warnings: yearning basically but jack doesn’t know yet, sexual innuendos, depressed themes, probably some cursing, reader is kinda teasing him, typical gen z dialogue, old man jack, whole chapter is from his pov, english isn’t my first language, also NOT proofread
a/n: have fun you little age gap gremlins
Jack Abbot was a good man.
Every month when he received his paycheck, he donated to a Pittsburgh nonprofit that supported the children of Afghan war veterans. He always kept a little change in his wallet in case he came across a homeless person. He once helped his elderly neighbor when her pension was late and she couldn’t pay her rent on time. Last but not least, he was a doctor. Helping others and being a good person was an indelible part of his soul.
Many of his med school colleagues had given up medicine long ago to settle down in other fields. He knew this because he liked all of their Facebook milestones. That was pretty much the only app he had on his phone. He had installed it after Robby showed him some photos of his newborn niece during a rare shift they worked together.
Jack didn’t hold it against them, though. He could understand why they had turned their backs on medicine. There were many nights when he himself stood on the rooftop terrace of his apartment complex, taking one step after another toward the edge. However, he couldn't even bring himself to lose his patients. He didn’t need to pretend every day, that he was fed up with his life.
He wasn’t.
So, every day, he did his best to be a good person and not lose either his patients or himself.
Of course he wasn’t perfect. In fact, he had made many mistakes in his life. But he wouldn’t want to undo any of them. After all, it was his mistakes as a newly graduated doctor during his residency that had given him his wonderful daughter. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Her mother, Evelyn, was God’s gift to him on earth. She gave him 15 wonderful years together, and an even more wonderful daughter.
Jack could treat wounds, manage crises, boss people around, and most importantly, save lives. But he couldn't save hers. She died of a heart attack while he was at work and she was at home. It was quiet, and silent. Her heart had been sick for a long time already. It was for the best, sparing her a long and painful death.
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. He rolled his eyes and finished spreading butter on his toast. He didn’t like eating sweet things in the morning, they provided you zero nutritional value. Suddenly, a pair of delicate arms wrapped around him from behind, and a slender body pressed itself against him.
"Allison Abbot, how many more times do I have to ask you not to use me as a human shield?"
His daughter was still breathing heavily from running around the house, giggling behind him. She was twenty-three, but sometimes she still acted like the immature and not even slightly grown up seventeen-year-old girl who had lost her mother.
And then there was you.
The girl he initially thought was in a relationship with his daughter because you spent so much time together. Jack was very progressive. His cousin had been in a same-sex marriage ever since they were legalized in 2016.
But as it turned out, the trauma of endless nursing exams and bad clinical instructors bound you together. Non romantically, in this case.
Jack tried not to look at you, but utterly failed at that. Small sweat stains dotted your white tank top, and he wished he were repulsed by the sight. The last thing he wanted to look at was a sweaty 23-year-old college student.
Since his wife’s death six years ago, he hadn’t tried to meet anyone new. The flirtatious advances of his older female patients were already too much for him. At one point, Dana had tried to download an app other than Facebook onto his phone, something called Tinder. But Jack just grimaced at the thought of judging and rating someone like a product through a screen. Back in the day, you’d go out and actually talk to the person you liked. He had snatched his phone right out of Dana’s hand. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. She looked at him for quite a while. To this day, he still didn’t know what was going on behind her head in that moment.
He might be a doctor, but he couldn’t explain why his body started sweating all of a sudden when you bent down to grab an ice-cold can of Coke from the fridge.
"We were playing tag, relax, Dad”, Allison muttered, who had the habit of driving her father up the wall in all sorts of situations.
His gaze wandered back to you. Y/N was your name, if he remembered correctly. It was almost funny how you were trying not to get involved in the discussion between father and daughter, your gaze drifting around the kitchen ceiling before concentrating on your drink again.
His gaze wandered down to your fingers, which were struggling to open the can. You had beautiful nails, a pretty floral 3D design, Jack had to admit that, even though he didn’t approve of the idea that women in this society had to make themselves as pretty as possible for men. Still, he had always paid for his daughter’s nail salon appointments. What else did he work for?
She’d never had it easy in school. The other kids always teased her about having a doctor for a father. They called her a spoiled brat. Jack shook his head at the memory. It was incomprehensible to him how anyone could view saving lives as a bad thing, let alone bully a child for the type of job their parents did.
So he was more than glad that his daughter’s college years were going far better. It seemed that her unpopularity in school was really just a result of youthful immaturity. Jack tried to remember his daughter’s difficult school days whenever he felt the urge to scold her. For example when he came home early after a particularly exhausting night shift, having to chase her classmates out of his house because she thought it was the perfect place for a house party.
He tried to never be angry with his girl. She had finally made friends and stopped coming home with a tear-stained face after all these years. She looked too much like her mother when she cried. And her mother cried much, more and more as she got sicker.
His girl who brought that other girl home with her every day.
You.
Jack didn’t know when it had started.
In his 50 years on this planet, he’d never been one of those men who took younger women as their own, parading them by their side as if they were accessories. Or even looked after them.
The can hissed, and a small drop of Coke rose to the surface. You let out a surprised sound before bringing your finger to your lips, sticking out your tongue, and licking up the drop. Jack quickly looked away and turned toward the kitchen window.
He shouldn’t have thoughts like that about his daughter’s best friend. He shouldn’t even be looking at you that long, to know that you always licked your lips after you swallowed something. For crying out loud, you were nearly thirty years younger! You could be his daughter.
"Well, anyway," Allison said, "I still have to hand in that stupid exam registration form at his office, even though I’ve already sent it to him by email. I don’t know why old people still want everything in paper form these days. What’s the point of him having an email address then? He should just take it off his university website." His daughter sighed beside him, and Jack could practically feel her doe-eyed stare boring into his head from the side.
"Could you give me a lift to uni?", she asked in that sugary tone which she always used when she wanted something from him and knew he would say no. He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "How urgent, one to ten? You have your own car, Allison. As much as I’d love to drive you around forever, it’s 30 degrees outside, and I’d hate to roast in the car like a rotisserie chicken on the one free Saturday I get per month.”
A short giggle escaped your lips, and his eyes darted over to you.
"Sorry," you muttered, but your eyes didn't look as though you really were. He’d noticed that before. Whenever he said something that wasn’t actually funny, you laughed at it. It was as if you were trying to make fun of him. He hadn't ever heard you laugh that much with his daughter.
He wished he could erase the sound of it from his head. Wished he could stop locking his bedroom door at night because the way you laughed burned itself into his head, causing him to do things that should forbid him from going to church every Easter.
He looked back at his daughter, who merely shrugged her shoulders, giving a half-hearted glance in his direction. “My professor said by the end of next week. That’s the deadline for registration.” He tried to, but he couldn’t get mad at her for taking so long to sign up for the exam. He’d been the exact same way during his own college days.
He crossed his arms, giving his daughter a stern look, and turned his gaze to you. "And you, do you have anything to hand in, or are you a better student than my daughter?"
You took a sip of your Coke, wiped your mouth, and shook your head. "I am always behaving, Mr. Abbot." Allison laughed. You rolled your eyes and took another sip of your Coke. Jesus, how much liquid could possibly fit in such a small can?
"Well, anyway, I try to, sort of. I don’t have to hand anything in, but thanks for asking.” You set the can down on the kitchen counter and wiped your condensation-smeared hands on your already damp shirt.
"If we stay in this house any longer, I think we'll all end up with a heatstroke from the heat building up in here." Those words were true. Jack felt incredibly hot, and wasn’t quite sure if the sweat that was forming on his neck was caused by the sheer too high temperature, or something else entirely.
His daughter made a thoughtful sound and crossed her arms. "I didn't know you were finishing your degree in construction management."
You rolled your eyes but didn't let that snark stop you. "Why don't we just drive to the lake? It’s only a 15-minute drive. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a cool-off. What do you say?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Seeing you in swimwear would be the end of him, a sight, from which he’d never recover.
Sometimes, when he locked his bedroom door at night, he wished he’d been born 30 years later. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so bad about touching himself every night to the image of you in exactly such situations.
But his daughter beat him to it. “I like the way you think.” She let out a sigh and fanned herself with her hand. "I ordered this cute bikini the other day, and it arrived over the weekend. We have to take so many photos. I’ve already got the perfect songs in mind for both of us.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. Were the women of his generation back then, when he was their age, the same? He couldn’t remember. Other memories were now overshadowing those from his youth.
Apparently the two girls took his silence as a yes, because you two were already storming up the stairs, chattering loudly about tanning oils until your voices grew fainter and finally vanished into his daughter’s room.
Great.
Really great.
This was going to be the worst fucking day of his long life.
The drive to the lake was quiet. His daughter offered to drive, a small gesture to make amends for the way you both had taken him by surprise earlier. Jack declined immediately. He could certainly use the distraction while driving. Besides, she’d recently received a speeding ticket in the mail. There was no way he would let her drive anything but a bike for the next month.
She was sitting behind the passenger’s seat, you right behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, this seating arrangement meant that he sometimes catched your gaze in the mirror when he went to check on the cars behind. From your seat, you had a perfect view of his face for the entire duration of the drive. Jack convinced himself that it was just pure coincidence, pure coincidence that your eyes met every time he looked in the rearview mirror.
When you arrived at the lake, it was fairly quiet. To Jack’s surprise, you were the only ones on the small beach. This would very likely change as the day went on, but in the morning warmth no one seemed too eager to go down to the water just yet.
He spread the picnic blanket and towels while you two changed behind the car. He had already put on his swimming trunks at home before you set off. When you and his daughter emerged from behind the car and tossed your clothes onto the back seat, the sight he was met with briefly took his breath away. Your bikini consisted of not more than a few scraps of black fabric that clung to your body in just the right way. And there was that mischievous smile again as your gaze set on him kneeling on his towel across the few feet distance.
Jack was suddenly glad his bathing shorts were spacious, otherwise…this situation would have been rather embarrassing. He sat down on his dark blue towel with a deep sigh while you and his daughter made yourselves comfortable on the large blanket.
You promptly lay down on your stomach, giving him a perfect view of your bottom.
God forgive him if there was one.
Maybe he could be discreet and innocently offer to put sunscreen on your back. He was already starting to stand up, when his daughter beat him to it and undid the bow of your bikini top, exposing your beauty mark scattered back.
Jack sat back down and shook his head. That was how it’s supposed to be. No woman your age should have someone like him rub cream on her. Besides, you probably had a boyfriend and would have politely declined anyway.
That was the problem with you. You were always so polite and smiled so much, that he thought it couldn't possibly be meant seriously. Not all the time.
You stretched your arms upward and rested your head on your right upper arm. Your fingers curled, and uncurled.
His daughter began applying sunscreen to your back in circling motions, and he quickly looked away before you could turn your head and catch him in the act of watching you bask in the sun.
Jack forced himself to look out over the lake. The water glistened in the morning sun. As expected this early, it was fairly calm, the water barely swishing around in soft waves. He normally loved days like this, when he didn’t have to work and be a doctor, but could simply be himself. Nobody wanted anything from him. Relaxation in its purest form.
Today, however, his day off felt anything but relaxing. For a moment though, it felt like he finally catched a moment of rare peace until a shadow settled beside him. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who it was. Your tangerine smelling perfume wafted up to his nose, wrapping itself around him like a cocoon. Slowly, he turned his head.
You had pulled your knees up and wrapped your arms around them. Your hair, still dry, was held in place by a claw clip, though a few strands had broken free and hung loosely in your face.
You looked at him.
Not with the disdain or judgment with which most people usually looked at him. Simply with interest. And that made it worse.
"Allison talks about you a lot, you know?"
“Hopefully nothing bad.”
"Actually, only good things."
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Then she's lying."
You let out a thoughtful hum.
"You never forget your friends’ birthdays or any special occasion. You donate to charities. You always make Alli feel like she can come home, no matter how bad your day has been or how bad she fucked up.”
Of all the things he’d heard, he hadn’t expected this to leave him speechless.
"I think you can be proud of that."
For a moment, he didn’t know how to respond. He rarely received compliments, neither for his work nor for himself as a person.
A small thank you was the only thing that escaped his mouth in a quiet whisper.
You gave him a small smile.
There it was again, that strange feeling in his chest, something tightening that he wished wouldn’t.
A warm, dangerous tug. For a moment, he forgot how old he was. How old you were.
Then suddenly, his daughter called out your names from a distance, tearing the two of you from your little bubble.
"If you two keep sitting there, I'll gladly eat the watermelon without you."
You rolled your eyes. Jack really laughed this time and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh. He may be doing yoga every morning at sunrise, but he was still a 50 year-old man with bones just as old. He reached his hand out toward you almost automatically, without noticing how quickly and instinctively he was doing it.
Before he could think about it too much, you took his hand before he could take it back and pulled yourself up.
For a moment, he forgot why he’d been trying to keep his distance from you all this time ever since his daughter brought you home in her first uni year.
After eating, Allison insisted on taking a few more photos with the sun in the background before they would pack their things and set off again. She placed her phone on the car’s windshield, set the timer to ten seconds, and quickly jogged over to you and Jack. Jack stood between you two, and as the timer ticked down, Allison quickly wrapped her arm around his waist and smiled.
Moments like these kept him going every day, allowing him to take a few more steps away from the edge. But then he felt your arm wrap around his waist from the other side. His body tensed for barely a second before relaxing again, but the moment was over as quickly as it came.
Allison clapped her hands and grinned at her phone with satisfaction as she tucked the picnic blanket under her arm, and got into the car.
"I’m definitely adding these on my Insta post later."
Later, as Jack laid in bed, he could still hear you both giggling in her bedroom across the hall. He unplugged his phone from the charger and opened the App Store.
At 50 years old, he downloaded an app he’d only ever heard of through his med students and daughter. And Dana.
All because of a single photo.
Surprisingly, he found that setting up an Instagram account wasn’t that difficult.
It was even easier to find his daughter’s account. He frowned. Her username was her real name, first and last name visible for anyone. Any weirdo could find her that way. He’d have to talk to her about that later.
His fingers clicked on the small square where he could make out a face all too familiar to him.
Posted two hours ago.
He zoomed in a little. It wasn't the way his hair stood up or his hand hung awkwardly in the air. He zoomed in on your smile. He really shouldn’t have looked at the picture for so long. There was no reason to. He should have clicked away from it ages ago. But then he accidentally clicked on the now big picture.
Was this your account his daughter had mentioned? He believed he heard her say the word ‘tag’ before in connection to the app. But the only connection his brain made, was to the game paint tag he quite frequently played with his friends in his teens. His finger hesitated before finally clicking on the little box that led to your account.
He only did this because he was a father interested in his daughter’s friends. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit about you, could it? He scrolled through your profile without realizing it. He looked at one picture after another. When he glanced at the clock, already 30 minutes had passed since he’d downloaded the app.
With a heavy sigh, he swiped your profile away. It was getting late, and he really shouldn’t be doing this.
Wait, what was that?
No. Oh God, no.
While swiping, he had accidentally double tapped the screen by mistake and…liked a photo of you from two years ago? It was a photo of you in a national park in front of a tree taller than the PTMC.
He quickly took back his like, hoping you hadn’t received a notification.
He quickly switched off his phone and put it back on his bedside table to charge. The house was dead quiet; you were probably fast asleep by now, as the giggling had long since stopped. You were probably one of those people who deleted their notifications without reading them after waking up anyway.
Ping.
A shrill sound broke the silence, and Jack’s head snapped toward the small bright square on his bedside table.
He squinted to avoid being blinded by the brightness of his screen and unlocked his phone.
No.
Just a few Facebook notifications and emails. But there, at the top of them all, a message stood out. He pinched his wrist briefly.
Not a dream.
yn_lastname sent you a message
Jack opened the app with a vigor that surprised even him.
Why did you message him?
Oh.
Oh...
‘Next time you want to know something about my past, feel free to ask me over a hot chocolate.’
Jack Abbot was screwed.
Ultimately, utterly screwed.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this fun little fic! It’s my first time writing for The Pitt and Jack, and I hope you enjoyed it.
warnings: yearning basically but jack doesn’t know yet, sexual innuendos, depressed themes, probably some cursing, reader is kinda teasing him, typical gen z dialogue, old man jack, whole chapter is from his pov, english isn’t my first language, also NOT proofread
author’s note: have fun you little age gap gremlins
Jack Abbot was a good man.
Every month when he received his paycheck, he donated to a Pittsburgh nonprofit that supported the children of Afghan war veterans. He always kept a little change in his wallet in case he came across a homeless person. He once helped his elderly neighbor when her pension was late and she couldn’t pay her rent on time. Last but not least, he was a doctor. Helping others and being a good person was an indelible part of his soul.
Many of his med school colleagues had given up medicine long ago to settle down in other fields. He knew this because he liked all of their Facebook milestones. That was pretty much the only app he had on his phone. He had installed it after Robby showed him some photos of his newborn niece during a rare shift they worked together.
Jack didn’t hold it against them, though. He could understand why they had turned their backs on medicine. There were many nights when he himself stood on the rooftop terrace of his apartment complex, taking one step after another toward the edge. However, he couldn't even bring himself to lose his patients. He didn’t need to pretend every day, that he was fed up with his life.
He wasn’t.
So, every day, he did his best to be a good person and not lose either his patients or himself.
Of course he wasn’t perfect. In fact, he had made many mistakes in his life. But he wouldn’t want to undo any of them. After all, it was his mistakes as a newly graduated doctor during his residency that had given him his wonderful daughter. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Her mother, Evelyn, was God’s gift to him on earth. She gave him 15 wonderful years together, and an even more wonderful daughter.
Jack could treat wounds, manage crises, boss people around, and most importantly, save lives. But he couldn't save hers. She died of a heart attack while he was at work and she was at home. It was quiet, and silent. Her heart had been sick for a long time already. It was for the best, sparing her a long and painful death.
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. He rolled his eyes and finished spreading butter on his toast. He didn’t like eating sweet things in the morning, they provided you zero nutritional value. Suddenly, a pair of delicate arms wrapped around him from behind, and a slender body pressed itself against him.
"Allison Abbot, how many more times do I have to ask you not to use me as a human shield?"
His daughter was still breathing heavily from running around the house, giggling behind him. She was twenty-three, but sometimes she still acted like the immature and not even slightly grown up seventeen-year-old girl who had lost her mother.
And then there was you.
The girl he initially thought was in a relationship with his daughter because you spent so much time together. Jack was very progressive. His cousin had been in a same-sex marriage ever since they were legalized in 2016.
But as it turned out, the trauma of endless nursing exams and bad clinical instructors bound you together. Non romantically, in this case.
Jack tried not to look at you, but utterly failed at that. Small sweat stains dotted your white tank top, and he wished he were repulsed by the sight. The last thing he wanted to look at was a sweaty 23-year-old college student.
Since his wife’s death six years ago, he hadn’t tried to meet anyone new. The flirtatious advances of his older female patients were already too much for him. At one point, Dana had tried to download an app other than Facebook onto his phone, something called Tinder. But Jack just grimaced at the thought of judging and rating someone like a product through a screen. Back in the day, you’d go out and actually talk to the person you liked. He had snatched his phone right out of Dana’s hand. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. She looked at him for quite a while. To this day, he still didn’t know what was going on behind her head in that moment.
He might be a doctor, but he couldn’t explain why his body started sweating all of a sudden when you bent down to grab an ice-cold can of Coke from the fridge.
"We were playing tag, relax, Dad”, Allison muttered, who had the habit of driving her father up the wall in all sorts of situations.
His gaze wandered back to you. Y/N was your name, if he remembered correctly. It was almost funny how you were trying not to get involved in the discussion between father and daughter, your gaze drifting around the kitchen ceiling before concentrating on your drink again.
His gaze wandered down to your fingers, which were struggling to open the can. You had beautiful nails, a pretty floral 3D design, Jack had to admit that, even though he didn’t approve of the idea that women in this society had to make themselves as pretty as possible for men. Still, he had always paid for his daughter’s nail salon appointments. What else did he work for?
She’d never had it easy in school. The other kids always teased her about having a doctor for a father. They called her a spoiled brat. Jack shook his head at the memory. It was incomprehensible to him how anyone could view saving lives as a bad thing, let alone bully a child for the type of job their parents did.
So he was more than glad that his daughter’s college years were going far better. It seemed that her unpopularity in school was really just a result of youthful immaturity. Jack tried to remember his daughter’s difficult school days whenever he felt the urge to scold her. For example when he came home early after a particularly exhausting night shift, having to chase her classmates out of his house because she thought it was the perfect place for a house party.
He tried to never be angry with his girl. She had finally made friends and stopped coming home with a tear-stained face after all these years. She looked too much like her mother when she cried. And her mother cried much, more and more as she got sicker.
His girl who brought that other girl home with her every day.
You.
Jack didn’t know when it had started.
In his 50 years on this planet, he’d never been one of those men who took younger women as their own, parading them by their side as if they were accessories. Or even looked after them.
The can hissed, and a small drop of Coke rose to the surface. You let out a surprised sound before bringing your finger to your lips, sticking out your tongue, and licking up the drop. Jack quickly looked away and turned toward the kitchen window.
He shouldn’t have thoughts like that about his daughter’s best friend. He shouldn’t even be looking at you that long, to know that you always licked your lips after you swallowed something. For crying out loud, you were nearly thirty years younger! You could be his daughter.
"Well, anyway," Allison said, "I still have to hand in that stupid exam registration form at his office, even though I’ve already sent it to him by email. I don’t know why old people still want everything in paper form these days. What’s the point of him having an email address then? He should just take it off his university website." His daughter sighed beside him, and Jack could practically feel her doe-eyed stare boring into his head from the side.
"Could you give me a lift to uni?", she asked in that sugary tone which she always used when she wanted something from him and knew he would say no. He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "How urgent, one to ten? You have your own car, Allison. As much as I’d love to drive you around forever, it’s 30 degrees outside, and I’d hate to roast in the car like a rotisserie chicken on the one free Saturday I get per month.”
A short giggle escaped your lips, and his eyes darted over to you.
"Sorry," you muttered, but your eyes didn't look as though you really were. He’d noticed that before. Whenever he said something that wasn’t actually funny, you laughed at it. It was as if you were trying to make fun of him. He hadn't ever heard you laugh that much with his daughter.
He wished he could erase the sound of it from his head. Wished he could stop locking his bedroom door at night because the way you laughed burned itself into his head, causing him to do things that should forbid him from going to church every Easter.
He looked back at his daughter, who merely shrugged her shoulders, giving a half-hearted glance in his direction. “My professor said by the end of next week. That’s the deadline for registration.” He tried to, but he couldn’t get mad at her for taking so long to sign up for the exam. He’d been the exact same way during his own college days.
He crossed his arms, giving his daughter a stern look, and turned his gaze to you. "And you, do you have anything to hand in, or are you a better student than my daughter?"
You took a sip of your Coke, wiped your mouth, and shook your head. "I am always behaving, Mr. Abbot." Allison laughed. You rolled your eyes and took another sip of your Coke. Jesus, how much liquid could possibly fit in such a small can?
"Well, anyway, I try to, sort of. I don’t have to hand anything in, but thanks for asking.” You set the can down on the kitchen counter and wiped your condensation-smeared hands on your already damp shirt.
"If we stay in this house any longer, I think we'll all end up with a heatstroke from the heat building up in here." Those words were true. Jack felt incredibly hot, and wasn’t quite sure if the sweat that was forming on his neck was caused by the sheer too high temperature, or something else entirely.
His daughter made a thoughtful sound and crossed her arms. "I didn't know you were finishing your degree in construction management."
You rolled your eyes but didn't let that snark stop you. "Why don't we just drive to the lake? It’s only a 15-minute drive. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a cool-off. What do you say?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Seeing you in swimwear would be the end of him, a sight, from which he’d never recover.
Sometimes, when he locked his bedroom door at night, he wished he’d been born 30 years later. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so bad about touching himself every night to the image of you in exactly such situations.
But his daughter beat him to it. “I like the way you think.” She let out a sigh and fanned herself with her hand. "I ordered this cute bikini the other day, and it arrived over the weekend. We have to take so many photos. I’ve already got the perfect songs in mind for both of us.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. Were the women of his generation back then, when he was their age, the same? He couldn’t remember. Other memories were now overshadowing those from his youth.
Apparently the two girls took his silence as a yes, because you two were already storming up the stairs, chattering loudly about tanning oils until your voices grew fainter and finally vanished into his daughter’s room.
Great.
Really great.
This was going to be the worst fucking day of his long life.
The drive to the lake was quiet. His daughter offered to drive, a small gesture to make amends for the way you both had taken him by surprise earlier. Jack declined immediately. He could certainly use the distraction while driving. Besides, she’d recently received a speeding ticket in the mail. There was no way he would let her drive anything but a bike for the next month.
She was sitting behind the passenger’s seat, you right behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, this seating arrangement meant that he sometimes catched your gaze in the mirror when he went to check on the cars behind. From your seat, you had a perfect view of his face for the entire duration of the drive. Jack convinced himself that it was just pure coincidence, pure coincidence that your eyes met every time he looked in the rearview mirror.
When you arrived at the lake, it was fairly quiet. To Jack’s surprise, you were the only ones on the small beach. This would very likely change as the day went on, but in the morning warmth no one seemed too eager to go down to the water just yet.
He spread the picnic blanket and towels while you two changed behind the car. He had already put on his swimming trunks at home before you set off. When you and his daughter emerged from behind the car and tossed your clothes onto the back seat, the sight he was met with briefly took his breath away. Your bikini consisted of not more than a few scraps of black fabric that clung to your body in just the right way. And there was that mischievous smile again as your gaze set on him kneeling on his towel across the few feet distance.
Jack was suddenly glad his bathing shorts were spacious, otherwise…this situation would have been rather embarrassing. He sat down on his dark blue towel with a deep sigh while you and his daughter made yourselves comfortable on the large blanket.
You promptly lay down on your stomach, giving him a perfect view of your bottom.
God forgive him if there was one.
Maybe he could be discreet and innocently offer to put sunscreen on your back. He was already starting to stand up, when his daughter beat him to it and undid the bow of your bikini top, exposing your beauty mark scattered back.
Jack sat back down and shook his head. That was how it’s supposed to be. No woman your age should have someone like him rub cream on her. Besides, you probably had a boyfriend and would have politely declined anyway.
That was the problem with you. You were always so polite and smiled so much, that he thought it couldn't possibly be meant seriously. Not all the time.
You stretched your arms upward and rested your head on your right upper arm. Your fingers curled, and uncurled.
His daughter began applying sunscreen to your back in circling motions, and he quickly looked away before you could turn your head and catch him in the act of watching you bask in the sun.
Jack forced himself to look out over the lake. The water glistened in the morning sun. As expected this early, it was fairly calm, the water barely swishing around in soft waves. He normally loved days like this, when he didn’t have to work and be a doctor, but could simply be himself. Nobody wanted anything from him. Relaxation in its purest form.
Today, however, his day off felt anything but relaxing. For a moment though, it felt like he finally catched a moment of rare peace until a shadow settled beside him. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who it was. Your tangerine smelling perfume wafted up to his nose, wrapping itself around him like a cocoon. Slowly, he turned his head.
You had pulled your knees up and wrapped your arms around them. Your hair, still dry, was held in place by a claw clip, though a few strands had broken free and hung loosely in your face.
You looked at him.
Not with the disdain or judgment with which most people usually looked at him. Simply with interest. And that made it worse.
"Allison talks about you a lot, you know?"
“Hopefully nothing bad.”
"Actually, only good things."
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Then she's lying."
You let out a thoughtful hum.
"You never forget your friends’ birthdays or any special occasion. You donate to charities. You always make Alli feel like she can come home, no matter how bad your day has been or how bad she fucked up.”
Of all the things he’d heard, he hadn’t expected this to leave him speechless.
"I think you can be proud of that."
For a moment, he didn’t know how to respond. He rarely received compliments, neither for his work nor for himself as a person.
A small thank you was the only thing that escaped his mouth in a quiet whisper.
You gave him a small smile.
There it was again, that strange feeling in his chest, something tightening that he wished wouldn’t.
A warm, dangerous tug. For a moment, he forgot how old he was. How old you were.
Then suddenly, his daughter called out your names from a distance, tearing the two of you from your little bubble.
"If you two keep sitting there, I'll gladly eat the watermelon without you."
You rolled your eyes. Jack really laughed this time and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh. He may be doing yoga every morning at sunrise, but he was still a 50 year-old man with bones just as old. He reached his hand out toward you almost automatically, without noticing how quickly and instinctively he was doing it.
Before he could think about it too much, you took his hand before he could take it back and pulled yourself up.
For a moment, he forgot why he’d been trying to keep his distance from you all this time ever since his daughter brought you home in her first uni year.
After eating, Allison insisted on taking a few more photos with the sun in the background before they would pack their things and set off again. She placed her phone on the car’s windshield, set the timer to ten seconds, and quickly jogged over to you and Jack. Jack stood between you two, and as the timer ticked down, Allison quickly wrapped her arm around his waist and smiled.
Moments like these kept him going every day, allowing him to take a few more steps away from the edge. But then he felt your arm wrap around his waist from the other side. His body tensed for barely a second before relaxing again, but the moment was over as quickly as it came.
Allison clapped her hands and grinned at her phone with satisfaction as she tucked the picnic blanket under her arm, and got into the car.
"I’m definitely adding these on my Insta post later."
Later, as Jack laid in bed, he could still hear you both giggling in her bedroom across the hall. He unplugged his phone from the charger and opened the App Store.
At 50 years old, he downloaded an app he’d only ever heard of through his med students and daughter. And Dana.
All because of a single photo.
Surprisingly, he found that setting up an Instagram account wasn’t that difficult.
It was even easier to find his daughter’s account. He frowned. Her username was her real name, first and last name visible for anyone. Any weirdo could find her that way. He’d have to talk to her about that later.
His fingers clicked on the small square where he could make out a face all too familiar to him.
Posted two hours ago.
He zoomed in a little. It wasn't the way his hair stood up or his hand hung awkwardly in the air. He zoomed in on your smile. He really shouldn’t have looked at the picture for so long. There was no reason to. He should have clicked away from it ages ago. But then he accidentally clicked on the now big picture.
Was this your account his daughter had mentioned? He believed he heard her say the word ‘tag’ before in connection to the app. But the only connection his brain made, was to the game paint tag he quite frequently played with his friends in his teens. His finger hesitated before finally clicking on the little box that led to your account.
He only did this because he was a father interested in his daughter’s friends. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit about you, could it? He scrolled through your profile without realizing it. He looked at one picture after another. When he glanced at the clock, already 30 minutes had passed since he’d downloaded the app.
With a heavy sigh, he swiped your profile away. It was getting late, and he really shouldn’t be doing this.
Wait, what was that?
No. Oh God, no.
While swiping, he had accidentally double tapped the screen by mistake and…liked a photo of you from two years ago? It was a photo of you in a national park in front of a tree taller than the PTMC.
He quickly took back his like, hoping you hadn’t received a notification.
He quickly switched off his phone and put it back on his bedside table to charge. The house was dead quiet; you were probably fast asleep by now, as the giggling had long since stopped. You were probably one of those people who deleted their notifications without reading them after waking up anyway.
Ping.
A shrill sound broke the silence, and Jack’s head snapped toward the small bright square on his bedside table.
He squinted to avoid being blinded by the brightness of his screen and unlocked his phone.
No.
Just a few Facebook notifications and emails. But there, at the top of them all, a message stood out. He pinched his wrist briefly.
Not a dream.
yn_lastname sent you a message
Jack opened the app with a vigor that surprised even him.
Why did you message him?
Oh.
Oh...
‘Next time you want to know something about my past, feel free to ask me over a hot chocolate.’
Jack Abbot was screwed.
Ultimately, utterly screwed.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this fun little fic! It’s my first time writing for The Pitt and Jack, and I hope you enjoyed it.
warnings: yearning basically but jack doesn’t know yet, sexual innuendos, depressed themes, probably some cursing, reader is kinda teasing him, typical gen z dialogue, old man jack, whole chapter is from his pov, english isn’t my first language, also NOT proofread
author’s note: have fun you little age gap gremlins
Jack Abbot was a good man.
Every month when he received his paycheck, he donated to a Pittsburgh nonprofit that supported the children of Afghan war veterans. He always kept a little change in his wallet in case he came across a homeless person. He once helped his elderly neighbor when her pension was late and she couldn’t pay her rent on time. Last but not least, he was a doctor. Helping others and being a good person was an indelible part of his soul.
Many of his med school colleagues had given up medicine long ago to settle down in other fields. He knew this because he liked all of their Facebook milestones. That was pretty much the only app he had on his phone. He had installed it after Robby showed him some photos of his newborn niece during a rare shift they worked together.
Jack didn’t hold it against them, though. He could understand why they had turned their backs on medicine. There were many nights when he himself stood on the rooftop terrace of his apartment complex, taking one step after another toward the edge. However, he couldn't even bring himself to lose his patients. He didn’t need to pretend every day, that he was fed up with his life.
He wasn’t.
So, every day, he did his best to be a good person and not lose either his patients or himself.
Of course he wasn’t perfect. In fact, he had made many mistakes in his life. But he wouldn’t want to undo any of them. After all, it was his mistakes as a newly graduated doctor during his residency that had given him his wonderful daughter. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Her mother, Evelyn, was God’s gift to him on earth. She gave him 15 wonderful years together, and an even more wonderful daughter.
Jack could treat wounds, manage crises, boss people around, and most importantly, save lives. But he couldn't save hers. She died of a heart attack while he was at work and she was at home. It was quiet, and silent. Her heart had been sick for a long time already. It was for the best, sparing her a long and painful death.
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. He rolled his eyes and finished spreading butter on his toast. He didn’t like eating sweet things in the morning, they provided you zero nutritional value. Suddenly, a pair of delicate arms wrapped around him from behind, and a slender body pressed itself against him.
"Allison Abbot, how many more times do I have to ask you not to use me as a human shield?"
His daughter was still breathing heavily from running around the house, giggling behind him. She was twenty-three, but sometimes she still acted like the immature and not even slightly grown up seventeen-year-old girl who had lost her mother.
And then there was you.
The girl he initially thought was in a relationship with his daughter because you spent so much time together. Jack was very progressive. His cousin had been in a same-sex marriage ever since they were legalized in 2016.
But as it turned out, the trauma of endless nursing exams and bad clinical instructors bound you together. Non romantically, in this case.
Jack tried not to look at you, but utterly failed at that. Small sweat stains dotted your white tank top, and he wished he were repulsed by the sight. The last thing he wanted to look at was a sweaty 23-year-old college student.
Since his wife’s death six years ago, he hadn’t tried to meet anyone new. The flirtatious advances of his older female patients were already too much for him. At one point, Dana had tried to download an app other than Facebook onto his phone, something called Tinder. But Jack just grimaced at the thought of judging and rating someone like a product through a screen. Back in the day, you’d go out and actually talk to the person you liked. He had snatched his phone right out of Dana’s hand. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. She looked at him for quite a while. To this day, he still didn’t know what was going on behind her head in that moment.
He might be a doctor, but he couldn’t explain why his body started sweating all of a sudden when you bent down to grab an ice-cold can of Coke from the fridge.
"We were playing tag, relax, Dad”, Allison muttered, who had the habit of driving her father up the wall in all sorts of situations.
His gaze wandered back to you. Y/N was your name, if he remembered correctly. It was almost funny how you were trying not to get involved in the discussion between father and daughter, your gaze drifting around the kitchen ceiling before concentrating on your drink again.
His gaze wandered down to your fingers, which were struggling to open the can. You had beautiful nails, a pretty floral 3D design, Jack had to admit that, even though he didn’t approve of the idea that women in this society had to make themselves as pretty as possible for men. Still, he had always paid for his daughter’s nail salon appointments. What else did he work for?
She’d never had it easy in school. The other kids always teased her about having a doctor for a father. They called her a spoiled brat. Jack shook his head at the memory. It was incomprehensible to him how anyone could view saving lives as a bad thing, let alone bully a child for the type of job their parents did.
So he was more than glad that his daughter’s college years were going far better. It seemed that her unpopularity in school was really just a result of youthful immaturity. Jack tried to remember his daughter’s difficult school days whenever he felt the urge to scold her. For example when he came home early after a particularly exhausting night shift, having to chase her classmates out of his house because she thought it was the perfect place for a house party.
He tried to never be angry with his girl. She had finally made friends and stopped coming home with a tear-stained face after all these years. She looked too much like her mother when she cried. And her mother cried much, more and more as she got sicker.
His girl who brought that other girl home with her every day.
You.
Jack didn’t know when it had started.
In his 50 years on this planet, he’d never been one of those men who took younger women as their own, parading them by their side as if they were accessories. Or even looked after them.
The can hissed, and a small drop of Coke rose to the surface. You let out a surprised sound before bringing your finger to your lips, sticking out your tongue, and licking up the drop. Jack quickly looked away and turned toward the kitchen window.
He shouldn’t have thoughts like that about his daughter’s best friend. He shouldn’t even be looking at you that long, to know that you always licked your lips after you swallowed something. For crying out loud, you were nearly thirty years younger! You could be his daughter.
"Well, anyway," Allison said, "I still have to hand in that stupid exam registration form at his office, even though I’ve already sent it to him by email. I don’t know why old people still want everything in paper form these days. What’s the point of him having an email address then? He should just take it off his university website." His daughter sighed beside him, and Jack could practically feel her doe-eyed stare boring into his head from the side.
"Could you give me a lift to uni?", she asked in that sugary tone which she always used when she wanted something from him and knew he would say no. He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "How urgent, one to ten? You have your own car, Allison. As much as I’d love to drive you around forever, it’s 30 degrees outside, and I’d hate to roast in the car like a rotisserie chicken on the one free Saturday I get per month.”
A short giggle escaped your lips, and his eyes darted over to you.
"Sorry," you muttered, but your eyes didn't look as though you really were. He’d noticed that before. Whenever he said something that wasn’t actually funny, you laughed at it. It was as if you were trying to make fun of him. He hadn't ever heard you laugh that much with his daughter.
He wished he could erase the sound of it from his head. Wished he could stop locking his bedroom door at night because the way you laughed burned itself into his head, causing him to do things that should forbid him from going to church every Easter.
He looked back at his daughter, who merely shrugged her shoulders, giving a half-hearted glance in his direction. “My professor said by the end of next week. That’s the deadline for registration.” He tried to, but he couldn’t get mad at her for taking so long to sign up for the exam. He’d been the exact same way during his own college days.
He crossed his arms, giving his daughter a stern look, and turned his gaze to you. "And you, do you have anything to hand in, or are you a better student than my daughter?"
You took a sip of your Coke, wiped your mouth, and shook your head. "I am always behaving, Mr. Abbot." Allison laughed. You rolled your eyes and took another sip of your Coke. Jesus, how much liquid could possibly fit in such a small can?
"Well, anyway, I try to, sort of. I don’t have to hand anything in, but thanks for asking.” You set the can down on the kitchen counter and wiped your condensation-smeared hands on your already damp shirt.
"If we stay in this house any longer, I think we'll all end up with a heatstroke from the heat building up in here." Those words were true. Jack felt incredibly hot, and wasn’t quite sure if the sweat that was forming on his neck was caused by the sheer too high temperature, or something else entirely.
His daughter made a thoughtful sound and crossed her arms. "I didn't know you were finishing your degree in construction management."
You rolled your eyes but didn't let that snark stop you. "Why don't we just drive to the lake? It’s only a 15-minute drive. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a cool-off. What do you say?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Seeing you in swimwear would be the end of him, a sight, from which he’d never recover.
Sometimes, when he locked his bedroom door at night, he wished he’d been born 30 years later. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so bad about touching himself every night to the image of you in exactly such situations.
But his daughter beat him to it. “I like the way you think.” She let out a sigh and fanned herself with her hand. "I ordered this cute bikini the other day, and it arrived over the weekend. We have to take so many photos. I’ve already got the perfect songs in mind for both of us.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. Were the women of his generation back then, when he was their age, the same? He couldn’t remember. Other memories were now overshadowing those from his youth.
Apparently the two girls took his silence as a yes, because you two were already storming up the stairs, chattering loudly about tanning oils until your voices grew fainter and finally vanished into his daughter’s room.
Great.
Really great.
This was going to be the worst fucking day of his long life.
The drive to the lake was quiet. His daughter offered to drive, a small gesture to make amends for the way you both had taken him by surprise earlier. Jack declined immediately. He could certainly use the distraction while driving. Besides, she’d recently received a speeding ticket in the mail. There was no way he would let her drive anything but a bike for the next month.
She was sitting behind the passenger’s seat, you right behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, this seating arrangement meant that he sometimes catched your gaze in the mirror when he went to check on the cars behind. From your seat, you had a perfect view of his face for the entire duration of the drive. Jack convinced himself that it was just pure coincidence, pure coincidence that your eyes met every time he looked in the rearview mirror.
When you arrived at the lake, it was fairly quiet. To Jack’s surprise, you were the only ones on the small beach. This would very likely change as the day went on, but in the morning warmth no one seemed too eager to go down to the water just yet.
He spread the picnic blanket and towels while you two changed behind the car. He had already put on his swimming trunks at home before you set off. When you and his daughter emerged from behind the car and tossed your clothes onto the back seat, the sight he was met with briefly took his breath away. Your bikini consisted of not more than a few scraps of black fabric that clung to your body in just the right way. And there was that mischievous smile again as your gaze set on him kneeling on his towel across the few feet distance.
Jack was suddenly glad his bathing shorts were spacious, otherwise…this situation would have been rather embarrassing. He sat down on his dark blue towel with a deep sigh while you and his daughter made yourselves comfortable on the large blanket.
You promptly lay down on your stomach, giving him a perfect view of your bottom.
God forgive him if there was one.
Maybe he could be discreet and innocently offer to put sunscreen on your back. He was already starting to stand up, when his daughter beat him to it and undid the bow of your bikini top, exposing your beauty mark scattered back.
Jack sat back down and shook his head. That was how it’s supposed to be. No woman your age should have someone like him rub cream on her. Besides, you probably had a boyfriend and would have politely declined anyway.
That was the problem with you. You were always so polite and smiled so much, that he thought it couldn't possibly be meant seriously. Not all the time.
You stretched your arms upward and rested your head on your right upper arm. Your fingers curled, and uncurled.
His daughter began applying sunscreen to your back in circling motions, and he quickly looked away before you could turn your head and catch him in the act of watching you bask in the sun.
Jack forced himself to look out over the lake. The water glistened in the morning sun. As expected this early, it was fairly calm, the water barely swishing around in soft waves. He normally loved days like this, when he didn’t have to work and be a doctor, but could simply be himself. Nobody wanted anything from him. Relaxation in its purest form.
Today, however, his day off felt anything but relaxing. For a moment though, it felt like he finally catched a moment of rare peace until a shadow settled beside him. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who it was. Your tangerine smelling perfume wafted up to his nose, wrapping itself around him like a cocoon. Slowly, he turned his head.
You had pulled your knees up and wrapped your arms around them. Your hair, still dry, was held in place by a claw clip, though a few strands had broken free and hung loosely in your face.
You looked at him.
Not with the disdain or judgment with which most people usually looked at him. Simply with interest. And that made it worse.
"Allison talks about you a lot, you know?"
“Hopefully nothing bad.”
"Actually, only good things."
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Then she's lying."
You let out a thoughtful hum.
"You never forget your friends’ birthdays or any special occasion. You donate to charities. You always make Alli feel like she can come home, no matter how bad your day has been or how bad she fucked up.”
Of all the things he’d heard, he hadn’t expected this to leave him speechless.
"I think you can be proud of that."
For a moment, he didn’t know how to respond. He rarely received compliments, neither for his work nor for himself as a person.
A small thank you was the only thing that escaped his mouth in a quiet whisper.
You gave him a small smile.
There it was again, that strange feeling in his chest, something tightening that he wished wouldn’t.
A warm, dangerous tug. For a moment, he forgot how old he was. How old you were.
Then suddenly, his daughter called out your names from a distance, tearing the two of you from your little bubble.
"If you two keep sitting there, I'll gladly eat the watermelon without you."
You rolled your eyes. Jack really laughed this time and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh. He may be doing yoga every morning at sunrise, but he was still a 50 year-old man with bones just as old. He reached his hand out toward you almost automatically, without noticing how quickly and instinctively he was doing it.
Before he could think about it too much, you took his hand before he could take it back and pulled yourself up.
For a moment, he forgot why he’d been trying to keep his distance from you all this time ever since his daughter brought you home in her first uni year.
After eating, Allison insisted on taking a few more photos with the sun in the background before they would pack their things and set off again. She placed her phone on the car’s windshield, set the timer to ten seconds, and quickly jogged over to you and Jack. Jack stood between you two, and as the timer ticked down, Allison quickly wrapped her arm around his waist and smiled.
Moments like these kept him going every day, allowing him to take a few more steps away from the edge. But then he felt your arm wrap around his waist from the other side. His body tensed for barely a second before relaxing again, but the moment was over as quickly as it came.
Allison clapped her hands and grinned at her phone with satisfaction as she tucked the picnic blanket under her arm, and got into the car.
"I’m definitely adding these on my Insta post later."
Later, as Jack laid in bed, he could still hear you both giggling in her bedroom across the hall. He unplugged his phone from the charger and opened the App Store.
At 50 years old, he downloaded an app he’d only ever heard of through his med students and daughter. And Dana.
All because of a single photo.
Surprisingly, he found that setting up an Instagram account wasn’t that difficult.
It was even easier to find his daughter’s account. He frowned. Her username was her real name, first and last name visible for anyone. Any weirdo could find her that way. He’d have to talk to her about that later.
His fingers clicked on the small square where he could make out a face all too familiar to him.
Posted two hours ago.
He zoomed in a little. It wasn't the way his hair stood up or his hand hung awkwardly in the air. He zoomed in on your smile. He really shouldn’t have looked at the picture for so long. There was no reason to. He should have clicked away from it ages ago. But then he accidentally clicked on the now big picture.
Was this your account his daughter had mentioned? He believed he heard her say the word ‘tag’ before in connection to the app. But the only connection his brain made, was to the game paint tag he quite frequently played with his friends in his teens. His finger hesitated before finally clicking on the little box that led to your account.
He only did this because he was a father interested in his daughter’s friends. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit about you, could it? He scrolled through your profile without realizing it. He looked at one picture after another. When he glanced at the clock, already 30 minutes had passed since he’d downloaded the app.
With a heavy sigh, he swiped your profile away. It was getting late, and he really shouldn’t be doing this.
Wait, what was that?
No. Oh God, no.
While swiping, he had accidentally double tapped the screen by mistake and…liked a photo of you from two years ago? It was a photo of you in a national park in front of a tree taller than the PTMC.
He quickly took back his like, hoping you hadn’t received a notification.
He quickly switched off his phone and put it back on his bedside table to charge. The house was dead quiet; you were probably fast asleep by now, as the giggling had long since stopped. You were probably one of those people who deleted their notifications without reading them after waking up anyway.
Ping.
A shrill sound broke the silence, and Jack’s head snapped toward the small bright square on his bedside table.
He squinted to avoid being blinded by the brightness of his screen and unlocked his phone.
No.
Just a few Facebook notifications and emails. But there, at the top of them all, a message stood out. He pinched his wrist briefly.
Not a dream.
yn_lastname sent you a message
Jack opened the app with a vigor that surprised even him.
Why did you message him?
Oh.
Oh...
‘Next time you want to know something about my past, feel free to ask me over a hot chocolate.’
Jack Abbot was screwed.
Ultimately, utterly screwed.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this fun little fic! It’s my first time writing for The Pitt and Jack, and I hope you enjoyed it.
warnings: yearning basically but jack doesn’t know yet, sexual innuendos, depressed themes, probably some cursing, reader is kinda teasing him, typical gen z dialogue, old man jack, whole chapter is from his pov, english isn’t my first language, also NOT proofread
author’s note: have fun you little age gap gremlins
Jack Abbot was a good man.
Every month when he received his paycheck, he donated to a Pittsburgh nonprofit that supported the children of Afghan war veterans. He always kept a little change in his wallet in case he came across a homeless person. He once helped his elderly neighbor when her pension was late and she couldn’t pay her rent on time. Last but not least, he was a doctor. Helping others and being a good person was an indelible part of his soul.
Many of his med school colleagues had given up medicine long ago to settle down in other fields. He knew this because he liked all of their Facebook milestones. That was pretty much the only app he had on his phone. He had installed it after Robby showed him some photos of his newborn niece during a rare shift they worked together.
Jack didn’t hold it against them, though. He could understand why they had turned their backs on medicine. There were many nights when he himself stood on the rooftop terrace of his apartment complex, taking one step after another toward the edge. However, he couldn't even bring himself to lose his patients. He didn’t need to pretend every day, that he was fed up with his life.
He wasn’t.
So, every day, he did his best to be a good person and not lose either his patients or himself.
Of course he wasn’t perfect. In fact, he had made many mistakes in his life. But he wouldn’t want to undo any of them. After all, it was his mistakes as a newly graduated doctor during his residency that had given him his wonderful daughter. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Her mother, Evelyn, was God’s gift to him on earth. She gave him 15 wonderful years together, and an even more wonderful daughter.
Jack could treat wounds, manage crises, boss people around, and most importantly, save lives. But he couldn't save hers. She died of a heart attack while he was at work and she was at home. It was quiet, and silent. Her heart had been sick for a long time already. It was for the best, sparing her a long and painful death.
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. He rolled his eyes and finished spreading butter on his toast. He didn’t like eating sweet things in the morning, they provided you zero nutritional value. Suddenly, a pair of delicate arms wrapped around him from behind, and a slender body pressed itself against him.
"Allison Abbot, how many more times do I have to ask you not to use me as a human shield?"
His daughter was still breathing heavily from running around the house, giggling behind him. She was twenty-three, but sometimes she still acted like the immature and not even slightly grown up seventeen-year-old girl who had lost her mother.
And then there was you.
The girl he initially thought was in a relationship with his daughter because you spent so much time together. Jack was very progressive. His cousin had been in a same-sex marriage ever since they were legalized in 2016.
But as it turned out, the trauma of endless nursing exams and bad clinical instructors bound you together. Non romantically, in this case.
Jack tried not to look at you, but utterly failed at that. Small sweat stains dotted your white tank top, and he wished he were repulsed by the sight. The last thing he wanted to look at was a sweaty 23-year-old college student.
Since his wife’s death six years ago, he hadn’t tried to meet anyone new. The flirtatious advances of his older female patients were already too much for him. At one point, Dana had tried to download an app other than Facebook onto his phone, something called Tinder. But Jack just grimaced at the thought of judging and rating someone like a product through a screen. Back in the day, you’d go out and actually talk to the person you liked. He had snatched his phone right out of Dana’s hand. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. She looked at him for quite a while. To this day, he still didn’t know what was going on behind her head in that moment.
He might be a doctor, but he couldn’t explain why his body started sweating all of a sudden when you bent down to grab an ice-cold can of Coke from the fridge.
"We were playing tag, relax, Dad”, Allison muttered, who had the habit of driving her father up the wall in all sorts of situations.
His gaze wandered back to you. Y/N was your name, if he remembered correctly. It was almost funny how you were trying not to get involved in the discussion between father and daughter, your gaze drifting around the kitchen ceiling before concentrating on your drink again.
His gaze wandered down to your fingers, which were struggling to open the can. You had beautiful nails, a pretty floral 3D design, Jack had to admit that, even though he didn’t approve of the idea that women in this society had to make themselves as pretty as possible for men. Still, he had always paid for his daughter’s nail salon appointments. What else did he work for?
She’d never had it easy in school. The other kids always teased her about having a doctor for a father. They called her a spoiled brat. Jack shook his head at the memory. It was incomprehensible to him how anyone could view saving lives as a bad thing, let alone bully a child for the type of job their parents did.
So he was more than glad that his daughter’s college years were going far better. It seemed that her unpopularity in school was really just a result of youthful immaturity. Jack tried to remember his daughter’s difficult school days whenever he felt the urge to scold her. For example when he came home early after a particularly exhausting night shift, having to chase her classmates out of his house because she thought it was the perfect place for a house party.
He tried to never be angry with his girl. She had finally made friends and stopped coming home with a tear-stained face after all these years. She looked too much like her mother when she cried. And her mother cried much, more and more as she got sicker.
His girl who brought that other girl home with her every day.
You.
Jack didn’t know when it had started.
In his 50 years on this planet, he’d never been one of those men who took younger women as their own, parading them by their side as if they were accessories. Or even looked after them.
The can hissed, and a small drop of Coke rose to the surface. You let out a surprised sound before bringing your finger to your lips, sticking out your tongue, and licking up the drop. Jack quickly looked away and turned toward the kitchen window.
He shouldn’t have thoughts like that about his daughter’s best friend. He shouldn’t even be looking at you that long, to know that you always licked your lips after you swallowed something. For crying out loud, you were nearly thirty years younger! You could be his daughter.
"Well, anyway," Allison said, "I still have to hand in that stupid exam registration form at his office, even though I’ve already sent it to him by email. I don’t know why old people still want everything in paper form these days. What’s the point of him having an email address then? He should just take it off his university website." His daughter sighed beside him, and Jack could practically feel her doe-eyed stare boring into his head from the side.
"Could you give me a lift to uni?", she asked in that sugary tone which she always used when she wanted something from him and knew he would say no. He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "How urgent, one to ten? You have your own car, Allison. As much as I’d love to drive you around forever, it’s 30 degrees outside, and I’d hate to roast in the car like a rotisserie chicken on the one free Saturday I get per month.”
A short giggle escaped your lips, and his eyes darted over to you.
"Sorry," you muttered, but your eyes didn't look as though you really were. He’d noticed that before. Whenever he said something that wasn’t actually funny, you laughed at it. It was as if you were trying to make fun of him. He hadn't ever heard you laugh that much with his daughter.
He wished he could erase the sound of it from his head. Wished he could stop locking his bedroom door at night because the way you laughed burned itself into his head, causing him to do things that should forbid him from going to church every Easter.
He looked back at his daughter, who merely shrugged her shoulders, giving a half-hearted glance in his direction. “My professor said by the end of next week. That’s the deadline for registration.” He tried to, but he couldn’t get mad at her for taking so long to sign up for the exam. He’d been the exact same way during his own college days.
He crossed his arms, giving his daughter a stern look, and turned his gaze to you. "And you, do you have anything to hand in, or are you a better student than my daughter?"
You took a sip of your Coke, wiped your mouth, and shook your head. "I am always behaving, Mr. Abbot." Allison laughed. You rolled your eyes and took another sip of your Coke. Jesus, how much liquid could possibly fit in such a small can?
"Well, anyway, I try to, sort of. I don’t have to hand anything in, but thanks for asking.” You set the can down on the kitchen counter and wiped your condensation-smeared hands on your already damp shirt.
"If we stay in this house any longer, I think we'll all end up with a heatstroke from the heat building up in here." Those words were true. Jack felt incredibly hot, and wasn’t quite sure if the sweat that was forming on his neck was caused by the sheer too high temperature, or something else entirely.
His daughter made a thoughtful sound and crossed her arms. "I didn't know you were finishing your degree in construction management."
You rolled your eyes but didn't let that snark stop you. "Why don't we just drive to the lake? It’s only a 15-minute drive. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a cool-off. What do you say?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Seeing you in swimwear would be the end of him, a sight, from which he’d never recover.
Sometimes, when he locked his bedroom door at night, he wished he’d been born 30 years later. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so bad about touching himself every night to the image of you in exactly such situations.
But his daughter beat him to it. “I like the way you think.” She let out a sigh and fanned herself with her hand. "I ordered this cute bikini the other day, and it arrived over the weekend. We have to take so many photos. I’ve already got the perfect songs in mind for both of us.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. Were the women of his generation back then, when he was their age, the same? He couldn’t remember. Other memories were now overshadowing those from his youth.
Apparently the two girls took his silence as a yes, because you two were already storming up the stairs, chattering loudly about tanning oils until your voices grew fainter and finally vanished into his daughter’s room.
Great.
Really great.
This was going to be the worst fucking day of his long life.
The drive to the lake was quiet. His daughter offered to drive, a small gesture to make amends for the way you both had taken him by surprise earlier. Jack declined immediately. He could certainly use the distraction while driving. Besides, she’d recently received a speeding ticket in the mail. There was no way he would let her drive anything but a bike for the next month.
She was sitting behind the passenger’s seat, you right behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, this seating arrangement meant that he sometimes catched your gaze in the mirror when he went to check on the cars behind. From your seat, you had a perfect view of his face for the entire duration of the drive. Jack convinced himself that it was just pure coincidence, pure coincidence that your eyes met every time he looked in the rearview mirror.
When you arrived at the lake, it was fairly quiet. To Jack’s surprise, you were the only ones on the small beach. This would very likely change as the day went on, but in the morning warmth no one seemed too eager to go down to the water just yet.
He spread the picnic blanket and towels while you two changed behind the car. He had already put on his swimming trunks at home before you set off. When you and his daughter emerged from behind the car and tossed your clothes onto the back seat, the sight he was met with briefly took his breath away. Your bikini consisted of not more than a few scraps of black fabric that clung to your body in just the right way. And there was that mischievous smile again as your gaze set on him kneeling on his towel across the few feet distance.
Jack was suddenly glad his bathing shorts were spacious, otherwise…this situation would have been rather embarrassing. He sat down on his dark blue towel with a deep sigh while you and his daughter made yourselves comfortable on the large blanket.
You promptly lay down on your stomach, giving him a perfect view of your bottom.
God forgive him if there was one.
Maybe he could be discreet and innocently offer to put sunscreen on your back. He was already starting to stand up, when his daughter beat him to it and undid the bow of your bikini top, exposing your beauty mark scattered back.
Jack sat back down and shook his head. That was how it’s supposed to be. No woman your age should have someone like him rub cream on her. Besides, you probably had a boyfriend and would have politely declined anyway.
That was the problem with you. You were always so polite and smiled so much, that he thought it couldn't possibly be meant seriously. Not all the time.
You stretched your arms upward and rested your head on your right upper arm. Your fingers curled, and uncurled.
His daughter began applying sunscreen to your back in circling motions, and he quickly looked away before you could turn your head and catch him in the act of watching you bask in the sun.
Jack forced himself to look out over the lake. The water glistened in the morning sun. As expected this early, it was fairly calm, the water barely swishing around in soft waves. He normally loved days like this, when he didn’t have to work and be a doctor, but could simply be himself. Nobody wanted anything from him. Relaxation in its purest form.
Today, however, his day off felt anything but relaxing. For a moment though, it felt like he finally catched a moment of rare peace until a shadow settled beside him. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who it was. Your tangerine smelling perfume wafted up to his nose, wrapping itself around him like a cocoon. Slowly, he turned his head.
You had pulled your knees up and wrapped your arms around them. Your hair, still dry, was held in place by a claw clip, though a few strands had broken free and hung loosely in your face.
You looked at him.
Not with the disdain or judgment with which most people usually looked at him. Simply with interest. And that made it worse.
"Allison talks about you a lot, you know?"
“Hopefully nothing bad.”
"Actually, only good things."
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Then she's lying."
You let out a thoughtful hum.
"You never forget your friends’ birthdays or any special occasion. You donate to charities. You always make Alli feel like she can come home, no matter how bad your day has been or how bad she fucked up.”
Of all the things he’d heard, he hadn’t expected this to leave him speechless.
"I think you can be proud of that."
For a moment, he didn’t know how to respond. He rarely received compliments, neither for his work nor for himself as a person.
A small thank you was the only thing that escaped his mouth in a quiet whisper.
You gave him a small smile.
There it was again, that strange feeling in his chest, something tightening that he wished wouldn’t.
A warm, dangerous tug. For a moment, he forgot how old he was. How old you were.
Then suddenly, his daughter called out your names from a distance, tearing the two of you from your little bubble.
"If you two keep sitting there, I'll gladly eat the watermelon without you."
You rolled your eyes. Jack really laughed this time and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh. He may be doing yoga every morning at sunrise, but he was still a 50 year-old man with bones just as old. He reached his hand out toward you almost automatically, without noticing how quickly and instinctively he was doing it.
Before he could think about it too much, you took his hand before he could take it back and pulled yourself up.
For a moment, he forgot why he’d been trying to keep his distance from you all this time ever since his daughter brought you home in her first uni year.
After eating, Allison insisted on taking a few more photos with the sun in the background before they would pack their things and set off again. She placed her phone on the car’s windshield, set the timer to ten seconds, and quickly jogged over to you and Jack. Jack stood between you two, and as the timer ticked down, Allison quickly wrapped her arm around his waist and smiled.
Moments like these kept him going every day, allowing him to take a few more steps away from the edge. But then he felt your arm wrap around his waist from the other side. His body tensed for barely a second before relaxing again, but the moment was over as quickly as it came.
Allison clapped her hands and grinned at her phone with satisfaction as she tucked the picnic blanket under her arm, and got into the car.
"I’m definitely adding these on my Insta post later."
Later, as Jack laid in bed, he could still hear you both giggling in her bedroom across the hall. He unplugged his phone from the charger and opened the App Store.
At 50 years old, he downloaded an app he’d only ever heard of through his med students and daughter. And Dana.
All because of a single photo.
Surprisingly, he found that setting up an Instagram account wasn’t that difficult.
It was even easier to find his daughter’s account. He frowned. Her username was her real name, first and last name visible for anyone. Any weirdo could find her that way. He’d have to talk to her about that later.
His fingers clicked on the small square where he could make out a face all too familiar to him.
Posted two hours ago.
He zoomed in a little. It wasn't the way his hair stood up or his hand hung awkwardly in the air. He zoomed in on your smile. He really shouldn’t have looked at the picture for so long. There was no reason to. He should have clicked away from it ages ago. But then he accidentally clicked on the now big picture.
Was this your account his daughter had mentioned? He believed he heard her say the word ‘tag’ before in connection to the app. But the only connection his brain made, was to the game paint tag he quite frequently played with his friends in his teens. His finger hesitated before finally clicking on the little box that led to your account.
He only did this because he was a father interested in his daughter’s friends. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit about you, could it? He scrolled through your profile without realizing it. He looked at one picture after another. When he glanced at the clock, already 30 minutes had passed since he’d downloaded the app.
With a heavy sigh, he swiped your profile away. It was getting late, and he really shouldn’t be doing this.
Wait, what was that?
No. Oh God, no.
While swiping, he had accidentally double tapped the screen by mistake and…liked a photo of you from two years ago? It was a photo of you in a national park in front of a tree taller than the PTMC.
He quickly took back his like, hoping you hadn’t received a notification.
He quickly switched off his phone and put it back on his bedside table to charge. The house was dead quiet; you were probably fast asleep by now, as the giggling had long since stopped. You were probably one of those people who deleted their notifications without reading them after waking up anyway.
Ping.
A shrill sound broke the silence, and Jack’s head snapped toward the small bright square on his bedside table.
He squinted to avoid being blinded by the brightness of his screen and unlocked his phone.
No.
Just a few Facebook notifications and emails. But there, at the top of them all, a message stood out. He pinched his wrist briefly.
Not a dream.
yn_lastname sent you a message
Jack opened the app with a vigor that surprised even him.
Why did you message him?
Oh.
Oh...
‘Next time you want to know something about my past, feel free to ask me over a hot chocolate.’
Jack Abbot was screwed.
Ultimately, utterly screwed.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this fun little fic! It’s my first time writing for The Pitt and Jack, and I hope you enjoyed it.
warnings: yearning basically but jack doesn’t know yet, sexual innuendos, depressed themes, probably some cursing, reader is kinda teasing him, typical gen z dialogue, old man jack, whole chapter is from his pov, english isn’t my first language, also NOT proofread
a/n: have fun you little age gap gremlins
Jack Abbot was a good man.
Every month when he received his paycheck, he donated to a Pittsburgh nonprofit that supported the children of Afghan war veterans. He always kept a little change in his wallet in case he came across a homeless person. He once helped his elderly neighbor when her pension was late and she couldn’t pay her rent on time. Last but not least, he was a doctor. Helping others and being a good person was an indelible part of his soul.
Many of his med school colleagues had given up medicine long ago to settle down in other fields. He knew this because he liked all of their Facebook milestones. That was pretty much the only app he had on his phone. He had installed it after Robby showed him some photos of his newborn niece during a rare shift they worked together.
Jack didn’t hold it against them, though. He could understand why they had turned their backs on medicine. There were many nights when he himself stood on the rooftop terrace of his apartment complex, taking one step after another toward the edge. However, he couldn't even bring himself to lose his patients. He didn’t need to pretend every day, that he was fed up with his life.
He wasn’t.
So, every day, he did his best to be a good person and not lose either his patients or himself.
Of course he wasn’t perfect. In fact, he had made many mistakes in his life. But he wouldn’t want to undo any of them. After all, it was his mistakes as a newly graduated doctor during his residency that had given him his wonderful daughter. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Her mother, Evelyn, was God’s gift to him on earth. She gave him 15 wonderful years together, and an even more wonderful daughter.
Jack could treat wounds, manage crises, boss people around, and most importantly, save lives. But he couldn't save hers. She died of a heart attack while he was at work and she was at home. It was quiet, and silent. Her heart had been sick for a long time already. It was for the best, sparing her a long and painful death.
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. He rolled his eyes and finished spreading butter on his toast. He didn’t like eating sweet things in the morning, they provided you zero nutritional value. Suddenly, a pair of delicate arms wrapped around him from behind, and a slender body pressed itself against him.
"Allison Abbot, how many more times do I have to ask you not to use me as a human shield?"
His daughter was still breathing heavily from running around the house, giggling behind him. She was twenty-three, but sometimes she still acted like the immature and not even slightly grown up seventeen-year-old girl who had lost her mother.
And then there was you.
The girl he initially thought was in a relationship with his daughter because you spent so much time together. Jack was very progressive. His cousin had been in a same-sex marriage ever since they were legalized in 2016.
But as it turned out, the trauma of endless nursing exams and bad clinical instructors bound you together. Non romantically, in this case.
Jack tried not to look at you, but utterly failed at that. Small sweat stains dotted your white tank top, and he wished he were repulsed by the sight. The last thing he wanted to look at was a sweaty 23-year-old college student.
Since his wife’s death six years ago, he hadn’t tried to meet anyone new. The flirtatious advances of his older female patients were already too much for him. At one point, Dana had tried to download an app other than Facebook onto his phone, something called Tinder. But Jack just grimaced at the thought of judging and rating someone like a product through a screen. Back in the day, you’d go out and actually talk to the person you liked. He had snatched his phone right out of Dana’s hand. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. She looked at him for quite a while. To this day, he still didn’t know what was going on behind her head in that moment.
He might be a doctor, but he couldn’t explain why his body started sweating all of a sudden when you bent down to grab an ice-cold can of Coke from the fridge.
"We were playing tag, relax, Dad”, Allison muttered, who had the habit of driving her father up the wall in all sorts of situations.
His gaze wandered back to you. Y/N was your name, if he remembered correctly. It was almost funny how you were trying not to get involved in the discussion between father and daughter, your gaze drifting around the kitchen ceiling before concentrating on your drink again.
His gaze wandered down to your fingers, which were struggling to open the can. You had beautiful nails, a pretty floral 3D design, Jack had to admit that, even though he didn’t approve of the idea that women in this society had to make themselves as pretty as possible for men. Still, he had always paid for his daughter’s nail salon appointments. What else did he work for?
She’d never had it easy in school. The other kids always teased her about having a doctor for a father. They called her a spoiled brat. Jack shook his head at the memory. It was incomprehensible to him how anyone could view saving lives as a bad thing, let alone bully a child for the type of job their parents did.
So he was more than glad that his daughter’s college years were going far better. It seemed that her unpopularity in school was really just a result of youthful immaturity. Jack tried to remember his daughter’s difficult school days whenever he felt the urge to scold her. For example when he came home early after a particularly exhausting night shift, having to chase her classmates out of his house because she thought it was the perfect place for a house party.
He tried to never be angry with his girl. She had finally made friends and stopped coming home with a tear-stained face after all these years. She looked too much like her mother when she cried. And her mother cried much, more and more as she got sicker.
His girl who brought that other girl home with her every day.
You.
Jack didn’t know when it had started.
In his 50 years on this planet, he’d never been one of those men who took younger women as their own, parading them by their side as if they were accessories. Or even looked after them.
The can hissed, and a small drop of Coke rose to the surface. You let out a surprised sound before bringing your finger to your lips, sticking out your tongue, and licking up the drop. Jack quickly looked away and turned toward the kitchen window.
He shouldn’t have thoughts like that about his daughter’s best friend. He shouldn’t even be looking at you that long, to know that you always licked your lips after you swallowed something. For crying out loud, you were nearly thirty years younger! You could be his daughter.
"Well, anyway," Allison said, "I still have to hand in that stupid exam registration form at his office, even though I’ve already sent it to him by email. I don’t know why old people still want everything in paper form these days. What’s the point of him having an email address then? He should just take it off his university website." His daughter sighed beside him, and Jack could practically feel her doe-eyed stare boring into his head from the side.
"Could you give me a lift to uni?", she asked in that sugary tone which she always used when she wanted something from him and knew he would say no. He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "How urgent, one to ten? You have your own car, Allison. As much as I’d love to drive you around forever, it’s 30 degrees outside, and I’d hate to roast in the car like a rotisserie chicken on the one free Saturday I get per month.”
A short giggle escaped your lips, and his eyes darted over to you.
"Sorry," you muttered, but your eyes didn't look as though you really were. He’d noticed that before. Whenever he said something that wasn’t actually funny, you laughed at it. It was as if you were trying to make fun of him. He hadn't ever heard you laugh that much with his daughter.
He wished he could erase the sound of it from his head. Wished he could stop locking his bedroom door at night because the way you laughed burned itself into his head, causing him to do things that should forbid him from going to church every Easter.
He looked back at his daughter, who merely shrugged her shoulders, giving a half-hearted glance in his direction. “My professor said by the end of next week. That’s the deadline for registration.” He tried to, but he couldn’t get mad at her for taking so long to sign up for the exam. He’d been the exact same way during his own college days.
He crossed his arms, giving his daughter a stern look, and turned his gaze to you. "And you, do you have anything to hand in, or are you a better student than my daughter?"
You took a sip of your Coke, wiped your mouth, and shook your head. "I am always behaving, Mr. Abbot." Allison laughed. You rolled your eyes and took another sip of your Coke. Jesus, how much liquid could possibly fit in such a small can?
"Well, anyway, I try to, sort of. I don’t have to hand anything in, but thanks for asking.” You set the can down on the kitchen counter and wiped your condensation-smeared hands on your already damp shirt.
"If we stay in this house any longer, I think we'll all end up with a heatstroke from the heat building up in here." Those words were true. Jack felt incredibly hot, and wasn’t quite sure if the sweat that was forming on his neck was caused by the sheer too high temperature, or something else entirely.
His daughter made a thoughtful sound and crossed her arms. "I didn't know you were finishing your degree in construction management."
You rolled your eyes but didn't let that snark stop you. "Why don't we just drive to the lake? It’s only a 15-minute drive. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a cool-off. What do you say?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Seeing you in swimwear would be the end of him, a sight, from which he’d never recover.
Sometimes, when he locked his bedroom door at night, he wished he’d been born 30 years later. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so bad about touching himself every night to the image of you in exactly such situations.
But his daughter beat him to it. “I like the way you think.” She let out a sigh and fanned herself with her hand. "I ordered this cute bikini the other day, and it arrived over the weekend. We have to take so many photos. I’ve already got the perfect songs in mind for both of us.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. Were the women of his generation back then, when he was their age, the same? He couldn’t remember. Other memories were now overshadowing those from his youth.
Apparently the two girls took his silence as a yes, because you two were already storming up the stairs, chattering loudly about tanning oils until your voices grew fainter and finally vanished into his daughter’s room.
Great.
Really great.
This was going to be the worst fucking day of his long life.
The drive to the lake was quiet. His daughter offered to drive, a small gesture to make amends for the way you both had taken him by surprise earlier. Jack declined immediately. He could certainly use the distraction while driving. Besides, she’d recently received a speeding ticket in the mail. There was no way he would let her drive anything but a bike for the next month.
She was sitting behind the passenger’s seat, you right behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, this seating arrangement meant that he sometimes catched your gaze in the mirror when he went to check on the cars behind. From your seat, you had a perfect view of his face for the entire duration of the drive. Jack convinced himself that it was just pure coincidence, pure coincidence that your eyes met every time he looked in the rearview mirror.
When you arrived at the lake, it was fairly quiet. To Jack’s surprise, you were the only ones on the small beach. This would very likely change as the day went on, but in the morning warmth no one seemed too eager to go down to the water just yet.
He spread the picnic blanket and towels while you two changed behind the car. He had already put on his swimming trunks at home before you set off. When you and his daughter emerged from behind the car and tossed your clothes onto the back seat, the sight he was met with briefly took his breath away. Your bikini consisted of not more than a few scraps of black fabric that clung to your body in just the right way. And there was that mischievous smile again as your gaze set on him kneeling on his towel across the few feet distance.
Jack was suddenly glad his bathing shorts were spacious, otherwise…this situation would have been rather embarrassing. He sat down on his dark blue towel with a deep sigh while you and his daughter made yourselves comfortable on the large blanket.
You promptly lay down on your stomach, giving him a perfect view of your bottom.
God forgive him if there was one.
Maybe he could be discreet and innocently offer to put sunscreen on your back. He was already starting to stand up, when his daughter beat him to it and undid the bow of your bikini top, exposing your beauty mark scattered back.
Jack sat back down and shook his head. That was how it’s supposed to be. No woman your age should have someone like him rub cream on her. Besides, you probably had a boyfriend and would have politely declined anyway.
That was the problem with you. You were always so polite and smiled so much, that he thought it couldn't possibly be meant seriously. Not all the time.
You stretched your arms upward and rested your head on your right upper arm. Your fingers curled, and uncurled.
His daughter began applying sunscreen to your back in circling motions, and he quickly looked away before you could turn your head and catch him in the act of watching you bask in the sun.
Jack forced himself to look out over the lake. The water glistened in the morning sun. As expected this early, it was fairly calm, the water barely swishing around in soft waves. He normally loved days like this, when he didn’t have to work and be a doctor, but could simply be himself. Nobody wanted anything from him. Relaxation in its purest form.
Today, however, his day off felt anything but relaxing. For a moment though, it felt like he finally catched a moment of rare peace until a shadow settled beside him. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who it was. Your tangerine smelling perfume wafted up to his nose, wrapping itself around him like a cocoon. Slowly, he turned his head.
You had pulled your knees up and wrapped your arms around them. Your hair, still dry, was held in place by a claw clip, though a few strands had broken free and hung loosely in your face.
You looked at him.
Not with the disdain or judgment with which most people usually looked at him. Simply with interest. And that made it worse.
"Allison talks about you a lot, you know?"
“Hopefully nothing bad.”
"Actually, only good things."
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Then she's lying."
You let out a thoughtful hum.
"You never forget your friends’ birthdays or any special occasion. You donate to charities. You always make Alli feel like she can come home, no matter how bad your day has been or how bad she fucked up.”
Of all the things he’d heard, he hadn’t expected this to leave him speechless.
"I think you can be proud of that."
For a moment, he didn’t know how to respond. He rarely received compliments, neither for his work nor for himself as a person.
A small thank you was the only thing that escaped his mouth in a quiet whisper.
You gave him a small smile.
There it was again, that strange feeling in his chest, something tightening that he wished wouldn’t.
A warm, dangerous tug. For a moment, he forgot how old he was. How old you were.
Then suddenly, his daughter called out your names from a distance, tearing the two of you from your little bubble.
"If you two keep sitting there, I'll gladly eat the watermelon without you."
You rolled your eyes. Jack really laughed this time and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh. He may be doing yoga every morning at sunrise, but he was still a 50 year-old man with bones just as old. He reached his hand out toward you almost automatically, without noticing how quickly and instinctively he was doing it.
Before he could think about it too much, you took his hand before he could take it back and pulled yourself up.
For a moment, he forgot why he’d been trying to keep his distance from you all this time ever since his daughter brought you home in her first uni year.
After eating, Allison insisted on taking a few more photos with the sun in the background before they would pack their things and set off again. She placed her phone on the car’s windshield, set the timer to ten seconds, and quickly jogged over to you and Jack. Jack stood between you two, and as the timer ticked down, Allison quickly wrapped her arm around his waist and smiled.
Moments like these kept him going every day, allowing him to take a few more steps away from the edge. But then he felt your arm wrap around his waist from the other side. His body tensed for barely a second before relaxing again, but the moment was over as quickly as it came.
Allison clapped her hands and grinned at her phone with satisfaction as she tucked the picnic blanket under her arm, and got into the car.
"I’m definitely adding these on my Insta post later."
Later, as Jack laid in bed, he could still hear you both giggling in her bedroom across the hall. He unplugged his phone from the charger and opened the App Store.
At 50 years old, he downloaded an app he’d only ever heard of through his med students and daughter. And Dana.
All because of a single photo.
Surprisingly, he found that setting up an Instagram account wasn’t that difficult.
It was even easier to find his daughter’s account. He frowned. Her username was her real name, first and last name visible for anyone. Any weirdo could find her that way. He’d have to talk to her about that later.
His fingers clicked on the small square where he could make out a face all too familiar to him.
Posted two hours ago.
He zoomed in a little. It wasn't the way his hair stood up or his hand hung awkwardly in the air. He zoomed in on your smile. He really shouldn’t have looked at the picture for so long. There was no reason to. He should have clicked away from it ages ago. But then he accidentally clicked on the now big picture.
Was this your account his daughter had mentioned? He believed he heard her say the word ‘tag’ before in connection to the app. But the only connection his brain made, was to the game paint tag he quite frequently played with his friends in his teens. His finger hesitated before finally clicking on the little box that led to your account.
He only did this because he was a father interested in his daughter’s friends. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit about you, could it? He scrolled through your profile without realizing it. He looked at one picture after another. When he glanced at the clock, already 30 minutes had passed since he’d downloaded the app.
With a heavy sigh, he swiped your profile away. It was getting late, and he really shouldn’t be doing this.
Wait, what was that?
No. Oh God, no.
While swiping, he had accidentally double tapped the screen by mistake and…liked a photo of you from two years ago? It was a photo of you in a national park in front of a tree taller than the PTMC.
He quickly took back his like, hoping you hadn’t received a notification.
He quickly switched off his phone and put it back on his bedside table to charge. The house was dead quiet; you were probably fast asleep by now, as the giggling had long since stopped. You were probably one of those people who deleted their notifications without reading them after waking up anyway.
Ping.
A shrill sound broke the silence, and Jack’s head snapped toward the small bright square on his bedside table.
He squinted to avoid being blinded by the brightness of his screen and unlocked his phone.
No.
Just a few Facebook notifications and emails. But there, at the top of them all, a message stood out. He pinched his wrist briefly.
Not a dream.
yn_lastname sent you a message
Jack opened the app with a vigor that surprised even him.
Why did you message him?
Oh.
Oh...
‘Next time you want to know something about my past, feel free to ask me over a hot chocolate.’
Jack Abbot was screwed.
Ultimately, utterly screwed.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this fun little fic! It’s my first time writing for The Pitt and Jack, and I hope you enjoyed it.
jack abbot fanfic idea…. immigrant new grad nurse!reader who has her first shift in the ER, and out of all shifts she could start with, it’s the night shift with Dr.Jack Abbot who seems to have taken a liking to her…
guys do you want to read it?? should i write it??? if so, lemme know if you want to be tagged!
jack abbot fanfic idea…. immigrant new grad nurse!reader who has her first shift in the ER, and out of all shifts she could start with, it’s the night shift with Dr.Jack Abbot who seems to have taken a liking to her…
guys do you want to read it?? should i write it??? if so, lemme know if you want to be tagged!
jack abbot fanfic idea…. immigrant new grad nurse!reader who has her first shift in the ER, and out of all shifts she could start with, it’s the night shift with Dr.Jack Abbot who seems to have taken a liking to her…
guys do you want to read it?? should i write it??? if so, lemme know if you want to be tagged!
jack abbot fanfic idea…. immigrant new grad nurse!reader who has her first shift in the ER, and out of all shifts she could start with, it’s the night shift with Dr.Jack Abbot who seems to have taken a liking to her…
guys do you want to read it?? should i write it??? if so, lemme know if you want to be tagged!
♡ synopsis: when a patient attacks you & embeds a scalpel in your abdomen, you go to jack for help. overwhelmed & irritable, he snaps at you to go find someone else for whatever it is which you're running to him for. once robby has tended to your injury, he informs jack of how he royally screwed up & your husband comes home after his shift to make amends.
♡ a/n: requested by @styx03, ty! i hope i did ok ;_;
Blood drips in fresh, crimson splatters onto polished white tiles from the wound your hand hovers near.
Protruding from your right lower quadrant is a scalpel which a patient has just impaled you with. You don't even respond—there is no screaming, wailing in panic, or hyperventilating to bear witness to which interrupts the beeping, shifting monotony of the ED—before you turn and head out the door of his exam room without another word.
With your shirt awkwardly clutched in your hand, you walk with measured steps to an empty room—cringing all the while from the rhythmic movement.
Once you've closed yourself behind a locked door, you pull the silver instrument from your now inflamed abdomen with a quiet cry of distress, and drop it into the stainless steel sink you stand at. Clattering against the metal basin, you pluck half a dozen tissues from a plastic box mounted to the wall and press them firmly to your weeping laceration.
Not but perhaps two hours ago did you stand at a patient's bedside and hold his hand as a heart attack claimed his life and ripped him from his family's embrace. His wife threw herself over his corpse after—screaming all the while for him to wake up, wake up, wake up; she can't do it without him, how will they survive?
Her children, meanwhile, trembled in a corner while holding fast to one another—their tiny faces flushed and red from tears, unable to understand why daddy wouldn't open his eyes like mommy wanted.
You excused yourself to the restroom to vomit thereafter.
Fighting down a familiar feeling of nausea, you flex stiff limbs while continually pressing numb fingertips against your palm—continually counting them as a grounding technique.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
You believe that you may be going into shock.
You'd like a heated blanket to keep you warm, or your husband's arms to make you safe. Most of all, you wish to leave this place.
You go in search of Jack.
"Hey, Jack?" you ask quietly from the entryway of Trauma 3, watching as he smoothly inserts an IV in the arm of an unconscious patient.
You slide your shaking hand behind you so no one can see.
At least you're still upright, you think. Small blessings.
Even behind the blue and white mask he dons, you can hear him huff in irritation. "Honey, I'm a bit busy right now. If it's a consult, or you're needing help, you need to go find somebody else."
You take a small step forward, ignoring the way your fresh wound smarts when you do so. "I was just—"
He swiftly tugs down his mask and grips the handrail of the patient's bed he stands guard beside. "Go find Robby or Langdon. Anybody else. Can you do that?" he barks. "I don't always have to be the one you come to. They're just as capable."
Your eyes flit to Parker, who turns to Jack with an open mouth—you know she intends to defend you; chew him out for the way he's just spoken to you—until you take a step back in acquiescence to prevent an argument.
Sniffling quietly, you nod, now feeling like a burden. Does he often feel like that? Like you're breaking his concentration, or are too attached? Perhaps it's unprofessional behavior on your part. Work and home are two different things which you've ignorantly merged into one.
"Yeah, I'll go find Robby. I'm sorry for interrupting."
The door swings shut behind you.
You stare at Robby a handful of feet from where he stands, and watch as he heads into an empty exam room before following close behind.
"Are you busy?" you inquire softly while fingering the edge of the striped polyester curtain you waver beside.
He glances to you with kind brown eyes before tearing wrinkled paper from the exam table he stands at. Robby shakes his head while balling it up and tossing it into the trash. "Never too busy for you. What's up?"
You pull back the curtain to give yourself a bit of privacy.
You nervously tug at the hem of your shirt while your other hand continues holding your throbbing side, which Robby's eyes flit to before meeting your own once again.
"I need you to promise me," you say while shuffling forward. "That you're not going to make a federal case out of this. I...I think he's going to end up under psyche's care. I left him—" You shake your head. "I shouldn't have."
You half turn around then. What if he leaves his room and harms someone else? Why did you just walk out and not call security like protocol demands?
Stupid, stupid, stupid. No wonder Jack was so short with you.
You go to head back the way you came until Robby starts toward you and grabs your forearm. "Sweetheart," he says while resting his opposite hand on the crown of your shoulder. "You're my concern now. Tell me what's going on." He nods toward your stomach. "It have anything to do with the way you're holding yourself?"
You shift on your feet uncertainly and wince quietly from the movement. "Promise me. He's unwell. I don't want him arrested, or—"
Robby finally throws up his hands. "Fine, fine, if it'll get you to tell me what's wrong, I will give this man the royal treatment. Now, tell me."
You chew the inside of your lip, then gingerly lift the bottom of your shirt before carefully peeling away the wad of tissues that've dried to your unwanted incision.
"Jesus Christ," Robby curses while stepping forward and gripping your hip to begin examining the damage inflicted. "When did this happen?"
"A few minutes ago," you sputter in explanation. "I didn't tell anyone. I just turned and walked away. I don't know why. I went to Jack, but he...he was busy—"
"Too busy for this?" he asks incredulously. "A patient sliced your fucking stomach open."
You hang your head. "It's not that extreme, Robby."
Maybe if you deny that you were assaulted, things won't turn out to be as bad as you're afraid they are when he finally takes a look.
Robby gently prods at it and your hand flies—sinking your nails into his shoulder. "Ow!"
He raises a brow. "Isn't it?" Robby shakes his head. "Jack should've dropped everything to tend to you."
He waves you toward the exam table, and you climb awkwardly atop it while favoring your side. "I didn't exactly tell him," you murmur while lying back.
Pulling on a pair of gloves, Robby purses his lips in disapproval.
"He told me to come find you. Or just...someone. He was busy—overwhelmed—so he didn't mean to snap at me."
Robby shakes his head. "No excuse. When you come to me, I drop everything without complaint."
You grin, ignoring the way your body is trembling because it's so painfully cold. "It's because you just adore me, right?" you say playfully between chattering teeth while tucking your shaking hands beneath your thighs.
Seeing how you're shivering, Robby frowns, then shrugs off his hoody before draping it over you. "You know I do," he rumbles before grabbing a pack of wipes. "Was the instrument—"
"Sterile," you supply. "I just need stitches." Your eyes flit to the machine next to him, and your stomach sinks to your knees. "Robby..."
"What is it, sweetheart?"
Your chin wobbles. "Ultrasound." Your hand flutters toward your stomach. "My...my ovary."
He stills for a moment and studies you—the way your tearful eyes plead with him to tell you anything but that which you're now terrified of hearing.
He wheels the machine around and switches it on.
You stare up at him through glassy eyes. "Is...is it—"
He shakes his head. "It didn't go deep enough to hit anything. Barely went any deeper than the subcutaneous level."
You squeeze your eyes shut and begin to sob.
Pushing the cart away, Robby slides a palm over your forehead while shooshing you. "It's alright. I'm going to clean the area, give you a few stitches, and then," he says while folding your shirt until it's positioned just beneath your breasts, "I'm taking you home."
You shake your head. "No. Robby, I can—"
He drags an antiseptic wipe over the affected area. "This isn't some option I'm laying before you. I'm an attending, you're my resident—"
"I'm Jack's resident," you state.
Robby looks at you. "I'm making you my resident right now. And as your attending, I'm telling you that you're going home. I'm not asking," he states with finality.
Throwing your head back against the hard vinyl beneath you, you huff in irritation. "Fine."
Robby alerts security to the altercation which occurred where you clearly neglected to, followed by a page to psyche for a consult. After you've completed a workplace incident form and he's compiled a bag of supplies for you to take home so you can tend to your wound in private—as well as some pain meds—he presses the keys to his truck into your palm and tells you to go wait for him.
You think to ask as to why he can't come with you, but refrain.
You'd really like to sit down, and the sooner you make it to his vehicle, the sooner that can happen.
Jack's just exiting the room he found himself unwittingly stationed in for the last hour to the sight of Robby coming straight toward him with a displeased look on his face. He's left to assume that you went to him in the end like he commanded you to, then, and now he's about to be ripped a new one for daring to withhold attention for a damn minute.
"Take it she came to you?" Jack asks while ripping off a surgical gown.
Robby crosses his arms. "She's out in my truck. I'm taking her home."
"I'm sorry, what?" he asks with a raised brow while swinging around toward him.
"I'm guessing you don't have any idea why she came to you earlier?"
Jack plants his hands on his hips. "I assumed because she had a question, or needed help with a patient."
"She was the patient," Robby spits.
Jack falters momentarily.
"He's been taken up to psyche, but she was trying to treat a man having an episode of psychosis. He shoved a scalpel in her belly for it."
Jack curses then runs the heel of his palm along his eye and past his temple. "She didn't say—"
"Maybe if you'd bothered listening for a moment—allowed her to get out what she was trying to fucking tell you—then you might've known."
Jack hardly wastes a moment before shoving past Robby and hobbling toward the doors of the ED. His leg is giving him fucking fits tonight, and instead of dealing with it like a man, he chose to take it out on you instead. You, who was already terrified after someone committed battery against you.
You had looked a bit wan, but he merely shook it off as hazards of the job. Hardly anybody around here is in tip-top shape at all times.
Robby jogs to catch up with him, then presses a hand to his shoulder to halt him in his tracks. A gesture which he bats away. "I'm going to see my wife."
"Jack—"
"Dr. Abbot," calls Henderson from two doors down. "He's crashing, we need you!"
Jack grits his teeth and growls in frustration before turning back around yet again. "Just get her home. I'll be there as soon as I can once my shift is over," he calls reluctantly over his shoulder.
"You sure you don't want me to come in with you? Stay for awhile?" Robby asks while settling his forearm atop the center console and turning in his seat to face you.
You shake your head and force a smile. "No, thank you. I'll be okay. I'm just going to go in, try and bathe," you say with a breathy laugh. "Maybe order something, or just warm up leftovers. Afterward, I'll probably lay down for awhile and watch TV."
Robby seems to debate something for a moment, but ultimately relents. "Alright. Just call me if you need anything," he says while giving your hand a reassuring squeeze.
You nod. "I will. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, sweetheart."
When Jack enters your shared domicile, it's to strict quietude. He presumes that you long ago fell off to sleep in wait of him, so he heads in the direction of the bedroom to get his damn leg off and switch to the relief crutches provide.
And then he finds the bed devoid of your previously expected presence.
Tugging off the apparatus, he practically tosses it onto the floor at his side of the bed, slides himself onto his preferred means of physical support—when he's home, anyway—and goes in search of you. An exploration which doesn't take long when he sees light peeking out of the crack found at the base of the bathroom door.
He knocks quietly. "Honey, can I come in?"
He hears something roll across the floor, followed by a quiet "damn it."
"Sweetheart, I'm sorry for what happened at work. I just had a lot going on. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. Just open the door for me, angel. Please."
There's the sound of something crinkling.
With a huff, he goes to turn the handle, only to find it locked.
He's really in the doghouse this time, isn't he?
"Either you can let me in, or I'm going to find a key," Jack states.
"I'm busy," you snip.
He sighs, rolls his eyes, then turns and heads for the multiple keychains that hang near the front door.
The doorknob jingles, then turns with a quiet squeak. "Now, do you wanna tell me why—" He promptly shuts his mouth.
It's worse than he thought. Robby did a clean job of repairing what that man damaged, but he's horrified by the sight of you sitting atop a towel in the middle of the bathroom floor in no more than your underwear while you try and clean your dozen stitches.
Leaning his crutches against the sink, Jack hops forward, presses a palm against the wall, then slides downward to join you on the floor.
"C'mere," he murmurs. "Let me take care of it."
"No, I can do it," you mumble while half turning away.
Jack plants his legs on either side of you and shoves your hands from the injury before you manage to reopen it.
Picking up the bottle of rubbing alcohol, he eyes it with a raised brow before glancing to you. "You know better."
You shrink into yourself out of embarrassment. "I was only gonna use a little..."
With a shake of his head, he reaches across the way, grabs the top, and screws it back on.
Swiping an ace bandage from beside you, he peels it open and tosses the wrapper in the trash before making to apply the dressing. "I'm sorry," he begins while smoothing the edges with his thumbs. "I didn't know. Not until Robby told me. For what it's worth, I was a worried wreck for the remainder of my shift. I couldn't get back here fast enough. I went flying by a state trooper on the interstate, but got lucky when he didn't come after me."
In every spare moment Jack had tonight, he found himself subconsciously fiddling with his wedding ring—not wanting to acknowledge the ugly truth of what kind of hell losing you would bring upon him.
He feels doubtful he could survive it; unsure that he would want to.
But you don't need to ever hear something so ugly.
Once you've been properly tended to, Jack grips your hips and pulls you toward him. "My leg has been aching all fucking night, I ended up having to do a cric on the patient you saw me with—" he shakes his head. "Doesn't matter."
Cupping the back of your head, he tries pulling your lips toward his. "I'm sorry, baby."
You slide a hand up his chest. "I forgive you," you whisper.
An apology which is soon followed up with a mischievous smirk. "Robby's really good with his hands, by the way. You ever had 'em on you?"
Jack glares at you. "You do not want to test my patience right now."
"I'm the one who got stabbed," you retort. Leaning in close, you giggle. "Even let him come inside and tuck me in..."
Jack deadpans. "I need to check the security cameras?"
You shrug. "Only proof of what we did in bed is stored on my phone in a locked folder. It's filthy."
He fights against a smirk. "You're such a pain in my leg."
You raise a brow. "And you're a pain in my belly."
He snorts while bringing you flush against his chest. "If something like that ever happens again, you scream at the top of your fucking lungs. Alright? Made me sick thinking about you trapped in there alone... He could've done far, far worse."
You nod while nuzzling against his neck. "I just froze. My body locked up, and my voice with it. All I wanted was you I was so scared."
He could put his head through a fucking wall hearing that. Jack wraps his arms securely around you. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. What happened tonight will never happen again. You come first. Always."
Sliding a hand up your back, he presses a kiss to your temple. "It's my job to protect you. And tonight I failed to—"
You shake your head. "Jack, I didn't even tell you." Leaning back, you caress his cheek. "It happens. As terrible as it is, it does in our line of work. It's just a cut that, at most, may leave a small scar. Better it be me with a sterile instrument than someone he attacks on the street with a dirty knife. He wasn't himself. I'm okay."
He presses a long kiss to your forehead. "You're way more empathetic than I would've been. Good thing you didn't tell me. Because if you had..." He doesn't want to think on how he may've very well put the assailant in the morgue.
"I'm just glad he's safe and getting the help he needs. Everything is alright now," you insist.
He brushes a kiss over your lips.
"C'mon," you say while pushing back. "Come lay in bed for awhile and I'll massage your leg." You grin. "Robby gave me the good painkillers, y'know?"
He rolls his eyes. "He does tend to baby you," he says with a grunt while pushing himself upward.
You paw at his middle once he's standing. "Guess that makes two of you."
You pad out of the bathroom and he pinches your rear on the way out, causing you to yelp in surprise.
"Let's go see if we can't overwrite your and Robby's video," he croons while sliding onto his crutches.
"'Overwrite'? Think you're cruising in the wrong century, old man."
He switches off the bathroom light and nearly barks a laugh at the reply that comes to him. "Yeah, well, I'm about to fuck you into the next one, little girl. So you better hope those stitches were sewn tight enough."
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