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✶ — OFF-DAY !

summary: in the middle of the worst e.r. shift of your whole career, you catch your not-quite boyfriend, shirtless, in an empty room with another resident. (6.4k)

characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, mentor!michael robinavitch, samira mohan, melangdon crumbs

contents: established relationship/friends with benefits, jealousy (mohabbot take five real quick), angst, hurt/comfort, kinda canon divergent 'cause i wrote this when the spoilers dropped a few weeks ago cw for s2 spoilers, physical assault (a la dana in s1), panic attacks, mentions of blood and medical procedures, mentions of patient death, brief mentions of grief, brief mentions of not eating due to stress n sadness, allusions to smut 18+ (MDNI)

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The lamplit room is filled with Jack’s exclusion from it.

You writhe beneath the mussed blankets, still buzzing from the remnants of your orgasm, and watch his shadow move beneath the crack of the bathroom door. You’re still filled by him, still leaking a mixture of him onto the stained sheets below, and yet you find yourself missing him, anyway.

He does not seem as grieved by the distance as you are. He sobered almost instantly from his own orgasm and promptly slid off your body, without another word or a kiss of reassurance shared between you. He’d slipped his prosthetic back on and made a beeline for the adjoining bathroom — where he has been for some minutes now, just pacing, and leaving you to stew in the worry of what you had obviously done so wrong.

“Do you wanna order food?” you call into the quiet, reaching for your phone on the nightstand beside you. You miss once, then twice, with hands still tingling from a soul-ascending pleasure. The screen fills the dim room with a blue-white light that makes you squint until your tired eyes adjust.

“What?!” Jack shouts back, muffled from behind the door. The hissing faucet shuts off to a slow drip.

“I said, do you—” You cut off your yelling when the bathroom door squeaks open. Jack appears in the doorway, now dressed in the t-shirt and jeans he’d arrived in. He’s shadowed momentarily by the light behind him until he switches it off again — then he’s painted a dim golden color as he walks back into the bedroom for his shoe.

You hold the thin sheet to your bare chest and shift further up the headboard, bending your knees to accommodate his body when he sits on the edge of the mattress to tie his laces. Your eyes soften, waiting for him to look back at you.

He never does.

More quietly, you tell him, “I asked if you wanted to order food. ‘Cause I don’t really feel like cooking right now and, depending on what you want, we should probably wait to order ‘cause Love Island doesn’t come on for another hour, and—”

Jack’s scruffy chin brushes the thin fabric of his shirt as he turns his head slowly to look at you. There’s a distance in his eyes that cuts you off, like you’re a quick fuck that doesn’t know when to stop talking, like he’s waiting for you to stop so he can get away.

“I think I’m gonna head out now, actually,” he tells you, then returns to knot his laces.

“Oh…” you hum, half-breathless, and pretend his foreign dismissiveness doesn’t tear your chest in two. “Are you… Are you okay—?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs and rises from the mattress. “I’m fine. I just— Need to get home.”

You follow him with wet eyes as he rounds the bed for the opposite side, where his phone and wallet sit on the nightstand and his branded rucksack rests on the floor. “Well, do you want me to wait to watch it with you? ‘Cause then I have to text Princes and tell her not to spoil it for me in the morning—”

“Go ahead,” Jack shrugs, with a faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, as he slides the camo strap over his broad shoulder. “I think I’ll survive a week without it.”

Your frown deepens at his joke.

“Did I do something?” you wonder in a meek voice that makes his chest ache.

“No,” he scoffs. “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know…” you murmur shyly, shifting on the mattress and grimacing slightly when the sticky sheets cling to your thighs. “You never leave right after we have sex, so I— I didn’t know if, maybe… It wasn’t good for your something, or if I said something—”

“No, it was great—” Jack interjects, but cuts himself off quickly thereafter, like he was about to say something he shouldn’t.

The word ‘honey’ was about to roll off his tongue the way it always does when he’s talking to you, but it feels wrong to say it now, for a reason he still can’t name that threatens to strangle him all the same.

“I just gotta go now. Okay?”

At a loss for what else to do, or what else to say that might make him stay, you just nod with a sad smile. “Sure…”

Jack leaves with a polite nod — like the sex was some sort of mindless transaction he’s thanking you for and not something you’ve done quite regularly for the past several months. He doesn’t speak another word to you when he walks out, and doesn’t look back at you once when he shuts the door behind him.

You stew in his absence and forget to eat.

Your tired body functions the following day on nothing but heartache and half a granola bar.

You drown in the bustling emergency department, and in the void of the white screen ahead of you, where you try and fail to do your charting. You can’t quite garner the strength to use your hands, much less use your brain to put letters on the screen that’ll just look like alphabet soup to you anyway. You’re stuck idling in the emptiness inside of you, where your heart withers along with your stomach.

Robby watches from afar, studying you as he flits between patients and residents requiring his attention. He has, self-admittedly, quite the soft spot for you — because you’re the smartest person on this floor and the most sensitive, too, which makes for a great doctor but very often the saddest person you’ll ever meet. He waits for you to correct yourself before he has to step in, and potentially make your day worse than it’s obviously already going.

You don’t move for six minutes straight.

He timed it.

“What is going on over here?” Robby wonders slowly, leaning over the top of the desk and peering down at you with a pair of stern brown eyes.

You blink rapidly to clear the haze of rumination from your vision and shrink into your cushioned seat like a scolded child. “Charting…” you answer with an unconvincing waver in your voice.

“Looks like it,” Robby scoffs with a hint of a smile that gets lost in his greying beard. He taps the desk with his palm and stands to full height again, nodding his head and urging you to follow him. “C’mon. Walk with me.”

He saunters off in the opposite direction of the work station, taking a tablet that Dana hands to him as he goes. It takes a long moment for his words to compute, and you scramble to your feet when he throws you an expectant look over his shoulder. You fall into step with the older man as he drags his glasses from the shirt pocket of his black scrubs.

Robby sets the black frames on the bridge of his nose and wonders aloud with his gaze turned to the screen in his hand, “What’s going on with you today, kid?”

“It’s nothing,” you shrug dismissively, sticking close to the man’s side as you weave within the crowded hall.

He flashes you an unenthusiastic glare in return. His eyes dart between your furrowed brows, to your anxiety-bitten lips (where your teeth dig into the delicate skin even now), to where you wrench the hem of your long-sleeved undershirt into trembling fists. Whatever it is, it’s very clearly not nothing.

“I’m not asking to be polite, kid,” the older man tells you, firm but not entirely unkind. “I can tell something’s wrong, and it’s affecting your work, so— Just tell me.”

You swallow hard and struggle to find the courage to speak, or to meet the man’s gaze as your eyes dart everywhere but back at him.

“It’s about your friend…” you confess in a sheepish murmur that gets lost in the droning of the bustling E.R.

It takes Robby a moment or more to catch your meaning.

“Jack?” he presses, because he knew the two of you were seeing each other, but not that it was quite so serious to warrant the off-day you’re having now. He makes a mental note to ream Abbot out for it the next time he sees him — ‘cause he can’t have any of his residents upset, least of all you.

You nod with an averted gaze. “He’s just… been off—”

“He’s always off,” Robby scoffs.

“Well, not with me,” you tell him, foreignly firm in your quiet argument. “And now he’s not talking to me, and I have no idea what I did…”

“Well, knowing Jack, you probably didn’t do a damn thing,” Robby concedes with a heavy sigh and flashes you a sympathetic look as you turn the corner. “Just give him some time, alright? He’ll come around. He always does. For now, you’ve got a patient in 8 that’s asking for you—”

Before you can make a guess on who it is — though you think you already know the answer — a strong hand wrenches suddenly around your wrist.

The man’s fingers are warm, calloused, and unwavering against your delicate skin. Your heart lurches into your throat at the sudden panic as your chin snaps towards the man towering over you. He’s tall, bearded, rugged, and so angry he’s red in the face.

“I have been waiting out there…” the man starts, taut voice wavering with a withheld fire. “…For four hours. When the hell am I gonna see somebody?”

“How did you get back here?” is the first thing you think to squeak out, because you vaguely recall McKay sending him back to Chairs after taking his vitals some time ago.

Robby steps in then, cutting between you and the stranger to urge him backward and away from you. You rub at your tender wrist when the man’s brutal touch is gone.

“We’re seeing the sickest patients first, sir. So count yourself lucky you aren’t back here,” Robby explains in an even voice, sounding much calmer than he really feels. “But touch anybody in here like that again, and you won’t be seen at all. Got it?”

The man caves with a heavy breath and with his weathered palms splayed in surrender. “I was just asking a question, man…”

“I’ll handle it, boss,” Ahmad cuts in, rushing towards the three of you after catching sight of the altercation from down the hall. He steps between the two of you and the angry patient and ushers him back toward the waiting room.

“Don’t touch me,” you hear the man spit, but complying anyway.

“Trust me, man,” Ahmad quips. “I don’t want to.”

It takes you a long moment thereafter to catch your breath.

It was certainly not the first time you’ve been grabbed by an unhappy patient, and it would certainly not be the last, but you can never quite get used to the fear. The panic is slow to ebb from your veins, even as the man is escorted back to Chairs. You find him sneering silently at you when you catch his eyes, moments before the door shuts behind him.

Robby steps into your tunnel vision, ducking down to meet your gaze with dark eyes glimmering with worry. “You alright, kid? Did he get you?”

“I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory and muster a smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “I’ve seen my fair share of assholes, Robby. Today, even.”

“Well, yeah,” the man scoffs playfully. “You’re with Abbot— I’m sure you’re an expert at dealing with assholes by now…”

By all accounts, you were not supposed to have favorites at the PTMC. And you didn’t really; everyone who stepped foot into the E.R. got the same level of medical care from you — even the assholes. But Louie Cloverfield was different, special. He was the first patient you ever saw as an R1, and when he kept coming in, and you kept picking up his cases, he became your patient.

If Louie was in, and you were on shift, you were the one tending to him. Always.

So, you stay by his side when he loses his pulse, even when the rest of the E.R. reduces to the inevitable chaos of the afternoon rush — even when you know the rest of your co-workers could probably use your help out there now — even when you know there’s nothing more you can do for Louie to keep him alive.

Sweat beads on your forehead as you kneel at his bedside, pounding firmly at the man’s chest in a feeble attempt to keep his heart beating. You’ve lost feeling in your arms now — they’ve gone from aching, to burning, to utterly numb — but your attempt at resuscitation never stops, not even as dark crimson blood spits from his breathing tube; the clearest sign of blood in his lungs.

Robby watches from the back of the room, keeping a close eye on you and the bodies donned in camo outside the window — as the TEMS unit treats a trauma patient across the way, with Jack Abbot among them. He catches the man glancing around the crowded E.R. for a moment, peering over passing heads for a glimpse of you, before the work inevitably drags him away.

Robby knows you have not yet noticed Jack’s presence.

You’ve got the sort of tunnel vision you always get in a crisis, when you refuse to move on until you’ve helped the person in front of you first — which has undoubtedly made you the very backbone of the PTMC patient satisfaction score, though at a detriment to yourself perhaps. Because you never know when to stop; and then, when you inevitably have to, you’ll always find a way to blame yourself for it.

“Three minutes since the epi,” you hear Perlah say, over the sound of your pounding heartbeat in your ears.

“Hold compressions,” Robby commands.

You stop on instinct, and feel the ache done into your bones. You exhale heavy breaths as you wipe sweat from your brow with the back of your gloved hand, careful to avoid the drops of blood spotted there. You feel like your chest is tearing in two when that same, menacing beeping sound fills the air.

“Aystotle,” Robby sighs. “Resume compressions.”

“Give me another amp of epi— and more suction,” you say through panted breaths, situating your palms back over the older man’s sternum. You look past the rogue flyaways falling over your eyes and the nurses crowded around you, peering at Robby with a determined but no less pleading gaze. “What do we do? Should we— Should we give PCC?”

Robby shakes his head with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, it’s too late for that…” he hums sympathetically. “And he’s not an ECMO candidate, so—”

“Well, can you tell me something that we can do?” you snap, harsher than you mean to.

Robby only softens further, dark eyes going tender around the edges as he tells you, “There’s nothing else we can do for him, kid…”

“Robby,” you whimper, flinching like he’s hurt you, but never once stopping your compressions. “C’mon. Please, we can— We can think of something— We still have two more rounds of epi, maybe it’ll—”

“He’s gone, kid…” Robby tells you, voice taut. “It’s okay.”

You exhale a punched-out breath, like not being able to save Louie hits you like a fist to the stomach. Your aching arms tingle with numbness when you part from the unconscious man. That wretched beeping fills the air once more, ringing through your ears and pounding skull.

“12:07,” you hear Robby announce the time of death, as Perlah’s soft hands grasp gently at your shoulders.

“C’mon. I’ll clean up,” the woman tells you, sniffling. “You take a second.”

“I’m fine,” you shrug, half-strangled, as you slip the bloodied gloves from your half-numb hands. You blink back burning tears as you walk them to the trash.

“You’re not,” Robby murmurs, head bowed to meet your averted gaze. “And that’s okay. Just take a second.”

You remind yourself to breathe — in for seven beats and out for eight — as the muffled exam room breaks away into the chaotic E.R. The rest of it becomes a blur in your tunnel vision, and the calls for concern turn to inaudible slurs in your ears.

“Whoa… you okay?” you only vaguely hear Trinity ask as you storm past the work station.

“Fine,” you squeak on instinct, despite the obvious.

“Oh, yeah, he totally croaked in there,” Ogilvie murmurs, as though to gossip with her, but forgetting to be subtle about it.

“Do you ever think before you speak?” Santos quips. “Or is the stupidity genetic?”

Your heavy eyes search for an empty room to duck into, to at least muffle your screams before you cry in front of everyone. There is no patient in the bed in Central 15, so you burst into that one, still struggling to catch your breath.

Your much-needed inhale gets caught in your chest at the sight you find in the corner of the room — Jack Abbot, stripped off his shirt and wiping blood from his stomach, with Samira standing just behind him, tending carefully to the scrape on his back.

Your sneaker scuffs the tile as you still suddenly in place.

The sound of your sudden presence makes them freeze, too. Their heads dart in your direction, gaping with wide eyes and parted mouths as if you’d just caught them doing something terrible. In a way, it feels like you have.

It feels like you’ve stumbled upon some achingly tender moment between them, of which you had been deprived for some time now — because even when Jack was with you, he was a thousand miles away. You wonder if, maybe, a part of him wanted to be here — with Samira, perhaps — and if that’s why he had left you so abruptly last night, as if it had only occurred to him then that you were no longer what he wanted.

You wouldn’t have blamed him for it, if that were the case. You just wish he would’ve told you before now, so it would feel like less of a white-hot knife lodged into the center of your sternum to find him this way.

“Sorry,” you just barely manage to choke out, though it gets lost in a whimper as you fight back the urge to cry.

Jack’s scruffy chest pinches with worry at the crack in your fragile voice and the visibly frazzled sight of you, all wild-haired and glassy-eyed. It hurts him far worse than the wounds burning red-hot on his pale skin now.

“What happened?” he asks, greying brows lowered in concern.

Samira stills with her soft fingers on Jack’s broad, freckled shoulder, touching him with a tenderness he hasn’t let you give him in some time.

“Are you okay?” she wonders, soft with a worry that is always sincere coming from here, but finds you more like a slap in the face just now.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory, then sniffle as you shake your head at yourself. “I’m not, actually— I don’t know why I said that— Louie just died. Pulmonary hemorrhage. And I was just looking for an empty room to cry in, I didn’t mean to… to interrupt…”

“You didn’t,” Jack assures you, parting from Samira to take a step closer to you.

It takes quite a lot of strength from you to turn away from him, instead of leering at his shirtless form or cowering at the gentle look in his light eyes. “I-I’ll see myself out,” you stammer hopelessly. “Sorry…”

You just barely hear Jack calling your name before the heavy glass door shuts behind you.

With nowhere else to go, and not willing to face the embarrassment of walking back the way you came, you make a beeline for the ambulance bay. The automatic doors part for you, and the cool air outside takes your breath away a second later.

Your chest hitches as you inhale a sniveling breath, trying and failing to regulate your breathing. You stand at the edge of the curb with one hand balled into a fist and one hand clutching your aching chest. Your heart’s telling you that you’re having an embolism and you’re about to keel over at this very moment; your brain’s telling you that you’re just having a panic attack and you need to suck it the hell up.

“Hey,” a man calls from further down the sidewalk.

Your head snaps in the direction of the familiar voice. You tense at the sight of the man who had grabbed you earlier, and your aching heart forgets to beat when you see him storming over to you. You find he’s wearing a smile on his bearded face when he’s close enough, but it looks more cynical than kind.

“You’re the nurse who got me kicked out earlier, aren’t you?” he asks.

You don’t have the breath or the bravery to correct him now.

“I’m sorry, sir…” you sniffle, wet-eyed, and turn away. “It’s just… It’s been a long day, okay? I didn’t mean for you to get escorted out. You just scared me, that’s all. I’m—”

You turn to face him again when he’s standing ahead of you. But before the words of an apology can spill from your mouth, his weathered fist collides with your nose.

You hear a sharp crack, a wet whoosh, and then the dull slap of your body hitting the pavement. You grimace when the back of your skull meets the concrete, and struggle to blink away the black spots from your vision.

The very first face you see is Langdon’s, though you’re not quite sure how long it’s been since your eyes have closed — a few seconds, maybe, or several minutes. You’re still lying on the rough pavement when you come to, with Frank’s gentle fingers brushing the hair out of your eyes with one hand and shining his penlight into your eyes with the other.

“There you are…” the man coos. “What happened to you out here?”

You hardly hear him, like he’s speaking to you from underwater. You answer him with a question of your own, lifting your trembling fingers to the dull throbbing sensation in your nose.

“Is… Is it bad?” you wonder aloud, half-slurring. You grimace first at the wet feeling on your cupid’s bow, then at the bright scarlet blood staining your fingertips. You whisper, voice breaking. “Ow…”

“Whoa, careful there…” Mel wavers, rushing from behind Langdon to help you when you try to sit up on your own. She crouches down beside him and takes you by the elbows in a pair of gentle hands. She squints behind her glasses when your inhale rattles in your chest. “Did you fall on your back?”

“Did somebody hit you?” Langdon presses from her other side, bushy brows lowered in worry.

“Wow…” you mumble, blinking hard, and wincing when you taste blood in your mouth. “So many questions…”

Mel and Langdon share a panicked look you don’t see.

“Yeah, c’mon. Let’s go,” the older man sighs, urging you up by the elbows and steadying you when you sway softly in place. “Come with me…”

“I can walk,” you protest through your ragged breaths, and through the blood dripping from your cupid’s bow and into your mouth. You pull your arm out of his grasp when the strength to do so returns to you, and stagger the rest of the way to the entrance until you regain your footing. “Just… Be normal, alright?”

“Right…” Langdon scoffs and fights back the urge to laugh — because you obviously have no idea how you look right now, with the lower half of your face all covered in blood, as if you’ve just been rescued from a bar fight. There’s hardly anything normal about that.

You try to be, anyway, as you stroll through the crowded E.R., hoping to be blanketed by the chaos inside. Everyone’s too busy charting or rushing to patients to notice your being there. You’re five or more steps away from making it to the bathroom when Robby’s eagle-eyed stare locks in on you from behind his computer.

“Jesus fucking Christ…” the older man blurts, sliding off his glasses and rising from his chair. He abandons his work without a second thought and rounds the workstation to rush to your side.

“I’m okay,” you tell him with a dismissive wave of your hand, pressing onward even when you hear his footsteps nearing you. He stops you with a gentle hand on your shoulder and steps in front of you to block your path.

“What the hell happened to you?” he wonders aloud, looking past you to Langdon and Mel as he drags a pair of gloves from his scrub pockets.

“We found her like this,” Frank shrugs.

“I told you to take a break, not get into a bar fight.”

“Ha-ha,” you monotone, then flinch when it hurts to smile. “Ow…”

“Who did this, huh?” Robby asks, cupping your bloodied face in his gloved hands. He runs his fingers over the back of your head first, to make sure you have no wounds there, before pressing his thumbs gently to the apples of your cheeks. “It wasn’t that asshole from before, was it?”

“I didn’t see him,” you lie through your teeth.

“Any trouble seeing? Any double vision?”

You shake your head against his hands, then inhale another rattling breath.

“Did you fall on your back?” he asks you then.

You nod once.

“What about a headache?”

“I always have a headache,” you answer. “I’m fine, Robby. I just need to get cleaned up—”

“Look at you— You’re not fine,” the man snaps. “Now, c’mon. You’re coming with me.”

You have no choice but to follow him when he wraps a firm, gentle hand around your arm, ushering you to walk ahead of him. You ignore the looks and calls of concern from the coworkers around you, except for Mel’s voice, which comes from behind you.

“Should I find Dr. Abbot?” she wonders aloud.

Your head snaps over your shoulder to look at her, and it makes your vision swim.

“Absolutely do not do that,” you answer, a little harsher than you mean to.

“O-kay…” she stammers and trails off.

“In here,” Robby urges, swinging open the door to the nearest empty room. He keeps a steady hand on your back to keep you stable and turns back to Mel before he follows you inside. “Find Abbot,” he tells her.

You lie on your back on the hospital bed while Robby does an impromptu exam. He presses the cold chestpiece of his stethoscope to your skin and listens to your breathing until it evens out again, from where the air had rushed out of your lungs after the fall. He finds your pupils both equal and reactive, and your nose free from swelling or cracking — “Nothing that mother nature can’t fix,” he says, and takes to cleaning you up instead.

“These beds are so hard,” you murmur, shifting uncomfortably with an icepack pressed to your nose, which Princess had brought by some minutes ago. “We should really get new ones in here. How are patients supposed to be comfortable in these?”

“Yeah, I’ll go tell Gloria,” Robby scoffs, dabbing at your nose with a wet wipe. “I’m sure she’ll get right on that…”

He parts from you to chuck the red-tinted napkin into the bin at his side and waits for you to laugh at his stupid joke. You stay silent. You don’t even give him a pity giggle, and you always, at the very least, give him a goddamn pity giggle. His brows furrow in a mixture of confusion and concern.

“Can I ask you a stupid question?”

“Better than anyone I know, Dr. Robby…”

“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, reaching for another wipe with a gloved hand. It’s freezing against the burning skin of your neck as it dabs it gently there. “Why didn’t you want me telling Abbot about this, huh?”

“Because he doesn’t care…” you mumble cynically, almost inaudibly so.

“Oh, c’mon,” Robby scoffs. “Even you don’t believe that.”

You don’t. Not really. You know Jack cares, if only because it’s in his blood to do so. His basic human empathy is what made him such a good doctor. You just aren’t sure that he cares about you in the way you thought he did — in the way you wanted him to — and you’re not quite sure how to voice that to Robby now.

“He’s busy right now,” you answer instead, still half-hidden behind the icepack. “Too busy for me, and I don’t wanna bother him, so… Just drop it.”

Robby flashes you a sympathetic smile that you don’t see as he swipes at the last bit of blood from your skin. “I know he may not act like it, kid, but he does care about you.”

“You’re right,” you mumble. “He doesn’t act like it—”

Jack Abbot bursts into the room like a red-hot flame through a burning house. His broad chest heaves with panted breaths beneath the thin navy shirt he wears in place of his tactical gear, though his camo pants still sit heavy on his waist.

His wild eyes scan your form. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he blurts.

You glare at Robby from behind the icepack. “I hate you.”

“Yeah, I know…” the man sighs, dropping the crumpled wipe into the trash beside him.

“What happened?” Jack presses, more firmly this time.

“Nothing,” you murmur shyly, unable to meet his gaze when he towers at your bedside with his hands on his hips. “It’s not the first time someone’s swung at me—”

“Yeah, but it’s the first time it’s been this bad. Bad enough that someone had to come get me,” Jack argues, made a bit harsher with the concern pinching at his chest. His head whips over his shoulder. “Who the hell did this?”

“Some guy from Chairs, I think,” Robby shrugs. “Name’s Driscoll. Ahmad’s already handling it. He’ll deal with the police.”

“Good,” Jack nods, firm in a way you’ve always adored about him. He was inherently resolute where you were perpetually indecisive. It mostly came in handy when you struggled to figure out what to eat for dinner, not usually in situations like this. “‘Cause we’re pressing charges on this asshole, alright?”

“Honestly, Jack, I don’t care what you do…” you sigh. “But my head is really starting to hurt, and I really don’t feel like handling this right now.”

“On it,” Robby nods, taking the hint and stalking out of the room. He shuts the curtains after him and dims the light as he goes. The noise of the Pitt muffles again when the door closes behind him, leaving you and Jack alone in the not-quite-silence and the not-quite-dark.

“Here. C’mon,” the man urges suddenly, motioning with his chin. “Make room for me.”

“What?” you ask, eyes squinted in confusion as the man turns to sit on the edge of the twin-sized bed, adjusting his prosthetic to swing it over the side.

He gives you an expectant look over his shoulder. “Scooch,” is all he says, in a strangely strong voice despite the very silly command.

You shift on the thin mattress despite your better judgment to make room for him. Jack urges his right leg up first, then his left one second. He settles in beside you and urges the railings up to keep him from falling off the side. You try to do the same, though you possess a lot less strength with only one hand than the man beside you.

Your breath catches when he reaches over you with a strong hand, helping you lift the barrier the rest of the way.

“Thanks…” you mumble, half-shy.

“Don’t mention it,” he huffs politely, with one arm on his stomach and the other curled around your shoulders, keeping you close to accommodate both your bodies on the twin-sized bed. He smells of sweat and musky cologne and antiseptic. It takes everything in you not to melt into his warmth. You remain tense beside him, feeling slightly strange in his hold in a way you never have before.

“I’m sorry about, Louie—”

“You don’t have to do this—” you blurt simultaneously.

His head snaps over to you. He has to jerk his scruffy chin back to look at you properly from the dwindling proximity between you. His eyes dart between your averted gaze and the slowly melting icepack you fidget with like a stress ball.

“Do what?” he asks.

“I didn’t mean to walk in on you and Samira, okay?” you confess quietly, ‘cause any octave higher, and your voice will start to shake. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to make it a whole thing, you know? So you don’t have to come in and pretend to be all nice just because you think I’m upset, ‘cause I’m not.”

(Your rambling is hardly convincing in the matter, but he makes no mention of it.)

“Okay. I hear you,” Jack murmurs gently, always so patient with your rambling, even though he can only halfway comprehend it a lot of the time. “But I’m still not sure what Mohan has to do with this—”

Honey, he wants to say, but doesn’t allow himself.

“If you want to be with her, that’s okay— Or if it’s just because you don’t wanna be with me, that’s okay, too,” you explain in a strangely even voice. “But I wish you would’ve just told me, instead of bailing on me last night—”

“I didn’t bail on you—”

“—So then I wouldn’t have to catch you and Samira doing…” you trail off, face screwed. “Whatever the hell you were doing back there.”

“Catching us?” Jack echoes with a laugh you can feel rumbling against your shoulder. “That would imply we were doing something worth getting caught. She just walked in on me while looking for her patient, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well…” you hum, gaze averted to the icepack in your lap. “It seemed pretty intimate…”

“It wasn’t.”

“More intimate than you’ve been with me,” you argue sheepishly.

“Well, not to be crude here, but…” Jack trails off with an audible smile in his voice. “We literally had sex last night.”

“Yeah, and you left,” you spit, turning to look at him for the first time since he stormed in. You wear a wet look in your glassy eyes and a bruise blooming on the bridge of your nose. “And I cried myself to sleep about it. Which means I didn’t get to watch Love Island, which means I forgot to eat, which means I’m running on fumes on what has arguably been the worst shift of my whole life.”

You take a much-needed breath when the words are gone from your mouth.

Jack does not jump immediately to defend himself. He knows he doesn’t deserve it now. He just lets himself stew in your fiery words instead, so you know they’ll have a real impact on him before he responds.

“You’re right,” he sighs after a few long moments. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” you shake your head at his apologetic tone. “Just don’t… Don’t be so mean, you know? If you don’t wanna be with me anymore, why can’t you just say?”

“Because I do want to be with you,” he answers, weathered features screwed in offense. “How would you ask me that?”

“Because you aren’t acting like it—”

“Because I almost told you that I loved you,” Jack blurts suddenly, in a stern tone of voice that snatches the breath from your lungs. He swallows hard and continues. “Last night, I mean, when we… I almost said it… Because I felt it, but then I… I realized I hadn’t said that to anyone since my wife passed, and it freaked me out.”

“But…” you start in a broken whisper. “Why does that have to be such a bad thing?”

“‘Cause it makes me feel guilty,” Jack answers. “The way I love you makes me feel guilty, like I’m abandoning her. And I… I don’t know what to do with all that… grief.”

You feel your heart aching, for the third or hundredth time that day. You notice Jack’s right hand hanging on your shoulder, how his fingers fidget anxiously there, and how his left hand scratches at the rough fabric of his camo pants — made overwrought by his confession, and unsure what to do with it now.

“Why don’t you just give it to me?” you wonder quietly, then shrug at the confused look Jack gives you a second later. “Your grief, I mean. I can take it. You know, make it a little more bearable for you. So you don’t have to carry it all on your own.”

The softness of your words knocks the breath from Jack’s lungs.

The corner of his mouth quirks in a wavering smile as he blinks burning tears out of his eyes. “Jesus, we're a couple of goddamn sad sacks, aren’t we, honey?” he scoffs a sad laugh and runs his free hand down his scruffy face.

Your lips twitch upward, feeling giddy but fighting it. “That’s the first time you called me that in two days…” you observe distantly.

“What?”

“Honey.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I’m sorry for that, too…”

“Don’t be sorry,” you repeat, this time with a smile. “Just— kiss me or somethin’…”

“Gladly,” Jack says with a wider grin.

You tilt your chin up to meet him halfway when he leans down to kiss you. His nose bumps into the side of your bruised one, as your hand reaches for his wounded shoulder. You flinch against each other in tandem.

“Ow,” you whimper.

“Ouch,” Jack winces. “Shit, honey— Sorry.”

“Are you okay?” you ask with a sympathetic scrunch to your features, cupping his scruffy face in your delicate hands. “I haven’t checked in on you yet, I know you’re hurt—”

“I’m fine,” he assures with a shake of his head, leaning instinctively into your touch. “I got a little banged up, but… I’m good now.”

“Promise?” you whisper, swiping an eyelash from his cheek with your thumb.

“I promise. I'll tell you about later,” he nods once and smooths his calloused fingers across your temple, looking at you with a tenderness you’ve been craving all day. “What about you, honey— Are you okay?”

You inhale sharply through your bruised nose and nod on a slower exhale.

“I will be,” you answer honestly for the first time all day.

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