❤︎ Hihihi I'm naush!! and this blog is primarily dedicated to my fanfictions and hyperfixations
❤︎ She/her | gemini | infj | writer | English, Hindi and Urdu speaker
✩°｡⋆⸜ 🎧✮ now playing- drop dead by olivia rodrigo
♡︎༻🌸༺♡︎ taken that Eurostar to France
❤︎ masterlist | taglist | flufftober '25
❤︎ posting schedule I'm (loosely) following ₊˚⊹♡.
wednesday-> The Raven (nikolai lantsov x grisha! oc)
saturday-> ~Blackbird on my shoulder ~ (Jack Abbot x senior attending! reader)
♡︎༻🌸༺♡︎ You know all the words to "Just Like Heaven"
❤︎ Characters I write for
MCU- Bob Reynolds, Bucky Barnes, Joaquin Torres, Yelena Belova, Kate Bishop, Natasha Romanoff
Grishaverse- Nikolai Lantsov, Zoya Nazyalensky, Genya Safin, David Kostyk, Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Jesper Fahey, Nina Zenik, Wylan Van Eck, Matthias Helvar
Stranger Things- Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, Nancy Wheeler, Max Mayfield, Eddie Munson
Top Gun Maverick- Bob Floyd, Natasha Trace, (platonic) Bradley Bradshaw, (platonic) Jake Seresin
Misc- Lewis Pullman, Ben Mears, Rhett Abott
♡︎༻🌸༺♡︎ The most alive I've ever been
❤︎ While requesting
Please be respectful because I'm not obligated to take your request and I'm only doing so because I want to.
Specify the gender and or pronouns of the reader. ->However, I only write the reader as female and gender neutral and I don't use specific names and don't wish to.
I won't write large age gaps, poly relationships, stalking, harrasment, or rape.
I don't write smut explicitly but would write suggestive content.
Provide some details regarding the fic because it's very difficult to write something based off a few sentences only.
I take x reader requests only! But I would add specific details like hair colour, eye colour, etc if you want
And most importantly, please don't send a request which you've sent to one or more writers beforehand as it's very disrespectful to both their hardwork and mine.
❤︎ I don't use any form of gen AI nor do I consent to any of my work being fed to AI or being copied in any way
Summary: For centuries, Jack has ruled with an iron fist, his name casting a shadow of fear in everyone who encounters it. All have heard the fate of those who cross him, and none forget what became of the ones who took you from him. Kingdoms have risen and fallen, languages have been forgotten, and new countries have been created during his unnatural reign. Yet he remains, watching diligently, and perhaps foolishly, for the return of your soul.
word count: 5.9k
tags: vampire!jack, yearning, suffering, jack has waited for you for centuries, reincarnation, blood, hints of cruelty and torture, biting, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, slight sexual tension
a/n: saw that photo of shawn covered in blood, and inspiration struck me. vampire love stories will just always be a favourite of mine (once a twilight girl, always a twilight girl, am i right?) and there's just something about a man staying true and mourning his love for centuries—it really does something for me hahah. i hope you guys like it—feedback is as always appreciated <33
The Pitt | Masterlist
Main | Masterlist
Jack does not remember a life untouched by pain.
He's familiar with it in ways most could never imagine—has measured countless lifetimes by its presence. He has endured the physical excruciation as venom coursed through his veins like liquid fire, surviving the brutal, unforgiving transformation from human to vampire. His bones breaking, muscles solidifying, heart-stopping. His leg hanging on by a thread and reattaching itself. The world going black only to roar back to life.
But none of that compares. None of it ever has.
The worst pain he has ever faced came on the day he lost you.
Centuries of unnatural existence have yet to dull the ache. The heaviness still sits in his chest, sharp and hollow all at once, flaring every time he draws a breath he does not need. A constant reminder that he is still here, undeservingly—and you are not.
That fateful day had taken you from him—his mate—the only soul the universe had ever seen fit to bind to his. The one he'd waited for centuries to find, only to lose within a handful of years of meeting.
And it'd had been his fault. His enemies had taken you because of him—because loving Jack meant standing in the shadow of violence and vengeance. Time had not only made Jack powerful—it had made him inevitable. Kingdoms had risen beneath him. Covens' sworn fealty. Bloodlines bent at his word. He was not simply a survivor of time, but one of its architects, and that meant there was always someone vying for his power.
You’d passed mere days before he’d finally agreed to turn you, just days before eternity would have been yours. He had thought he was protecting you from immortality. In truth, he had been protecting himself from the terror of losing you inside it.
The guilt nearly destroyed him. He had tried to follow you more times than he would ever admit—after first ensuring your assailants had been taken alive, so they could understand, over days and nights without end, exactly what they had stolen from him. When it was finished, no one asked what had happened to them. They only knew the aftermath: the silence that followed, and the certainty that no one had ever tried to take what was his again.
What his court remembered were the blood rages. The scorched streets. The nights when Jack’s wrath had left cities afraid of the dark. That was the version of his grief they were allowed to see—the destruction turned outward, weaponised until few were left to speak of it.
They did not know about the rest.
They did not see him walk into the sun, tearing off his ring and letting the light burn him to ash and bone. They did not see him starve himself until his body shook with starvation, until even rage could not keep him standing.
Only Robby knew.
Each time, Robby dragged him back from the edge—the only one in existence who could lay hands on him without permission and live to speak of it. He forced the ring back onto Jack’s finger, watched as his broken body healed in increments. Shoved blood down his throat while Jack fought him.
Robby watched over him as if he were a liability instead of a ruler—trying to see past the grief that had hollowed him out until only despair and regret remained. He had bled beside Jack in wars older than most languages. Had stood at his side when the world itself tried to unmake him. If anyone had earned the right to save Jack from himself, it was him.
What finally saved Jack—if it could be called salvation—was hope. McKay and Mohan, relentless as always, had spent years chasing fragments of old myths, half-forgotten legends buried in forbidden texts. Stories of souls reborn. Of mates tethered across lifetimes. Of true love finding its way back, no matter how many times the world ended.
Reincarnation.
Jack clung to the idea like a lifeline. And so he waited. He placed scouts across the globe, watchers trained to look for patterns—people who looked the same, spoke in the same cadence, moved as you did. He waited through wars and plagues, through the rise and fall of empires, through centuries that came and went without a single real whisper of you.
For there had been others. Women who resembled you from a distance. Voices that caught his breath. Laughs that made his chest seize. Each time, hope had flared bright and reckless—only to gutter out under scrutiny. Sometimes the resemblance was superficial. Sometimes it was cruelly close. And each time, the disappointment carved something out of him that never quite grew back.
Once, only once, in the early days, had he allowed himself to believe without confirmation. Had crossed oceans on the strength of a drawing and a name written by a trembling scout. When it fell apart, the fallout had been catastrophic. Three nights of unchecked violence. Another city left trembling.
Jack had ordered the scout's hands removed after. Slowly. Not because it would bring you back.
But because it felt like something. And he was desperate to feel anything but the everlasting despair.
Still, he did not give up. He couldn’t.
He buried himself in work, ruled with cold efficiency, letting strategy and bloodshed keep his mind occupied. But no matter how busy he kept himself, you lived in the back of his thoughts—in the quiet moments, in the space of his still heartbeat.
Every war he ended. Every treaty he signed. Every city he spared.
He didn't do it for peace. But so that when you returned, there would be something left worth ruling
“Sire.” Robby’s voice is calm and measured, but sharp, honed over centuries of knowing just how fragile Jack’s restraint can be. In one hand, he holds a report; in the other, a photograph. His every movement is deliberate. Messengers have been killed for bringing false hope, Jack has burned cities for less, which is why Robby carries the photograph himself. No one else would risk it.
“Do not get your hopes up,” Robby says quietly, almost a whisper, even as he enters the office. His eyes are locked on Jack, and across the room, he raises both hands slightly—a silent warning. “Not yet. I cannot promise this is what you want it to be.”
Jack’s eyes flick to him, but the caution barely registers. He does not speak. He cannot help but hope. It's been decades of silence, ever since the last false sign, so the tiniest spark ignites anyway.
Robby does not approach him. Even he has been fooled before—women who smelled like you, moved like you, and yet weren't—but this time is different. He has gone himself, seen you, smelled you. Verified. There is no mistake. Except for the fact that sorrow and grief might have fogged his memory, too. Might have made him susceptible to making mistakes out of hope. Jack might have lost his mate, but Robby had lost a sister.
“We believe we found her,” Robby continues, more firmly now. “But do not let yourself—”
Jack is already on his feet before the words are fully out. He moves faster than the blink of an eye, gripping the photograph in one hand, the report in the other. The world tilts and bends around him.
It is a photograph of a woman, seated in a café, head bent over a book, hair falling forward as she writes in the margins. Ordinary. Unremarkable.
Except she isn’t.
Jack knows it's you immediately. Not because he allows himself to believe—but because some truths refuse permission. It’s you. Not similar. Not reminiscent. You. The tilt of your head. The quiet concentration. His hands tremble as he clutches the evidence.
“Where?” The word slips free before he can stop it, barely more than a breath, pitched too low for any human to hear. It is not a command. It is a need.
Robby’s jaw tightens. He anticipated this. “Not far,” he says cautiously. “Whitaker’s with her—”
But Jack is already gone. The office seems to collapse in his absence, papers fluttering in the wake of his departure. Cities blur past him, streets folding into one another, lights streaking as he follows Whitaker's scent like a beacon. He does not pause. He does not question. He has been wrong before. He has been burned before. And yet… he cannot stop. Something tells him to let it burn for once.
"Where is she?" he demands, halting abruptly in the narrow alley where Whitaker waits.
Whitaker flinches at his abrupt arrival, despite being aware that once he sent word of his discovery, Jack's presence would be imminent. He bows his head, a gesture of deep respect, and tilts it toward the left, toward the small coffee shop. "She's right over there, Sire."
Jack follows his gaze. You're seated in the corner, cradling a book in between sips from a steaming mug. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. His chest tightens, a sudden, painful contraction that leaves his lungs wanting air he hasn't needed for hundreds of years. He remembers you reading that, and now, here you are, centuries later, alive, real, breathing in a world that had once taken you from him, still reading that book.
He dismisses Whitaker with a sharp nod, retreating into the shadows to continue watching you. He must see, must feel, must confirm that hope is not a cruel illusion.
He watches—the subtle crinkle by your eye when you smile, the delicate curl of your lip when amused, the faint furrow of your brow when reading a line that does not please you. Every motion, every quiet nuance, is as familiar as the ache that has lingered within him for centuries.
And then, finally, he inhales. Slowly. Carefully. Not daring to breathe too soon, in case hope is a lie once more.
But the scent is unmistakable—the impossibly sweet scent that has haunted him across lifetimes, across every day he has survived without you. No other soul carries it. No other soul has ever belonged to him like this. And somehow, it is even sweeter than he remembers.
It's truly you.
Grief and joy battle in his chest, centuries of longing and loss pressing down, yet hope, fragile and trembling, blooms truly for the first time in an age.
After all this time, after all the waiting, after all the pain and the emptiness, you have returned to him, not as a memory, not as a shadow, not as a cruel trick of fate—but as you. And for the first time in centuries, Jack allows himself to believe that he will never be without you again.
Jack has dreamt of this reunion for so long that when it finally arrives, he doesn’t know how to navigate it.
In his dreams, you always remember him. You smile the moment your eyes meet his, your lips part to speak his name as if it had always belonged to you. Because it does. Because it has, across centuries, across lifetimes, across all the nights he has spent waiting.
Reality, as he knows it, is far crueller. Because what if you don’t remember him at all? The thought gnaws at him. And so he treads carefully, agonisingly so, every step measured, every gesture deliberate.
He intercepts you at the coffee shop that afternoon, misjudging his step just enough to send your book clattering to the floor. He kneels to help you pick it up, hands brushing yours just long enough to feel the faintest echo of what once was.
Looking up, he searches your face, desperate for a spark of recognition. But there is none. Not a flicker. Not a pause. You smile politely, thank him, and your gaze drifts over him as if he were just another stranger, curious but unanchored.
It is a wound deeper than he anticipated.
For one reckless second, he considers it. The command forms in his throat—Remember me. He has bent kings, broken generals, and shattered lesser minds with less effort. But this—this would not be love. He swallows the impulse down like poison.
He tells himself you are still in there. That souls remember even when minds do not. That patience has always been both his curse and his strength. That a few more weeks, a few more months, are nothing compared to the centuries he has endured.
He straightens, barely breathing, forcing himself to step back, to let you go. Then, just as you reach the door, just as the gap between you seems insurmountable, you stop. You turn back, hesitating, and you reach down into your purse, scribble something on a note that you slip into his hand before leaving with a shy smile.
It is almost cruel. Because you still do not remember. You do not know him yet. And still, you reach toward him anyway.
His chest tightens, but he'll take whatever he can get.
So, he calls your number, asks you out.
You say yes, and it feels like both a gift and a punishment. You laugh with him, touch his arm when you talk, tuck your hair behind your ear the way you used to when you were thinking, look at him with warmth that feels unearned. Gradually, he resigns himself to the fact that even if you never remember, this is still better than the empty years without you.
He'll take whatever the universe grants him as long as you're with him.
Jack knows you don't remember him. He never asks. Never pushes. But even then—even then—there are moments. Small ones. Fleeting ones. Dangerous ones he never quite allows himself to linger on, because to linger would be to hope for too much.
Sometimes, when he’s speaking, you pause before answering. Your gaze drifts—not boldly, not knowingly—to his mouth. To the scar at his throat, he knows your eyes can't see. To the ring he never removes. As though something in you is searching for a shape it once knew. As though a name is pressing against the inside of your mind, just out of reach.
Other times, when he laughs, your smile falters. Your expression softens into something almost mournful, almost tender, as if you are grieving something you cannot name. As if the sound reaches somewhere too deep, stirring a loss you were never meant to remember.
Once you tell him, half-laughing, half-serious, “You feel… familiar.” Then you wave it away, embarrassed. “Sorry. That was weird.”
Jack says nothing. He cannot trust his voice in moments like that.
The most damning moment comes on a quiet night. There’s no tension in the air, no careful distance between you. You’re talking about nothing at all—something mundane and forgettable—and Jack is tired.
Tired enough that the walls he’s built around himself thin for just a second. Just long enough for habit to win over caution.
He says your name. The one he hasn’t spoken aloud since that night. Since his world ended.
The sound leaves his mouth before he can stop it. He freezes instantly, breath caught in a chest that doesn’t need air, dread crashing through him as he realises what he’s done. He’s already reaching for an apology, for some careful lie to smooth it over, already bracing himself for the polite confusion he expects to see on your face.
But it never comes. You don’t hesitate. You don’t blink or frown or ask who he means. You answer immediately, turning toward him with an ease that feels terrifying in its certainty. Your attention locks onto him as if there was never any question that the name belonged to you.
“Yes?”
For one suspended breath—before your expression shifts, before your mind has time to catch up—for one suspended breath, he sees you.
A soul answering a call it has heard before.
When you invite him over for dinner, his chest tightens with something dangerously close to hope.
Maybe this means you’re remembering.
You make him sit at the counter while you cook, scolding him lightly when he tries to help. He obeys, folding himself onto the chair, watching you move around the kitchen. Listening to the rhythm of your hands as you chop vegetables.
It isn’t that he can’t eat. He can. He just doesn’t need to. Not the way you do. But if you asked him to, he would swallow every bite and pretend it sustains him.
He hasn’t been feeding the way he should. He tells himself it’s watchfulness—less hunting, fewer risks, fewer hours spent away from you (even if he knows Robby would be watching you in his stead). He can’t stand being gone long enough for you to disappear again. Hunger is easier than that kind of loss. Hunger he can endure.
You’re laughing at something he said when the knife slips. He hears it before he sees it: the faint drag of metal against skin. Your sharp intake of breath. A bead of crimson wells against your finger, impossibly bright. It gathers, trembles, then spills.
Then the scent hits him.
Jack doesn’t mean to react. Truly, he doesn’t. But he is starving.
His fangs descend before he can stop them. His vision darkens at the edges, the world collapsing inward until there is nothing but the pulse in your throat, the copper-sweet perfume of you. God, it’s devastating, how familiar you smell. How right.
You’re still smiling, shaking your head at your own clumsiness, until you look at him, and the sound dies in your throat.
“Jack?” you whisper, breathless, trying to make sense of the impossibility of what you're seeing.
He forces himself to stop breathing. Forces his fangs to recede. Every muscle in his body trembles with restraint.
“I’m sorry,” he says at once, turning his head sharply away as if the motion alone might undo what you saw. Shame crashes over him—swift and suffocating. It feels like being young again, newly turned and feral with it, all instinct and no discipline. Reckless. Unworthy.
He has missed the taste of you. The bond it forged between you. But that doesn’t matter.
He’s frightened you. He’s ruined everything.
“I’ll leave.” The words are out before he can stop them. He pushes back from the chair, his body moving on instinct even as something in him splinters. His heart does not beat, hasn’t in lifetimes, yet grief pounds through him all the same—an echo of something he thought he’d already bled dry.
He doesn’t get far.
You’re suddenly there, stepping into his path. He stops short—not because you move quickly, but because you move toward him.
You’re close. Too close. Close enough that he can feel the heat of you like sunlight against his skin. Close enough to hear the soft rush of your breathing.
Your eyes search his face. He braces for it. The recoil. The disgust. The instinctive flinch every human makes when they realise the monster is real and standing right in front of them.
He has seen it countless times. He knows the exact moment it happens. He just never thought he'd have to see it coming from you.
But it never comes.
Your gaze doesn’t drop to his mouth in horror. It doesn’t harden. Instead, your brow furrows, not in fear, but in focus. There’s curiosity there. Wonder. Your hand, still faintly stained with red, hovers between you, forgotten.
“Jack,” you breathe, and this time his name sounds different. Not frightened. Not accusing.
Searching.
Slowly, so slowly, he almost thinks he’s imagined it, you lift your injured finger.
Jack’s body goes rigid. “No—” The protest leaves him in a whisper, frayed and desperate, but it dies halfway to your name as you bring your hand closer. Closer until your fingertip rests, feather-light, against his lips.
He doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t dare move. As if the slightest shift might shatter something fragile and irreversible between you.
Your skin is warm against his mouth.
His eyes flutter shut. His lips part on instinct, and when you slide your finger inside, tentative but unafraid, something in him breaks open.
He means to resist. He does.
But your pulse is right there. Your trust is right there. His tongue moves before thought can intervene. He draws the blood away with excruciating restraint, every movement deliberate, terrified of the sharpness of his teeth, of the strength he barely contains. There is nothing feral in the way he touches you now. Nothing hungry in the violent sense of it.
Only devotion.
And then the taste of you reaches him fully. It isn’t just blood. It’s memory.
It’s standing beneath a sky that no longer exists. It’s the night he'd saved you from your father's cruelty. It’s the first time you ever reached for him. It’s the bond that once tethered your mortal heartbeat to his endless night.
It floods him.
Love. Fierce and undiminished. A longing so sharp it feels like a blade sliding between his ribs.
His knees nearly give out. He feels it everywhere—through veins that no longer carry life, through a chest that hasn’t held a pulse in centuries. It fills hollows he had convinced himself were permanent.
His hands hover at your waist but do not touch. He refuses to take more than you offer. When he finally, reluctantly, draws back, your finger leaves his mouth slowly.
He opens his eyes. There’s no red in them now. Only something raw and luminous.
Your eyes flicker down to his mouth, and he notices the subtle hitch in your breathing, the way your throat works as you swallow. How confusion and something more scorching tangle together in your expression.
You stare at your hand.
Your brows knit together as you turn it over, once, then twice. The pad of your finger is smooth. Unbroken. No cut. No blood. Not even the faintest mark to prove it ever happened.
“What…?” you murmur, the word barely more than breath.
Jack says nothing. He can’t. He only watches as you try to reconcile what you’re seeing with what you know should be true.
Finally, you look back at him. “You’re a vampire,” you state softly, neither accusing nor frightened.
“I am,” he nods, his voice low and careful. “Are you scared?”
You pause, truly considering the question. Your head tilts slightly as you search your feelings, as if expecting fear to suddenly bloom in your chest and finding… nothing. No instinct to run. No spike of panic. Just a strange, grounding calm, and a pull toward him you don’t understand.
“No,” you respond slowly. “Should I be?”
“Never,” he replies without hesitation, his certainty unwavering. “Never around me.”
Your gaze drifts over his face again, this time slower, lingering on his eyes, his mouth, the tension in his jaw.
“I feel like I’ve known you for years,” you say quietly.
The impact of your words strikes him like a blade to the chest, tightening his expression despite his efforts to remain composed.
Your hands rise instinctively, gently smoothing the tension from his brow just as you once did without thinking. The touch is so familiar it nearly undoes him.
“Did I say something wrong?” you ask softly, confusion creeping into your voice. “I just—none of this makes sense, but it feels like it should."
“No, my love,” he breathes, his voice trembling despite every effort to steady it, the term of endearment slipping out without him meaning for it to. The words feel too fragile to exist in the air between you. “I—” He falters, centuries of restraint battling with the aching need in his chest. “Can I try something?”
Fear grips him now—not of you, but of himself. Of wanting too much. Of asking for something he no longer has any right to. Of this not working like he hopes it will.
You don’t hesitate, trusting him despite everything you've seen. “Anything.”
He moves slowly, every motion deliberate, allowing you the chance to pull away or change your mind. His fingers catch the edge of your top, easing the fabric down just enough to bare skin, freeing the gentle curve of your breast.
His breath ghosts over you as he leans in, pausing, watching your face with painstaking care. He searches for fear, for uncertainty, for even the smallest sign of regret. There is none.
Instead, your lashes flutter. You lean closer, as if drawn by something you don’t fully understand but trust all the same.
Among his kind, this is a place few ever drink from. A place reserved for mates. For bonds that transcend lifetimes. To bite there is not to feed—it is to join. To open the soul as much as the flesh.
His lips brush your skin in a soft, lingering kiss. He feels your breath hitch, hears the faint sound you make, and it nearly shatters him. It’s the same reaction you used to have—subtle, and unguarded—your body remembering what your mind has yet to reclaim.
“I can stop,” he whispers against you.
"Please, don't," you beg.
When his fangs pierce your skin, it is not violent. It is precise. Your blood rises to meet him, and when it floods his mouth, it is nothing like the frantic edge of feeding he has gotten used to. It is deep. Resonant. It feels like drinking starlight.
The moment he draws from that vein, the bond ignites. It is immediate. He feels you. Not just your pulse—but your thoughts, your emotions, the shape of your soul pressing against his.
Memories crash into him, not as fragments but as lived moments. He sees your childhood in flashes of sunlight and scraped knees. The loneliness you never speak of. The years you searched for something you couldn’t name. He sees himself through your eyes—the stranger with sad eyes, the inexplicable pull toward him, the way your chest tightens when he’s near.
You see him, too. Flashes of stone halls, candlelight, blood, and his voice shouting your name.
He drinks, and with every pull he pours himself back into you—not just love, but devotion. Every vow he kept in your absence. Every lifetime spent refusing to forget you. Every night, he stood at the edge of despair and chose to endure, because somewhere in the world, your soul would rise again.
Your back arches slightly. The sensation is everywhere—heat threading through your veins, light behind your eyes, his name forming on your lips. Your gasp sharpens, breaking into something fuller and deeper. Your fingers curl into his hair, not pushing him away but drawing him closer, instinctively, as if some part of you knows exactly where he belongs.
And for one terrible second, he considers it. Taking more. Releasing his venom. Deep enough to anchor you to him forever. Ending this fragile human life before the world has the chance to steal you again. His jaw tightens. He stops. Not until you remember. Not until you choose it.
“Oh, Jack,” you breathe, his name slipping from your lips like memory rather than a newfound discovery.
At the sound of it, his eyes sting. Because that—that—is how you used to say it.
When he finally pulls away, fear seizes him again—sudden and vicious. It coils around his ribs, tight enough to steal the breath he still doesn’t need. He bows his head, unable to look at you. Unable to risk it.
Then you move. Your fingers brush his cheek softly. The touch sends a shiver through him.
“My love,” you murmur. “You found me.”
For a moment, the world ceases to exist.
Jack’s breath stutters, and slowly—so slowly, as if the movement itself might break something—he lifts his head. His heart feels too large for his chest, pounding despite its stillness with a terror so sharp it borders on pain. His eyes search your face desperately, terrified that hope is making him see things that aren’t there.
“You remember?” he breathes, the words come out broken, barely sound at all. He doesn’t dare say more. Doesn’t dare tell you how many lifetimes he has yearned to ask that question, how many nights he has imagined your answer only to wake up to its absence.
Tears glimmer in your eyes, not out of confusion or fear, but from recognition. A love so ancient it has transcended even death.
You smile. It’s the same smile you wore when you used to cup his face between your hands. The same smile that once promised eternity without needing to say it aloud.
“I remember,” you reply softly.
He stills. "How much?"
Your brow furrows. “Not everything. Not clearly.” You touch your temple like something aches there.
“Say something only you would know,” he whispers, needing the confirmation.
You don’t hesitate, eyes lifting to meet his.
“I hated winter,” you say softly. “Hated going outside. Hated being cold. Hated how Robby always managed to hit me with snow, no matter where I hid.” You laugh under your breath. “You used to pretend not to see it happen. Then you’d drag him into the lake in full armour.”
In that instant, something in Jack finally gives. He lets out a sound that is part laugh, part sob, drawing you close. His face burrows into your shoulder, inhaling deeply.
You are here. You are his.
For a long while after, neither of you moves.
Jack is afraid to.
He has learned, over centuries, that happiness is fragile. That if he breathes too deeply, the universe notices. So he stays exactly where he is, forehead resting against your shoulder, arms wrapped around you as if holding a miracle that might dissolve if he loosens his grip.
You let him.
Your hand remains in his hair, fingers moving slowly, soothingly, tracing patterns you once knew by heart. There is a faint tremor in your touch, as though the weight of memory is still settling into your bones.
“I thought I lost you,” he finally says, voice rough and unsteady. It’s the closest he has ever come to admitting the truth aloud. “I thought I would never see you again.”
You pull back just enough to look at him properly.
Up close, you can see it now—the age in his eyes that has nothing to do with appearance. The exhaustion. The love that has never dimmed, only sharpened with time.
“I didn’t disappear,” you whisper. “I just… went ahead.”
Jack had never lied to you. You'd known even then what he was.
He had told you the truth on a night heavy with rain and candle smoke. He had knelt as though awaiting execution. Instead, you had reached for his face and told him you loved him.
You had loved him because of it, not despite it—because you saw the man beneath the monster. You had known the dangers. Known the enemies that followed him like shadows. And you had stayed.
“I should’ve turned you earlier,” he says quietly. “I wanted you to know exactly what it meant. What you would've given up if you chose me.”
You nod slowly. "I chose you knowing the cost.” A faint smile touches your mouth. “I remember being so furious when you hesitated. I thought you didn’t trust me to decide."
Your gaze softens. “You were afraid I’d wake up one day and regret forever.”
His eyes close briefly. “I still am.”
You press your forehead to his, steady and warm. “I won't. I'll never regret being with you,” you whisper.
“I was not kind without you,” he says quietly. “I was not merciful.” He meets your eyes, gaze unwavering.
He readies himself for horror, but you don't flinch. You just nod. "So would I have been," you say simply, "if they had taken you."
The truth comes out later, in pieces.
It’s well past midnight when Jack finally speaks of it—not because he hasn’t thought about it every single day since, but because saying it aloud still feels like reopening a wound that never healed.
You’re curled beside him on the couch, legs tucked beneath you, your head resting against his shoulder. He can feel your heartbeat there, steady and real.
“I did try,” he says quietly.
You lift your head, brows knitting. “Try… what?”
“To turn you.”
The words land softly, but the weight behind them is immense.
“I didn’t tell anyone this,” he continues, staring ahead as if the past might be waiting for him in the shadows. “Not the others. Not even Robby. I couldn’t stand to hear them say it out loud.”
You sit up a little, instinctively turning toward him.
“You were dying,” he says. “They’d taken so much blood from you that there was almost nothing left. I could feel your heart slowing under my hand.” His jaw tightens. “I bit you anyway. Gave you my venom. I begged it to work.”
His voice breaks, just barely. “But there was nothing for it to change.”
Your breath catches at the grief in his voice, the guilt.
“Venom doesn’t create life,” he says hoarsely. “It reshapes what is already there. But you were already slipping."
You remember it all now. Not the pain—oddly, not that—but the warmth. The way his arms had wrapped around you, shaking, the way his tears had fallen onto your face as he whispered apologies you hadn’t needed. You remember wanting to tell him it was all right. That you weren’t afraid. That you shouldn't have left the castle. That it had been your own fault.
“I felt you,” you murmur. “I remember… heat. And then nothing.”
Jack closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against yours. “I stayed with you until the sun came up. I couldn’t leave you alone.”
Silence stretches between you, heavy but not unbearable. Later still, when the grief has softened into something gentler, you tell him about this life.
How, as a child, you were always drawn to old things.
“I liked the smell,” you admit softly. “Dust. Ink. Leather. New books never felt… right.”
You tell him how you’d find yourself rereading medieval romances, old epics, obscure translations—texts no one your age cared about. How passages felt like echoes rather than discoveries.
“There were times,” you confess, “when I could swear I’d already read something. I’d know what was coming next before my eyes reached the words.” You shake your head. “I thought I was imagining it.”
Jack’s hand tightens around yours.
“And that’s why I became a historian,” you continue. “I told people I liked patterns. Timelines. Understanding how the past shaped the present.” You laugh quietly. “But the truth is… I think I was looking for something. Or someone.”
He looks at you then, really looks at you, and sees the inevitability of it all.
Of course, you would find your way back to history. Your soul had always known the path.
Jack exhales shakily and presses a kiss to your temple. “You were always coming back to me,” he murmurs.
You turn into him, resting your forehead against his chest. “I'd choose you,” you say softly. “In every lifetime. Will you choose me back?”
He stills. He knows what you mean. His arms close around you, protective, but there's no fear in him now.
“You understand what you’re asking?” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
Jack pauses for a long time. He studies your face as if memorising it. As if preparing to lose it again. “Then this time,” he murmurs, his thumb brushing over the steady beat of your pulse, “I won’t hesitate.”
And this time, when the world comes for you, it will find you standing beside him, forever in your heart and death behind your smile.
SUMMARY: When the unimaginable happens and you are attacked in the comfort of your own home, you are wheeled into the Pitt where Jack loses all sense of professionalism when he sees the state that you are in. In the chaos, the secret of your relationship unravels, and Robby makes a tense situation worse on everyone including himself with his reaction.
NOTES: Mentions of an armed break-in (stabbing), mentions of physical violence, descriptions of physical injuries and blood, surgical procedures, canon-typical medical settings, family conflict (Robby is stressed and therefore mean), secret relationship.
REQUESTED BY: @mysticrisingroses
NAVIGATION | PITT MASTERLIST | KO-FI
The heavy, metallic tang of disinfectant and cold morning air had a way of clinging to the back of your throat during the twilight hours of a hospital shift, but Jack Abbot had long since stopped noticing it.
It was ten past six in the morning, that strange, liminal window in the emergency department where the exhausted night crew was desperately trying to hand off their last few chart files while the incoming day shift shuffled in with steaming paper cups of cheap coffee.
Jack stood at the central nursing station, his broad shoulders hunched slightly over a computer terminal as he signed off on his final discharge summaries. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw stubbled, and every muscle in his back ached with the heavy, familiar fatigue that came with twelve relentless hours of trauma calls.
He was looking forward to nothing more than driving home, taking a scalding hot shower, and slipping into bed where he hoped you would still be sleeping peacefully, entirely unaware of the chaos he spent his nights wading through.
Keeping your relationship a secret had been your idea originally, though Jack had agreed without much resistance, knowing precisely how protective and intensely possessive your older brother could be.
Robby was a brilliant physician, but he viewed the emergency room, and everyone within it, through a lens of strict, professional compartmentalisation, and he guarded his family with a fierce, almost suffocating tenacity.
Jack knew that if Robby discovered his close friend and colleague was quietly slipping out of his younger sister’s apartment in the early hours of the morning, the fallout would destabilise the delicate balance of the entire department.
So, you had kept it hidden for four months, snatching quiet moments in empty breakrooms, lingering hand-brushes by the elevator banks, and long, warm nights wrapped up together away from the harsh, flickering fluorescent lights of the hospital.
The sudden, piercing blare of the telemetry alarms and the sharp, urgent rattle of the double doors being thrown open shattered the low hum of the morning shift change. Dana looked up instantly from her desk, her brow furrowing as the paramedics burst through the entrance, pushing a stretcher at a dead sprint.
Jack didn't think much of it at first, traumas rolled through those doors every twenty minutes, until he caught the sheer, pale panic on the lead paramedic’s face, and the distinct, sickening crimson pattern soaked into the white sheets draped over the gurney.
Jack stepped forward purely out of muscle memory, his voice raspy from a long night of shouting over sirens. "What have we got, guys?"
"Twenty-eight-year-old female, victim of a aggravated burglary at her residence forty minutes ago," the paramedic rattled off at breakneck speed, her heavy boots squeaking against the polished linoleum. "Neighbour called it in after hearing a struggle and glass breaking. Stab wound to the left upper quadrant, deep laceration to the right forearm, massive blood loss at the scene."
Jack took two paces toward the stretcher to take the chart, his eyes dropping casually to the patient’s face to assess her airway, and in that split second, the entirety of his world shattered into jagged, unyielding pieces.
The color drained from his face so rapidly that Dana actually reached out a hand, thinking he was about to faint. The woman lying pale and motionless beneath the blood-soaked trauma blanket was you.
The breath left Jack’s lungs in a harsh, strangled gasp, his professional distance evaporating so violently that he stumbled forward, his hands trembling uncontrollably as they hovered over your bloodied, chest-stained clothes. "No... no, no, Jesus Christ—"
"Jack? What the hell are you doing?" Dana barked, her eyes widening as she grabbed his elbow, shocked by the total collapse of his usually unflappable demeanor. "Get back, let us transfer her! Shen, I need a trauma team right now! Call down to blood bank, give me four units of O-negative on the rapid infuser!"
Jack didn't hear her. The sterile, controlled world of the Pitt was completely obliterated, replaced by a terrifying, primal panic that choked the throat right out of him. He grabbed the side rail of your stretcher, his knuckles turning stark white, his eyes wide and wild as he looked down at your face. You were barely conscious, your eyelids fluttering weakly, your lips parted as you sucked in shallow, wet breaths.
"Look at me, hey, look at me," Jack begged, his voice cracking, entirely devoid of his usual calm authority as he reached out and cupped your ice-cold cheek with a hand that was shaking like a leaf. "I'm right here. You're at the hospital, you're with me, you're going to be okay. Please, sweetheart, stay with me, stay open for me."
You turned your head toward his voice, your eyes unfocusing as you tried to track him through the thick, terrifying haze of shock. "Jack?" you rasped, a tiny, frail sound that nearly brought him to his knees right there on the blood-spattered floor. "Jack, it hurts so bad..."
"I know, I know, I’ve got you," he sobbed out, not caring in the slightest that half the nursing staff was staring at him in utter shock. He pushed alongside the paramedics, helping to physically lift your limp body onto the trauma bed.
The scene erupted into controlled chaos around him. Clothes were being cut away with shears, cardiac monitor leads were being slapped onto your icy skin, and the metallic thump of suction devices filled the small room.
Jack stood at the head of your bed, his gloved hands cupping your face, his head bent low so he was inches from yours, whispering desperate, broken promises against your hairline while Shen sprinted into the room, snapping on a pair of sterile gloves.
"Abbot, what is going on with you? Step back, I need space at the airway!" Shen yelled over the shrill, alarming beep of the heart monitor, which was ticking at a terrifyingly rapid rate. "Who is this?"
"It's... it's her," Jack choked out, his eyes never leaving your face. "It's Robby’s sister. Shen, please... "
Before Shen could even process the devastating weight of Jack's plea, the door to the trauma bay swung open with a bang, and Robby walked in, holding a tablet and adjusting his stethoscope around his neck, looking fresh and prepared for his morning shift.
"Hey, what's the noise down here? Dana said we had an unstable stab—" Robby stopped dead in his tracks. The tablet slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the hard floor. His eyes swept over the blood-soaked trauma shears, the bags of crimson red blood hanging from the IV poles, and finally landed on your pale, bruised face surrounded by monitoring wires.
"Y/N?" Robby’s voice was barely a whisper, a hollow, disbelieving sound that shattered the room. In three long strides, he shoved past a nurse, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror as he grabbed the edge of the bed. "What happened?! What the fuck happened?!"
"Robby, listen to me—" Shen tried to interject, stepping between him and the bed.
"Get off me!" Robby screamed, his voice cracking with a terrifying mixture of grief and rage as he looked at your open, bleeding abdomen where Shen was applying heavy, firm pressure with sterile gauze to slow the massive internal hemorrhage.
"Why was she brought in like this?!" Robby’s eyes swung wildly around the room until they landed on Jack, who was still standing at the head of the bed, his shoulders shaking with silent, ragged sobs.
Robby froze, his mind racing through the dark, frantic puzzle of the room. He looked at the way Jack was holding you, not like a doctor holding a patient, not even like a friend holding a colleague's relative, but with the terrifying, desperate agony of a man watching his entire life bleed out on a stainless-steel table.
Robby stepped forward, his eyes narrowing into slits of pure, lethal fury. "Jack... why are you holding her like that? Why are you touching her like that?"
Jack didn't look up. He couldn't take his eyes off your face, watching your oxygen saturation levels dip dangerously low on the overhead monitor. "Robby, please, not right now," Jack pleaded, his voice thick and broken. "She's bleeding badly, she needs to go straight to theatre—"
"I asked you a fucking question, Jack!" Robby roared, lunging forward and grabbing the front of Jack’s scrub top, pulling him away from the bed with such violent force that the cardiac monitor cart rattled. "Why are you looking at my sister like that?! What is she to you?!"
"Robby, stop it!" Dana yelled, stepping boldly between the two grown men, her hands slamming against Robby’s chest to keep him from shoving Jack into the wall. "She is in hemorrhagic shock! Look at the fucking monitor, Robby! Look at your sister!"
"I love her!" Jack snapped, the secret ripping out of his chest like a jagged blade, his voice echoing loudly over the frantic, rhythmically failing beeps of the cardiac machine. "We’ve been seeing each other for months, Robby! I fucking love her, and she was attacked in her home while I was sitting here doing paperwork! So hit me, tear me apart, do whatever the hell you want, but do not make this about us while she is dying on this bed!"
Robby reeled back as if he’d been physically struck, his hands dropping from Jack’s shirt. His face twisted into a complex, ugly storm of betrayal, shock, and profound, terrifying panic. He looked from Jack’s blood-stained hands to your quiet, still face.
“You... you were lying to me? Both of you?" Robby’s voice shook, a bitter, wounded sound. "You were sleeping with my sister behind my back while—"
"Robby, her blood pressure is insane!" Shen yelled, his voice cutting through the rising argument like a scalpel. "We don't have time for a surgical team to come down, we need to open her right here or she goes into cardiac arrest in minutes!"
The harsh reality of the medical emergency slammed back into the room like a tidal wave. Robby blinked, the anger in his eyes instantly drowning in a wave of sheer, unadulterated terror as he watched your heart rate spike, the waveform on the screen flattening out into dangerous, erratic rhythms.
“No," Robby breathed, his voice small, vulnerable, and completely stripped of his usual arrogance. "No, no, no, look at me. I'm right here. You stay with me, do you hear me?"
"I need a thoracotomy tray and a laparotomy kit, right now!" Shen shouted, his hands working furiously to pack more gauze into your side. "Someone get on the suction! Robby, you need to step out!"
"Like hell I'm stepping out!" Robby yelled, shoving his way back to the side of the bed, his hands trembling violently as he reached for a pair of sterile gloves. "She's my sister! I am operating!"
"You cannot touch her, Robby, you know the protocol! You’re not doing shit either, Abbot," Dana sternly intervened, putting her body directly between Robby and the instrument tray. Her face was set like granite, though her eyes were filled with deep, maternal sympathy. "You will freeze or you will make a mistake, and she will die because of it! Out! Both of you, get out of this bay right now!"
"No!" both men barked in unison.
"I am not leaving her!" Jack yelled, his knuckles white as he grabbed a pair of gloves, his eyes fixed on Shen. "Shen, let me assist! My hands are steady, I swear to God my hands are steady!"
"Jack, look at yourself, you're shaking so hard you can barely stand!" Dana snapped, taking Jack firmly by the upper arms and physically pulling him away from the head of the bed. She looked at Robby, then at Jack, her voice dropping into a fierce, commanding tone that left no room for argument. "If you two care about this girl, if you love her at all, you will get the hell out of this room and let Shen and the trauma team do their jobs! Every second you stand here fighting like children is a second she doesn't have! Move!"
She didn't wait for them to comply, she aggressively pushed both men out of the sliding glass doors and drew the blue privacy curtains shut with a sharp, definitive snap.
The waiting corridor outside the main trauma suite felt like a cold, sterile tomb. The morning sunlight was just beginning to bleed through the high frost-tinted windows, casting harsh, pale light across the linoleum floor, but inside the hallway, time had ground to a complete standstill. The only sound was the distant, muffled shouting of medical commands from behind the blue curtain, punctuated by the steady, terrifying rhythm of automated alarms.
Jack stood leaning against the far wall, his hands buried deep in his curls, his body slumping down until he was on the floor. His scrub top was ruined, smeared with bright crimson streaks of your blood that had already begun to dry into stiff, dark patches.
Every breath he pulled into his lungs felt like glass, his chest tight with a crushing, suffocating guilt. He should have been there. He should have insisted on driving you home after your shift two days ago, he should have checked your locks, he should have protected you. The image of your bruised skin and the frail, terrified sound of your voice calling his name kept repeating in a horrific, endless loop behind his eyelids.
A few yards down the hallway, Robby was pacing like a caged beast. His fists were clenched so tightly that his nails were digging drawn blood into his own palms. Every time he turned around, his furious, bloodshot eyes landed on Jack sitting against the wall, and the bitter, hot rage inside him flared back to life, offering a brief, desperate distraction from the sheer, paralyzing fear that his little sister was dying on the other side of that glass.
Robby marched over, stopping directly in front of Jack. "Get up," Robby spat, his voice trembling with venom. "Get up and look at me, you coward."
Jack slowly lifted his head. His face was ghastly, his eyes hollow, dark, and utterly deadened by grief. He didn't offer any resistance, didn't raise a hand to defend himself. He just looked up at Robby with a hollow, broken expression. "Go ahead, Robby. Say whatever you want. It won't be worse than what I'm already telling myself."
"You lied to me!" Robby shouted, his voice echoing down the empty, quiet corridor, causing a few passing nurses to flinch and walk faster. "For months! I treated you like a brother, Jack! I trusted you with my life in this department, I took shifts for you, I let you into my home, and the whole time you were sneaking behind my back with my sister! You manipulated her!"
"I didn't manipulate anyone!" Jack rasped, standing up slowly, leaning his heavy back against the cold wall to keep his legs from buckling beneath him. "I love her, Robby! I didn't plan for this to happen! It started off slow, and then... Christ, she became the only good thing in my life! She asked me not to tell you because she knew you'd react exactly like this! She was terrified you'd make her feel guilty for just wanting to be happy!"
"Don't you dare put this on her!" Robby barked, stepping directly into Jack's personal space, poking a harsh, rigid finger into Jack's chest right over a dark bloodstain. "She is my little sister! My responsibility! She was hiding things because of you! You put her in danger!"
"You think I don't know that?!" Jack suddenly roared back, his composure snapping entirely as he grabbed Robby's wrist and shoved his hand away, tears spilling freely over his blood-stained cheeks. "You think I'm not sitting here wanting to tear my own skin off because I wasn't there to protect her?! I would have taken every single one of those fucking knives for her, Robby! I would lay down on that table and let them cut my heart out right now if it meant she gets to wake up! So don't you dare stand there and pretend you're the only one who cares whether she lives or dies!"
Robby stared at Jack, his jaw working as if he wanted to scream, but the sheer, raw agony in Jack's voice hit him like a physical blow. The anger drained out of Robby just a fraction, leaving behind the hollow, terrifying reality that neither of them had any control over what was happening behind those blue curtains.
Before Robby could fire back another bitter insult, the double doors at the end of the hall swung open, and Dana walked out alongside Shen. Both of them looked thoroughly exhausted, their blue gowns splattered with blood, but their faces were calm, settled into that weary, professional relief that both Robby and Jack knew so intimately.
Jack was across the hallway in a fraction of a second, grabbing Dana's forearms with desperate, trembling hands. "Is she... is she alive? Please, Dana, tell me she's alive."
Dana looked down at his hands, then up into his terrified, bloodshot eyes, her expression softening into a gentle, reassuring smile. "She's alive, Jack. She's stabilised."
A long, ragged sob burst from Jack's chest as he slumped against the wall, covering his face with his hands as the suffocating weight lifted off his lungs. Robby let out a shaky, desperate breath of his own, running both hands over his face, his shoulders slumping in profound, overwhelming relief.
"The blade missed the important stuff by less than a centimetre," Shen explained quickly, pulling off his surgical cap and wiping his damp brow. "Park and the guys are finishing up her sutures right now. She's going to be okay, guys. She's strong."
"Can I see her?" Robby asked immediately, his voice thick with emotion, stepping toward the trauma bay doors.
"She's being moved up to a different unit in a few minutes once she comes round from the anesthetic," Dana said gently, stepping smartly into Robby's path and laying a firm hand against his chest. She gave him a stern, motherly look that made even the senior attending doctor pause. "And before you step foot into that room, Robby, you are going to take a long, deep breath and leave your ridiculous ego at the door."
Robby blinked, taken aback. "Dana, I—"
"I don't want to hear it," Dana interrupted smoothly, turning her cool, unyielding gaze between Robby and Jack. "I have watched the two of you act like absolute idiots for the last forty-five minutes while that poor girl was fighting for her life. Robby, your sister just survived a horrific, traumatic assault. She does not need to wake up to her brother screaming at the man she loves. She needs peace, she needs rest, and she needs both of you to pull yourselves together and be adults."
Robby looked at Dana, his mouth opening to argue, but the sheer authority in her posture held him silent. He glanced over at Jack, who was still standing by the wall, wiping his face with the back of his wrist, looking entirely drained, hollowed-out, and deeply ashamed.
"Go up to the fourth floor," Dana added softly, her tone loosening into something kinder. "Clean yourselves up. Change out of those ruined scrubs. By the time you look like proper doctors again, she'll be awake in her room."
Your room was quiet, illuminated only by the soft, warm glow of the bedside lamp and the gentle, rhythmic pumping of the IV drip monitor. The harsh smell of the trauma bay was replaced by the clean, faint scent of lavender soap and fresh linens. You lay propped up slightly against two large pillows. A thick white bandage was wrapped securely around your right forearm, and beneath the heavy hospital blanket, your abdominal dressing sat quiet and intact.
When the heavy wooden door pushed open, you turned your head slowly toward the sound. The heavy pain medication made your head feel light, floaty, and distant, but the moment you saw Jack and Robby walking into the room together, the fog cleared just enough for your heart to ache with sweet, overwhelming relief.
Both men had changed into clean, dark scrubs. Robby walked in first, looking hesitant, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his usual confident posture replaced by a cautious, quiet guilt. Behind him stood Jack. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week, his eyes were bruised with dark circles, his jaw tight with anxiety, hovering near the doorway as if he wasn't entirely sure he was permitted to be in the same room as you.
"Hey, kiddo," Robby whispered softly, walking over to the right side of your bed. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he gently tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, his face softening into a look of pure, unadulterated big-brother affection. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I got hit by a very large truck," you rasped, your voice scratchy and dry. You offered him a weak, tired smile. "Dana told me that you were making a scene down there, Robby."
Robby let out a soft, wet laugh, dropping his head for a second as a fresh wave of emotion hit him. "Yeah, well, you scared the shit out of me. I thought, God, I don't even want to say it." He took your uninjured hand, holding it tight between both of his. "The police caught the guy, by the way. He was a petty burglar who panicked when he realised the apartment was occupied. He's in custody. He won't ever come near you again."
"Good," you murmured softly, squeezing his hand weakly. Your eyes drifted past your brother's shoulder, locking onto Jack, who was still standing quietly by the door, staring down at his shoes, his posture heavy with guilt. "Jack, come here."
Jack lifted his eyes, looking at you with such a raw, desperate tenderness that it made your chest tighten. He glanced cautiously at Robby, then slowly walked around to the left side of your bed. He stopped a few inches away, looking as though he wanted to reach out and touch you, but was terrified of breaking you further.
"I'm sorry," Jack whispered, his voice cracking on the words. "I am so, so sorry. I should have been there. I should have stayed with you last night, I shouldn't have taken this shift—"
"Jack, stop," you interrupted gently, reaching your left hand out toward him. "Stop that right now. It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known."
Jack lowered himself to the floor, wincing at the discomfort. He brought your hand to his mouth, pressing his lips against your knuckles, tears slipping quietly from his eyes and wetting your skin. "I thought I lost you," he choked out, ignoring Robby's presence entirely now as he leaned his forehead against the mattress beside your arm. "When they brought you through those doors... I've never been so terrified in my entire life. I don't care about anything else. I just need you to be okay."
You ran your fingers through his curls, feeling the heavy, frantic racing of his heart slowly begin to settle against your side. "I'm okay, Jack. I'm right here."
Across the bed, Robby watched the two of you. He saw the way Jack held your hand not with possessiveness, but with a deep, reverent care that was entirely selfless. He saw the way your face relaxed the moment Jack touched you, the way the lingering fear in your eyes melted away into complete, absolute safety.
Robby let out a long, heavy breath, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked up at the ceiling. "You two are absolute idiots, you know that?" he said softly, breaking the quiet emotional tension in the room.
Jack lifted his head from the mattress, looking over at Robby with a guarded, wary expression. You offered your brother a small, pleading look. "Robby, please don't be mad at him. It was my idea to keep it quiet. I didn't want you making things complicated at work."
"I am mad," Robby admitted honestly, though the harsh edge in his voice was completely gone, replaced by a weary, warm acceptance. "I'm fucking furious that you both lied to my face for months. I'm furious that I had to find out while my sister was bleeding out." He paused, looking directly at Jack, his dark eyes firm. "But... I saw you down there, Jack. I saw how you looked at her."
Jack stood up slowly, keeping his hand firmly wrapped around yours, meeting Robby's gaze across the bed without flinching. "I love her, Robby. I'm not going anywhere. I'm sorry for lying to you, but I am never going to apologise for loving her."
Robby stared at Jack for a long, silent moment, before a small, dry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He shook his head, leaning over to kiss the top of your head before stepping back from the bed.
"Well... at least I know if she ever gets hurt again, the attending doctor will be too terrified of failing to let her die." Robby walked toward the door, turning back with his hand on the handle. "I'm going down to the cafeteria to get some decent coffee. Real coffee, not that shit in the breakroom. Jack, you're staying right here until I get back. And then we're going to have a long talk about boundaries."
"Understood," Jack said softly, offering a quiet, respectful nod.
Robby looked between the two of you one last time, his expression softening into pure relief. "I'm glad you're alive. Don't do it again." With a final, gentle click, the door swung shut, leaving the room in a warm, peaceful quiet.
Jack immediately leaned in close, wrapping his arms around you with extraordinary gentleness, careful to avoid your bandaged abdomen as he buried his face in the warm crook of your neck. You wrapped your uninjured arm around his back, pulling him as close as you could, feeling the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest against yours.
"You really scared me, sweetheart," Jack whispered against your skin, his hands smoothing down your back with a soft, desperate rhythm.
"I know," you murmured, kissing the side of his neck, breathing in the clean scent of soap and his familiar, comforting warmth. "I'm sorry. But I'm safe now. You've got me."
"Yeah," Jack breathed, pulling back just enough to look down into your eyes, his face lit by the soft golden light of the bedside lamp. He leaned in, pressing a slow, sweet, lingering kiss to your lips that tasted of salt, relief, and quiet promises for the future. "I've got you. And I'm never letting you go."
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i need crossword puzzles to stop giving me sports clues. dont ask me about football stars and nba championships and baseball team names. im the kind of nerd who chooses to do crossword puzzles why would you expect this of me. cruel and unusual.
