria overlap, the parking garage, the brief handoff spaces where one version of the hospital exhaled and another one started breathing.
They would see you pass him in the hall and fix his twisted ID badge without breaking your sentence.
They would see Jack let you.
They would think, " Oh.”
Interesting.
Robby would think, finally.
They would think it was new.
They would think it was a crush.
They would think he was learning how to be soft around you.
They would not know about room 417.
They would not know about Rabbit.
They would not know that the first time Jack saw you, he had been standing in a military hospital hallway with his leg aching and his pride worse, pretending he was not hovering.
They would not know you had looked at him and seen a man instead of a wound.
They would not know that one day, he would marry you.
That one day, years after that hallway, you would stand beside him with a ring on your finger and his son tucked beneath your ribs, a name folded between the two of you like a secret.
That Robby would know.
That everyone else would be late.
They would only know what they saw.
Jack watching you from across the ER.
You rolling your eyes when he hovered.
And the thing between you looking so much like the beginning of love that no one thought to ask if it had already survived years of it.
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