He would be a total munch every single time he would be around you Always wanting his face to be buried between your legs, hands gripping yours thighs and tongue flat against your clit all while dry umping the mattress under him. Certified eater Simon would do damage to your head with the mind-blowing orgasm he would initiate on your body back-to-back, only to make you cry out more when he would finally plunge his hard cock into your tight cunt.
His stroke game was as good as his head game, if not better on one of those days where the only thing you needed was a good cock inside you while certified eater Simon whispered dirty words in your ears. Sentences like “Ngh, you-your pussy is so thigh and wet around me” “Fuck-you fit me so well, Darling” “God, you’re squeezing me just right” would flow out of his mouth and go directly into your pussy.
At night, when you would both be at your respective houses, Certified eater Simon would just send you a text with “Can I come over and eat your pussy”. It was an almost everyday thing, part of your daily routine if you will, and because you knew how good he was with his tongue you would accept and prepare yourself for the hotness that was coming your way.
Certified eater Simon would arrive quickly to your house, so quickly it was almost as if he didn’t wait for your approval first. How could you blame him, your pussy was his drug, it was the best thing he ever tasted and spending too much time away from him made him have withdrawal symptoms.
5 TIMES ZUKO BURNED THE PALACE + 1 TIME THE MAID FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHY
art cr @ oouyox on X
18+ MDNI, smut, adult!zuko, fire lord!zuko, established relationship, newlywed, dom!zuko, jealous!zuko, fire lady!reader, water/icebender!reader, cockwarming, oral sex, edging, creampie, semi-public sex, dry hump, etc ...
DEAR DIARY, it’s my sixth day as a palace maid & apparently fire lord zuko burns things down whenever he’s alone with his wife. i asked the head maid about it, but she said i’m still too innocent to understand ...? is it because the fire lord is abusive ?! i just hope the kind fire lady is okay :<
O1 | HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU
The palace staff had quickly learned to read the architectural warning signs. At first, the occasional flicker of the wall sconces was easy to dismiss as a normal side effect of living inside the Fire Nation royal estate, where ceremonial flames burned at nearly every corner and the Caldera heat had a personality of its own. A candle trembling during a tense council meeting was not unusual. A brazier roaring too brightly after the Fire Lord received bad news was simply part of palace life. Firebenders were emotional people, after all, and the palace had housed generations of them.
But then the Fire Lord got married, and suddenly the entire palace became one prolonged fire hazard.
Whenever Zuko was struck by a particularly intense wave of desire for his wife, his inner fire reacted with embarrassing honesty. The decorative flames burning in the iron wall sconces would surge upward, roaring to life in blinding, unnatural pillars of gold. Lanterns trembled on their hooks, curtains smoked at the edges, and the very air in certain corridors grew so thick and hot that walking through them felt like stepping into the throat of a dragon. It became common knowledge among the staff that if a hallway suddenly felt like a furnace and the torches were licking the ceiling, you simply turned around and walked the other way.
No one said anything directly, of course. This was the Fire Lord and Fire Lady, newlyweds and apparently determined to test the structural endurance of every room, corridor, garden, balcony, kitchen, archive, and unfortunately, the royal study. The guards developed a silent rotation around the affected areas. The maids began carrying water basins with the same exhausted professionalism soldiers carried spears. The council, with great suffering and even greater self-preservation, pretended not to notice whenever their notoriously strict, punctual ruler arrived at official meetings with his collar pulled suspiciously high and his hair slightly more ruined than court protocol allowed.
You, naturally, found the entire situation hilarious. Zuko didn’t.
“You’re ruining my reputation,” he muttered one morning over breakfast, glaring into his tea as if the jasmine leaves had personally betrayed him. His hair was still half-loose from sleep, his robe lazily tied at the waist, and the faint reddish mark just beneath his jaw was doing an absolutely terrible job of staying hidden under his collar.
You lifted your teacup with both hands, blinking at him over the rim with exaggerated innocence. “My love, your reputation survived banishment, piracy, treason, and that one unfortunate ponytail era. I think it can survive people knowing you like your wife.”
His golden eyes narrowed. “I do not merely like my wife.”
“Oh?”
His gaze flicked to your mouth, then back to your eyes with the grim seriousness of a man discussing military strategy. “I am devoted to my wife.”
Your heart did something terribly inconvenient inside your chest. Then Zuko, apparently deciding that ruining you emotionally before breakfast was perfectly acceptable royal behavior, added in a lower voice, “Obsessed, even.”
The candle between you burst into a sudden, dramatic flame.
Both of you looked at it.
From the doorway, the head maid closed her eyes and took a very slow breath. “Not again,” she whispered.
O2 | SEVEN MINUTES OF HEAVEN
The first major casualty of your absolute lack of restraint was the royal study. It had started as a minor disagreement over a passing comment made by a visiting Earth Kingdom dignitary, which really should not have escalated as quickly as it did. The dignitary had been harmless enough, charming in that polished diplomatic way, with smooth compliments and practiced laughter that clearly meant nothing beyond courtly manners. You had barely paid him any mind. Zuko, unfortunately, had paid him too much mind.
By the time the heavy doors of the royal study closed behind you both, the Fire Lord’s fiercely protective instincts were already simmering dangerously beneath his skin. The room smelled of cedar, parchment, ink, and the sharp metallic bite of ozone, a scent you had come to associate with your husband trying very hard not to set something on fire. He stood near the shelves with a scroll clenched in one hand, his jaw tight enough to cut glass, while you leaned against the edge of his massive oak map table and crossed your arms.
“You are being ridiculous, Zuko,” you said. The table behind you was covered in carefully arranged naval documents, trade routes, council reports, and one very important scroll that had taken three ministers nearly a week to prepare. “He complimented my diplomacy. That is literally his job.”
Zuko’s eyes flashed. “He complimented more than your diplomacy.”
You rolled your eyes so hard it was honestly impressive you didn’t see the back of your own skull. “You know I only have eyes for you. Besides, you are one to talk. Honestly, with your history, I’m surprised you didn’t accidentally marry half the Earth Kingdom before I got here. Total womanizer.”
Zuko went completely still.
The scroll in his hand lowered slowly, and you realized a fraction too late that you had touched something far more tender than simple jealousy. Over the past decade, Zuko had mellowed into a composed ruler, a man capable of silencing entire council chambers with nothing but a look. But there were still old wounds beneath all that control, places where rejection and loneliness had carved themselves too deeply into him. Your teasing had landed somewhere dangerously close to one of them.
“A womanizer?” Zuko repeated quietly.
His voice was calm, and that was what made it worse. It had dropped into that dark, gravelly register meant only for you, the one that made the back of your neck prickle and your spine instinctively straighten. He placed the scroll down on the desk with careful precision, then moved around the table with slow, heavy steps until he was standing directly in front of you, crowding you back against the polished wood.
“My wife,” he said, his golden eyes burning with raw, defensive intensity, “I haven’t looked at, let alone wanted, another woman in years. I was abstinent before you invaded my palace, pointed a blade at my throat, and drove me completely insane.”
Your breath caught. The firelights in the study flickered at the edges of your vision, but you could barely focus on them with the way he was looking at you, as if the entire world had narrowed down to the space between your bodies.
“That was…” You swallowed, suddenly finding it very difficult to hold onto your smug little smile. “That was a very dramatic answer.”
Zuko only huffed, low and humorless, his mouth twitching like he could not decide whether he wanted to argue with you or ruin you against the nearest available surface.
“Anyway, you have a council meeting in exactly—”
“They can wait.”
“They really cannot.”
“They can,” he said, and there was something almost dangerous in how certain he sounded. His hands found your waist, scorching through the layers of crimson silk as he pushed closer, forcing the edge of the map table to press harder against the back of your thighs. The carefully organized naval reports crinkled beneath your palms when you braced yourself, and Zuko’s eyes dropped to the movement before lifting back to your face, dark and possessive and entirely too pleased with the way your composure had started to slip.
You opened your mouth to respond, but whatever clever retort you had prepared vanished the moment his lips brushed the side of your neck. Zuko had always loved you with a terrifying kind of intensity, and when his emotions caught fire, he had a habit of kissing like he was trying to prove something to both of you at once. Still, there was nothing uncertain in the way your fingers curled into his collar, nothing hesitant in the way you pulled him closer, dragging him down until his mouth finally crashed against yours.
The kiss wasn’t elegant. It was teeth and heat and months of carefully leashed obsession finally snapping under the weight of one careless accusation.
Zuko kissed you like he was still trying to prove a point, like every word you had thrown at him had struck somewhere too close to an old wound and he had decided the only acceptable response was to make you forget you had ever doubted him. One large, calloused hand slid up your spine, fingers spreading firmly between your shoulder blades while the other gripped your hip hard enough to make the silk wrinkle beneath his palm. You answered by biting his lower lip, and the low, broken sound that tore from his throat went straight through you.
“My lord,” you gasped against his mouth, freezing fingers twisting into the front of his robes. “You’re gonna be late—”
“Don’t care,” he panted, voice wrecked and rough. He shoved your skirts up with impatient hands and lifted you onto the map table in one motion. Scrolls scattered. An inkwell tipped over, spilling black across weeks of careful work, but neither of you noticed.
You barely had time to brace yourself before he pushed your legs apart. He freed himself with jerky movements, and the thick, scorching heat of his cock dragged against your inner thigh. You shivered at the contrast.
“Zuko—s-slow down—” The word broke into a sharp moan as he pushed inside you in one deep thrust, stretching you open around burning heat. The clash of temperatures dragged ragged groans from both of you.
He moved with none of his usual restraint after that, the table creaking beneath you as ruined scrolls slipped uselessly to the floor. Your freezing hands clutched at his shoulders, frost blooming beneath your fingertips before melting almost instantly against the fevered heat of his skin.
“You’re unbearable when you’re—ah!—jealous,” you managed between breaths, the words shaky and broken.
Zuko let out a breathless, almost pained laugh against your neck, hips never slowing. “And yet you keep giving me reasons.”
He shifted just enough to find the angle that made the whole room blur at the edges.
“Zuko—right t-there,” you gasped, head falling back as your legs tightened around his waist. The firelights in the study answered before he could, flickering wildly as his control slipped. Flames stretched higher in the sconces, throwing restless gold across the walls, while a nearby candle flared too bright and caught the corner of a discarded scroll.
Neither of you stopped.
Zuko moved with terrifying concentration, one hand planted against the table, the other gripping your thigh as if he needed something solid to hold onto. The room filled with heat, paper crumpled beneath you, and somewhere behind him, another small flame caught at the edge of an old tapestry.
“Zuko—ah, I’m g-gonna—” Your words dissolved into a broken moan as you came first, sudden and shattering. Your walls clenched tight around his burning length.
The cold rush dragged him over the edge right after. He buried himself deep with a choked groan, hips stuttering as he spilled inside you. His inner fire roared so fiercely that two of the wall sconces burst into tall, uncontrolled flames for several seconds before slowly settling.
For a long moment, the only sounds were your ragged breathing and the soft crackle of the small fires still licking at the edges of the room.
Zuko stayed buried inside you, arms wrapped tightly around your waist. His breath was hot and uneven against your neck. You carded freezing fingers through his messy hair and pressed a soft kiss to his scarred cheek.
“…You’re definitely late now,” you whispered, voice hoarse.
When Fire Lord Zuko finally strode into the grand hall—hair slightly mussed, ceremonial robes hastily straightened, and a very obvious trail of fresh dark marks blooming along the side of his neck—the temperature in the palace had spiked noticeably. The decorative fire sconces outside the royal study were still flaring brighter than usual.
Avatar Aang took one look at him, then at the faint sheen of lingering frost melting on Zuko’s collar, and choked violently on his tea.
The rest of the council suddenly found the table extremely interesting.
Zuko, however, simply took his seat with that terrifyingly composed Fire Lord mask firmly back in place. Though the faint, smug curve at the corner of his mouth gave him away completely.
He was exactly seven minutes late.
And he didn’t look sorry at all.
O3 | “SIR, I’M NOT PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS.”
The outdoor training courtyard was not safe from your antics either. The afternoon sun was blistering, turning the stone tiles warm beneath your bare feet, but the heat rolling off Zuko’s skin was even hotter. He moved across the courtyard with lethal precision, dual dao swords flashing in sharp silver arcs as he pressed forward. You met him strike for strike, your waterbending weaving through his aggression like a river cutting through stone. He had trained under masters, survived wars, fought prodigies and assassins and spirits, but you had learned his body in motion with a familiarity that made every sparring match feel less like combat and more like a private language.
He swung low. You stepped over the blade. He pivoted, and you caught the shift in his weight before he completed the motion, twisting your wrist and drawing moisture from the air until it hardened into a wicked, glittering blade of ice. With a sharp sweep of your ankle and a perfectly timed pull of water beneath his heel, you sent him off balance. Zuko hit the ground with a rough grunt, and before he could recover, you vaulted forward, straddling his waist and pressing the freezing tip of your ice dagger directly against the erratic pulse beating at his neck.
“Dead,” you panted, victorious and breathless, a smirk curling at your lips.
Zuko didn’t look at the blade. He looked at you.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his chest rising and falling beneath the open collar of his training robe. His golden eyes dragged slowly from your triumphant expression to the way your thighs pinned him in place, and the sudden clash of your freezing temperature against his scorching skin visibly wrecked whatever remained of his concentration. A soft cloud of steam curled where your bare legs pressed against him. His hands flexed once at his sides, then slid up to grip your thighs with desperate, reverent heat.
He had simply stopped trying.
“You’re distracted,” you accused, breathless and smug.
Zuko’s gaze flicked back to yours, dark and unashamed. “Well, you’re sitting on top of me.”
“That is a terrible excuse.”
“It’s a very convincing one.”
You laughed, delighted, but the sound barely had time to leave your mouth before his hand moved to the back of your neck and pulled you down into a kiss. The ice dagger dissolved instantly, melting into a harmless stream of water that ran over his collarbone and disappeared into the fabric of his robe. You meant to tease him for surrendering so easily, but then his hips shifted beneath you, and the thought scattered completely. Through the thin layers of training clothes, you felt the unmistakable hard line of him pressed against you, hot and insistent, betraying exactly why his focus had slipped in the first place.
Your breath caught against his mouth.
His grip on your thighs tightened, and when you moved by accident—just a slight shift of your weight over his lap—his reaction was immediate. A rough, strained sound broke low in his throat, his head tipping back against the ground for half a second before his golden eyes snapped back to yours, darker than before. The victory in your expression slowly turned into something far more dangerous.
“Oh,” you breathed, unable to stop the smile spreading across your lips. “So that’s why you lost.”
You shifted again, deliberately this time, just enough to make the heat between you drag in a way that stole the air from both of your lungs. Zuko’s hand slid up to your waist, holding you in place, but he did not push you away. If anything, he pulled you closer, guiding the slow, heated movement until the line between sparring and something far less appropriate blurred completely.
Around you, the courtyard seemed to inhale. The lanterns along the wall flared, the training posts began to smoke, and a nearby guard, who had unfortunately chosen that exact moment to enter through the side gate, stopped mid-step, stared at the scene, and very slowly turned around.
He did not get paid enough for this.
Two more guards followed him without a word.
By the time the flames around the courtyard settled, three practice posts had been scorched, one stone pillar had cracked from thermal shock, and Zuko had somehow managed to look both smug and completely ruined at the same time. You brushed ash off his shoulder later, trying very hard not to laugh, while he stood there with his hair destroyed, his robe uneven, and the kind of expression that made it very clear he had absolutely no regrets.
“This is why the staff avoids us,” you told him.
Zuko leaned down until his mouth brushed your ear. “Good.”
O4 | STEP ONE: CALL HIM ZUZU!
But the most chaotic incident happened in the supposed privacy of your royal bedchamber, fueled by three generous glasses of imported plum wine and your unfortunate discovery of Zuko’s old travel chest.
You were delightfully, shamelessly drunk, rummaging through the old belongings he had kept tucked away at the back of the chamber while he watched you from the bed with the wary patience of a man who knew his wife well enough to expect disaster. There were old cloaks, worn maps, a few dull blades wrapped in cloth, and several items from the years he clearly did not enjoy discussing unless he was already half-asleep and emotionally ambushed by your cold hands on his chest.
Then you found the mask.
The infamous wooden Blue Spirit mask stared up at you from beneath a folded travel cloak, its painted grin just as dramatic as the stories had promised. Your eyes widened. Your mouth fell open. Zuko, immediately sensing danger, sat up.
“No,” he said.
You slowly lifted the mask.
“No.”
“Zuko.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Zuzu.”
His expression tightened. “Don’t Zuzu me.”
You turned toward him with the biggest, most delighted smile he had ever seen, clutching the mask like a sacred treasure. “Katara told me about this.”
Zuko closed his eyes.
Of course Katara had told you. Katara had a gift, and it was not just waterbending, healing, or her terrifying ability to mother people into becoming better versions of themselves. No, Katara had the supernatural ability to make traumatized boys confess their entire life stories to her. Jet, Aang, Sokka, Zuko; somehow all of them had, at one point or another, looked into her kind blue eyes and decided, yes, this girl absolutely needed to hear the worst thing that had ever happened to them.
And now, thanks to her, you knew about the Blue Spirit, which meant Zuko was doomed.
It started as a joke, as most of your terrible ideas did. You had dragged the mask out of his travel chest with far too much excitement, demanded he put it on, and somehow managed to bully the Fire Lord of the Fire Nation into indulging you with nothing but sparkling eyes and a smile he had never learned how to refuse. The bargain had been simple, if deeply unfair: he would wear the mask, and in return you would sit sweetly in his lap—taking him fully inside you and staying there without moving.
Which, technically, you were doing.
The plum wine had left you warm and loose above him, your arms looped lazily around his neck while Zuko sat against the pillows with the last of his dignity barely hanging on by a thread. He was buried deep inside you, thick and throbbing while your walls wrapped snugly around his cock. He tried very hard to act like this was not the most unreasonable form of torture you had ever invented.
The mask stared back at you with its sharp painted grin, pale tusks, hollow eyes, and all the dramatic menace of a nightmare that had learned theater. It should not have been funny. It definitely should not have been romantic. But you, warmed by plum wine and your own terrible sense of humor, looked at him like this was the most delightful thing you had ever seen.
Zuko, unfortunately, had no idea what to do with that.
He had been perfectly willing to toss the mask aside the second you dragged it out of his travel chest, but you had whined so dramatically when he reached for it that he froze mid-motion, one hand hovering beside the painted blue grin.
“Nooo,” you complained, clutching at his wrist with both hands. “Keep the mask on.”
Zuko went still beneath you.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m extremely serious.”
“The mask is crooked.”
“That makes it better.”
“It does not.”
“It does,” you insisted, squinting at him with the solemn concentration of someone trying very hard to appear artistic while very drunk. The Blue Spirit’s painted grin stared back at you, all sharp teeth and dramatic menace, while the actual Fire Lord behind it sat painfully still beneath your attention. “You look very mysterious.”
“I look ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously hot,” you said, then reached up with both hands to adjust the strap.
Unfortunately, your coordination had been murdered by plum wine. Instead of fixing it, you somehow made the mask tilt even farther to one side, turning the fearsome Blue Spirit into something lopsided, sulky, and deeply offended. You stared at him for one long, silent second.
Then you giggled.
It was such a small thing. A drunken little request, harmless and silly, made with your eyes bright from wine and your smile too soft to be cruel. Still, insecurity struck him faster than reason could. For one brief, awful second, his mind went somewhere old and ugly, back to every stare that had lingered too long on his scar, every flinch hidden behind polite manners, every person who had looked at the burned side of his face before they looked at him.
His voice came out quieter than he intended. “What, is the mask better?”
You blinked.
Then your expression changed so quickly it almost hurt to watch. The teasing vanished, replaced by something fiercely offended, as if the thought itself had personally insulted you. “No, silly,” you said, already reaching for the edge of the mask. “I just wanna tease you.”
Before he could answer, you pulled it off his face and yeeted it over your shoulder with absolutely no grace. Weee. The mask sailed through the air in a tragic little arc before landing harmlessly somewhere among the cushions.
Zuko stared after it, then he stared back at you.
Without the mask, his face was fully visible in the dim amber light of the bedchamber: the strong line of his jaw, the softness of his mouth, the old scar that had shaped him without ever making him any less beautiful, and the golden eyes that had once burned with anger but now looked at you with something so painfully devoted it made your chest ache. You cupped his face with both hands, your thumbs brushing over his cheeks with tenderness.
“Nothing beats your pretty face, Zuzu.”
Zuko went completely still.
There it was again, that impossible thing you did to him. You could tease him until his ears went red, bully him into wearing an old vigilante mask, laugh at his suffering like it was your favorite hobby, and then suddenly say something so gentle that it cut through every defense he had ever built. You were smiling at him like his face, scar and all, was not something to tolerate or look past, but something precious. Something beloved.
And because the spirits were apparently cruel, you said it while sitting so close, while your body was wrapped around his, while he was already buried deep inside you and trying very hard to pretend he was not losing every last scrap of composure he had left.
It made him want to come right there and then.
“Stop,” he rasped.
You tilted your head, still smiling. “Huh? Why?”
His hands tightened at your hips, not enough to hurt, only enough to keep you still. His jaw worked once, the muscle in his cheek jumping as he tried to gather whatever dignity had not already been ruined by you. “Just…” His voice came out strained, almost embarrassed. “Don’t move, unless you want to get pregnant.”
For one second, your wine-softened mind processed the warning.
Then your smile turned wicked.
“You do know I can just bend your—” You paused, waving one hand vaguely between you with far too much confidence for someone explaining absolutely nothing. “Your fluids, right?”
The gesture made no scientific sense whatsoever, but you delivered it with the calm certainty of a woman who had never once allowed anatomy, physics, or basic decency to stop her.
You leaned closer, lips hovering near his, mischief bright in your wine-soft eyes. “Besides, it’s not like that hasn’t happened before.”
Zuko’s eyes shut for half a second.
“That is not the problem.”
“Then what is the problem, my lord?” you asked sweetly, pressing slow, teasing kisses along the side of his neck, up the sharp line of his jaw, and finally near the corner of his mouth.
His breath left him unevenly, almost a laugh and almost a groan. He looked humiliated by his own body, but too far gone to pretend he was not completely ruined by you. “The problem,” he said, voice tight with restraint, “is that we have barely done anything.”
Your expression brightened with realization.
“Oh,” you whispered, delighted. “So this is about your pride.”
“Don’t sound so pleased.”
“I’m very pleased.”
“Y/N.”
You shifted just enough to make his grip tighten again, just enough to pull a rough, broken sound from low in his throat. His teeth caught against his lower lip, his head tipping back against the pillows as if sheer stubbornness alone could hold him together. It was adorable, actually. Devastating, but adorable.
The more he thought about it, the worse it became. The warmth of you around him, your legs wrapped lazily around his waist, your hands still cradling his face like he was something worth loving carefully. Every soft movement, every breathless little laugh, every fond look you gave him pushed him closer to the edge he was desperately pretending he had not already reached.
So naturally, you moved again.
Ever so slowly. Teasingly. Just enough to shred whatever pride he had left.
The lantern beside the bed flared so brightly the room flashed gold.
Zuko’s composure broke all at once. His hands clamped around your hips, his whole body going tense beneath you as a low, wrecked groan tore from his throat and disappeared into the curve of your neck.
“Fuck, Y/N— I’m—” His voice broke into a wrecked groan. His hips jerked up once, twice, then he came hard.
You felt the first thick spurt of his cum shoot deep inside you, hot and sudden. His member pulsed strongly, again and again, flooding your walls with rope after rope of warm release. It was so much that it quickly spilled out around where you two were joined, slick and messy, dripping down his shaft and over your thighs every time he twitched.
Zuko shuddered beneath you, mouth open in a silent moan as another powerful spurt filled you. His whole body tensed, muscles straining, while the sconces around the room surged with bright blue-white flames that lit up the entire bedchamber for several long seconds. One of the hanging lanterns flared so intensely the flame nearly touched the canopy before settling.
When it finally slowed, Zuko was breathing hard, chest heaving, looking thoroughly ruined and a little mortified. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his skin, and his golden eyes were glassy with pleasure and embarrassment.
Then you looked down at him, unbearably pleased with yourself.
Zuko dragged one heavy hand down his face as if asking the spirits why they had made him fall in love with the most infuriating woman alive.
“Haa…” he breathed, glaring at you with absolutely no real anger. “You just love to test my patience, don’t you, my queen?”
A sweet, bright giggle escaped you, echoing through the quiet chamber. You leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his scarred collarbone, feeling his pulse jump beneath your lips.
“Oh, absolutely.”
His laugh was low and wrecked, his hands sliding carefully back to your waist.
And the night, of course, was only beginning.
O5 | THE FIRE LORD IS A SUCKER FOR HIS WIFE
Tucked deep behind the private wing of the palace, the moon garden was quieter than the formal courtyards and far more intimate than the public terraces. Zuko had commissioned it shortly after your wedding, though he had tried to be painfully casual about the entire thing, as if personally designing a secluded garden filled with your favorite flowers, a koi pond cold enough for your waterbending, and shaded stone paths made specifically for evening walks with you was not the most obvious confession of devotion in the world. It had a narrow pond lined with black volcanic stones, clusters of red fire lilies blooming beside pale moonflowers, and a curved stone bench beneath a low maple tree whose leaves looked almost black under the night sky. The servants rarely entered unless summoned, the guards only passed the outer gate during patrol, and the entire place was usually reserved for those rare moments when the Fire Lord wanted silence with the only person he could never bear to be away from for long.
Naturally, that peace didn’t last.
You found Zuko on the stone bench long after midnight. Stripped down to only his outer robe hanging loosely from one shoulder, he stubbornly braved the biting cold as if the freezing night temperature meant nothing. His long hair had slipped free from its tie, dark strands falling over his face and sticking to the damp line of his neck. The moonlight caught the hard planes of his bare chest and abdomen, tracing silver along old scars, tense muscle, and the familiar golden warmth of his skin. One arm was draped lazily over the back of the bench, but the pose was too deliberate, too careless in the way only Zuko could be when he was trying to pretend something didn’t hurt.
Then you saw the blood.
A dark smear stained the exposed skin of his upper thigh, where a shallow but ugly cut had torn. It was not fatal, not even close, but it was bleeding enough to make your stomach twist and your irritation rise immediately behind it. Zuko, of course, looked more annoyed at being discovered than concerned about the wound itself, because apparently becoming Fire Lord, surviving assassination attempts, getting married, and promising to stop carrying the entire world on his shoulders had done absolutely nothing to cure him of his lifelong allergy to asking for help.
“You’re bleeding,” you said.
Zuko glanced down at his thigh as if the wound had personally inconvenienced him. “It’s just a scratch.”
“It’s leaking.”
“That is usually what blood does.”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
The lantern beside the koi pond flickered once, as if even the flame knew he had said the wrong thing.
With a long, suffering breath, you crossed the garden, gathered your skirts in one hand, and crouched down between his parted knees before he could argue again. Zuko’s expression shifted immediately, the sharp edge of his stubbornness catching on surprise. You ignored it, drawing water from the koi pond with a smooth curl of your wrist until it rose in a clear ribbon and wrapped itself around your fingers. The moment your glowing palms settled near his thigh, the moon garden filled with soft blue light.
“You should have called me,” you murmured, keeping your eyes on the wound as the healing water spread gently over torn skin.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You woke three guards, two ministers, and probably half the turtle-ducks by bleeding through the royal hallway, but yes, thank you for sparing me.”
His mouth twitched. “The turtle-ducks are strong. They will recover.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You married me.”
“Still questioning that.”
His quiet laugh was low and tired, but it warmed the space between you more intimately than any flame. You pressed your thumb near the edge of the wound to guide the healing water deeper, and Zuko’s breath caught despite his best effort to hide it. The muscle beneath your hand jumped. His fingers curled against the stone bench, long and tense, while the lantern above his shoulder flared a little too brightly.
You looked up.
He looked away with the stiff, guilty dignity of a man who knew exactly what his own fire had just confessed.
“Zuko.” you warned him.
“I know.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“I said I know.”
“You’re injured.”
His jaw flexed. “It is not related.”
“You’re sitting here half-dressed, bleeding on a garden bench, and somehow still finding a way to be embarrassed because your wife is touching your thigh.”
The faint color climbing his neck betrayed him completely, but he still had the nerve to look offended. “You’re kneeling between my legs and scolding me. I’m reacting with impressive restraint.”
The words landed between you with enough heat to make the glowing water tremble around your fingers.
For a moment, neither of you moved. The wound was nearly closed now, the angry red line fading beneath the blue light of your bending until only smooth, warm skin remained beneath your palm. You should have stood, smacked his shoulder for being reckless, and dragged him back inside before the night patrol circled past the outer gate again. The moon garden was private, yes, but not unguarded; there were still soldiers beyond the walls, servants in the nearby corridors, and a very official expectation that a secluded garden built for quiet walks would not be used for anything else.
Or so everyone kept insisting.
Instead, your hand lingered against his thigh for one second too long, and Zuko’s golden eyes darkened beneath the loose fall of his hair.
The look he gave you made the koi pond steam.
“You’re enjoying this,” he said.
You blinked up at him with exaggerated innocence, though your hand was still resting a little too comfortably against his newly healed thigh. “I’m healing you.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m just naturally joyful person.”
“Joyful person, huh? No wonder you threatened to freeze a councilman’s tongue this morning.”
Your expression didn’t change. “He interrupted my breakfast.”
“That doesn’t support your argument.”
A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it, soft and bright in the quiet garden, and just like that, whatever remained of Zuko’s restraint seemed to fold in on itself. His expression changed, irritation melting into something far more dangerous and far more tender. He looked at you the way he always did right before the palace lost another curtain, like your laughter was the only sound in the world that mattered and his fire had no idea what to do with the feeling.
His hand lifted from the bench and touched your chin, tilting your face up with a gentleness that made your chest ache.
“The wound is healed,” he murmured.
You glanced down. It was. Completely.
“So it is,” you whispered.
“You’re still kneeling.”
“Well, duh, you’re holding my face.”
His thumb brushed once along your chin, then higher, grazing your lower lip with the kind of careful heat that made the entire garden feel suddenly too quiet.
The moon garden went very still around you. The koi pond steamed faintly at the edges. The fire lilies glowed red beneath the lantern light, and the night air warmed until the scent of maple leaves, water, and Zuko’s familiar cedar heat wrapped around you like a warning.
You forgot whatever clever thing you were about to say.
Instead, your gaze dropped, which Zuko noticed almost immediately.
His thumb stilled against your mouth. “Y/N.”
There was warning in his voice, but not nearly enough conviction behind it. Not when he was still half-dressed on the stone bench, hair loose around his flushed face, newly healed thigh still warm beneath your hand, and looking at you like he had already lost the argument before it began.
You tilted your head with exaggerated innocence. “What?”
“You know what.”
You pressed a slow kiss to the inside of his newly healed thigh, right where blood had stained his skin only moments ago, and Zuko’s breath fractured so sharply it nearly ruined his attempt at dignity. His fingers curled against the stone bench before slipping into your hair. His touch was impossibly gentle, as though holding on to you was the only way to keep himself from falling apart.
“I’m very thorough.”
His eyes narrowed. “That is not what thorough means.”
“It is when I’m the healer.”
You looked up at him.
Moonlight painted silver across his bare chest, the hard lines of his abdomen, the old scars scattered across his skin, and the faint sheen of sweat gathering at his throat. His long hair hung loose and messy, a few strands clinging to the sharp line of his jaw. He looked like a man who had survived wars, assassination attempts, exile, palace politics, and half the world trying to break him.
And somehow, this was what undid him.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he breathed, voice rough and helpless.
Your smile softened for half a second. “Wrong,” you murmured playfully, kissing him again, slower this time. “I’m going to make you feel better.”
Zuko’s laugh came out low and wrecked, barely more than a breath.
Whatever answer he meant to give disappeared when you tugged the rest of his robe aside and freed him. He was already achingly hard, flushed dark and leaking at the tip. You dragged your tongue slowly from base to head, savoring the way his thigh muscle jumped under your free hand.
Zuko let out a shaky exhale, head tipping back against the bench. “Hah—Y/N,”
You answered by taking him into your mouth, slow and wet, sinking down until he bumped the back of your throat. A low, broken sound escaped him—something between a groan and a sigh, like the tension he’d been carrying all night was finally cracking.
You worked him with lazy, deliberate strokes of your mouth, one hand stroking what you couldn’t take while the other rested possessively on his uninjured thigh. Every time you hollowed your cheeks or swirled your tongue, his hips twitched, fighting the urge to thrust.
The muscles in his abdomen flexed visibly with every stroke of your tongue as his breathing grew more uneven. You could feel him throbbing, getting impossibly harder against your tongue.
When you looked up, his golden eyes were fixed on you—dark, overwhelmed, and completely unguarded. The sight made something warm bloom in your chest.
It only made you greedier. So you slowed down, cruelly deliberate now, learning the exact rhythm that made his breath catch and then denying him the moment he got too close. Every time you felt his thighs tense and his member start to throb harder against your tongue, you eased off, licking lazily along the underside or sucking softly on just the head until his hips twitched with frustration.
His fingers tightened in your hair, not forcing you, but clearly fighting the urge to. “Y/N…” His voice was hoarse, almost pleading. “Don’t—ah—don’t tease me like this.”
You pulled off with a wet pop, lips glistening, and looked up at him with a wicked little smile. “But you look so pretty when you’re desperate.”
Zuko’s eyes shut, his jaw clenching as if the words had struck somewhere embarrassingly deep.
You sank back down immediately, taking him to the back of your throat in one smooth motion. Zuko groaned, head falling back against the bench as his hips jerked. You could feel him getting dangerously close again—thick and pulsing on your tongue—so you pulled back once more, stroking him slowly with your hand.
He let out a wrecked sound, half curse, half whimper. “You’re cruel… but—fuck, hah—you’re so beautiful.”
You hummed around him in response, the vibration pulling another quiet curse from his lips. You took him deeper, faster, letting the wet sounds mix with his ragged breathing and the gentle ripple of water. One of your freezing fingers traced the sensitive skin just beneath his cock, the sharp temperature contrast making his whole body jerk.
The second time you pulled him back from the edge, he lost whatever pride had been keeping him silent.
“Please,” he rasped.
For once, he looked less like a ruler and more like a man entirely at his wife’s mercy.
You looked up at him with a wicked, affectionate smile, still stroking him fast and tight. “Cum for me, Zuzu.”
For a heartbeat, he tried not to.
You saw it in the sharp clench of his jaw, the way his fingers tightened in your hair without pulling, the way his breath caught and broke like he could still argue his way out of surrendering. Then his restraint snapped quietly, then all at once.
The Fire Lord came with a choked, broken groan, his hips jerking up uncontrollably as the first thick, hot spurt flooded your mouth. You moaned around his pulsing cock, swallowing greedily, but there was too much—thick ropes of cum kept shooting across your tongue, so much that it overflowed almost immediately. It spilled from the corners of your stretched lips, dripping messily down his throbbing shaft and over your fingers as you kept stroking him through it. The sheer amount of it made your thighs press together, heat pooling low in your belly at how desperately his body was giving in to you.
He shuddered hard beneath you, muscles taut and trembling, his long hair sticking to his sweat-damp neck and chest. His golden eyes were half-lidded, glazed with raw pleasure as he watched you take every drop like you were starving for him.
The koi pond steamed violently. A nearby fire lily bush glowed red-hot before slowly dimming.
When it finally subsided, Zuko was slumped against the bench with his chest heaving, your husband looked beautifully ruined. You pulled off slowly, licking your lips clean with a small, satisfied smile. A thin string of cum still connected your bottom lip to him before it broke.
“Good boy,” you teased softly.
Zuko stared down at you for a long moment, something raw and helpless in his expression.
“…You’re impossible,” he finally whispered, voice hoarse and wondering, as if he still couldn’t believe you were real.
You pressed one last soft kiss to his thigh and smiled.
“Isn’t this exactly what you wanted, my lord?”
His smirk deepened at your question.
Clearly, you had not realized how much danger that pretty little mouth of yours had put you in.
Zuko was still flushed, still catching his breath, still looking far too ruined for a man who had any right to recover so quickly. But his hands were steady when they reached for you, sliding beneath your arms and pulling you up into his lap before you could even think to escape.
You landed against him with a soft gasp, your skirts spilling messily over his thighs. The warmth of him pressed through the fabric, unmistakable and already returning, and suddenly your teasing smile did not feel quite as victorious as it had a moment ago.
“My wife always knows best, doesn’t she?” he murmured, his voice low against your mouth.
O6 | UPDATE: THE FIRE LADY IS FINE
By the end of the first month, the palace had adapted with the grim efficiency of a nation recovering from war. The maids carried water buckets as part of their standard duties, the guards learned which corridors to avoid based on heat patterns alone, and the council stopped scheduling meetings too close to breakfast, lunch, dinner, sparring sessions, diplomatic arguments, late-night kitchen raids, library research, moon garden strolls, or any moment where the Fire Lady happened to smile at her husband for longer than three seconds. The palace seamstresses quietly reinforced your gowns, the head chef hid the good towels, and the royal archivist posted a handwritten warning outside the study that simply read: NO OPEN FLAMES NEAR NAVAL DOCUMENTS, which everyone understood was not actually about candles.
Zuko pretended to be offended by all of this, but you knew better. For all his muttering about dignity and decorum, the Fire Lord was utterly hopeless. He had spent years learning how to contain himself, how to swallow rage, how to make his fire precise enough to serve a nation instead of destroy it. Yet somehow, all it took was your hand on his sleeve, your mouth near his ear, your laughter pressed against his throat, or apparently the simple act of healing a wound on his thigh, and the most powerful firebender in the world became a walking architectural threat.
The newest maid finally understood after one night, when she heard your bright, breathless laughter from behind the royal chamber doors, followed by Zuko’s low voice murmuring something far too soft to be anger. The sconces outside the hallway flared blue-white, the temperature spiked, and suddenly every vague warning from the senior maids made horrifying, embarrassing sense.
By dinner, her diary had only one update:
DEAR DIARY,
thankfully, the fire lady is fine.
the furniture, however, is not.
After that, she stopped asking questions and started carrying a water bucket like everyone else.
These days, the palace staff had been working very hard. If they were lucky, you had already set the fire down with your bending before anyone arrived. If they were not, they had to manually put out the flames before replacing another curtain, cushion, napkin, table runner, practice post, garden lantern, or emotionally unfortunate bread basket. Still, no matter how violently the sconces flared or how many unfortunate pieces of furniture fell victim to the Fire Lord’s complete lack of restraint around his wife, the flames never once touched you.
Even when his control slipped because of you, even when desire made the air shimmer and the palace lights burn brighter than they had any right to, Zuko’s fire always curved away from your skin. It burned around you, sparked above you, and curled through the air like devotion given shape, but it never hurt you. It would never hurt you. His fire had been raised in anger, sharpened by war, and forced for years to survive on pain, but with you, it had learned something gentler, something warmer, something sacred.
With you, his fire had learned love.
And love, no matter how brightly it burned, would always know how to keep you safe.
this is part of the sublimation ( my zuko fic ) universe! read more chapters
this oneshot took me like ~8 hours btw. i need everyone to clap because what the hell </3
anw i alr finished the atla la s2 n it was so good !! altho they skipped n reordered some parts, but it’s prolly bc of the budget... welp, i can’t wait for the movie to come out.
I kind of miss the impulsivity that certain spaces used to allow. oh you want a hair cut today? hairdresser in the corner can fit you in before her 2 o’clock. tattoo of a cobra… sure leg or arm? even concerts, back when you could go to the box office thirty mins before any show. not saying these things don’t exist at all, but everything feels booked five months in advance and 10x more expensive
i get why people don't believe in marriage as a social construct but legally it is the best and easiest way to say "this is who i trust to take care of me when i can't take care of myself" and i'm so glad gay people fought for that right bc when shit gets scary at least i know im in good hands
cw: cockwarming, penetrative sex, teasing, male whimpering, hair pulling, bicep biting, multiple creampies (two), pet names, not proofread.
ⓘ featuring Zuko cockwarming with his wife, for the first time.
Zuko could feel his eyes bulge out the moment you'd asked if he could stay seated inside you after his orgasm, "Cockwarming sounds like it'd be really intimate... I'd like to try it out if you're open."
He hated how tempted he was the moment you asked; his back was still actively smoking & effectively turning your bedroom into a sauna, for fuck's sake.
Not to mention his arms were still shaking, his lungs were failing to catch air as quickly as he'd like, and he could have sworn he'd reach another orgasm within seconds if your walls wouldn't stop greedily gripping his cock.
But fuck. You looked so desperate asking for him, so needy, and he loved making you feel good, so he slowly nodded.
Carefully, Zuko cupped your cheek. His rough thumb brushed over your cheek as he pressed his hips forward—successfully bottoming out once again—with a deep groan.
"Y-yes, my love. We can try that out—" he choked out, hips twitching as you fluttered around him. "—Ah! ...For how long?"
You brought your hand to press firmly against his lower back with a soft moan, thighs twitching around his hips.
"Hold on, let me think." Your free hand pressed against his chest, tracing one of his scars, attempting to refocus your thoughts on anything but the sweet pleasure growing from every point of contact with Zuko. "Uhm. Maybe just a few minutes to try it at first?"
"Fuck. Okay, yeah, that sounds good... really good." He whispered, lowering his face to press quick kisses to your jaw. "Just tell me when to pull out."
"Mm," you nodded, nails sinking into his back for a moment. "Mm-hmm. No problem." A small moan broke through your lips, gone just as fast as it came but very much noticed by your husband.
"Stop staring, you idiot," you groaned, covering Zuko's eyes teasingly. "It's embarrassing and weird."
"My wife is moaning from nothing but a stretch, and me staring is weird? I think it'd be weirder if I weren't mesmerized." Zuko breathlessly cooed, quickly pressing a kiss to your cheek.
"This isn't going how I wanted, Zu." Your fingers slid from his eyes to tangle in his hair, & tugging softly, a flush dusted your cheeks at the groan that escaped his lips.
"Well, baby, I'm doing what you asked," he whispered, pulling back to stare at you with soft eyes. "Just tell me what you really want, okay?"
"I thought you'd be begging to fuck me again by now—" You pulled him back down until he was hovering just above you, holding himself up carefully, "—but no. You're making me ask."
Zuko paused, a laugh escaping his lips, before pressing them against yours. "My love. You said you wanted to try cockwarming. Not a second round."
"Yeah, and cockwarming typically leads to a round two, Zuko." You hissed, pressing your thighs tightly against his hips, scratching your nails up to his shoulders.
"Oh no, Love is using my first name—I'm going to die." He teased, kissing you on the cheek. "Here, baby, we can go again."
He gasped softly as he drew his hips back, giving a testing thrust before setting a comfortable pace.
"Oh, my god." Your voice broke, crushing him against your chest with a sharp moan—Zuko's eyes widening once more as he flexed his arms against the mattress.
"My love, this already isn't going to last long; no need to speed the process up by being touchy like that," Zuko huffed, stiffening as you locked your ankles against his lower back. "Fuck."
Zuko took a deep breath, relishing the way each stroke of his hips left your nails greedily clawing at him, leaving a pleasant sting in their wake.
"You're so mean to me," you hissed, pushing sweaty strands of hair from his face to cradle his cheek and pull him down to kiss his lips.
"Mm-hmm," Zuko rasped, giving a particularly cruel thrust just to hear you moan. "I love you too."
You paused, glancing away from his gaze momentarily before leaning up and sucking his bottom lip between your teeth and nipping playfully.
Zuko groaned lowly, hips snapping against yours with more force—leaving you to gasp and let go of his lip between moans, his hands grasping your hips as he fucked into you deeply.
"Son of a bitch," he purred, fingers gripping tightly as white-hot pleasure tore through you both, Zuko leaving you with the second creampie of the night.
"Holy shit." You whimpered, thighs loosening around him as you unlocked your ankles, brushing through Zuko's hair slowly, trying to catch your breath.
"Baby, you were right. We need to do that more often." He sighed before effectively collapsing on top of you.
The heavy doors to your royal chambers slammed open. Zuko stumbled in, face flushed, golden eyes wild with feverish need. Sweat already glistened on his scarred chest.
"My wife.." he rasped, voice wrecked as he locked the door and pulled you into a crushing kiss. "They spiked the wine with something. I'm so fucking hard it hurts. I need you—please, I can't take it."
"Zu.." You barely had time to answer before he was tearing at your robes. His thick cock sprang free, dark red and throbbing painfully leaking pre steadily.
He pushed you onto the bed, spreading your thighs wide. "Please baby, don’t deny me this pleasure."
"O-okay." you whispered to Zuko, giving him permission to take whatever he wanted.
"Thank you." he whispers needly, for a few minutes he worked you open with his fingers, scissoring and curling them deep while sucking marks into your neck and breasts.
"Zuko—ahh—please.." you moaned, hips rolling. He barely started yet you already felt so overwhelmed. "I need more."
"Such a sweet girl, begging so sweetly." he groans, finally replaced his fingers with his cock, he pushed in slowly, inch by thick inch, groaning deeply at your tight heat.
"Gods....you feel so good," he breathed, bottoming out. He stayed buried for a moment, savoring it, then started fucking you with long, deep strokes—rolling his hips deliberately so you felt every ridge and vein dragging against your walls.
He kept that steady, devastating rhythm for what felt like forever, grinding against your clit with every thrust, kissing you messily and whispering how much he loved you. Your first orgasm came quickier than expected, judging the fact he'd been teasing you just moments ago, you were already on the brink. You cried out, clenching around him as your pussy gushed.
Zuko whimpered loudly and fucked you through it, hips never stopping. Only after your orgasm faded did he bury himself deep and cum for the first time, flooding your insides with thick ropes of hot seed.
But he didn't soften—fuck was it an aphrodisiac?
Zuko pulled out briefly, flipped you onto your stomach and slid back in from behind without warning He fucked you with slow, powerful thrusts, gripping your hips and pulling you back onto his cock again and again.
"Fuck—you're so full of my cum already," he panted, voice strained. "But I need more."
He kept going, pace gradually picking up until the wet slap of skin on skin echoed loudly. You came a second time, moaning into the sheets. Zuko followed right after, pressing deep as he pumped his second heavy load into your already cum-stuffed pussy.
Zuko whimpered, his voice cracking as he stayed buried inside you. He rolled you onto your back again and folded you into a tight mating press, knees pushed to your chest. "Fuck, I can't stop—it won't go down. I need to keep fucking you."
"Ah—Zu..too much—" you whined, tears of overwhelming pleasure streaming down your face as he used you.
He started thrusting again—desperate strokes that made your belly bulge slightly with every push. Seeing your belly bulging turned him on even further. His eyes darkened as he watched you, something suddenly primal awakening in him.
"You want me to put a baby in you?" he asked suddenly, eyes feral. "You want your husband to breed you full tonight?"
"Z-Zuko.." you moaned, still trying to form words.
But he was losing control. His thrusts grew faster, more erratic, while his voice turned whiny and needy. "Answer me," he begged, voice trembling as he pounded into your cum drenched pussy.
"You want me to knock you up? Want me to fill you until your womb can't take anymore?"
Your mind was already beginning to melt from the relentless deep fucking, his words turned you on way more, your pussy dripping around him. "Y-yes—ahhn—breed me baby..please."
That was all it took. Zuko let out a broken whine and started railing you harder, hips snapping with pure animal need.
"Yes—yes, I'm gonna put a baby in you," he panted, voice whiny and desperate. "Gonna fill this pretty pussy over and over until you're swollen with my child. You're gonna look so fucking good carrying my heir."
He kept fucking you fucked you in deep, punishing strokes mixed with grinding that rubbed your clit perfectly. Your third orgasm built slowly, then slammed into you. Your eyes rolled back, mouth falling open as you completely lost the ability to speak properly.
"F-fuuu—hah—Zuuu. too deep—!" you babbled incoherently, drooling as your pussy spasmed and squirted around his cock.
Zuko groaned at the feeling, tears of overwhelming pleasure in his eyes. "Fuck—you're squeezing me so tight. I-I can't—"
He slammed in to the hilt and came hard, pumping even more cum into your overflowing cunt. He kept fucking you through both your orgasms with sloppy, desperate thrusts.
"Need more—'nt stop," he whined pathetically, pressing his forehead to yours.
"Your pussy feels too good. I'm sorry baby.. "
He kept you folded and railed you for another long stretch, the wet squelching sounds absolutely obscene as his cum was fucked deeper into you with every thrust. Your fourth orgasm left you a twitching, babbling wreck.
"Guh—'m cumming again, nngh—daddy please!"
The word 'daddy' broke him. Zuko whimpered like he was in pain, hips stuttering as he came again, flooding you so full that cum squirted out around his cock with every thrust.
"Fuck—call me that again," he begged, still pounding into you. "You're gonna make me a daddy aren't you baby?"
You could barely respond, reduced to broken moans. "Mmm..yes, oh god please."
He switched positions again, pulling you on top but immediately fucking up into you frantically, gripping your hips and bouncing you on his cock while whimpering.
"Look at you, all fucked dumb on my cock," he panted, voice cracking with need. "Such a good wife taking all of me..let me breed you one more time, cum with me."
Your orgasm hit you like lightning for the millionth time. You screamed broken, wordless moans as your body convulsed. Zuko followed with a loud, desperate whine, pumping another thick load deep into your womb.
His thrusts finally slowed but still deep and grinding inside you—never stopping.
By the time the aphrodisiac finally began to fade, you were a cum soaked, blissed out mess, mind blank except for soft, incoherent whimpers.
Zuko finally softened and collapsed beside you, pulling you into his arms and kissing your sweaty forehead with trembling lips.
"Sorry baby..you're so good to me." he whispered hoarsely, still gently grinding his softening cock against your messy pussy. "Thank you for letting me breed you like that, my love."
summary: through your five years of residency at PTMC, you grew to hate Jack Abbot with all your might. Robby makes sure you come to terms with him, all of it having an unexpected turn as he sends you both to the medical conference in Washington.
warnings: 18+, undisclosed age gap, smut, unprotected sex (plan b mentioned), oral (f receiving), creampie, brief breeding kink, enemies to lovers, one bed trope, curse words, alcohol consumption
word count: 4.8k
“He clearly doesn’t like me, Michael.” You huffed, adjusting the stethoscope around your neck.
Michael Robinavitch was your mentor and also a best friend. You worked together for almost five years after you moved to Pittsburgh. And you were one of the few people who actually called him by his first name.
Robby looked through some papers on the chart, humming underneath his breath, his reading glasses hanging low.
“You are not listening.” You rolled your eyes, walking over to the nurse station, looking through a chart.
Dana glared up at you, shaking her head with a little smile.
“Arguing with Robby again?”
You straightened your back a little and huffed. “I would call it an exchange of opinions.”
Day and night shifts met for a quick briefing, Robby standing tall and serious. You were beside Mel, who looked anxious as always, stealing occasional looks at Langdon who were unusually smiley.
Then your eyes flicked to the opposite, to who dared to stand beside your partner in crime. Jack Abbot with his arrogant and cocky energy.
You scrunched your nose and he caught your stare, giving you a lopsided smile. He always enjoyed teasing you and you never held back.
“So, the thing is there’s this medical conference next week and I have to pick two of us who will represent the PTMC there.” Robby started, he wasn’t a fan of those events so you knew exactly he won’t be attending. You crossed your arms over your chest, curiosity took over your brain and you thought about who he should pick.
Frank raised his hand. “I’ll go. I think I’m pretty capable of doing so.”
Robby shook his head no. “No. I already made my choice.” And his gaze ended up on you. Oh no. Oh no. You knew where this was going.
Inhaling sharply, you were about to speak when he pointed at your figure adding: “You and Abbot.”
Jack raised his brows in surprise, but then his expression changed into an amused one, flashing a smirk at you. “Oh, funny.”
“You can’t be serious, Michael.” You growled, anger fuelling your body.
“That’s my final decision. I expect you two to behave like the professionals you are.” Robby dismissed the meeting, others already whispering and giggling.
You stomped on your feet, walking towards him all the while Jack still stood beside him.
“I won’t go.”
Robby scribbled something onto a paper, clipping it onto a chart not caring about your words.
“Come on. Don’t be silly.” Jack chuckled.
“I’m not talking to you.” You shot him a death glare and he just shook his head.
Michael lifted his gaze to look at you, being all so serious. You know it's just a bullshit facade.
“I’m giving you a chance to solve this— this something, which I don’t understand what is, between you two. Talk it out, spend some time together, I don’t know, but don’t come back from that conference with unresolved issues you have with yourselves.” And he was gone for a patient that just came through.
The way you were pissed off was unbelievably bad. Jack crossed his arms over his chest.
“Well, I won’t be easy on you, so you better get ready.”
“Go fuck yourself.” You scoffed, trying to find yourself a useful thing to do, you decided to go triage.
Arriving into the hotel you were staying in Washington was another kind of shock.
After neverending bickering through the flight, you were excited to get some peace in your hotel room.
Only to find out there was a mistake with your booking and you ended up in the same room as your rival.
One bed
Your worst nightmare, sharing the most intimate space with this unbelievable man.
Jack shook his head when he put his suitcase against the wall, taking another glance at the bed as if he was able to divide it into two.
“Robby, you piece of shit…” he muttered, but you heard it, shooting him an annoyed look.
“I will kill that man, with my bare HANDS.” You were livid, pacing at the window.
“Calm down, it’s okay. This bed is fucking huge, so there’s plenty space for us both.” He was amused.
“I don’t care what you think, Abbot. I’m getting my own room.” You were determined.
Casually, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants. “You heard the receptionist. There’s no other room, because they’re overbooked. Everybody is here for the medical conference. So be a professional and suck it up.”
You hated how he was right.
Jack was unbelievably gentle, standing tall beside you, chest puffed with pride when you spoke with other people representing the medical field. He took in how you were glowing while talking about things you loved.
When sitting at the table, you circled the leg of the champagne flute, watching it with an empty look.
“You don’t fancy alcohol?” His voice got you out of your mind.
“Not much.” You murmured, taking a glance at the speaker on the podium.
Jack was listening to everything that was said, massaging his thigh above the prosthesis, it was one of those days he felt utterly exhausted by that damn thing.
You didn’t care, trying to mind your own business, making some notes.
But Jack couldn’t help but steal occasional glances at your figure, the dress you were wearing was really enhancing you, as if you were born to wear that fabric. Clearing his throat, he shook his head to get back to his line of thinking.
You noticed he was staring, but said nothing, because you were already exhausted from dealing with him before, so there wasn’t a point in losing any more time with him. But you had to admit that he looked damn good in that suit, that white shirt under his blazer was really something, with those two buttons undone from the top revealing a little of his greyish chest hair. Swallowing hard, you felt your throat becoming dry, so this was the time you gulped the champagne.
Staying for the dinner and some evening chat with other doctors, one of them flirting with you, Jack decided he had enough and he excused himself to go back to the hotel room. His leg was bothering him to the limits the same as that damn young doctor trying to impress you with his successes through internships.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell?” You huffed when you arrived at the hotel room, a little tipsy, spotting a prosthetic leg casually resting against the wall near the bedside table.
Jack lifted his gaze lazily from the tv show he was watching, already tucked in the spacious bed.
“Scared by an innocent part of a leg? Get a grip.” He scoffed, but there was that sarcastic undertone you couldn’t unhear.
“Pff… I don’t have limbs scattered across my flat, so…” you rolled your eyes, trying to take off your heels, but it was already a struggle given to your tired state.
He noticed your fight with the tiny straps and he sat up on the bed. “Come here, you clumsy thing.”
And you did, landing on your ass on the edge of the bed and he gestured for you to lift your leg up so he could reach for it. Once his large hands wrapped around your ankle, your guts did a flip, the one you didn’t expect.
Jack was focused on the small fastening that was stuck. With the surgical precision he undid it and relieved your foot from the tight grip of the heel.
Then you lifted your other leg and he did the same. Now you had your legs on his lap and he ran his fingers over the curves of your insteps, pressing a little into the marks from the straps.
“You should consider stopping wearing those damn heels. Not good for your feet and back.” His voice soothed something in the depths of your soul, you started to melt under his skilled touch.
“Keep it to yourself, doctor Abbot.” You muttered and moved down to rest on your elbows, the dress hanging on your figure, your skin growing annoyed of the fabric.
Jack let out a soft chuckle, pressing his thumb to your sole causing you to groan in utter satisfaction.
“Fucking hell…” a soft mutter escaped your lips, your head falling back with a deep sigh.
“I know what I’m doing.”
The way he massaged your feet was astounding and embarrassingly great. You thought that you could never admit this to Robby. Ever.
“Sure you do…”
Jack hummed, tracing your ankle with his thumb. “I have an idea. Go take a shower and I’ll massage your feet even more, you can fall asleep comfortably. Hm?”
You turned your head back to stare at him in disbelief, awaiting something mischievous behind it but his face was soft and full of honesty.
“Okay.” You whispered softly, getting off the bed, already missing his warm touch. Collecting your toiletry bag and pajamas, you disappeared into the bathroom.
After a while you were out, fresh as a daisy, a tired expression written all over your face. A scent of your shampoo hit his nose and he cleared his throat.
Climbing into the bed under the sheets, you lay your head on the pillow, looking up at how he was seated against the headboard.
“Were you serious or you were making fun of me?”
Jack patted his lap again, your legs moving instinctively towards him and he moved a little closer to you for you to be more comfortable. You could smell him, feel the heat radiating from his body, but you didn’t feel nervous or scared. It brought you peace and comfort.
“Is this okay?” He asked for your permission in a low tone, giving you a concerned look.
You nodded, eyes closing as he massaged your feet gently.
For you it was a very intimate act. And with your sworn enemy?
“Thank you.” Your murmur was barely heard, but he caught it, smiling to himself, working on your toes.
“I would take care of you every day if you were mine.” Jack sighed into the silence of the room, while you were already out, deeply asleep.
The first sunrays peeked through the curtains of the hotel room, having you stirring in the bed. Something heavy was draped over your upper body, heat radiating at your back. A soft hum of approval escaped your mouth, but then you opened your eyes slowly, confused a little.
Jack had his arm draped over you, holding you close to his chest while his breath trickled your hair on your neck as he was still asleep.
Your mind yelled at you to jump out of the bed immediately, but you decided to shift a little, your stare taking in his skin.
Counting the freckles on his forearm, you actually felt good, safe even.
Until you felt another thing poking into your back, blush was creeping up your cheeks.
“Jack. Hey. We have to get up.” You tried to gently nudge him but all he did was wrap his arms around you tight, his face buried in the crook of your neck, exhaling heavily.
“A few more minutes, baby…” he hummed, grinding his hips into you.
Eyes wide you jumped out of the bed, heart thumping in your chest. “Abbot. Wake up, you dang idiot!” Your voice surely caused him to open his eyes lazily, looking at you and then he shifted to lay on his back.
“What’s the rush, huh?” His voice was hoarse and now you could see clearly the tent formed between his legs.
“Jesus Christ, you have no decency.” You huffed, grabbing your clothes to disappear into the bathroom.
Jack peeked under the cover to seek his morning wood only to grin. “That’s a sign my body is working well.”
Doing your skincare, you still felt the ache in your lower belly, the one that you desperately tried to keep at bay with your own skilled hands. There’s no way you would want to have sex with your enemy. No.
Maybe… a little. Yeah. No.
You shook your head and once being ready, you fled out of the bathroom, taking a glance at him with the corner of your eye.
Jack struggled to put on his leg, grunting and cursing under his breath.
“Need a hand?” You were all sarcastic but in your mind you pitied this man.
“Actually, yeah.” He ran a hand through his messy grey curls and you put down your phone, walking to him. Jack noticed you’re wearing a dress, again, but this time it was a nice summer one with flowers on it.
“You look good.” He hummed out and you just got onto your knees completely ignoring him as you focused on the task and that was clasping his leg on where it has to be.
“Tell me what to do?” You lifted your gaze and you caught his expression. Sucking in a breath he got out of the trance, showing you exactly what he needed help with.
You nodded, trying your best, your dainty fingers helping but that prosthetic bitch had its own mind.
“Shit…” you cursed and Jack propped himself back on his hands.
“Fuck. I hate this.”
You sat back on your heels, taking in his frustrated expression and your eyes wandered down south.
“Abbot, are you fucking kidding me?” You breathed out at the sight of his erection again.
His gaze fell down and he smirked a little.
“Well, you're on your knees…”
Your eyes went wide, mouth open agape when you wanted to insult him but your brain was numb. You could use some relief, a man hasn’t touched you in ages.
“You're an unbelievable asshole.”
“Really? Then why are you blushing? Why are you so flushed, princess?” He mocked you and you noticed his dick twitching in his shorts.
Acting more on instinct, you managed to rip your panties off you and throwing them at him with annoyed grunt. Catching them swiftly, he brought them to his nose, inhaling your sweet scent.
“Guess we’re gonna need to prolong our stay.” His voice was suddenly so deep.
Your hands grabbed his thighs, a longing sigh escaping your mouth. “How do we play this out?”
Jack was still mesmerised by the piece of fabric that used to hug your pussy, but he gave you a look full of lust.
“Robby wants us to get our frustrations out. So, use me. Ride me. Whatever you like. Because I know you’re secretly thinking about all the things you’d do to me.” His body leaned closer to where you kneeled, whispering against your lips as his fingers tipped your chin. You were like a moth caught by the flame, your lips parted slightly, trembling, you were needy as hell.
Not giving you time to speak, he captured your lips in some kinda soft kiss, like testing the waters if you’re gonna kiss him back. And you waited no more. Literally jumping onto him, you wrapped your legs around his hips, his one hand keeping you steady in place while the other was a little behind him to not fall on his back.
“Eager girl.” He muttered in between kisses, gasping when he felt you grinding against his groin.
“Can you shut up for a moment?” You breathed out heavily, arms around his neck, staring into his eyes.
“Never.”
That goddamn smirk that was driving you crazy.
“I hate you.” You gritted through your teeth, your hand traveling down between your bodies, into his shorts to finally take a hold of his girth. And holy shit, girl, your hand suddenly felt very small.
Jack could see it in your eyes, the surprise and warmth of your arousal when you found out how blessed he actually was.
“So, what are we saying?” His hand casually fell down to the curve of your ass, underneath the soft fabric of your dress.
“I’m not gonna praise your cock.” You huffed, palming him, trying not to salivate at how much you wanted to have your mouth stuffed with him. But you won’t give him that satisfaction. Not yet.
Being so focused on that, you almost didn’t notice his hand on your ass moving towards your pussy, his fingers smearing in your wetness.
“Oh, ohhh…” you jolted forward into his chest, whining in process.
“Jesus, love, I think we both need me to be inside you soon as possible, hm?” Jack was starting to get frustrated, expecting you to be more denying as usual but you nodded fast and shifted your hips to navigate his tip to your aching folds. All that while you were holding his gaze, you were shaking at the anticipation and he helped you with both his hands to guide you down.
Once his cock started to stretch through your velvet walls, your eyes rolled back into your skull, mouth letting out a loud gasp, your consciousness faltering slowly.
“Easy, baby, easy… fuck, you’re so tight.” He got you, slowly getting you lower and lower on his length, biting his lip to hold back the pathetic moan at how you clenched around him heavenly.
After a while, you were sitting fully on him, his shaft being swallowed whole by your hungry pussy and you held onto him tight, like you didn’t want to fall off. You didn’t even have a single thought to talk.
“So this is what it gets for you to finally be quiet, huh?” His arm holding you close on his lap, while his other hand reached out to brush a strand of your hair from your face to look at you, to note how you were out of your mind, so pliant and soft.
Then it struck him that you were still wearing that dress and he pushed the straps down your shoulders to reveal your breasts. Licking his lips, he then took your right nipple into his mouth, giving it a proper care, sucking it as if there was no tomorrow.
“J-Jack…” you whimpered, losing your mind through being full by him.
Trailing his way up your neck to your ear, he chuckled smugly. “Come on, baby girl, ride me.”
Lifting your hips, you slammed back, over and over, his hands gripping your hips to help you with your moves.
Face flushed, eyes rolled back, you couldn’t breathe from how much you loved the moment. He was absolutely perfect for you, matching your desire, holding you exactly how you expected from a man.
Sweat formed on your forehead, hair sticking to it, you were riding this man with all your might. And he was there, for you, watching you, without any biting remark, he was enjoying himself too.
Suddenly he stopped you, halting you fully onto his cock. You inhaled sharply, mind dizzy from the lack of oxygen, but you noticed his trembling lower lip, his features tight.
“Huh?”
“I’m gonna come, sweetheart, and–” you interrupted him.
“Don’t care. Gonna take a plan b. Just fucking fill me, Abbot.” ah, there it was, the fire in your eyes was back.
Something dark flashed across his gaze and he nodded. Quickly, he moved you on the bed, flat on stomach, and he did his best to climb on you, slapping your ass gently.
Settling between your ass cheeks, he rubbed his dick through your folds, only to fill you again. It was really hard for him to keep his balance, so he leaned forwards onto his hands.
Your hands gripped the sheets, drooling into the fabric, muffling your moans as he pounded into your relentlessly.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, oh baby, oh…” he whimpered, it was like music to your ears and finally you felt his dick twitching with release, his thick cum coating your inner walls.
Breathing heavily, you buried your face into the mattress when Jack collapsed onto your back, peppering your bare shoulder in kisses.
“So good for me…” whispering, it gave you shivers.
“Fuck you…” you mumbled and he chuckled.
Jack carefully slid out of you, body still thrumming with post orgasmic flow, and his strong hand flipped you onto your back.
Gasping in surprise, you stared at him when he moved between your legs, laying on his stomach, one of his hands settled on your hip and the other cupped your ruined pussy. He was mesmerised by the way his precious frosting dripped out of you. Carefully, he scooped a little by his fingers, only to push it back into you, causing you to whine in overstimulation.
“Shhh… I almost forgot about you, how wrong of me…” he darted out his tongue and licked a long stripe to your clit, all the while his fingers were curling in your clenching cunt.
“Jack… please—“ you moaned, face frowned and eyes full of tears.
“What is it, baby?” He held you in place, noticing how your hips tried to escape from him even though you ached to come.
“T-too much—“ you gasped when he latched onto your clit with his lips, suckling sounds filling the room and your eyes went wide.
“Fuck— gonna kill you—“ it was all you had to say when your hands flew to his hair, to tug it rough, making him grunt into your core.
“Of course.” His voice vibrated your folds to the point you were going crazy, your pussy making all those lewd sounds of arousal.
Then he let go of you, blowing a little air onto your petal, chuckling at your squirming figure. Pulling out his fingers, having them coated with a mix of your juices and his cum, he propped himself onto his hand to bring them to your lips.
You shook your head no, brows furrowing in annoyance.
“Open your mouth. I want you to taste us.” His voice was commanding and you let out a shuddered breath. You were a mess, you wanted to come already, to be over with it, but you had to play his game.
Holding his gaze, you obeyed, parting your lips and he waited no more, pushing his fingers onto your tongue. Inhaling sharply, your tongue swirled eagerly, moaning quietly at how intoxicating taste it was.
Jack grinned victoriously, getting back to your painfully edged cunt, delving his fingers back into your depths.
“Look at you, taking me so well, who would have thought that you’re such a good girl. So fucking good. Mhm… come on… give it to me, all you have is mine, princess…”
The way he talked, you couldn’t take it, your body screaming in utmost pleasure and pain from the overwhelming sensations.
“You’d be so hot being round and soft with my baby. You were made to be filled by me…” he continued and you were bewildered by this and you shot him a shocked glare.
“Stop— don’t say— holy— Jack!”
But it was all you needed to actually reach your highest of the high, coming around his fingers, sucking him tight with your velvet walls.
Jack laughed softly, feeling so proud that his little talk made you come hard.
Giving your pussy a soft tap, he moved to lay beside you, enjoying your panting breaths, grinning how ruined you looked, sweaty and done.
Fingers grazed their way between your breasts to your neck, ending up on your jaw.
“You’re beautiful like this.”
Turning your head to look at him, you let out a sigh.
“Don’t start with this…”
“I’m just saying what’s true.” His features softened while caressing your cheek.
You leaned into his touch, closing your eyes for a moment. You wanted to savour every possible second of it.
“Robby can’t know about this.” You shot your eyes open with an amused expression.
Jack was smug, running his hand through the strands of your damp hair.
“He’s gonna be so nosy. Prepare for it.”
A soft laugh slipped past your lips, you were staring into the ceiling.
“Thank you.”
He cocked his brow. “For what?”
“Good fuck?” You looked at him again.
“Anytime.” He shrugged and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, reaching for his leg. This time he put it on the right way.
“Motherfucker.” He cursed under his breath and then he turned to see you over his shoulder.
“You have to get yourself cleaned up. I can help.” He offered you his hand and you took it without any hesitation. Still having your dress scrunched up around your waist you took it off and walked to the bathroom with him.
Jack grabbed a towel to clean himself quickly, not bothering about anything else and then he gestured for you to step under the spray of hot water.
While you were cleaning your skin he watched you intently, leaning against the vanity counter until he sat down on the closed lid of the toilet.
After you stepped out, wrapped into a fluffy towel, you let out a sigh of relief. His hand suddenly reached out for yours, bringing you to stand between his open legs.
“I don’t want this to be a one time thing. I’m not a man like this.” His thumb brushed over your knuckles.
That took you aback. “I… Jack…”
“Sorry, I… I just want you to know that I didn’t hate you. I don’t hate you. You captivated me from the moment you entered that damn hospital in Pittsburgh. You and your attitude just didn’t give me much choice.” He chuckled and his words tugged on your chest.
You placed a hand on his shoulder and he lifted his gaze to meet your eyes.
“I was so irritated by your cocky behaviour, I knew men like you. But… it appears that I didn’t know you at all.” Your hand moved to his cheek, cupping it.
A shaky breath went through his mouth. “You’re so insufferable, you can’t imagine.”
Rolling your eyes, you squeezed his hand instinctively. “Oh believe me. I can.”
“So, I suggest we come back and take it easy. No rush. We have to be careful around others on our shifts. What do you think?” Jack stood up, flinching a little, shifting his leg, but still holding your hand.
“Sounds good to me.” You nodded with a smile, while he leaned forward to press a kiss against your forehead.
“Let’s get you that morning after pill.”
A day shift was in full swing when about three in the afternoon Jack clocked in and his eyes were searching for you through the space.
You were on a case with Robby, finished with the patient to be sent to the OR.
Taking off your bloodied gloves, you huffed at something Robby was talking about behind you.
“Yeah, clearly I’m not in the best shape, okay?”
Robby noticed Jack standing at the computer at the nurse station, already watching you both. “Well, maybe you should think about switching for the night since you warmed up with our daddy one leg.” The last three words he whispered near you to tease you and you smacked his arm.
“Fuck you, Michael.”
“Ah, so, I’m not wrong with my assumption, huh?” He followed after you, when you hurried towards the charts.
“What’s the hush?” Jack smirked, taking a slow step forward Robby, who was eyeing him with amusement.
“Michael here just called you the daddy one leg.” You wiggled your brows in amusement, sipping coffee from your cup.
Jack feigned a little gasp, placing a hand on his chest. “You just hurt me, a war veteran, an amputee, Robby.”
Robby just scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief, a wide grin spread across his face. “I’m just trying to find what’s behind this little alliance you two made all of sudden. What the fuck happened at that conference, hm?”
Both you and Jack met with your gazes, but he decided to speak. “Well, you said we have to discuss the shit between us, and we sorted it out, case closed. What’s the matter with that?”
“That you both almost bit your head off and all of sudden you’re cooperating without a fuss. It’s weirdly hard to believe that you just discussed it out.” Robby bounced on his feet, irritation evident from his voice as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his scrubs.
“Get out of your head, Michael. You’re spending too much time there.” You chuckled at your own joke, Jack trying so hard to not laugh.
Later that day, when you were about to clock out of your shift, you stood beside Dana, who was scribbling something down, staring through her readers. Robby was discussing a case with Ellis and Shen who arrived just in time to relieve the day’s, while Jack stood close to them, somehow watching you again.
“So, what’s he like in bed, huh?” Dana nudged your arm, looking in the direction where Jack stood.
You bit the inside of your cheek with a little sigh. “Unbelievable, Dana. Fucking unbelievable…”
summary: reader and jack are three months into talking, and they're spending each waking moment with one another. summer has also fallen over pittsburgh and reader desperately wants to decorate her home according to the season. jack tells her to wait for him... but reader has different plans. plans that end in her going to the pitt.
warnings: broken bones. medical inaccuracies (i spent so long reading journals and watching videos on broken bones). i am no doctor -- far from -- so please don't judge. not edited. pure fluff. sorry bbs.
wc: 6.2k
a/n: this can be read by itself, or as a part 3 to roadblock. part 2 here . seashell divider by @ // bbyg4rlhelps
Jack trails behind you through the flea market like a duckling: waddling with arms full of bags he can barely keep balanced. You’ve asked him more than once if he’s okay or ready to leave, but each time he just shakes his head and urges you to keep browsing.
You weren’t supposed to be here for so long. Your only mission was to find a few summer decorations for your house, which you completed less than an hour into your outing. But right as you were heading back to the entrance, you came across a stand with the cutest clothing. Then, right after that stand, you came across another that held a million decorations you deemed perfect for Jack’s apartment.
Every time you left a stand and affirmed that you were done, you’d come across another person selling random things you don’t need, but desperately want.
This extended your trip by three hours.
You try to calculate how long you spent at each place while nursing a hot dog and an overpriced matcha lemonade. Jack sits beneath you, one hand gripping your waist while the other holds onto the bags littering your occupied bench.
“I’m sorry we spent so long here,” you tell him as you take one last bite of the hot dog. “It’s hot, and you have a shift later today.”
He shrugs. “I enjoy spending time with you.”
“You also love spending your money on me while you’re with me,” you laugh.
“That too.”
“I don’t need your money. I’m well off with my books,” you murmur, then push your hot dog and matcha lemonade closer to his mouth. “Here, open. I don’t want it anymore.”
Jack takes a bite and sips on the drink that’s actively being watered down by melting ice cubes. He scrunches his nose in slight disgust but doesn’t voice his disapproval of the matcha. “I don’t mind spending my money on you, but I can stop if it annoys you in any way. I’ll stick to paying for dates, the occasional gifts, and fridge re-stocks.”
You press a kiss to the side of his sweaty head with a smile. “That sounds good. Maybe one day I can spoil you if you let me.”
“That’ll be a long time from now. I feel quite spoiled with you making me tea with a side of deep tissue massages after long shifts.”
You give Jack another hard kiss on his temple and dig your fingers into his constantly stiff shoulder. “Maybe I can give you another massage before your shift.”
Jack squeezes your hip and releases a breathy chuckle – one that screams mischievous. “Oh, please and thank you. But I have one question.”
“Shoot.”
“What kind of massage, exactly? Is it PG or do I have to shut the blinds?”
The massage you gave Jack included closing the windows and blinds and looking into how to soundproof your entire house. After a few searches, you realized it would be too much work for your dad or Jack, so you decided to bake goodies for your neighbors to make up for the loud moaning.
The massage you gave him also threatened to make him late for his shift.
While you wrapped up his lunch as quickly as possible, you began talking about the decorations you bought a few hours ago that had yet to be taken out of their bags.
“I might clean them up and start putting them where they go while you’re away.”
“No way,” Jack protested with a headshake so fast and intense that you questioned if his neck was alright. “You almost hurt yourself while you were taking down the spring decorations the other day. Your chairs of choice are terrible, and I’m not letting you put things up on them while I’m not here.”
“I will be okay. I’ve stood on them multiple times.”
“I don’t care, they’re unsafe, and I need to fix them up if you plan on doing anything but sit on them,” he grumbled.
“Don’t be annoyed,” you told him with an authoritative glance.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said while handing you a juice and water bottle from the fridge, his face painted with an expression that typically belongs to puppies after being yelled at.
You shoved everything into his lunch box and zipped it up. You nudged it into his chest and let go once Jack clung onto the black strap. “I won’t get hurt … because I won’t be putting anything up.”
He nodded and gave you a quick kiss on your recently red and swollen lips. “See you tomorrow morning.”
You walked him to the door and waved goodbye as he slid into his car and backed out of your driveway. He was looking at you through his windshield like he knew you’d be up to something: face shriveling up from the nasty frown on his face.
He was probably right. Well, he is right, because now you’re holding onto the wall while standing on the old chair Jack told you not to use.
You have a pushpin pressed between your lips and a beaded curtain with dozens of seashells on it in your hand. You’re trying to pin the rest to the top of your back door – so that whenever you walk out, they make a beautiful clashing noise, almost like a windchime – but you can’t reach the edge of the door. You don’t want to get down, move the chair, then get back up, all while steadily holding the curtain, so you stand on your tiptoes and stretch yourself as much as you can.
You grunt as you take the pin from your mouth and hold it up to the edge. You press it against the wall, and just as you feel it sink into the drywall, the chair beneath you creaks and shakes.
You grip onto the door frame and the curtain, but they’re both unreliable.
The chair somehow falls apart, and you slip. You reach out your hands to break your fall so you don’t hit your head. You don’t hit your head… but you do immediately feel a sharp pain shoot up your left arm.
You sit up against the back door and gasp as the pain intensifies. You look down at your wrist and suck in another gasp that tries to form into a scream. It’s red, swollen, and dented. At least that’s what it looks like.
You don’t really know what to do besides cry and hold your wrist against your chest, which is what you do for the next minute before you realize you need to call for help.
When you get enough courage to stand, you wobble over to the kitchen counter and pick up your phone. You dial Jack’s number and stare into an empty spot on the floor. You think about sitting down, but you’ve now formed trust issues with any and every chair in your house.
Jack answers after a few rings, and you immediately start crying.
“Whoa. Whoa, baby, what’s going on?” Jack asks, panic filling every syllable.
“I fucked up. I put up the decorations even though you told me to wait, and now I think my wrist is broken! It looks so weird, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to call the ambulance, but I also can’t drive to the hospital with one hand.”
Jack sighs, but he isn’t annoyed; he’s painfully worried. “Why do you think it’s broken?”
“It looks weird, I don’t know!” you exclaim, which you quickly feel bad for. You don’t mean to yell at Jack, but you’ve never experienced this level of pain before, and you don’t know how to hide it. “Sorry. I’m not mad, it just hurts. It’s already swelling and bruising, and there’s a big bump on my wrist. And it hurts, I don’t know if that’s been mentioned yet.”
“It’s okay, I understand. It sounds like it might be fractured,” he sighs, and you can hear the movement of his thumbs digging into his eyes. You hear him shuffling around the department, followed by ‘hmmms’ and a few ‘okay’s.’ Then he adds, “Stay where you are. I’m coming to pick you up. I’ll be there in ten.”
“Please be safe,” you cry.
“I will, baby, just hang tight.”
You head to the front of your house and lean on the wall. “I’m sorry,” you whisper as your eyes land on the photobooth strip of you and Jack next to your key rack. “I should have listened to you, but I thought I would be okay. You have every right to be upset and angry with me.”
“I’m not mad at all. I’m a bit upset that I couldn’t watch and help you decorate your house, but I’m not angry at you. Accidents happen all the time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m one-thousand percent sure,” he replies, voice soft and tender. “Get an ice pack and hold it against your wrist. Stabilize it as best as you can, okay?”
“Okay,” you groan.
“Eight minutes away. I’ll be right there.”
The hospital is cold and feels disgusting, yet extremely clean. It’s also cool, but not cool enough, which slightly bothers you because the Pittsburgh summer heat is beginning to dig its claw into everyone and everything. It also makes you realize why people would much rather go to Presbyterian instead, but you wouldn’t dare say that to Jack, even if he might agree.
Your wrist hurts way less, all thanks to whatever pain medicine Jack hooked you up to when you first entered the hospital. You’re thankful for it, even if it feels like too much, because now you can hold a steady conversation with Jack and his kind associate without performing breathing exercises.
“Why won’t you write a queer romance next?” asks Doctor Santos, who noticed you when Jack dramatically brought you in. She immediately assigned herself to your case, asked about your books, and then questioned you about your deformed wrist.
“I want to,” you say with a yawn. You’re exhausted from crying and the medicine in your bloodstream, and desperately want to go home. That might not happen for a while, though, considering you didn’t bring a car here and Jack works until the early morning. “I’ll have to think about the storyline, the plot, scenery, all of that before I decide on doing it. You are always more than welcome to pitch a few ideas. It might not get written for a year or two, though.”
She shrugs. “I am totally okay with that. I have countless lesbian horror stories that could be turned into novels.”
“They have to have a happy ending, though. I can’t write a queer book with a sad ending. I’d get thrown into jail,” you say with a laugh.
“True. You’d be added to the queer ban list on TikTok,” she replies flatly, then laughs from what you think is also exhaustion. She told you a few minutes ago that she was covering for someone on the night shift and hasn’t been able to properly take a break since she left her house that morning.
You laugh some more, too, and it nearly turns into a manic fit of community laughter, but Jack interrupts by knocking on the door. He walks in and smiles, shining his crow’s feet, and logs into the computer next to your hospital bed.
“You doing okay? How’s the pain?” he asks you. You nod, but don’t say anything to answer his question. “Good. If you need anything else, let me know, alright?”
You nod again, and he starts showing you your X-rays. You aren’t really paying attention because all you can think about is how professional he’s being. It sends a shock through your chest, and you mindlessly grab your chest.
Jack stops the confusing explanation about your fractured wrist to raise an eyebrow and ask, “Are you okay?”
“Sorry, it’s nothing. Heartburn, probably,” you lie.
He continues talking about a Colles’ fracture, and how you won’t need surgery because it’s in a good position, and how Doctor Santos will be injecting something in you and something else. You still aren’t paying complete attention because you keep trying to find a crack in his facade.
As he completes the explanation and asks you something – if you need water, which you shake your head at – you start asking yourself questions you know shouldn’t be ricocheting off the grooves of your brain. You start by wondering if he treats every person he cares about this way: professionally and lukewarm. This then has you wondering if he even cares about you. Is it too early for him to care about you? That feels wrong to think, though, because an hour ago, he rushed to your house and lifted you into his car bridal style, even though you could walk on your own.
You’ve been speaking for roughly three months, yet haven’t witnessed this side of him before. Was there something wrong, or were you simply overthinking?
“You’re doing that thing again.”
You violently blink and shake yourself out of the haze you were in. You look up at Jack, who’s stolen Santos’ seat. She’s no longer here, but you can still smell her perfume.
“What?” you ask.
“When you think so hard that everyone nearby can feel the brain strain.”
“Yeah, sorry. I was thinking again.”
Jack scoots the chair further up the bed until you can see every individual gray hair lining his jaw. He places his hand on your face and smooths over the stressed frown on your lips. His other hand rests on the bed railing, where he lowers his chin. The face he presents to you is the Jack you’re familiar with: soft, gentle, and quiet, revealing every wrinkle on his face and what story each one has behind it. It’s unlike the stern and pulled-back face he put on once you’d been drugged into mild relaxation.
You prefer this version, even though the other one illustrates who Jack is when you’re not around, a sight you’ve been wanting to witness since you began talking to him.
“Tell me what you’re thinking about. I want to know what’s stressing you out.”
“You were so professional,” you tell him. “I’ve never seen you like this, so it sort of freaked me out.”
Jack glosses over your face with a look of concern that you’re trying to understand. You follow his eyes and start wondering what he thinks of the peeling sunburn coating your nose, and the few pimples dotting your chin – both of which you’re ashamed of, because you’re battling hormonal acne in your twenties, and you forgot to apply sunscreen to the center of your face.
You’re about to cover your face with your hand, but the dull ache that had previously gone dormant shoots through your arm. You hiss and shut your eyes so tight that you begin to see stars.
Jack kneads the skin surrounding your left eye and shushes you, the kind you whisper out when a baby has started fussing. “Don’t raise your hand. It’s broken, remember?” he says, a breath following that is trying to morph into a laugh.
You roll your eyes. “I know. I actually would like to know when it’s getting fixed so I can go home.”
“Soon,” is all he says, and then he shifts his body so that he can lean over the railing and kiss your forehead. He settles back into his seat once the throbbing in your wrist isn’t being followed by a throbbing in your head, and continues what he was saying a few seconds ago. “I’ve never introduced a girl to my coworkers. I haven’t even spoken to a woman romantically since my wife passed away… So, this is all new to me, and I am trying to figure out how to go about it.”
You crack a sympathetic smile and lift your good hand to his cheek. You squeeze his chin and pull him closer to you with a whimpering noise leaking out of your throat. “I’m sorry, Jack. This must be stressful for you, especially since people keep passing by and breaking their necks to look at us – or me, really,” you tell him. “I could have gone to Presby, though, and you could have introduced me to your coworkers in your own chosen way.”
“I didn’t want you to go to Presby,” he murmurs against your lips.
“Okay,” you whisper back.
You continue pecking his lips – even though it might be cheesy and nearly nauseating for anyone who passes by – while you think about bringing up the topic of his deceased wife. You haven’t gone into great detail about her passing, just mentions of her over dinner and movie nights when no one is paying attention to the screen. You’ve seen pictures of her, which stunned you beyond belief. You also know that she passed away from cancer. But you don’t know about their relationship dynamics or what life was like before she passed away. You also have no idea about what Jack’s healing journey looked like, only that he actively goes to therapy and is a big believer in hobbies, even if they are questionable.
Midway into your kissing session that is dipping its feet into makeout territory, you settle on asking Jack about his marriage another day. A day when he doesn’t have to perform a closed reduction on the fractured wrist of a girl he’s been seeing for three months.
“You’re brave,” you whisper into his mouth.
Jack pulls back and looks down at you with a puzzled expression for a fraction of a second. It slowly settles into ease as he remembers exactly why he should be called such a word. “Thank you, baby girl,” he replies in your tone and volume, and goes to kiss you again.
Then the door opens, and Doctor Santos waltzes in with a tray of supplies and disgust seeping out of her pores. “Wow, hetero content during Pride Month. Save it for October, will you?”
“October?” Jack mumbles.
“Yeah, when all the scary stuff happens.”
You cackle and pat Jack’s shoulder, pushing him away while trying to soothe the annoyance in his tone. “You’re funny. I like you, you should come over sometime.”
“Can I pitch all of my queer novel ideas and raid your library?”
“Sure!” you squeal.
“Deal,” she replies.
Santos rolls both the tray and stool over to your bedside, and Jack pushes himself up to perform his attending duties. “Abbot has told you this already, but I’ll remind you. Your wrist is fractured, but it’s actually in a good position where we can fix it without surgery. What we’ll do is called a closed reduction, which means I’ll carefully guide the bone back into place without any incisions.”
You scrunch your nose and start shaking your head – nonverbally telling everyone ‘fuck no,’ even though you probably have no other option. “That’s gonna hurt,” you say, and look up at Jack, who has started dropping the serious doctor mask inch by inch. “I don’t want it to hurt more than it already does. Just knock me out.”
Santos laughs and lifts a small vial and a syringe. “It would hurt like a bitch if you weren’t medicated, but I’m not that evil. We’ll numb your wrist so you’ll only feel some pressure, and I’ll – or your freak buddy Abbot here – will make sure you’re as comfortable as possible while we fix you up. Once everything is aligned, we’ll put you in a splint to give the swelling time to calm down, and then in a few days, we’ll switch you to a cast, which you’ll wear for about four to six weeks.”
“Do I get to pick the color?”
“Sure, why the hell not?” Santos answers.
You smile like a little kid, even if the anxiety is starting to build up in your chest and you try to block your airways. “Okay, cool. Do you guys have a wide variety, or is it all neon?”
She looks over at Jack, and they both let out some kind of evil chuckle. “This is the Pitt, may I remind you. You have black, white, and the ugliest colors to grace the planet.”
“I’ll take those couple of days to think, then.”
Santos presses her lips into a thin line and nods. “You do that. So! Are we ready to start?”
You shut your eyes and throw your head back into the hard hospital pillow. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Leaving the Pitt feels like you’ve gone ultra-famous overnight and are grasping the reason why as people bombard you with questions.
“You wrote that sexy book a couple of years ago,” a nurse, Princess, tells you while Jack is finishing up his handoffs.
“I did,” you tell her. “Did you read it?”
“No, but I hear it’s really good. I keep telling myself to read it, but I always wait for books like that to turn into movies.”
Heat crawls up your neck, and you soothe it with your right hand. “I am flattered that you think it would be turned into a movie.”
She shrugs. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
You want to tell her it’s because your sex scenes have been mediocre until Jack Abbot took your virginity a few months ago. You’d been writing based on fantasies and incredibly dirty novels you didn’t dare take out of your house. However, now that Jack has twisted your body into every position imaginable, you’re nearly done writing your novel, and could write sex scenes until you retire. Telling Princess this would probably kill her, because, although Jack is not exactly her boss, he’s close enough. No one would want to learn this backstory about someone at work who occasionally tells them what to do.
You rummage for an answer in your brain. “My other books are way better,” you tell her, opting for a self-promotional response. Your editor would be proud of you. “I’d want them to turn any other book into a movie before that one.”
“Are you talking down on your writing skills?” Jack asks, his hand snaking around your back and settling over your hip.
“Not really,” you reply as Princess says ‘Yes.’
Jack looks at Princess, who shrugs and leaves to tend to whatever task she’s been assigned to do this early in the morning. “What were you guys talking about?” he asks, now looking at you with intrigue.
“She basically said my first porn novel should be turned into a movie. I told her no, but I didn’t exactly tell her why.”
“Is it because you were a virgin when you wrote it or something?” Santos – who you were sure had already gone home – speaks up. She slides in beside you with her backpack thrown over her shoulder and her scrub top itching to push the zippers apart.
You and Jack break your necks looking at her. You don’t change any emotion littering your face, but your insides are surely on fire.
“Don’t ask that,” he scolds, and then looks at you with a similar stern look. “And don’t answer that.”
“Is it noticeable?” you ask her, ignoring Jack.
She hums for a long thirty seconds. “Not exactly. They’re good, trust me. I can tell your editor wasn’t a virgin when you sent it in. But I knew something deep down in my heart.”
“Okay, well I’m not one anymore, so trust me when I say my upcoming novel will be fucking amazing.”
She laughs and pats your shoulder. “I am putting all of my trust in you. If you fail me, you won’t be seeing any of my lesbian novel ideas.”
Jack scoffs from your right and starts digging his fingertips into your hip. “Alright, Doctor Santos, I think it’s time for you to go home. You were getting a bit delirious those last few hours.”
“Aye aye, captain,” she says. She turns to you before she scurries out of the hub, and shines a sympathetic smile that she hasn’t shown you at all these past ten hours. “Ask Abbot for my number. My brain is too fried to pull out my phone. We can plan something when your wrist is better.”
You nod. “Bye, Santos,” you say, and wave goodbye with your good hand.
She quickly escapes, and Jack pulls you out of the Pitt before anyone else strikes up a conversation with you. Before Princess, there was Javadi, who was also a big fan of your books, if not the biggest fan you’ve come across. And before Javadi, there was Doctor Robby, who was asking who you were and what your intentions with Jack were, as if he were his father. Thankfully, Jack told him to back off, and settled on discussing your relationship over dinner sometime soon.
When you get to his car, Jack opens the door for you and hovers while you settle into your seat. You go to buckle yourself in, but Jack grabs the seatbelt and does it for you. Then he caresses your face with his soft doctor hands.
“You did good today, you know?”
“You’re just saying that because you feel bad for me. I was a baby when you guys did that reduction thing.”
“This is your first broken bone, and you didn’t scream at all while you were there. That’s a big deal, and I’m proud of you for remaining as calm as possible.”
“Even if I did cry a little?” you ask, crinkling your nose at the reminder of the fat, hot tears rolling down your face when they pulled and twisted your broken wrist.
Jack brushes under your eyes as if the waterworks have come back. “Even if you did cry,” he whispers, and kisses your peeling nose. “Now c’mon. Let’s get you home and settled in bed.”
You kiss him before he steps back and shifts you around in your seat for optimum comfort. Then he walks over to his side, opens his door, plops into his seat, and turns the car on. You try to look away, at the sun that is already spraying its heat onto the city, or at the shops that are flipping their ‘closed’ signs over to start business for the day. But you see this more than once a week when you meet Jack for breakfast at an old restaurant that smells of peppermint and old mop water. Instead, you look at Jack and his lonely hand resting on the center console.
You were told to limit movement with your left hand, but you desperately want to hold his hand. You lift it just a little bit while Jack turns right, but you grunt in mild discomfort.
“Why are you moving around?”
“I want to hold your hand,” you mutter.
“Don’t,” he replies as he makes another turn. “As much as it kills me to not be able to while driving, you’re not supposed to move it around so much.”
“How am I supposed to do it then? Am I supposed to reach over with my right hand? Or what about washing my hands – oh wait! Hand, because I can’t even use the other one. How am I supposed to put up my decorations for the summer? Or swim? It’s hot, and you have a pool I was planning on using!”
Jack is chuckling beside you, and you want to cry. You could barely sleep in the hospital because of how bright it was, even when they dimmed the lights in your room. Even though it was nighttime and the night shift was usually less noisy, you could hear every cry, every curious student doctor asking questions in a high-pitched tone, every mother yelping for their child who shoved Legos into their ear before bed because they wanted to play a little longer. You only got thirty minutes of sleep, and all you want to do is hold Jack’s hand to soothe your anxious heart. But he’s laughing at you and all of the problems you’ll be facing for the next couple of weeks.
“Don’t laugh!” you whine. “How am I supposed to write? This is awful. I’ll go broke if I can’t finish this novel.”
Jack’s answer to your complaining is to set his hand on your thigh and press into your skin as if imaginary keys are dotting them. “Baby, you will not go broke. Trust me. Your bank account is doing more than okay and your editor will understand if your first draft is a little late.”
“What if my wrist gets worse and I’m never able to write ever again?”
“So that won’t happen, I’ll make sure of it,” he tells you, then pats your leg. “You’re dating a doctor, may I remind you.”
You smile. I am, you think, and then settle into the thought of Jack putting your cast on, being the first person to litter it with words and stickers that’ll only have a one-day lifespan. You think about him taking care of you when you get home, and how you’ll ban him from sleeping in his own home for as long as your wrist is wrapped in fiberglass and padding.
A few minutes later, Jack pulls into your driveway and tells you to wait for him to open your door. Once he does, he unbuckles your seatbelt. “You need me to pick you up or are you fine walking?”
You roll your eyes and grab his extended hand. You jump out and he murmurs a ‘Jesus’ like you nearly jumped off a cliff. “You’re acting like I broke my foot.”
“I don’t want you to break anything else,” he says. “Which is why I am helping you as much as possible to avoid that from happening.”
“I will be okay. Plus, you’ll be gone multiple times out of the week for very long shifts and I will be left to take care of myself. Start thinking about that.”
“I don’t want to,” he says as he holds you against his side and helps you climb the porch steps. “I might have Santos come and take care of you on her days off.”
“I am twenty-five, I do not need someone taking care of me over a broken wrist. Will you calm down before you give yourself a heart attack?”
Jack just grunts in disapproval and pulls the gingham-style key you gifted him from his bare keyring. He shoves it into the doorknob and twists it around, pushing the door open once it clicks.
“I’m hungry,” you tell him as soon as your foot meets your slippery doormat. You and Jack both look at it, and you’re sure he plans on hiding it while you’re not watching. “Jello is only enjoyable when you want it, not when you’re forced to eat it.”
“Baby, no one was forcing you to eat Jell-O,” Jack tells you. He’s in the kitchen, grabbing the big tub of yogurt from the fridge. It’s half empty now even though you bought it a few days ago. You and Jack are knee-deep in your yogurt-craze.
“It was that or a really cold sandwich with white bread.”
“I could have gotten you something.”
You almost sit down on the island stool, but keep yourself standing at the edge, watching Jack pour yogurt into a bowl. “I didn’t want you to do that.”
“It’s my job to make you as comfortable as possible in any setting. If you wanted me to get you anything in the world – absolutely anything – I would drop everything and get it for you. Do you understand? I don’t even care if I’m in the middle of an emergency surgery.”
You try to fight the smile creeping onto your lips, but you fail. It pries your lips open and you shine your teeth as you nudge your way into his chest. “Aweee. You really like me.”
He kisses the top of your head and murmurs, “I do. I really do.”
Jack lets you hug him while he washes and cuts fruit to garnish your yogurt bowl. He also lets you cling to him while he throws granola onto it and fishes for a spoon in your nearly empty drawer. You let go when he struggles to balance two bowls while somehow maneuvering your body around. You do chase him like a duck all the way to your living room, though.
“I have to clean up the mess I left before you picked me up,” you tell him as you shove your spoon into the yogurt.
“You won’t be doing anything,” Jack emphasizes. “You’ll be in bed until I tell you otherwise, and I’ll do all the housework.”
“Bossy…” you whisper.
“You like it when I’m bossy.”
“You’re right, I do. But only when we’re having sex. I don’t want you to be bossy right now. Let me be happy and put up the rest of my decorations. Also, this is my house and you’re my guest.”
“I stay here more than I stay at my apartment. I’m no longer a guest.”
“Whatever,” you tell him. “Let’s eat breakfast, go to bed, and then we can make real decisions once we’re energized. Deal?”
“Sure,” Jack says, even if his face says ‘hell no.’
You tried to persuade Jack into letting you decorate your house. You promised you’d be careful and you’d stand on whatever surface he chose to put everything up.
He looked at you this morning when you said that, and acted like he hadn’t heard anything.
“Seriously, Jack, I won’t get hurt.”
“You said that the last time, and then you ended up with a broken wrist. Why would I let you put up decorations on an elevated surface with your history?”
“Because you really like me and want me to be your girlfriend?”
He scoffed and shook his head. “I do really like you and obviously want you to be my girlfriend, but I am not going to let you do that. Just sit down and let me do it.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“I’ll give you head.”
He stopped unraveling the tangled sun lights like he might think about that offer, then shook his head. “Tempting, but no.”
“C’mon! I’m trying to get better at giving blowjobs. You said I could practice on you whenever I wanted.”
“I said that right after I came all over your face and boobs. Things you say in that moment are either super truthful or should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, why do you want to become a pro at giving blowjobs? I think they’re great as is. Are you planning on leaving me?”
“Maybe. If you don’t let me do this.”
Jack sighed and dropped the newly untangled lights into the cardboard box. “Okay. You are being extremely stubborn but I like you, and I hate that frown on your face. So I’ll make a deal. You can help me put up the decorations, but you are not standing on any elevated surface, got it?”
“Sir, yes sir,” you answered.
That conversation led to you bossing him around from the ground while he stands on the table and hangs lights along your living room. He said, very early into your decorating, that it didn’t matter how crooked they were.
“Not to be rude, baby girl, but no one comes over except for your parents and I. Occasionally your friend and editor. Why does it matter?”
Then you shot him a disapproving stare and he raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’m inviting Santos over soon. I also figured you’d invite Doctor Robby over for dinner, since you spend more time here than your own place. Your words, not mine!”
“You’re right. Let me do what I’m told before you kick me out.”
Jack spends the afternoon and evening filling your house with summer decorations: colorful placemats with suns adorning the center, bright magnets in the shapes of suns and plants sticking to the already full fridge door, and paintings of women and animals galloping along prairies replacing spring-like canvases on your wall.
When he’s done shifting things around and changing your bedsheets to something orange, yellow and pink instead of forest green, you sit on your bed with the windows open and your head lying on his bare, sweaty chest.
“I’m happy to have you in my life,” you whisper. “No one has ever treated me like this. Like I’m the center of their universe.”
“The second I saw you in that coffee shop, I knew you would become the center of my life.”
“Without even getting to know me?”
He hums, a soft murmuring of words and thoughts he can’t fit into one sentence. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“I won’t. Not until my next shift, at least,” he tells you, his fingers deep in your scalp, massaging the pain that has begun pumping through your body.
“Not what I mean,” you say. “I don’t want you to leave, ever. I know we’re not official yet, but I’m already making this decision.”
“I approve of the decision,” he replies with enthusiasm. “I’m not going anywhere.”
In this moment, with tangled legs and bare bodies pressed against each other, nothing else matters. Not the idea of being asked to be his girlfriend, not the worry of Jack approving of your passion-fueled decision, or even the worry of getting your novel complete before its extended deadline.
Nothing matters, because you’re cuddling Jack without there being sex involved, and you finally have your summer decorations up.
"All because my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried so hard to suck out
—the cure, Olivia Rodrigo
summary: you’re the ray of sunshine and overly dependable smiling intern the night shift crew has been needing. But a certain attending begins noticing you might need more help than you let on.
wc: 11.7k (a short one sorry guys)
warnings: crippling perfectionism, high-key people pleasing, reader is bright and bubbly to compensate for how awful she feels day to day, one vomiting scene, service dom jack, santos is on nightshift bc i love her and i wanted her in this fic. trinity and dennis and reader r basically siblings, jack’s characterization in this is DEF andrew pope cody-esque panic attacks, mental health struggles, reader is an intern again but i swear it’s just cause i watch a lot of greys and interns r the only stage of medical career i know enough about to write semi-well T-T
acknowledgments: once again a round of applause for @wesandresons for the lovely gif, and @uzmacchiato and @cursed-carmine for the dividers!
a/n: i’m not rlly sure i like how this turned out but oh well @leeknowpegger i hope this keeps you company
masterlist
When you first get to the PTMC, Jack can’t decide what he thinks about you.
He vaguely remembers you— you’d done a rotation here, some time ago. One of the unfortunate ones who’d drawn the short stick and been stuck on the night shift. He has a hazy recollection of your face during an MVC, your jaw hard set and a permanent smile to your face. He vaguely remembers, at the time, the only thing he’d really though was:
Jesus, this kid needs to dial it back.
The sentiment, of course, remains the same when it’s handoff time, and Robby is telling him all about what an awful fucking day it’s been, and of course now he says “Oh, remember that med student you got stuck with awhile back? Smiley-face? You must’ve done something right, because she matched into the ED for her residency. She starts today.”
Not exactly the news an attending wants to hear right after the horror show the day has been so far. Especially when intern/baby resident in question is… charismatic.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ellis says, her eyes trained on you as you soothe a crying teenager who just got wheeled in. “If you ask me, we could use someone who actually smiles. Bit too dark and dreary in here for my taste.”
“You like dark and dreary.”
She gives him an unimpressed raised eyebrow. “So? We can’t all be doing it. Like, we’ve got Shen, but his is more iced-coffee induced than actual smiling charm.”
“I can be charming when I want to be.”
“No, you can be flirty or suggestive. There’s a difference.”
Jack does not justify her response with one of his own, instead choosing to look down at his tablet and pretend to chart while he listens to how you’re interacting with the patient. The teenager seems to be calmed down, and the parents don't sound frantic or worried.
Maybe Ellis is right. Unfortunately, this tends to be the case fairly often.
He sighs and focuses on the chart he’s supposed to be doing and attempts to wipe his mind of bright smiles and glittering eyes.
—
The PTMC and Emergency Medicine in general was not, actually, your first choice. It wasn’t even your second, or your third.
First was surgical. Everybody wants to be surgical. You wanted surgical. It’s flashy, it pays well, and it’s cool as fuck. Plus, unlike some of your classmates, you actually have the stomach for it (one of the many things that eventually translated well to emergency medicine.)
Second was Ortho. Because bones are cool. Ortho surgeries are fun too, when they’re not arthroscopy after arthroscopy.
Third was any kind of unit like Burn or ICU. A high stress program that wouldn’t let you think, let you run on adrenaline all day.
But then you did your rotation in general surgery and absolutely fucking hated it.
Surgeons are assholes. Surgeons are uptight nerds who like to subject anyone they consider beneath them to cruel and unusual punishment.
Even in during the short duration of your rotation through surgery, it almost killed you. You could practically feel the light in your soul dimming at every pointed comment, every sharp correction, every barked insult and something or other cruel word.
And then there was the PTMC. The stupid ED that wasn’t supposed to fun, was supposed to be grueling and exhausting (especially since you’d gotten assigned to the night shift.) But instead of awful you got amazing, which sucked.
Seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.
You wanted to like surgery enough to power though. But not a single rotation after the ED even came close to measuring up. The speed, the action, the gore, and the kind but firm guiding direction from the attending’s and residents.
Matching into the PTMC was an event actually worth celebrating. As in, you decided to un-tense minutely and splurge on actual champagne that you drank in your apartment while dancing to your favorite music.
And now, you’re here. Determined to not fuck this up. To keep moving, keep going, and be a fucking excellent ED doctor.
Except your attending, Dr. Jack Abbot, one of the reasons you joined the ED in the first place, keeps giving you funny looks when he thinks you’re not looking.
You’re not sure if he’s aware that you know that he’s staring at you. You do have a wider than normal field of peripheral vision, so maybe he doesn’t know that you can still see him out of the corner of your eye?
Regardless of if he knows or not, it’s unnerving. Because he’s your boss. And you know he’s capable of being an incredible doctor and mentor, because you see it every single day.
Just not directed at you.
He’s not really mean, or standoffish, or anything like that, he’s just… not necessarily kind. Not in the way that you see him with the other residents on his service or even with you, during your rotation as a med student.
Hell, he’s nicer to Santos than he is to you.
“Did I like, say something to offend him and I don’t know?”
Trinity makes a face at you from over the edge of the monitor. “Isn’t that more my area of expertise?”
“No. You offend people on purpose.”
“True.”
You prop your head on your hands, resting your elbows on the counter above her. Your keycard, attached to your breast pocket via a red, heart-shaped badge reel is lovingly adorned with pink rhinestones and cute stickers. The pocket itself is filled with several glitter gel pens (and regular pens, just in case.)
“I just don’t get it. I’m nice, right?”
“Disturbingly so.”
“Exactly. The only thing I can think of is that I’ve messed up or something, but it’s Dr. Abbot. He’d tell me if I did. He doesn’t exactly hold back.”
“Do you really need me for this conversation?”
You level her with a look, but she just groans.
“Why do you even care? So what, one guy doesn’t like you, boohoo.”
“He’s not just some guy. He’s my attending. And you might’ve secured your spot here, but i’m all shiny and new. I can’t exactly earn people’s respect if our boss doesn’t like me.”
Trinity doesn’t immediately respond with a scathing remark, which usually means that you’ve made a valid point.
“Should I talk to him?”
She sighs. “I think you’re overreacting. You’ve only been here for like, two weeks? Three? He’ll probably calm down the more you work together.”
“Did he stare at you all weirdly when you first started?”
“Well, no, but that’s because I don’t suck at my job.”
Now it’s your turn to glare.
“Sorry. I guess you’re not completely hopeless.”
You roll your eyes. “Thanks, Trin.”
She scrunches her nose up at the nickname like you knew she would, because she hates it, which makes it one of the only weapons you have against her.
Trinity wasn’t as helpful as you’d hoped, and night shift means no Dana to ask for advice. There’s Dr. Ellis, but she’s pretty close to Dr. Abbot, which means there’s a high chance that whatever you ask her will make it back to him. You aren’t really close enough to Dr. Shen to ask him “Hey, how come Dr. Abbot stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking and isn’t as nice to me as he is to you guys?”
The question is stupid and kind of pathetic, so really, you shouldn’t be asking anybody, but you’ve always been crippled by an intense need to be well-liked. It feels like winning, and it feels good and safe. Safe is good. Safe is great.
Wanting the guy who's essentially your boss to like you is completely rational, right?
You just wish he’d tell you what you’re doing wrong, so you can fix it.
Also, it’s just driving you crazy.
Even if he just legitimately didn’t like you, and made that apparent, it’d be something. You could work with that. You could figure out what it was he didn't like via intense pattern recognitin and fix it. Problem solved!
But he isn't obvious about it. He behaves indifferent and detatched- like you could die tomorrow and he wouldn't care.
It’s the not knowing. If you could just ask him, if he could just give you an answer, then you’d know where you stood, and everything could be fine.
What changed? You want to beg, What happened after my med student rotation? Do you even remember that? What did I do? Where did I go wrong?
It eats away at you over the course of the week. It has been since you noticed, which was pretty much on day one. You don’t show this outwardly of course, because you’re pretty sure you can get through to him and level out the wrong-footedness you feel around him through stubborn determination. Surely, at some point your unwavering nature will win out and he’ll finally see there isn’t anything he needs to hate about you. This is an incredibly healthy mindset to move through life with.
The week closes with an MCI around 5pm, which is just everyone’s favorite thing in the world. The night shift gets called in, minus Trinity, who was already there working a double, and everyone sets in for the long haul. You do your best to focus on the patients and do not at all think about the ease and camaraderie between Mohan and Abbot, because that would be a very fucked up progression of priorities.
Eventually it’s all over— patients are stabilized, some aren’t. Overtime ends with phantom blood on your hands and being strong-armed into drinks in the park afterwards.
You feel awkward, because you don’t work with the day shift people that often, so you’re not really sure how best to be yourself and not come across as weird. Neither of your “safe” people (Trinity and Dennis) are present, so there’s no way in hell you’re going to be capable of relaxing.
You take the beer that’s tossed to you, even though you think beer is gross (why does it taste like that? Why do people enjoy it?) and sip on it excruciatingly slowly, trying to hide a grimace and occasionally chiming in with mentally rehearsed and carefully crafted jokes and comments.
It’s exhausting, and not at all how you wanted to spend your night after an MCI. In a dream world, you don’t have the social backbone of a wet paper bag, and you say no, and you go home to your house and shower, then watch one, maybe two episodes of a tv show, scroll through Pinterest, and then go the fuck to bed.
But for the low low price of much needed rest, you get to drink one of the most disgusting alcoholic beverages known to man and worry if everyone thinks you’re being weird! Yay!
Also. Side note. Minor comment. Little issue.
Jack Abbot is sitting next to you. Like, right next to you on the bench. Because he came late and it was the last spot open. So he’s just right there. Posture loose and open and not at all like he didn’t just help you try to save a girl your age who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like two hours ago your elbows weren’t brushing, elbow deep in a man’s organs, saving his life.
Jack, unlike you, looks comfortable to be at the park with everyone. He doesn’t look like he’s analyzing conversation to determine the best thing to say next.
Jack isn’t looking at everyone. He’s not looking at anyone. He’s looking at you.
You turn, give him a little smile.
Again.
Maybe he doesn’t know you can still see him out of the corner of your eye. (No, he’s a vet, he’d definitely also have wide peripheral vision. But maybe he thinks that you don’t have it, because you’re not a vet.)
(You’re probably thinking too much about the peripheral vision.)
Jack doesn’t stop staring at you. Instead, he reaches over to where your barely-drunk beer is in your hands, and says:
“Here, give me that.”
And then he just. Takes your beer. Straight out of your hands.
Jesus fucking fuck he so hates you.
—
“He took your beer?”
“Yes,” You groan from the kitchen island in Trinity’s apartment, “He said ‘here, give me that’ and then just took it. He didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the night.”
She lets out a low whistle. “Maybe he doesn’t like you. What could you have possibly done to make him not like you?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, you better fix it. Having your attending hate your guts will like, majorly suck.”
“I don’t know how to fix it. That’s what i’m over here for. To brainstorm.”
“I thought you were here to steal the cookies Huckleberry made?”
Dennis peeks his head up from the couch. “Wait, what?”
You wave a hand. “Semantics. Focus.”
“Okay,” Trinity taps a pencil on a notepad, “Have you tried sleeping with him?”
“He’s like, probably over twenty years older than me.”
“So? I know your type.”
You roll your eyes. “As if he’d go after me, Trin. He doesn’t like me.”
“Hate sex is a thing.”
“Name one time hate sex solved the hate part.”
She purses her lips. “Touché. What about like, baking him shit, like Huckleberry does for—“
“Shut up Trinity!”
You both snicker.
“No dice,” You sigh, “I can’t bake for shit. Recipes never have enough context. They’re never specific enough.”
“Two tablespoons of sugar isn’t specific enough for you?”
“You’re not helping.”
Trinity holds up her hands in mock surrender. “To be fair, I never agreed to help. I just said we’d both be here if you wanted to come over.”
“I think you should just ask him.” Dennis pipes up.
He shuffles off the couch and slides into the second chair at the kitchen island adjacent to you. “Dr. Abbot is a straightforward guy. He appreciates honesty. Doesn’t beat around the bush. I can’t imagine him being truly upset that you tried to fix a problem.”
“I want to, but that’s like. Too straightforward. What if—“
“Oh my god,” Trinity moans, “Just ask him. Or fuck him. Do something so I don’t have to hear about it anymore.”
You frown, opening your mouth to object, then close it with a sigh.
She’s right.
You have to just move on. Either deal with it or deal with it by… not dealing with it. Talk to him or don’t.
Easier said than done.
—
It takes two more shifts of unrequited awkwardness for you to finally reach your limit. At a certain point, probably when you almost snapped at him for hovering (doing his job) while you were trying to intubate a patient, you realize that you cannot, actually, just get through to him via stubborn determination.
Damn.
So when you have a second, you corner him in one of the quieter hallways. The conversation has the potential to be horrifically embarrassing and mortifying, so it’s best if there’s no audience.
“Do you have a minute, Dr. Abbot?”
He glances down at his watch, then crosses his arms and leans against the opposite wall.
He doesn’t talk (unnerving, annoying) and his sharp, ever analyzing gaze makes your skin prickle as you cross your hands behind your back and mirror his position, leaning against the wall.
He’s so irritating. He won’t even give you a fucking inch. There’s nothing to go on.
“Did I do something wrong?”
For the first time since you became a resident in the ED, he makes an expression: surprise.
“Why do you think you did something wrong?”
“Because you won’t fucking talk to me!” You hiss, absolutely fed up with Dr. Jack Abbot, “Half the time you only look at me when you think I won’t notice. You don’t talk to me unless it’s required for teaching, and even then, it’s short and stilted. I’ve seen how you interact with literally every other person who works here. I know you can be nice. You’re just not nice to me, and I’d like to know why.”
You pause. “And you took my beer!”
There’s a moment of silence, and then there’s a breathy, almost wheezing sound that takes you a minute to place.
He’s laughing.
Jack fucking Abbot starts laughing.
You honest to God want to kill him.
“Sorry,” He says, eyes sparkling with mirth and shoulders loose, “I can see how all of that can be taken negatively—“
“How else was I supposed to take that.”
Jack levels you with a look, and you shut your mouth. “But it was not my intention.”
He just stops speaking there, like that’s a perfectly adequate explanation and not at all vague and almost more disconcerting.
“So…,” You drawl, “What was your intention?”
Something interesting, a little more heated than just analytical sparks in his gaze, and he tilts his head, eyes flicking up and down your body.
Under the silence and scrutiny, you resist the urge to squirm in place, hands squeezing themselves in an effort to subdue the itch.
“You hate confrontation.”
Your chest feels like a cinder block just slammed onto it. “What?”
“You,” He levels a finger at your chest, “Hate confrontation. You hate it so much that you lie about yourself to people instead of saying things they might not like.”
You laugh nervously, voice high and reedy. “A lot of people do that. I don’t think that’s a crime.”
“It’s not. But it doesn’t exactly make me want to trust you with my residents. With my team.”
“You’re worried I’ll what? Get somebody in trouble? Do something shitty?”
“I’m worried that something is going to happen to you, and you won’t tell anyone about it.”
The hallway grows silent. In this distance there’s beeping, someone shouting orders, a child crying. But not in the five feet of space you, Jack, and the conversion currently occupies.
“Why do all of this?” You gesture vaguely to the space between you two, unwilling to be more specific. He does not deserve the itemized list you assembled in your head.
“I wanted to see if you’d confront me about it or not. Confirm my suspicions.”
“That’s—“ You wrinkle your nose, “Actually kind of shitty of you.”
Jack just hums.
“So what now? Did I prove myself to you?” Your tone is mocking.
He scoffs, “God, you really hate confrontation, don’t you?”
Your skin prickles again. “No.”
“Lying again.”
“Shut up.”
He knows how uncomfortable he’s making you. He’s doing it on purpose. And right then and there, you decide you don’t care what Jack Abbot thinks, because if Jack Abbot is going to be a self-assured asshole, Jack Abbot can go fuck himself.
Your pager going off saves you from verbalizing any of this, and with one last glare, you’re gone.
—
If Jack was an obnoxious lurker before, it doesn’t hold a damn candle to how he behaves now.
He’s just. Everywhere. Around every corner. Driving you crazy.
When you bring this up to Trinity, she looks at you like you’ve finally lost it.
Which. Okay. You probably have. But that’s beside the point! The point is…
…The point is that Jack Abbot is getting on your last nerve and you really don’t have any to spare. Life has been stomping all over the other ones, so the singular nerve Jack is stabbing with his annoying pointed looks and almost lingering touches and stupid little questions (“Hey, that was a rough one, are you alright?”) is just worn out. It doesn’t have anything left to give. You don’t have anything left to give.
But, like you were brought up to do, you keep right on giving. And working. And smiling.
Because it goes a little something like this: There’s no one to pick you up if you fall. You pick yourself up when you fall, and you’ve gotten pretty fucking good at it. All of your friends (read: Trinity and Dennis and maybe Mel) are doctors, which means you all have shitty work/life balance and no one would even be available if you called and said “Hey, every morning I lie awake and stare at the ceiling and convince myself to get up while listening to Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley, after which I will inevitably cry on the bus to work. Would you mind helping me with my laundry?”
Okay. Well. Trinity would probably show up if you asked because once she decides that you’re her friend she’s really intense about it (she’s a bit like a Doberman or some other dog like that, not that you would ever tell her) and Dennis probably would too, but only because he never says no when someone asks for help so it kind of just feels like you’re taking advantage of him. Mel is far too busy juggling being an ED doctor and caring for Becca for you to even think about asking her without feeling intense, soul crushing guilt.
So yeah. You don’t really have a best friend, unless one would count the singular romance book you’ve read so much the spine is completely fucked and the pages are yellow from years of travel and rereading. Counting any book as a best friend is probably very pathetic. But hey, don’t fix what isn’t broken.
So you have a system and a method and crying before and after work every single day is totally, completely normal, healthy, and sustainable. Probably even more so in the medical field, and especially since you’re a PGY1. Interns gotta suffer and all that jazz.
Jack Abbot does not need to make the suffering worse by existing near you constantly. Things are really honestly bad enough.
“Hey,” Trinity grabs your arm as you’re going by during a mellow shift, grip not tight enough to hurt but enough to be a bit past uncomfortable, especially for a girl not used to physical contact, “You good?”
‘No,’ You want to shout, collapsing on the floor in a heap of bones and tears, ‘I haven’t done laundry in so long that I’ve started wearing my cleanest dirty socks instead of washing more. I don’t have the energy to spend my days off doing anything productive, but every time I sleep instead of doing chores the anxiety eats me alive. I can’t sleep at night because the guilt makes me so nervous sometimes I throw up. Sometimes I don’t wash myself in the shower and I just stand in the water until it gets cold. Every day I wake up with the same headache, and then I take medicine for it, but by the time it’s gone I’m going to bed and then I wake up with it all over again. I think my liver is shot from over-the-counter medication usage. Everything hurts. I’m so tired.’
Trinity needs you to be okay. Trinity is too busy and under too much stress to worry about you. She needs you to be okay. Everyone needs you be okay.
“Mhm!” You nod, lips spread wide, “Pretty good day actually, all things considered.”
It’s not a total lie. The headache relief you’ve been taking religiously is kicking in faster than it usually does today.
Trinity scans your face, looking for signs of a lie, and she must find something (not shocking, it’s very hard to pretend that everything isn’t awful when Everything Is Really Awful) because her grip tightens minutely and she does that pursed lip thing she does when she’s worried and about to express it through anger or bitchiness.
“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t want to find out you’re like, doing drugs or something stupid like that. If you’re having a hard time—“
“Trin,” You interrupt, skin prickling uncomfortably as she implies that you’re not capable of handling things on your own, “If I need help, I know I can ask for it. And look,”
You tap your unbroken collection of glitter gel pens still intact in the front pocket of your scrubs. “It’s gotta be a good day. I still got my glitter.”
She wrinkles her nose, but drops your arm. “I don’t even know why you keep those. You can’t use them on like, anything. It’s against hospital policy.”
You shrug. “Glitter is a great motivator and mood elevator. Plus, kids love ‘em.”
You manage to feign something important coming up and duck out of the conversation and then, when the coast is clear, dart into one of the lesser used bathrooms and tuck yourself in the darkest stall.
Even in a hospital, toilet seats are disgusting, but you can’t quite summon any actual disgust as you plop down on the white porcelain, only lightly cracked, and cradle your exhausted head in your hands.
You have to keep going. There is no alternative. There is no other option.
Your chest feels tight and loose at the same time, and your skin feels clammy and wrong. Everything feels wrong. The lights are too bright and the material of your scrubs is scratchy and awful, and the longer you sit in the stall the more you want to throw up.
Someone knocks on the door before you get the chance to move down to your knees and start worshipping the porcelain altar. Assuming it to be Mel, who sometimes has a habit of showing up at the wrong time, you open the stall door to reveal none other than Jack Fucking Abbot.
You stare at him blankly for a few beats, too bewildered to feel sick. “You’re not allowed to be in here.”
“In the men’s bathroom?”
“This isn’t the men’s bathroom.”
“The sign on the door would say otherwise.”
Embarrassment brings the nausea back tenfold. You hold the stall door in a white knuckle grip to keep yourself upright and from hurling onto your boss.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t do this on purpose—“
Jack raises an eyebrow, his hands folded behind his back. Military man, right.
“Clearly.”
You stumble forward. “I need to go—“
“Woah, down girl. I didn’t knock because I cared which toilet you use. You work here. Use whatever toilet you want. Preferably not the one in the attending’s lounge.”
“There’s an attending’s lounge?”
“No.” He grins, a devilish upturn to just the corner of his lips.
“Oh,” You pause, then catch up to the rest of what he said, “Then why’d you knock?”
“Cause it kind of sounded like you were dying in there, and I’d rather if you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The paperwork, for one. Two, Santos would probably shank me.”
“Ah.”
“Also,” He shrugs, “I’d miss you.”
You scoff. “No you wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You don’t like me. You don’t even trust me.”
Jack gets this pinched look on his face; his lips pull down, his brows furrow and he narrows his eyes, just a bit.
He opens his mouth to respond when the door bangs open.
Jack doesn’t even look up before he’s barking:
“Find another bathroom.”
“But I have to—“
“Find another bathroom or I’ll cut your dick off.”
The guy grumbles away, but Jack never takes his eyes off you. It’s unnerving— to be the sole focus of his attention.
You’re the first to break the now tense silence of the bathroom.
“That seemed a bit extreme.”
“I’m not a man who does things by halves.”
“No,” You sigh, “I suppose you’re not.”
Jack cocks his head to side, almost predatory. More methodical than anything. He looks at you— really looks at you. Shamelessly drags his eyes up your body, likely cataloguing every mystery bruise, frown line, eye bag, freckle, and all the million lines of exhaustion that seem etched on your very being, right down through the bones and marrow.
He sighs, crossing his arms before leaning back on the opposite wall of the bathroom.
“What am I going to do with you?”
His words instantly have you on edge, bristling at all the unsaid things behind his tone.
“I’m not something to be dealt with. I’m a person, not some fucking—“
“You’re like a stray cat,” He interrupts, “Always hissing. Do I need to win you over with treats? Should I start bringing canned tuna?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re drowning.”
Just like that, all the humor gets sucked from the room, replaced with the cold, sharp grip of reality. Suddenly exhausted by the weight of it all, you drop back down onto the toilet seat.
Jack gives you a few moments to respond, get angry, or defend yourself, but you don’t. He’s too good at reading you, it seems. What is there to say?
When you don’t speak, he does.
“Did you think no one would notice?”
“No one has.”
“Am I no one?”
You lean back, closing your eyes and awkwardly resting the back of your head against the wall and the back of the toilet.
“You’re nosy.”
If this were any other moment, any other scenario with any other person, you would never ever act so contrary. But you’re tired and Jack seems to bring out the worst in you.
He makes an amused huffing noise. “You’re good at what you do, I’ll give you that.”
“What, exactly, am I doing?”
“Pretending.”
You scoff. “Fuck off.”
“Come on, sweetheart. How much longer are you going to do this to yourself?”
You lift your head off the back of the toilet. “You act like I’m killing myself:”
“You are,” His inclined his head, “Just really slowly.”
You scrub a hand down your face.
“Look. I understand why you think you have to care, but you don’t. I’m just going through a rough patch. I’ll get through them like I always do. I’m not gonna crash and burn or endanger myself or do whatever it is you’re worried I’m going to do, okay? So you can leave me alone. I’m fine.”
Jack doesn’t get to respond, because the second the words are out of your mouth the nausea that’s been churning in your stomach since you made it to the bathroom rises all at once, and you barely have time to slide off the toilet and turn before you’re throwing up hard enough to almost choke.
The worst part is that you forgot to eat lunch so your stomach is woefully, painfully empty. You’re throwing up nothing but bile, throat burning and tears streaming down your face.
“Alright, come on,” A warm hand rubs soothing circles on your back, and if you weren’t busy hurling your guts out, you’d marvel at the feeling and juxtaposition between the Jack you know, who’s all cold indifference, and the Jack currently holding your hair out of your face while you vomit.
“Let it out,” He soothes, hand still rubbing, “Don’t fight it. It’ll be over soon.”
“I hate throwing up.” You choke, coughing and gasping.
“No one does. But you’ll feel better when it’s over.”
Over feels like it’s never going to come. But eventually your stomach stops clenching, you manage to stop heaving, and you’re slumped over the toilet, sucking down gulps of air, sweat beading on your forehead and the back of your neck.
“This,” You mumble in between gasps, “Means nothing.”
You can’t see Jack’s expression, but his response is so quiet you almost miss it.
“Okay.”
You can’t see his face, but you know this isn’t over.
—
Jack sends you home once you’re capable of standing on your own two feet without shaking like a newborn fawn.
(“You can’t send me home.”
“Yes I can. You’re not allowed to come back to work after throwing up in the bathroom.”
“We both know I’m not the only person to do it.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t caught the other people in the wrong bathroom and held their hair back while they vomited.”
“…”
“You only have two hours left anyway. Go home.”)
The problem lies in the fact that the buses aren’t running yet, which means that you can’t, actually, get home. Your house is an hour away on foot. An hour you’d normally be capable of walking, but your phone is almost dead, you’re exhausted, and you still feel a little weak because of the vomiting.
So after retrieving your things from your locker, you find yourself sitting on the little bench outside the PTMC, waiting for the minutes to tick by. If you didn’t bring at least one book with you everywhere you go in case of emergencies (like this one) you probably would have just walked into oncoming traffic.
It’s cold out and your jacket is cheap so you have to burrow into it, hood up to retain any semblance of warmth. It would be almost cozy —huddled in your jacket, watching the city go by, tucked into your favorite romance book— if the shift hadn’t gone the way it had and if a grueling bus ride and half mile walk didn’t await you once the buses finally start running. Waiting for you beyond that is just chores and an empty apartment.
Your fingers tighten on the edges of your book.
“Why the fuck are you still here?”
You jolt in place, cracking your neck over to the side and blinking blearily.
Jack. Again.
He makes an expectant face at you as if to say ‘Well?’ when you don’t answer immediately.
Your eyes dart back and forth nervously, even though you know you haven’t done anything wrong. “The buses aren’t running yet. It’s an hour walk to my house.”
Jack scrubs a hand down his face and curses under his breath.
“How long until your bus gets here?”
You check your phone. Shit. Only four percent left.
“And hour and a half. Maybe a little longer if it’s running behind more than usual.”
He seems put out by your answer, as if the bus’s heavily fluctuating schedule is of personal consequence and offense to him.
“Um,” You start, both uncomfortable at having been caught reading a romance book in public and at the general air of frustration Jack seems to be venting at the moment, “I’m fine. I have my book. I don’t mind waiting.”
Jack just sighs.
“Do you really think I’m just going to leave you out here, in the cold, after you threw up in the bathroom, to wait for the bus, for nearly two more hours?”
You wince. “Well, it doesn’t sound great when you put it like that.”
He works his jaw. “Have you eaten?”
“No…?”
He shakes his head.
“Come on. You’re coming with me.”
—
“I have to admit, this isn’t where I thought we were going.
Thirty minutes later finds you seated on the cracked vinyl seat of a booth in a cheap diner, staring at a menu and rationalizing spending your last $15 on what will probably be mediocre pancakes.
Jack is seated across from you, already two mugs of coffee —black, but oddly enough, decaf— and not even bothering to pretend to look at his menu. He either comes here often or doesn’t care to act like he isn’t staring at you.
Probably both.
“Where did you think we were going?”
Steam curls out of your own untouched mug of coffee —ordered for you by Jack, also unfortunately decaf— and you debate just getting up and running out of here.
Too bad you’re too exhausted to run anywhere. Jack’s probably banking on that.
“I don’t know,” You shrug, setting the menu down, “Maybe to Gloria’s office to write me up or something.”
“What would I even be writing you up for?”
“Disobeying direction? I’m sure you could come up with something.”
The waitress chooses that moment to appear, notepad in hand. “Are we ready to order?”
Jack rattles off his order, and then two sets of eyes turn to you expectantly. Before you can order the single fruit bowl you were planning on getting (the cheapest thing on the menu) Jack pipes up:
“Order whatever you actually want. Not whatever you think is cheapest or easiest.”
The waitress, a middle aged woman who has probably seen much worse than whatever the two of you have going on, just chuckles lightly under her breath.
You hesitantly list the item you’d been eyeing and thank the waitress.
It isn’t until after the menus have been taken and Jack’s coffee re-upped for the third time that you manage to courage to speak.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean,” your fingers curl on the edge of the table, desperate for something to hold onto, “I can’t— It’ll be awhile until I can pay you back. I barely made rent this month.”
“Do you think I would take you to breakfast and then make you pay?”
“Yes…?”
“You’re not touching the bill, kid. I’m a gentleman.”
“Oh,” You didn’t really see that coming, “Okay.”
Jack gets a funny expression on his face, then resumes his drinking coffee and glancing out the window routine.
“So,” You say after a beat, “Was there something you wanted to talk about…?”
The silence just feels so awkward. It’s killing you.
He raises a brow. “Do you want to talk?”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m asking you what you want to do. What do you usually do when you come out to eat?”
“I don’t? Eating out is expensive, so. But when I do it’s usually by myself, so I end up just reading.”
Jack gestures to your bag beside you. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“What?”
“Read your book.”
“But that’s— isn’t that boring for you?”
He sets his mug down. “I didn’t bring you here because I wanted something from you. I brought you here because you had a shitty day and it seemed like you could use some cheering up. If reading makes you feel better, then do it.”
You have to look out the window to avoid his gaze. You don’t understand how your perfectly crafted facade just crumbles into fucking dust around him. How he manages to see right through you at every turn, how he manages to uncover every lie and every half truth.
“How did you even know I like diner food?”
“Because I pay attention to you.”
You finally look back over at him, arms folded across your chest; not really defensively, more like you’re trying to hold your entire body together by sheer force of will.
Jack’s lips twitch. Not really a smile, but almost. “You bring it up every time Santos wants to get food after a shift. She always says no, because she hates it, but it never stops you from suggesting it.”
It’s just one detail. One tiny, inconsequential detail that he’s apparently memorized and held onto because to him, it’s important. For some impossible to understand reason, he seems to care.
"Also," He shrugs, "I'd miss you."
You scoff. "No you wouldn't."
"I would."
“Do you hate me?”
Jack looks back at you, seemingly startled by the abrupt question.
“No.”
You take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Okay.”
—
“You did what?”
You wince from your spot lying face-down on Trinity’s couch.
“Not so loud, Trin. I have a headache.”
She ignores you, seated on the floor almost directly in front of you. “So you’ve gone from hating each other to going on a date?”
“It wasn’t a date,” You groan, “We spent almost the entire time in silence. I read my book and he stared out the window and did… whatever it is men like him do when they stare out the window.”
“Brooding,” Trinity says, “He paid. That means it’s a date.”
“No it doesn’t!”
It doesn't. It totally doesn't. Just because Jack said he doesn't hate you doesn't mean he likes you either. There are a lot of emotions in between hate and love. Like toleration, for example. Mild amusement. Exasperation. An appropriate amount of annoyance.
Trinity pokes you on the back of your head, having none of it.
"He likes you. Why else would he willingly hang out with one of us after work?"
"He goes out for drinks in the park sometimes." You mumble.
"Yeah, after an MCI."
What Trinity doesn't know is the events leading up to breakfast at the diner, because that would involve telling her about the whole throwing up from anxiety in the men's bathroom directly after a mini-panic attack because she confronted you about your unhealthy lifestyle (which all just sounds a lot worse than it is), so there isn't really a way to give her the kind of context necessary to get her off your back and dissuade her from her (insanely insane) belief that Jack likes you. Romantically.
"Trust me Trin, he was just being nice. Nothing romantic about it."
It was kind of romantic. Just eating surprisingly good food in the company of someone you don't need to pretend around, enjoying being in the company of another human being without worry or expectation.
Not that she needs to know that.
"Jack doesn't do nice. Have you seen him? What happened to the hating?"
You shrug. "You'll just have to ask him, because I don't know."
You do know. He told you. Explained it.
It doesn't make sense.
Trinity throws her hands in the air dramatically.
"Whatever. You two are impossible."
She finally withdraws, leaving you to wallow in your headache-induced misery by yourself on her couch.
Your phone vibrates on the floor next to you, and you groan, rolling further over to hide yourself in the crack of the couch, shunning the light like the reclusive vampire you are.
Your phone vibrates again.
“Dennis,” your voice is muffled by the couch cushion so it ends up sounding more like ‘denim’, “Can you please see who’s texting me and tell them to fuck off?”
Dennis, who was eating cereal at the tiny table near the kitchen when you first showed up fifteen minutes ago and has pointedly stayed silent throughout the entire exchange between you and Trinity, finally speaks.
“Your phone is two inches away from your hand.”
“I have a headache I don’t wanna look at the screen.”
You feel rather than actually see him roll his eyes, but then there’s the clink of a spoon against a bowl and the faint sound of socked —you’ve genuinely never seen him ever be barefoot under any circumstances, no matter what, he’s always wearing socks— feet as they make their way over to your temporary pit (couch) of despair.
There’s a quiet rustle as he picks up your phone off the floor.
“Oh.”
You whine, dramatic and upset. “What?”
“Um,” He grabs your shoulder, slowly rolling you over and away from the back of the couch, “It’s Jack?”
“What!?” You screech.
You throw yourself up, wincing as you immediately regret it when the pain in your head doubles, take a steadying breath to ignore it, and then grab the phone from Dennis’s outstretched hand.
You turn on the phone and— yep. Sure enough. A text from Jack, complete with the stupid picture of a dinosaur you made his profile picture. Because he’s old.
(It was funnier at the time.)
Somewhere behind you there’s a crash, and then the thump thump thump that can only mean a person running towards you at dangerous speeds for sock covered feet on cheap linoleum.
“Incoming,” Dennis mutters.
“Did I just hear that right?” Trinity gasps, nearly giving herself blunt force trauma via the back of the couch, “Did Jack just text you?”
“I don’t know!” You cry.
“How do you not know! Your phone is right in your fucking hands!”
“I’m tired! Stop yelling at me!”
“Guys!” Dennis shouts, holding up his hands, “I refuse to spend my day off listening to you two argue over the validity of romance with our attending. Give me the phone.”
He snatches the phone without waiting for a response, quickly typing in your password (if there was ever a moment you regret telling him in case of emergency…) and opening the text.
He makes an incredulous face at the phone before saying:
“He asked what you’re doing today.”
Trinity claps once. “Fucking called it!”
“Trinity!” Dennis snaps, before sighing and tapping at your keyboard, “I’m telling him that you have a headache and you’re at our place and to please not text again—“
“No!” You squeal, launching yourself off the couch, arms outstretched, but your legs tangle over each other and you fall and slam, gloriously and beautifully, face first into the coffee table.
“Oo!” Trinity winces, covering her mouth.
“Oh my god!” Dennis balks, “Are you okay?”
“Just give me the fucking phone.”
Peeling your face off, you grab the phone, squinting at the screen and ignoring the black spots in the corner of your vision.
hi, you type, I’m at Trinity and Dennis’s. Did you need something?
You hit send before you can talk yourself out of it.
“We,” You haul yourself to your feet and stagger over to the kitchen table, “Will never speak of this.”
“I definitely am. When I’m the maid of honor at your guys wedding, I’m gonna give a speech and be all ‘you guys, she gave herself a concussion the first time he texted—‘“
“There will be no wedding!”
“That’s just what you think.”
Your phone vibrates again, signaling a response.
Just wondering how you were doing. Surprised to hear you’re not holed up in your apartment reading something.
Ah, sexy old men and their correct grammar and punctuation when texting. Shouldn’t be endearing.
“What’s he saying?”
“Go away!”
You tap out a quick response.
Not today unfortunately lol I have a headache so no reading for me
Isn’t this the sixth day in a row you’ve had a headache? Should I give neuro a call?
You stomach flips.
nooo I’m fine i get them all the time
That’s not exactly reassuring.
I went to the doctor for them awhile ago apparently they’re normal
Who?
if I tell you, are you going to call him and make him send over my chart?
Yes.
Your heart is starting to pound a fluttering beat in your chest, and you hunch over your phone.
then i’m not telling you. it’s fine, really
they usually go away when i take over the counter stuff
So your plan is just to destroy your liver?
pretty much
We need to work on your planning skills.
we?
I’m not doing all the work.
Now stop looking at your phone. Drink some Gatorade and take a nap.
this is a resident apartment there’s no gatorade here just redbulls
Have either of them buy you one. I’ll pay whichever one it is later. Go to sleep. You need it.
You turn off your phone, shuffling back over to the couch and flopping down onto it.
“I’m taking a nap. Jack wants one of you to go buy me a Gatorade. He said he’d pay you back later.”
“He said what?”
—
You end up sleeping the entire day away, which should have screwed up your sleep schedule, but thankfully you live in a state of perpetual exhaustion and are fully capable of falling asleep anytime, anywhere, no matter how much you last sleep. It’s a gift.
Shockingly, the shift you work the next day is actually much easier to survive and your smiles aren’t nearly as forced. Go figure. Who knew that getting an appropriate amount of sleep would be so helpful?
“Somebody’s in a better mood today.” Jack mutters as you sidle up next to him under the board.
“I’m pretty sure I slept for like, fourteen straight hours. Thanks for the Gatorade, by the way. I woke up around hour three, chugged it, and then went back to sleep. No headache when I woke up!”
“Wonderful,” He drawls, “It’s almost like taking care of yourself is actually beneficial.”
“I take care of myself plenty.”
He casts you a sidelong glance, expression pinched.
“When was the last time you drank water without being prompted?”
“That’s different.”
“Okay,” He dips his head, “When was the last time you ever felt truly relaxed?”
You give him a beaming smile, so wide it hurts. “We’re not going to talk about this right now!”
“You started this conversation. I’m trying to do my job.”
You snort. “You’re waiting to see if someone else is going to take the sunburn guy.”
“Are you accusing an attending of cherry picking?”
“Of course not. Just observing, sir.”
Jack’s turned to look at you now, head tilted up, hands folded behind his back.
When you say sir, his eyes flick down to your lips, and then his jaw tightens.
The air suddenly becomes charged, the space between you two filled with something too electric to be air.
It smells like aftershave, hospital antiseptic, wanting, and something that’s distinctly masculine.
You look away first, swallowing hard past the sudden dryness of your mouth.
“You know,” You say, crossing your arms and looking up at the board, “Trinity thinks you like me. Romantically.”
“Mm.”
“I told her that was dumb,” You babble, “Obviously it’s not true, but. She won’t let it go, so if she says something, just ignore her. Or not. Whatever you want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be true?”
You whip your head around so fast you’re pretty sure something cracks. “What?”
“I mean,” Jack’s voice is gruff as he shrugs once, “Is that really so unrealistic?”
“Of course it is,” You sputter, “You don’t like me.”
“I’ve actually never said that. That was a conclusion you came to on your own. I distinctly recall telling you that I don’t hate you.”
“Just because you don’t hate me doesn’t mean that you like me, let alone— like that.”
Jack tilts his head, almost predatory, and all that sharp tension rushes straight back in.
“Like what?”
Something hot and dangerous is starting to unfurl in your chest, untethering from where it was previously lodged deep behind your ribs, out of sight, out of feeling.
“Code Blue en route, ETA two minutes.”
Jack jerks his head in the direction of the ambulance bay. “You gonna go get that?”
“Uh,” You’re pretty sure you’re stroking out, having a seizure, or something, because the only thing you’re capable of comprehending is the fact that Jack just not-so-subtly implied to actually liking you. Romantically.
“Get going then.”
You scurry away, hot all over and absolutely done with emotions in their entirety.
—
The rest of the week is hell on Earth. Perks of being in your twenties.
Things could be worse though!
Kind of.
It’s just that it’s been several days since Jack basically confirmed Trinity’s suspicions on romance and you can’t stop thinking about it. Obsessively.
It’s bad.
Bad enough that when Mel asked if there was any way you could cover her shift, you said yes.
“Okay,” Dennis stage-whispers as you’re downing your third coffee of the day, miserably charting at the nurses station, “I feel the need to ask how bad things can possibly be if you’re covering a day shift.”
“Mel asked.”
Dennis blinks incredulously. “You love Mel, but not enough to work a day shift voluntarily.”
“What exactly are you asking me here?”
“Did you and Jack hit a rough patch or something?”
“Keep your voice down!” You hiss, ducking your head as if you can hide from Princess and Perlah, “And for your information, no. We didn’t. I just wanted to do something nice for Mel.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t need you to believe me.”
Day-shift crawls on in a whirlwind of chaos and a level of dumb-fuckery that can only be achieved from the hours of 8 a.m to 8 p.m. As usual, the place is understaffed, overcrowded, and filled with a lingering sense of impending doom.
By the time night-shift starts filtering in, you’re ready to completely give up and start a new life a sheep rancher in New Zealand. It’s always been the plan if being a doctor didn’t work out.
Jack finds you in the locker room once the handoff is over, sitting on the little bench in the same position Dennis found you in earlier. Face in your hands, heels in your eyes, methodically counting breaths and wondering if that fluttering feeling in your chest is from caffeine consumption or sleep deprivation.
It’s fine. Your fine. Everything is fine.
“You don’t look too good.”
“I’m—“
“Don’t say you’re fine.”
“But I am,” You grit, “I just need a minute.”
“Okay.”
There’s the distinct sound of Jack’s slightly uneven footsteps, and then there’s a warm weight pressed against your side.
You take another shuddering breath that feels less like breathing and more like placing a single brick in a wobbly foundation.
“Shouldn’t you be out on the floor?”
“I don’t work tonight.”
You raise your head just enough to look at him. “You don’t? I thought I saw you on the schedule. Why are you here if you don’t work?”
Now that you’re looking at him and not starburst patterns on the back of your eyelids, you can see that he’s wearing casual clothes, not scrubs, and he doesn’t have his usual army-issue backpack with him.
“I got Shen to cover me. I came here for you.”
Your next breath in almost gets stuck in your chest, air struggling to move past that alive and wriggling thing that keeps moving every time Jack is around.
“What’d you do that for?”
The barest hints of a smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Dennis called me. He said you’d need picking up after your shift.”
Shame, guilt, and embarrassment flood your veins, turning your blood into sickly-sweet poison that makes your stomach roll and twist.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I have no idea why he did that. You really didn’t have to drive all the way over here, I swear I didn’t tell him to call you or something like that—“
“I know you didn’t,” Jack soothes, voice a rumbly, smooth timber that washes over your permanently-frazzled nerves like a balm, “Which is why I came.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jack stands, pulling your bag and change of clothes out of your locker.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me, so you don’t have to answer it again. Can you do that for me?”
You nod once.
“Words.”
“Uh— yeah. Yes.”
“Good.”
Thank god the locker room is empty— everyone’s either on the floor or already left for their homes.
He closes your locker down, shoulders your bag, and hands you your clothes.
“Is it easier for you to accept help when you don’t have to ask and don’t get the chance to say no?”
It sounds so pathetic, hearing it laid out like that. The ugly guts of you; cut open, laid bare, and marked for research. Exhibit A, the inside of the girl no one ever needed to worry about.
You don’t want to agree. You want to laugh it off, maybe run away from it. Sit up straight, wipe your face, take the bag from Jack and explain that this is all a big misunderstanding and you’re perfectly fine and he can stop worrying about you now.
“Yes.”
Jack doesn’t verbally acknowledge your response besides a single dip of his head, like he knows that if he does anything more it’ll turn your response into a confession and that’s just too vulnerable for the hospital locker room.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t mean to be this way, you know.”
The passenger seat of Jack’s car isn’t somewhere you’d ever imagined yourself being. Not even late at night or on the bus when you’re pretending to be someone else who’s better at chasing what they want.
“It stopped being intentional a long time ago,” your hands are fisted into the material of your sweatpants, nails digging into the fabric, “It was just the natural progression of things. I like being liked.”
What you don’t say, what becomes an unspoken truth that lingers in the air despite not being verbalized, is the survival aspect of it. Why and how a person fuses this kind of thing to their personality; to their life. The circumstances that makes the natural progression of things end it being better for everyone if you just don’t have needs.
“I know.”
“I know you know, I just… needed to tell you. Myself.”
It’s odd seeing Jack illuminated by streetlights instead of fluorescent overheads. It’s odd being able to watch his hand flex on the steering wheel, watching his forearm tense as he shifts gears in his old stick-shift.
“You like being told what to do.”
Your face heats, but you’re determined not to lose face now. Especially after managing to survive being emotionally flayed open, willingly, by him.
“It feels safe. If I know what yo— someone wants, then I can’t mess it up, and I can relax.”
You can practically see the gears turning in Jack’s mind.
“Makes sense.”
The rest of the drive is quiet, the silence only filled by the sounds of Pittsburgh around you and the gentle crackle of something from the radio turned down too low to hear.
And for the first time in longer than you can remember, you begin feeling something that approaches calm.
Jack doesn’t have any expectations. There isn’t any one particular way he wants you to act or expects you to behave like. There’s nothing he wants you to do.
So you do what you want to do.
You relax.
—
In the weeks following Jack driving you home, there is a quantifiable shift in behavior between the two of you.
He starts pulling back.
It strikes you as odd first, and your natural inclination is to pull back too— to guard the soft, vulnerable bits you’ve showed him in case he throws them back at you.
But then you realize what he’s doing.
Instead of telling you how to proceed on a case when you come to him for advice, he asks you questions and steers you to the answer. He holds back when he’s evaluating a case with you, patiently following your lead and only interjecting when necessary.
He’s making space for you try new things and learn without fear of rejection. Building your confidence bit by bit.
It feels more intimate than sex.
After much deliberation, screaming into your pillow, and Reddit forum searching for HR violations, you decide to get him a card. Because he’s actually been really kind and helpful and he makes you feel like you can actually survive residency.
“What’s this?”
“A thank you card.”
You’re staring at your shoes, eyes flicking up and down between Jack’s face and the floor.
“What for?”
“It says it in the card.”
You scurry away, attaching yourself to the closest patient to avoid seeing Jack’s face when he does finally open it.
But when you look back, he’s just staring at it, a small smile on his face.
—
It’s the card that does him in.
Jack hasn’t made his feelings for you a secret, despite your unwillingness to see him as anything other than standoffish in the beginning.
He came on too strong at first— that was his fault. He didn’t yet understand how imbedded your need ran and how long it’d been since anyone bothered to look deeper.
He’d hoped, at least, that you were letting Whitaker and Santos help, and though you let them closer than most, it was clear you still seemed intent on holding up yourself and everyone around you on your own.
But it wasn’t just that. It was the way you oozed kindness— like it was a byproduct of your existence. He watched you get so wrapped up in being the perfect resident, perfect friend, perfect person, that no one ever stopped to let you know how good you were just by being.
He hadn’t planned on developing feelings or anything of the sort. At first, you’d just been one of his residents. Smart and capable but lacking confidence in yourself to fully commit. Then there was that MCI, and drinks in the park afterwards where he’d painfully watched you sip a beer you clearly hated, and everything just clicked right into place.
He never intends to flirt with you. It just happens. He can’t help himself. He’s a weak fucking man when it comes to you.
And then you bring him a card. A fucking card. To thank him for doing his job as an attending, a job he should’ve been doing better from the start. It has an illustration of bananas on it and says “Thanks a bunch!”.
He knows he’s completely gone, then. He was capable of being in denial before, could delude himself into thinking that what he felt was casual, but the sight of you before him, hands nervously wringing, your glitter gel pens sparkling as they caught the light was just the final nail in the coffin.
He allows himself a modicum of flirting on a day to day basis, mostly because if he couldn’t tease that real smile out of you at least once per day, he’d lose his mind.
Sometimes he takes you back to the diner, especially on longer days where none of your smiles reach your eyes and you start obsessively uncapping and capping your gel pens.
Even though you think it “looks dumb” you’ve also taken to sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in the booth, and he pretends he can’t see you sneaking fries off his plate because he knows how much effort it takes you to ask him if you can sit with him instead of on the opposite side.
Then he starts driving you home during a string of bad weather after you start sneezing from walking in the rain everyday, but even after the storm passes and the weather clears up he still finds you at the lockers, every day, car keys in hand. No matter how many times he does it, you always look so happily surprised that he’s still offering.
As if he’s not wrapped around your finger.
One day, after things have been mellow for awhile, Whitaker calls him and says that neither he nor Trinity have seen you in three days and you called out of work.
So naturally, as a calm and collected man, he showed up to your house.
You’d answered the door after the third time he knocked (which was great, because he was gearing up to force the door open) and you just looked miserable. Your hair was a mess, you head blanket wrinkles imprinted onto your face, and your eyes were puffy.
“Jack?” You’d mumbled, squinting your eyes against the not very bright light in the hallway, “Why are you at my apartment?”
“No one’s heard from you in three days.”
You wince. “I swear I meant to text Trinity. I just have a bad headache.”
His fingers twitch towards a penlight he doesn’t have. “How bad?”
“I don’t know. Like a seven on the pain scale?”
“Jesus— I’m coming in.”
“Nooo,” You cry, but shuffle back from the door and put up very little fight as he ushers you to the couch.
Your apartment is….. exactly as messy as he’d imagined a resident who lives alone would be. For someone who doesn’t drink enough water, there are an incredible amount of beverage bottles and cans littered about.
“Do you have headache relief?”
You gesture to the kitchen. “Cabinet furthest to the left.”
While rifling through your very disorganized medicine cabinet, he spies an orange prescription bottle with your name on it, dated for the previous year.
“Why do you have a prescription for a high level antihistamine?”
“Stop snooping. It’s for my migraines.”
“You’ve had a prescription this entire time and you’ve been taking all that over the counter shit?”
“Stop being mad,” You mumble into the couch cushion, “My migraine meds put me to sleep, so I can’t take them when I’m working. Plus I don’t have any refills left so I save them for when it’s really bad.”
“You called out of work and haven’t left your apartment in three days and you don’t consider this bad?”
“Could be worse. Could be throwing up.”
He sighs. Sets the bottle on the counter, breathes in once, then lets it out slowly. Imagines all the ways he could murder whoever made you think suffering alone for three days is preferable to asking for help.
“I’m going to help you back to bed,” He starts, voice low as he rounds the couch, “And then you’re going to drink some electrolytes, have a snack, and take your meds. Okay?”
The migraine has clearly taken it out of you, because you put up zero fight as he manhandles you to your feet and helps you drag yourself back to your bed.
“M’ sorry my apartment is a mess. I was supposed to clean it.”
“I’m not judging, sweetheart,” He says, tucking the blankets up around you, lips twitching as you make grabby hands for a giant triceratops plushie that looks to be the size of your upper body. “I’m gonna make you a snack, so try to stay awake until I come back. Can you do that?”
“Mhm. I’ll try.”
“Good girl.”
He manages to find a cucumber in your fridge, cuts it into slices and then adds a few pieces of lunch meat for protein. Last but not least, he snags a bottle of blue Gatorade from your pantry.
(He only knows they were there because he bought them for you a few weeks ago.)
He doesn’t make you sit up to eat, but instead scoots you a little ways away from the edge of your bed so there’s space for the plate.
You slowly nibble your way through, taking little sips of Gatorade when he nudges the bottle into your hands.
You finish the cucumbers, eat most of the lunch meat, and drink half the Gatorade before burrowing back into the blankets and declaring yourself done.
“Can I have my sleep mask please? I think it’s on the floor under my nightstand?”
“Of course you can.”
After your face mask is on and the curtains closed, he gives you the correct dose of your meds and gently shuts the door to your bedroom.
He fires off a quick text to Whitaker (he doesn’t have Santos’s number) that says you’re fine, stuck in bed with a migraine, and that he’s handling it.
And then he gets to work.
Two hours later your apartment is clean, your laundry is started, and Jack’s relaxing on your couch, aimlessly watching the news.
He hears the door creak open but knows you hate feeling on the spot, so he keeps his gaze trained on the tv even as he hears the sound of you shuffling over to the couch.
And then you pause.
“Jack.”
“Yes?”
“Did you clean my apartment?”
He finally looks over to you, and when his gaze reaches your face his stomach drops.
You’re crying.
He hauls himself off the couch (he’s thankful that he put his leg back on a few minutes prior) and stops in front of you, arms twitching at his sides with the need to fix, help, to stop whatever it is that’s making you cry.
“What’s wrong? Did I overstep?”
“No,” You warble, voice wet, “I just haven’t had the time or energy to clean in here for so long, and it’s been stressing me out so bad I avoid staying here during my off days. It’s just really, really nice of you.”
You look at him, eyebrows pinched and eyes wide with worry, “I— I’m not sure how to repay you for all of this. I know you said going to the diner was fine, but this is— a lot.”
“Sweetheart,” He starts, bracing one hand on the side of your face, thumb deftly sweeping across your cheek and wiping away the quickly drying tears, “I’m not doing any of this because I expect you to repay me. I’m doing it because I care about you and I want to see you happy.”
You sniff hard. “This is a lot of work, though.”
“I like doing it. I like taking care of you.”
Another sniff. “It doesn’t seem very fun.”
“I told you. You’re like a cat. Had to coax you over and now look at you,” he thumb rubs circles over your cheekbone, “Practically purring.”
You wrinkle your nose. “I don’t know if I like this metaphor.”
“Get used to it.”
You sigh, dramatic and long.
“I suppose I’ll allow it.”
“Oh, you’ll allow it, huh.”
You fold your hands behind your back, rocking back and forth on your heels. “Yes. I’ll allow it.”
“Well, aren’t I lucky.”
Later, when you’re lying on the couch, two movies into what Jack thinks is an unofficial early 2000s rom-com marathon (your favorite genre) you turn to look up at him from your spot tucked into his side.
“This is romantic, right?”
He presses a lazy kiss to your forehead, because he knows how much you like physical affirmations as well as verbal ones.
“Yes.”
“You’re serious about this?”
“You need confirmation?”
“I’d rather have it in writing, but this will do for now.”
He huffs a breathy laugh, tucks you closer to his chest.
“I’ll put it in writing for you later.”
You hum, pleased, and snuggle back into him, letting out a content sigh.
btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here
roald dahl was antisemitic and misogynistic. george orwell was openly homophobic. edgar allan poe married his 13 year old cousin. dr seuss cheated on his wife (and was racist as well as antisemitic!). hp lovecraft was racist as fuck.
anyways they’re fucking dead it’s not like you’re enabling their behaviors in the afterlife or something. then again I think they bleed into the books so uh keep an eye out for that
the difference between these old white guys and jk rowling is that the former group is all dead. jk rowling is alive and using your money to oppress trans people
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
fucked that you can’t fix other people especially when you really care about them. Oh so im just supposed to be there for you while you suffer. like a useless cunt gargoyle
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