Susie, 18+ (probably older than you think), Female from Brisbane Australia.
I used to mostly write Bucky Barnes, and I still do mostly, but I've branched out into other fandoms and, even a real person fic or two smattered in there - I'm sure you'll know if you scroll further down.
I haven't really written smut, the ones I have written I am too scared to post but that may change. My "Private Life" Masterlist has a couple of short fics I've written so maybe I can go a bit further.
Anyway, welcome and if you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know and I'll try my best for you.
Masterlist and Page headers by @wildflowersandvibranium and me
Angst = 💔; Fluff = 💖; Smut = 🔥
Bucky Barnes Masterlist - Mostly Bucky Barnes fics but may contain other Sebastian Stan characters
Steve Rogers Masterlist - Mostly Steve Rogers fics but may contain other Chris Evans characters
The Pitt Masterlist - Dr Robby & Jack Abbott
Spencer Reid Masterlist - Mostly Spencer Reid but may contain other Criminal Minds characters
QB Joe Burrow
Private Life Masterlist - 18+ only - This is separate so that people who don't want this kind of story won't "stumble" across them. MDNI
Meet Cute Masterlist - a list for some new shorter stories (mostly under 1k) based around meet cute ideas. Mostly will be Bucky but I'm open to suggestions for characters and situations..
Dad!Bucky Shorts Masterlist
Hoes for the Holidays - Snow Joke I love you (Steve Rogers x reader), Midnight made of magic (Andy Barber x reader)
Dr. Jack Abbot x (female) reader | Dr. Jack Abbot x you
Summary: Robby learns about Lizzie's birthday plans and reacts with the... um... calm rationality everyone expects from him.
A/N: I'm no longer updating the taglist because Tumblr has been glitching way too much lately. If you don't want to miss any updates, feel free to turn on notifications for my posts! <3
Link to "You stole my cart" master list (1)
Link to "You stole my cart" master list (2)
Previous chapter: Part 102: You don't have to cry for me
--- --- ---
Jack was asleep in the bedroom. Deeply asleep to be precise. That kind of sleep that only happened after a brutal night shift where he came home looking vaguely haunted, kissed your forehead on autopilot, checked on Lizzie, muttered something about loving you very much before collapsing into bed.
This time he had thought about taking his prosthetic off before falling asleep.
Progress.
You sat in the living room with a cup of coffee - and Robby, who stood on your doorstep twenty minutes ago with coffee and pastries. And immediately had taken over baby duty once you let him in. Now he sat on the living room floor with Lizzie in his lap while he helped her stack blocks with concerning levels of commitment.
“Okay” he said gravely, adding another block. “This feels structurally unsound but if you insist…”
Lizzie shrieked delighted. “RARA!” Then slapped the whole tower sideways.
You smiled.
Robby stared at the blocks then sighed deeply. “Uncle Rara loves you so much.” He cuddled her against his chest, kissing her hair. “I can’t be mad at you, kid.”
Lizzie squealed, then jumped up and down, laughing hysterically.
“You see - I’m the godfather so this child and I have a sacred bond” he said towards you.
You nodded slowly. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I’m serious.” He shrugged. “I hope there is any kind of legal document just in case you idiots die one day.”
You stared at him in horror for a moment, before laughing. “Can you not say it like that?”
“What?” He rolled his eyes. “I just like being prepared.”
“Okay.” You still chuckled softly when you took another sip. “Oh, by the way - did Jack tell you we booked the flights for her birthday?”
“Flights?” he asked, already frowning.
“I told you.” You gave him a stern look. “We’re flying out to see my family.”
“Ah. Yes. You mentioned that.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna stay for a week.”
“Excuse me?” He sat up straighter, pulling Lizzie - who wanted to crawl away - back into his lap. “So let me get this straight. You’re taking my goddaughter across the country and have the audacity to leave me out of her very first birthday?”
You could only blink. “Um-”
“No.” He shook his head once. “Absolutely not.”
“Robby-”
“No.” He gestured at Lizzie. “This child? She’s like my own daughter so, no, thank you very much, I’m not missing her birthday.”
You started to laugh. “Robby, we’re visiting my family.”
“And?”
You blinked. “My family” you repeated, slower this time.
“Yeah, I heard you. So I’m coming.”
“Um - what?”
“I’m coming with you.”
The laughter stuck in your throat. “Um, no, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Michael, you can’t just invite yourself to our family gathering.”
“Oh, watch me.” He looked genuinely offended now. “I’m her godfather. I’m important.”
“Yes but you see her nearly on a daily basis.”
“She gets one first birthday. No way I’m missing it.”
“Robby, she won’t remember!”
“But I will remember” Robby shot back, then went silent. He looked down at Lizzie for a second, brushing hair back from her forehead automatically. Then shrugged like he hadn’t gotten emotional. “I just don’t want to miss this.” He narrowed his eyes. “Also Jack’s meeting your family for the first time. He needs all the backup support he can get.”
You snorted. “He served in the army. I’m sure he’ll survive.”
Robby looked deeply unconvinced. “Big family birthday in a rural town? That man’s gotta get emotionally overwhelmed in like ten seconds.”
You tried to look offended. “That’s my family you’re talking about.”
“And you moved hundreds of miles away from them, so you’re just proving my point.”
You laughed despite yourself.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway and both of you looked up instinctively. Jack’s sleep-rough voice drifted over.
“Why do I hear Michael fucking Robinavitch in my apartment?”
Robby started grinning while Lizzie let out a delighted shriek. “Good morning heartthrob!”
You cackled.
There was a moment of silence. Then - “Get out of my apartment, you psycho.”
“Watch your language, Abbot, your daughter is here” he shot back without missing a beat.
Jack appeared in the doorway looking devastatingly exhausted - his hair a mess, his shirt wrinkled, still half-asleep. He stopped and looked at Robby. Then at Lizzie, who was trying to wrestle herself free from Robby's embrace.
“Why are you here?”
Robby raised his eyebrows. “I want to spend time with my goddaughter on one of my rare days off.”
“DADDA DADDA DADDA!” Lizzie made grabby hands in Jack’s direction and his face softened immediately.
“Hey Bean.” He blew her a kiss.
She giggled delighted.
Robby snuggled her a little closer. “By the way we just decided I’m coming to her birthday.”
Jack blinked once, glancing over to you. You held up your hands. “I’m innocent. He decided this. There was no we in that decision.”
“Traitor” Robby muttered under his breath, then added louder: “No way I’m missing my goddaughters first birthday.”
Jack looked horrified for a moment, then something else crossed his face. Immediate defeat. He let out a deep sigh, rubbing his face. “We created a monster” he mumbled.
Robby shrugged. “Yep. It’s your fault. Now let’s talk logistics…”
--- --- ---
You wanna keep reading? - Next part is coming soon, I promise :)
summary: months later at chase’s science fair jack finally meets daniel. and the distance between you and him begins to fracture. (4.4k)
pairing: jack abbot x reader
content: emotional infidelity (?), divorce/separation, co parenting dynamics, angst.
authors note: low-key this was my favourite chapter to write but anyways if i had braincells i would just end this whole thing here…
part four. part six.
by june, the air in pittsburgh feels heavier somehow. you would go as far as to say thicker.
heat presses against your skin the second you step out of your car. the late afternoon sun reflects off the school windows hard enough to make you squint, softening the fine crinkles at the corners of your eyes.
beside you, daniel reaches into the backseat for the cardboard tray of iced coffees, balancing them precariously beside chase's poster tube.
he doesn't rush. daniel doesn't really do anything in a rush. he has this deliberate, grounded way of moving through the world that usually makes you feel like the baseline hum of your own anxiety is just background noise.
he's wearing a light grey linen shirt with the cuffs turned back twice, a smudge of dark graphite still staining the side of his thumb from a blueprint he had been sketching at breakfast.
"she said the gymnasium, right?" he asks, shutting the car door with his hip.
you hadn't actually planned on bringing daniel along with you. well not at first.
but chase had appeared in your kitchen four nights ago while you were grading lab reports, leaning against the counter looking suspiciously casual.
"i think you should ask daniel to come on friday."
you looked up at her immediately. "to the science fair?"
"well, yeah." she shrugged, reaching into the fridge.
"he helped me build half the display, so i don't see why not?"
"baby, you don't have to invite him because you think it's polite."
"i know." chase twisted the cap off a water bottle. "i want him to be there."
you narrowed your eyes slightly then because you knew chase was always up to something.
"your father will be there," you said carefully.
chase took a sip of water like the conversation bored her already. "well yeah. obviously."
"and?"
"and nothing." but the corner of her mouth twitched suspiciously. "i just think everyone should meet eventually."
eventually.
like she hadn't engineered the timing of this with terrifying precision. when you didn't answer immediately, chase sighed dramatically.
"mom, look i promise i'm not trying to like parent trap you or whatever."
which, naturally, sounded exactly like something someone would say while actively trying to parent trap you.
"i just don't like feeling like parts of my life have to stay separate all the time."
that had settled heavily into your chest so eventually, you had looked back down at the papers spread across the table and said,
"i'll ask him."
chase's smile had been far too victorious for someone supposedly uninterested in the outcome.
but truthfully, you had been avoiding this for months and it wasn't because jack had asked you to.
because he hadn't.
jack had done the exact opposite actually. he had swallowed whatever private devastation your relationship with daniel caused him and forced himself into civility so thoroughly it almost made things worse.
he never made passive aggressive comments anymore. never interrogated you again. never acted territorial when daniel's name came up in conversation through chase.
if anything, jack had become painfully careful about it all, which made you feel slightly guilty.
because despite everything you had said in his kitchen that night—despite the you'll have to deal with it of it all—you still couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that bringing daniel fully into jack's world would feel like rubbing salt into something that had only barely scarred over.
so you kept the parts separated.
not deliberately enough to call it hiding, but enough that opportunities quietly passed by untouched.
if jack came to pick chase up from your house, daniel conveniently left fifteen minutes earlier.
if daniel stayed over, you made sure he was gone before early morning drop-offs.
careful choreography, timing and distance.
like if the two parts of your life never occupied the same room long enough, then maybe nobody would have to acknowledge what any of it actually meant.
which was ridiculous, honestly.
jack is a fifty year old emergency physician, not a feral dog that needed to be separated from houseguests.
and he was not, despite your occasional anxieties, likely to strangle your boyfriend in private or otherwise.
but still, there had been a small, deeply irrational part of you that imagined introducing them incorrectly could somehow end with a headline:
local doctor strangles architect to death beside school vending machine.
and really, if they had to meet for the first time, a crowded catholic school gymnasium filled with children, parents, and approximately eight nuns felt statistically like the safest possible environment.
"mmhm." you answer now.
you smooth your hands unconsciously down the front of your dress before catching yourself doing it. daniel notices immediately—because he's spent the last few months learning the exact map of your tells.
he doesn't make a big deal out of it. he just shifts the coffee tray to one hand and uses his free one to catch your wrist, his thumb pressing a light, steady circle into the back of your hand.
his skin is warm, dry, and completely devoid of the sharp, chemical scent of hospital sanitizer you had spent years tracking on someone else.
he smells like citrus and the sweet, burnt sugar of the vanilla lattes he always insisted on buying.
"you okay?"
"yeah." you force a small smile, letting him lead you toward the heavy double doors of the school. "just mentally preparing to be verbally assaulted by sixteen-year-old explaining robotics projects."
daniel laughs softly, a low, easy sound that hits your shoulder as he steps closer to shield you from a group of kids sprinting past. "terrifying. look if anyone asks, just look confused and mention structural integrity. it works every time."
you smile despite yourself.
daniel catches the expression immediately, the corner of his mouth lifting like he's quietly pleased with himself for pulling you out of your own head again.
his shoulder bumps yours lightly as you walk. "see? you're already surviving."
that's the thing about daniel. being around him is easy in a way you had forgotten relationships could be. there's no volatility to him.
no guessing games. no constant, exhausting reshuffling of your entire life around someone else's brutal double-shifts or sudden page-outs.
when daniel says he's going to show up at six, his car pulls into your driveway at quarter to.
he remembers things you mention casually—like how you hate the texture of pulp or how your left shoulder aches from holding your handbag all day.
he brings you coffee during grading weeks without asking what your order is because he wrote it down in the notes app on his phone the first week you met.
he listens carefully when you rant about department funding meetings.
daniel actually asks questions about the curriculum instead of just nodding while staring blankly at a television screen out of pure exhaustion.
even the mention of meeting jack didn't seem to phase him. he had only smiled softly and reached for her hand, completely at ease.
he loves you, trusts you, and carries himself with the quiet kind of confidence that never needed to turn your love into some kind of competition.
he's patient. he's steady.
he's really good.
sometimes you still catch yourself reaching for him automatically now—his hand at traffic lights, his wrist while talking, the fabric of his shirt in crowded rooms. just small unconscious things that started becoming habit before you even noticed.
and it really makes your heart ache because he isn't a temporary distraction or a placeholder.
he's real.
real enough that chase let him help her with her algebra homework, real enough that he has a toothbrush and razor in your bathroom drawer, real enough to bring here.
into jack's orbit.
and it isn't like you and jack disappeared from each other's lives perse. that would have been impossible but the distance was still there.
there were school pickups and therapy updates and shared calendar reminders.
last-minute schedule changes sent via text at midnight.
quick, quiet conversations in driveways while chase searched for missing shoes in the backseat.
there were weeks where you saw him about three times and barely looked directly at him a single time.
you became experts at proximity without intimacy.
you were polite, functional and quite careful.
like if neither of you pressed too hard against the edges of things, the shape of your life could remain manageable.
inside the school, the hallways buzz with noise.
parents crowd around folding tables clutching paper programs, while younger siblings weave recklessly between legs with half-deflated balloons tied around their wrists.
somewhere nearby, a toddler starts crying loudly enough to echo off the gym walls while an exhausted mother negotiates with a juice box.
the entire building smells faintly like poster board glue and cafeteria pizza.
teachers hover nearby trying to look enthusiastic despite visible exhaustion. clusters of students stand beside their projects, pretending they don't care whether people stop to look while visibly dying inside every time someone walks past too quickly.
it's chaos. warm, loud, communal chaos.
you spot your daughter immediately.
she's standing beside a sprawling astronomy display wearing flared jeans, sneakers, and the nasa hoodie jack bought her for her 16th birthday.
her short curls are pulled back messily with her glasses sitting amongst the curls like a crown. she's gesturing animatedly at something while her friends nod along beside her.
then she looks up. her face lights instantly.
"mom!"
chase darts toward you at full speed before hugging you tightly around the middle. you laugh, stumbling half a step backward.
daniel steps back smoothly to give you room, his hand coming to the small of your back just long enough to keep you steady.
"hi, baby."
"did you bring everything i asked for?"
"you only texted me like seventeen reminders."
"because you always forget things."
daniel hands her one of the coffee cups, a soft smile on his face. "your faith in your mom is inspiring."
chase grins immediately. "daniel."
there's genuine affection there now.
familiarity.
you still haven't fully adjusted to hearing his name in her voice so naturally, or remembering how he had spent three hours the previous night helping her hot-glue the foam border of her display board without a single complaint.
or the way he had started fitting into the negative spaces of your life without forcing himself there.
quietly stacking dishes beside you after dinner. fixing the flickering kitchen light without being asked. sitting through chase's rambling explanations about her favourite tv show like every single word mattered.
chase makes a grab for the poster tube before he even finishes saying her name and immediately tucks it under her arm with satisfaction.
you engage in a short conversation before you catch her glancing toward the far end of the gymnasium. your stomach tightens before you even follow her gaze.
jack is standing near the bleachers talking to another parent, both his hands tucked into his pockets.
it isn't shock that hits you seeing him. you have seen him dozens of times in the last five months.
outside your house with chase's overnight bag slung over one shoulder.
in the parking lot outside therapy appointments.
leaning against his car during pickup after one of chase's late chess club meetings.
once in march, half-asleep in navy scrubs at seven in the morning while chase argued passionately about snake enclosure lighting from the passenger seat.
small pieces. fragments.
but never this. never standing still long enough to actually look at him. because that became the unspoken rule. you had to keep moving.
still though your body still recognizes him instantly anyway.
he looks different somehow. his hair is a little shorter than it was earlier in the year. the dark circles under his eyes aren't quite as brutal.
he's wearing a dark green button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms instead of the endless rotation of navy scrubs he used to default to.
colour. the realization hits before you can stop it.
then jack looks up and sees you.
you watch recognition move across his face in real time. the quick, sharp focus of a man used to assessing a room in seconds, followed by something much quieter when his eyes drift to daniel standing beside you.
not anger. something far harder to survive.
acceptance.
jack says something quick to the parent beside him before starting toward you. your pulse kicks traitorously against your ribs.
beside you, daniel's fingers brush briefly against the small of your back—absentminded and reasssuring.
the touch steadies you for exactly half a second.
beside you, chase is suddenly very interested in reorganizing the coffee tray lids.
"hey," jack says when he reaches you. his voice still does horrible, involuntary things to your nervous system.
"hi."
for one awful second, neither of you move. then jack's eyes flick briefly over your face, a habit he can't shake, like he's cataloging changes. you realize with a sharp jolt that he looks almost nervous.
chase clears her throat softly beside you. "dad," she says casually "you remember daniel."
not this is daniel.
you remember daniel.
like she's smoothing the interaction into something already established. she's clearly decided ahead of time that everyone here will behave normally.
daniel steps in easily, offering his hand toward jack. "it's nice to finally meet you properly."
jack takes it firmly. "yeah of course. and you too."
the handshake lasts exactly the appropriate amount of time.
too appropriate.
jack's expression is composed enough that most people probably wouldn't notice the rigid effort underneath it.
unfortunately for him, you're not most people.
you know exactly what he looks like when he's holding tension in his jaw to stop himself from saying the wrong thing.
chase looks between the three of you briefly before turning away first, already moving back toward her display. "come look before the judges get here," she says. "i need at least one adult to pretend the satellite suspension system is completely intentional."
the astronomy display is genuinely impressive. large mounted photographs of lunar phases line the backboard alongside handwritten notes and data charts. a model satellite hangs awkwardly from fishing wire overhead.
jack stops beside you automatically, his shoulder brushing yours as he leans in closer to read one of the pages.
your body reacts instantly to the contact.
stupidly.
a familiar, memory-heavy heat curls low in your stomach before you force yourself to step half an inch away.
"she did most of the calculations herself," you say, trying for what you can only hope comes off as casual.
jack's mouth twitches faintly. "most?"
chase points aggressively at a graph. "mom helped me fix the projection modeling because apparently my equations were 'held together by vibes.'"
"they were objectively held together by vibes."
"oh come on mom, they were literally fine."
jack laughs under his breath.
the sound settles warm against your skin before you can protect yourself from it.
daniel steps beside chase, studying the display genuinely. "this is seriously impressive."
chase beams immediately.
jack notices that, too. you watch the slight, heavy shift in his expression as he sees daniel interact with her naturally and comfortably. with no awkwardness or performance.
and maybe that would be easier if daniel were dismissive or performative about it all.
but he isn't.
he listens to chase carefully, asks thoughtful questions, laughs at the right moments without forcing it.
worst of all, he seems to understand instinctively that she isn't fragile and jack can't even resent him properly for that.
"you interested in astronomy too?" he asks daniel. there's no edge to jack's voice when he asks it. no territorial challenge. he is genuinely just curious.
somehow, that makes you feel kind of strange.
"a little," daniel says. "mostly engineering overlap stuff. i work in architectural design, so i pretend i understand physics more than i actually do."
that earns another small laugh from jack.
the conversation continues too smoothly after that. painfully smoothly. you and jack fall into old, deeply ingrained patterns without meaning to.
finishing chase's sentences, talking over each other then stopping at the exact same time, sharing glances without thinking.
and chase notices every single one.
at one point, she thrusts her phone at daniel suddenly. "can you get a picture of us by the display?"
you blink. "us?"
"hurry before people start crowding around."
the word family never appears anywhere in the sentence but it doesn't need to.
you and jack step beside chase automatically. your arm slides around her waist at the same moment jack's hand settles lightly against the back of her shoulder.
then your fingers brush his wrist—right over the thin skin where his pulse beats.
the contact lasts less than a second but still, your breath catches. jack goes completely, utterly still beside you. chase glances upward for the briefest moment—not directly at either of you, just enough to register that it happened.
then she smiles innocently toward the camera.
daniel is completely oblivious and lowers the phone slightly, visibly trying not to laugh. "sorry," he says. "one more."
the second photo is worse somehow because now you're fully aware of jack beside you. aware of the heat radiating from him. aware that his shoulder is close enough to touch if either of you leaned even a fraction of an inch.
when the picture's finally done, chase wanders off to show some parents another display, leaving you, jack, and daniel standing awkwardly near the table.
daniel's phone buzzes. he glances down at it before looking toward you. "i should take this—it's a work thing. i'll be right outside."
you nod. "okay."
he leans down naturally, pressing a brief, familiar kiss to your cheek before stepping away.
but the second it happens, you feel jack go still beside you. not visibly enough for anyone else in the crowded gym to notice but you.
daniel disappears into the hallway outside, weaving between parents and students, and suddenly it's just you and jack again for the first time all evening.
the silence stretches.
around you, the gymnasium hums with voices and movement—applause breaking out somewhere near the robotics section, teachers calling students over, folding chairs screeching loudly against hardwood floors—but it feels strangely muted now.
like you're trapped under glass.
jack keeps his eyes locked on chase across the room. "she seems good these days," he says quietly.
"she is."
he nods once. he pauses for a moment you can almost see his brain trying to form words for his mouth to speak "he's good with her."
you glance at him briefly, knowing who he's referring to. "yeah. he is."
jack swallows once, almost invisibly. "good with you too?"
something in your chest tightens unexpectedly at the question. not because of what he's asking, but because of how gently he asks it.
"really good, jack," you answer honestly, your voice quiet.
jack nods again, his eyes dropping to his shoes for a split second before he looks back up, like he expected that. like maybe he already knew.
your chest tightens painfully again because underneath everything else—the history, the grief, the impossible pull still living quietly between you—you still love him in the way people love someone they built an entire life beside.
you wouldn't say it was romantic or simple and it wasn't in a way that fit neatly anymore.
but it was enough that some small, aching part of you still wants him to find his match.
you want someone to remind him to sleep after double shifts. someone to make his apartment feel less hollow and temporary.
the thought arrives softly and leaves damage behind it anyway because the second your mind tries to imagine jack belonging to someone else, something defensive and ugly twists low in your stomach.
so maybe you aren't nearly as healed as you have been pretending either.
"good evening."
the sudden, crisp voice snaps the tether between you.
you both turn to see sister agnes navigating the space between chase's table and the next.
she has the kind of posture that automatically makes adults feel like they're hiding a cigarette behind their backs, but tonight, her expression is remarkably soft as her eyes slide over the two of you.
"sister agnes," you say, straightening up instinctively.
"hello, sister," jack echoes, slipping his hands into his pockets. his shoulders square up, that defensive instinct flaring up for just a fraction of a second before he checks it.
she looks past you both, watching chase gesture wildly at a chart for some parents across the aisle.
"i was just admiring the satellite," sister agnes says, a small, rare smile gracing her thin lips. "and quite frankly, i'm pleased to see her channeling that formidable energy into orbital mechanics rather than testing the limits of our suspension policy."
a sharp, involuntary breath escapes you, and beside you, jack lets out a low, dry chuckle.
"we've been working on it," jack says, his tone respectful.
"it shows," sister agnes replies, her gaze shifting between the two of you, steady and perceptive.
there's no judgment in her eyes, just a heavy, quiet sort of observation.
"you both should be very proud. i know january was... a trial. but the stability you've provided her, the way you've handled everything together—it's reflected entirely in her progress. she's thriving because she has two parents who refused to let her fall through the cracks."
the word together hangs in the humid gym air like a physical weight.
it cuts right through the truth of the last few months. it feels like a compliment meant for a version of you that died a while ago.
"thank you so much" you say, the words catching slightly in your throat.
"yes. thank you," jack says. his voice is thicker now, rough around the edges.
he doesn't look at you, but you can see the tight, rigid line of his jaw as he holds himself completely still under her gaze.
sister agnes gives a single, decisive nod. "continue the good work. she has a bright future ahead of her."
with a brief, polite inclination of her head, she glides away toward the robotics display, leaving behind a silence that feels five times heavier than the one she broke.
across the gym, chase bursts into laughter at something one of her friends says. jack watches her, a quiet, devastating fondness softening his entire face, though his shoulders are still tight from sister agnes's words.
you look at him then, properly. and suddenly, the last five months rearrange themselves in your head all at once.
this isn't anger anymore.
it's grief.
not the loud, traumatic kind of grief jack handles at work. just the slow, quiet realization that life kept moving while neither of you were brave enough to look it in the eye.
jack finally glances back at you and catches you staring. for a second, neither of you says anything. the air between you feels dangerously familiar.
"you look happy."
your breath falters slightly and its not because the words are cruel. because they aren't.
there's no bitterness in his voice. no accusation. no resentment sharp enough to protect either of you from what this actually is.
he's looking at you the same way he always used to after long days. like he's checking whether you're okay before he lets himself relax.
so you know jack means those words and for some reason that hurts more.
before you can answer, chase reappears beside you both, holding a judging sheet in one hand. "they really liked the satellite thing," she announces. "which is embarrassing for them because structurally it's hanging on by prayer."
jack huffs a quiet laugh.
chase looks between you both once, her sharp eyes lingering just a fraction too long on the strange, heavy stillness between you. "dad, come look at the robot arm before mr. bennett breaks it again."
she grabs his arm.
jack lets her pull him a few steps before pausing. he looks back at you once.
just once. but it lands with the unbearable familiarity of a thousand other moments across almost twenty years.
jack looking back for you in grocery store aisles when chase wandered off toward the cereal section. from hospital entrances before overnight shifts. through crowded school auditoriums and soccer fields and airport terminals.
small instinctive checks to make sure you were still there.
your chest tightens so suddenly it almost feels physical because even now, he still does it without thinking.
like some part of him still moves through the world expecting you beside him.
then chase says something that makes him laugh softly under his breath, and he turns away.
you watch them disappear into the crowd together and grief moves through you so sharply it leaves you breathless for a second.
because for one impossible moment, they look like they still belong to you in the same way they used to. like if you followed them now, jack would automatically reach for your hand without looking.
like tonight would end with all three of you going home together.
and maybe that's part of what still hurts so badly.
because even now, some ugly, aching part of you still resents him for letting it end at all.
not for the missed birthdays or the overnight shifts or the exhaustion that hollowed both of you out slowly over years.
you understood those things. you always did.
but somewhere along the way, the two of you stopped reaching for each other properly and jack—so capable of holding together trauma rooms and impossible situations and other people's lives—had simply let his marriage bleed out quietly between his hands.
he hadn't fought for you.
not really.
and maybe that's unfair because you aren't sure you fought hard enough either by the end.
but sometimes, you still catch yourself angry that he let you walk away so easily. especially when for years you had built your entire life around the certainty that if things really mattered, jack would hold onto them with both hands.
the thought makes guilt crawl hot and immediate up your throat.
because your boyfriend is outside somewhere taking a work call after driving across the city to support your daughter like it was the easiest thing in the world.
and standing here wishing, even for a second, that things still belonged to jack feels horribly unfair to him.
but grief isn't clean and love isn't either.
sometimes they sit beside each other so closely you can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
so instead, you stay where you are while the gym buzzes loudly around you, full of families and laughter and children showing their parents little pieces of themselves.
and still for some reason, watching jack walk away beside your daughter hurts more than any argument with him ever did.
Series Summary: Vignettes of your life with your husband, Andrew Cody, after leaving Oceanside for good as you both heal, grow, and raise your family in the Northeast, far away from the Codys.
Chapter Summary: Your son arrives a few weeks early, which means you and Andrew have no idea what to call him.
Tags/Notes: wife!mom!reader x dad!husband!andrew, family fluff & drama, baby time!!, very soft protective andrew, lorraine & gerry sighting
Content: labor/birth (but like kinda not really bc i have dysphoria <3)
A/N: i do love fluff time i fear
Word Count: 2.9k
Your eyes snap open from a dead sleep.
Yup, that’s a familiar wetness. It’s not like you haven’t wet the bed during pregnancy – June rolled around on your bladder all night until she reached forty-fucking-one weeks in your uterus – but you know the difference between that and this.
You take a deep breath and sit up slightly in bed. Storm lifts her head and tilts it to the side, her tail tentatively thumping against your leg. What’s going on, not-dad? You rub between her ears for a second and give her a pointed look that she somehow seems to understand. She gets to her feet, stretches low, and then stares down Andrew.
Bracing yourself for what’s to come, you rub your husband’s back and gently murmur, “Honey, wake up.”
Your husband bolts upright, at attention immediately like a soldier – even with his curls mussed sweetly and his eyelids still heavy. Even though he now sleeps a striking 4-6 hours a night, it’s still fitful and prepared for anything. Words not yet quite fully formed, he asks, “What’s going on?”
“Either a ghost just tossed a water balloon at my crotch, or-”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah.” You strip the sheet aside and gesture to the mess. “‘Oh, fuck,’ indeed. It’s go time.”
Andrew slides out of bed and stretches his beautiful arms above his head, walking to the closet to collect the large duffel he packed a month and a half ago. Lifting it triumphantly, he announces, “See? I told you having the go bag ready starting at 30 weeks wasn’t unreasonable.”
You glare at him playfully as you groan to your feet. “I’m currently going into labor with your second child and you’re starting with ‘I told you so’?”
“Good point.” He shoulders the bag, comes to your side, kisses you hard, and amends, “Let’s get you ready and hopped up on happy drugs.”
“There you go.”
Andrew helps you get cleaned up and dressed in comfy clothes before heading down the hall to collect June. Meanwhile, you wash your face and do your hair so it’s not gonna annoy you. Honestly? Knowing it’s just going to be you, Andrew, and medical professionals practically has you whistling with delight. Your first truly major life milestone with no Smurf.
As you walk toward the steps, waiting for Andrew because you know he’s gonna insist on spotting you, the first contraction hits like a bus and you let out a pained groan. Yeah, that sucks just as much as the last time you did this. Why did you think this was a good idea? Are the newborn endorphins really that good?
Inside her bedroom, June tugs on her dad’s shirt and asks, “Mommy okay?”
“Mommy’s okay,” Andrew assures right away, scooping her up into his arms as he rapidly packs her a bag of essentials. “Looks like your baby brother decided to come early.”
Nestling her sleepy head in her dad’s neck, June wonders, “You said baby not until Bobtoner?”
“October,” Andrew chuckles fondly. He tries to explain as his brain scrambles to catch up, “Babies are pretty much done growing in a mommy’s tummy a little while before we think they’re going to come, so sometimes they decide they’re done early. You wanted to stay in and be cozy for a long time, but your brother’s ready to get out and meet you. That means we have to get ready to meet him, too.”
Andrew carries her and the two bags out of her room and toward the staircase. Seeing you hunched over the stair railing as you breathe deeply, June looks at Andrew skeptically. “You sure mommy okay?”
“I promise,” he replies. “Mommy’s body is working really hard right now and sometimes it really hurts, but the doctors know how to make it hurt less once we get to the hospital.”
Shocked, she clarifies, “Hurts to have baby?”
As you snicker under your breath, Andrew explains, “That’s right, bug. And mommy’s gonna hurt for a while after, too, so we’re gonna be extra nice and soft with her until she feels all better.”
June frowns and announces solemnly, “I never have baby.”
Andrew laughs and presses a kiss to her cheek. “That’s your call, princess, but maybe wait until you’re older to decide for sure.”
Still suspicious of the whole situation, she drawls, “Otay.”
Andrew gives you a drive-by kiss before taking June to the car. “Be right back for you, sweetheart.”
“Mhmm,” you agree absently, focusing on your breathing as you anticipate the next contraction, not knowing if it’ll be any second or another hour.
With June tucked into her car seat and Storm settled next to her, whining softly, Andrew supports you down the stairs (you let him even though you feel pretty stable) and straps you into the front seat.
There’s only one possible option before the hospital, so Andrew heads over right away. Given the circumstance, the half-mile drive to your nearest neighbor feels particularly long, but the truck rumbles up the gravel drive soon enough. After kissing you again because he simply can’t stop, Andrew unloads the girls and walks up to the front door, where an automatic motion light flickers on.
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Gerry answers the door with his wife right behind him, curiously peeking over his shoulder.
“Hi, Gerry. Hi, Lorraine,” Andrew says, forcing a friendly smile. “So, ah, her water broke. It’s a couple weeks early, so her sister isn’t supposed to get here for a while, and she can’t get a flight until tomorrow, but we can’t bring June or Storm to the hospital, and we don’t have an overnight sitter here yet, and-”
“Got it,” Lorraine replies easily, stepping in front of her husband. An angel on earth, she’s not even irritated at being woken up. She opens up her arms and June teeters over to her. Then she takes Storm’s leash and the dog tentatively walks up and begins to give her a sniff inspection. “We’ve got them, Andrew. Go meet your son. Give mama our best.”
“Will do. Thank you. Seriously, thank you so much. We owe you; I’ll come by and do any work you need done or-”
Gerry shakes his head and claps a large hand onto Andrew’s shoulder. “Son, we’re neighbors. Around here that means something. Don’t worry about us; you’ve gotta take care of your girl.”
Blinking back sudden tears, Andrew nods simply. Accepting. He kneels down and gives June a tight hug and a kiss on the forehead. “Your Aunt Lana is gonna come pick you up tomorrow, okay? She’ll bring you to the hospital where you can meet your brother and see me and mommy. Then she’s gonna watch you and puppy at the house until mommy can leave the hospital. Does that sound alright with you?”
She nods bravely and asks the big question: “Auntie Wana brings candy?”
“Auntie Lana always brings candy,” he confirms seriously. “She’ll watch all your favorite cartoons with you and play your favorite games. Whatever you want. You’re gonna have so much fun you’re not gonna want us to come back.”
June giggles and shakes her head. “Silly daddy.”
“Yeah, silly daddy.” He gives her one more tight hug. Then he plants a kiss on Storm’s head and scratches her ears fondly. “Goodnight, my princesses. Sweet dreams.”
“Thirty seven weeks but eight and a half pounds,” the doctor chuckles as she writes down your newborn’s measurements on the whiteboard next to your bed. The baby’s with the team of doctors while you take a minute to eat and drink and recuperate with Andrew doting on you. She adds lightly, “Mama, you should be glad he decided to come out now instead of waiting and gaining another pound or two.”
“Everything’s okay, then?” Andrew hovers too close to the doctor, but you don’t have the energy to nudge him backwards now that the adrenaline and endorphins are fading into pure exhaustion. “He’s fine even though he was early?”
“He’s perfect,” she confirms simply, offering a reassuring smile. “Lungs sound great, which is the big thing we look for when babies aren’t quite full-term. Heart is nice and strong, blood sugar and pressure are good, temperature is stable. We’re gonna bring him back in here to spend the night with you two in just a second.”
“Good.” He swallows hard and nods and looks at you. “That’s good.” The doctor disappears through the door and Andrew’s right by your side in an instant. “What can I do for you, angel? You’re so fucking amazing. Let me get you something.”
You shake your head softly. “I’m fine for now. Ready to see our little man. Hopefully he latches like a champ and we can all get some sleep.”
“If he takes after his dad at all, he won’t have any trouble latching.”
You snort out a needed laugh and poke him in the chest, resting your forehead on his shoulder. “You’re disgusting.”
“Probably true,” he concedes with a kiss to your temple.
You definitely get lucky with your son; his first feed is seamless and he’s happy to coo on your chest for a while as you slowly let yourself fall toward sleep. When you’re failing in fighting off the exhaustion, you transfer him to his little cot. Andrew curls up next to you because he doesn’t mind being your personal body pillow.
All three of you manage about two hours of sleep before the baby wakes up again, not quite crying but fussing. Since this is your second, both you and Andrew are primed to wake at even the least conspicuous baby sounds to evaluate.
While you drift into awareness, Andrew stands over the baby’s cot and whispers, “He’s so beautiful.”
You give a tired, warm smile and rub the back of his hand still resting on the bed next to you. “He looks just like you.”
Andrew’s eyes move over to yours and you realize there’s a steady stream of tears falling from his hazels. You wonder if they’ve stopped at all since the baby arrived. “You think so?”
“Your hooded eyes, your sweet cheeks and dimples,” you coo, leaning slightly forward to trace the tiny versions of your husband’s features on the baby’s face. Then you touch Andrew’s cheek and tease, “Your permanent frown because you’re a baby having feelings too big for you to process.”
He smirks and shakes his head. “That does sound like me.”
As Andrew gazes down at his son, you offer quietly, “You wanna hold him?”
Andrew shakes his head right away and you can hear the tears in his voice. “No, I- He looks so peaceful. I don’t want to- to hurt him or- I don’t know. Not yet.”
You lean your head against his side. Then you glance up at him, seeing his plain desire to hold the baby all over his features marred by the fear of his own hands, and say, “Give him to me, then. About time for a feed, I’m guessing.” You add on some extra drama by wincing when you turn slightly. “I don’t wanna pull my stitches trying to-”
Andrew urges seriously, “Stay still, angel, I’ve got it.”
With his brow furrowed and his jaw set, he carefully places his hands beneath the baby and starts to transfer him over to you with tense breaths and eyes full of wonder.
But you cross your arms over your chest and add, “Actually, I need the baby bag if you don’t mind grabbing that for me.”
“Yeah, of course,” he says absently, shifting the baby’s weight in his arms. When the baby yawns big, tensing up his tiny fists with a little shake, Andrew smiles down at him like he’s holding a million dollars – better, actually, since he probably has held a million dollars before. The baby lets out a sound sort of like a hiccup as he recovers from the proportionally massive yawn, and Andrew’s smile only grows. Not looking at you even a bit, Andrew asks, “I’m sorry, honey, what did you say?”
“Nothing, love.” You play with Andrew’s messy curls as he sits down next to you, mussed from all the stress and movement, and muse, “He has your cupid’s bow, too. He looks like a little cherub.”
“I don’t look like a cherub,” Andrew scoffs, looking particularly cherubic with his flushed cheeks and the light in his hair. “He doesn’t look like me. He’s perfect.” He looks at you with one of his small, appreciative smiles. “You tricked me into holding him.”
“Yeah, I did.” You sigh contentedly, letting your exhausted, heavy eyelids flutter shut because you know Andrew’s got you. Both of you. “You love holding your babies in those big strong arms of yours.”
“Don’t objectify me in front of my son,” he teases.Then his voice lowers as he wonders, “What are we gonna call him? None of the names we picked feel right anymore.”
“Well, you know how I feel about AJ.” You don’t need to open your eyes to know he’s shaking his head; Andrew hates the idea of cursing an innocent baby with his name. “We could always let June name him; she’d like that.”
“And spend the rest of our lives calling our boy ‘roly poly’?”
“Po for short,” you laugh, the sound soft and breathy and sleepy. “We’ll figure it out. Mama needs to get back to bed.”
Andrew gives a soft hum of approval and you listen to him crossing the birthing suite to sit on the loveseat, not putting the baby down.
The entirety of your three-day hospital stay – your tearing is pretty bad this time and they want to make sure the baby doesn’t have any unexpected issues – Andrew barely puts the baby down. You hold him for feeds, of course, and Andrew’s religious about making sure you have plenty of skin-to-skin time, but otherwise it’s your husband changing his tiny diapers, singing him lullabies, and rocking him back to sleep when he fusses. Whenever the nurses come to check in the baby, Andrew has to physically force himself to let go. “Okay, papa bear, I need to take the little man for another check-up.”
Andrew stands up with the baby still in his arms, his expression serious. “Can I come with?”
“Not for this one,” she says sympathetically. Andrew’s developed quite a reputation for being easily the most attentive, protective father they’ve ever had in the hospital. You’ve heard a couple nurses express their jealousy and it makes you peacock a little. “But we won’t be long; I promise.”
Andrew nods tightly, follows her all the way out of the suite, and then returns to your side with agony in his eyes. You reach up to rub his back and soothe, “They’ve got him, honey. You can relax.”
“I can’t,” he murmurs earnestly. “I need to know where he is. I need- I need-”
“Love.” You tug his arm and he understands the silent request, leaning back on the bed next to you and tucking you beneath his arm. “Be with me for a minute.”
That much he can do. It’s a familiar assignment. He rests his chin on the top of your head and breathes deeply. “You come up with any name ideas since your last nap?”
You shake your head and sigh. “Nope. You?”
“Nothing seems right.”
“Yeah. He’s just too…him.” You give Andrew a mischievous glance and suggest, “I wonder if a Snickers might help me brainstorm.”
Andrew chuckles, kisses your forehead, and says, “Coming right up.”
Your sister’s on the way to the hospital for June to meet the baby when you and Andrew finally make a choice. You’re trying to fix yourself up enough that your appearance won’t make June nervous while Andrew bounces the baby around the room, humming a tune under his breath to keep them both calm. The baby’s fussing and your boobs definitely recognize his particular cry, letdown reflex beginning to tingle in your chest.
“Bring him here, honey,” you call as you untie your hospital gown. As Andrew settles the baby on your chest, you sigh contentedly, “Our last few minutes in the newborn bubble.”
“I miss our toddler bubble,” he replies as he cozies up next to you, ready with your nipple pads as he kisses your shoulder and gently strokes your thigh. “What if she doesn’t like him?”
You shake your head. “Our little extrovert? They’ll be menaces together in no time. She’ll probably just think he’s boring.”
“What? Our baby bear?” Andrew feigns shock and touches the baby’s cheek as he finishes suckling and immediately starts looking sleepy and peaceful. “Look how animated and interesting the guy is.”
After burping the baby, Andrew holds him in his arms, head on your shoulder as the three of you wait for the arrival of newly-christened big sister June.
“Baby bear and his papa bear,” you coo gently, watching how both the baby and Andrew give their versions of content smiles at your tender voice. After a moment, brushing the baby’s cheek with your thumb, you muse, “Maybe that’s his name. Bear. We’ve been calling him that already.”
“You don’t think that’s too hippie-dippie?” But Andrew’s already smiling, trying the name on for size as he gazes down at his son’s tiny face. “Bear Cody. I like it.”
“We’re from California. Nothing’s too hippie-dippie.” Then you add, “One of Lorraine’s grandkids is called Blueberry.”
He chuckles softly and concedes, “Good point.” Rubbing the baby’s back, he asks, “What do you think, kiddo? Do you like it?”
The baby opens his mouth super wide and lets out a squeaky yawn that makes you grin ear-to-ear. You kiss his temple and give Andrew a look. “See? He’s roaring.”
A/N: Reader is female, plus size, shorter than Syverson. No other physical descriptors used.
Warnings: Anxiety, Pregnancy issues. Please let me know if I missed any.
Previous -- Next
Series Masterlist; Tech Tuesdays Masterlist
"I understand you have to tell Jonathan about things, especially in case of emergency," you start. "Do you trust him not to tell anyone else?"
"Aside from his girl, Rose, I honestly believe he won't tell another soul," Sy promises.
"And Rose can be trusted," you nod.
You've met with her briefly at office parties and the Twins' trick or treating visit. Though she seemed rather closed off, Syverson swears she can be quite the sweetheart. Those two traits definitely have you leaning towards trusting her as much as Jonathan.
Looking down, you caress your belly and wonder when you'll start showing. It's been barely two months and you can certainly feel changes, especially with your energy and bladder. But when you look in the mirror, things look relatively normal.
You let out a chuckle when you realize your actions have drawn the attention of both Sy and Lily. Sy tries to not be overprotective, knowing you like your personal space and not wanting you to feel uncomfortable from too much attention. Lilly, on the other hand, has no problems letting you know she's keeping an eye on you. She's been trained to keep you safe, take care of you in times of distress. With your hormones changing, she might not know that you're pregnant, but she certainly knows something's up and she could be needed at any moment.
"I'm okay," you say to your audience. "Just thoughtful."
"And there's a lot to be thoughtful of," Sy nods.
"It'd be easier to think if you held me," you tease.
Sy pulls you close to him and wraps his arms around you. "Whatever you need, Darlin'."
In his daily meeting with Jonathan and Rose, Syverson does something unexpected and closes the door behind him. The other two meeting attendees are immediately on alert for bad news or, at the very least, news that doesn't leave the room.
"Darling is pregnant," Sy quietly announces, grateful to have people he can tell.
Jonathan and Rose are quick with smiles and congratulations. Jonathan even shakes his hand.
"Is there a reason you want this kept quiet?" Jonathan gently pushes.
Sy nods. "Every pregnancy is risky but, given our history, we're tryin' to be especially careful. We wanna wait until things are...more sure."
"Understandable," Rose nods. "But, would it be okay if I sent a little gift to her?"
"I'm sure she'd love that," he beams. "And thank you, both, for understandin'."
"It hasn't been an easy journey and we're happy to do our part to make this leg of it easier," Jonathan reassures.
"Although, if someone from the department asks why we had a closed door meeting, we should come up with something to avoid suspicion," Rose suggests.
"Oh yes. We don't want another repeat of the 'mass firing panic'," Jonathan nods.
"Ain't we comin' up on Ransom's fifth work anniversary?" Sy suggests.
"Perfect!" Rose chimes in. "Not to mention a few of our other employees are coming up on some big anniversaries so if we need to keep quiet after Ransom's work anniversary, we can use the G's 10th work anniversary or, depending on when we count first days, Mike's first year anniversary."
"Excellent thinking, love," Jonathan beams with a small kiss to the back of Rose's hand.
A few days later you're taking advantage of the fact that you actually feel like you have energy, and decide to take Lily for a walk around the block. Regular exercise is good for both you and the baby, after all.
You take the leash off the hook on the wall and Lily is immediately ready to go outside. Maybe it's calming for her to do perimeter checks, like how checking the locks before going to bed helps Sy get to sleep. Maybe you should be doing these walks more. When the baby lets you have the energy.
Still, better the energy drain than the morning sickness. You've had some, yes, but it hasn't been too bad. The obstetrician said that 40% or so of women with morning sickness don't get vomiting. After the years of struggling with getting pregnant, you'll take the blessing of not having to deal with getting sick. Sleeping through the nausea is a welcome alternative.
The walk itself is pretty calm. It's an off time of day for most people so you don't have to worry about strangers approaching or having to keep Lily calm. It really does feel good to go out sometimes. You sometimes wish you had more people than Sy to feel comfortable around. Maybe get yourself one of those "girl days" you've heard so much about.
Stepping back into the apartment building you check the mail. Bills, of course, but also something else. Something with your and Sy's names written by hand. You don't recognize the name on the return address so you're cautious about opening it up.
Sitting at your desk, you open the envelope and are surprised by a card. It's a simple card congratulating you and Sy on your upcoming baby. It's signed by Jonathan and someone else. It takes you a minute to remember that "Rose" isn't actually the name of Jonathan's secretary and suddenly everything clicks.
You smile sadly at the card. You should be getting a lot of these from supportive friends and family. But you've cut off your family for the sake of your life with Sy. And making friends isn't easy when you're certain people are judging you for something or another.
Maybe it's time to make a change, even just one friend can make a world of difference. And you'll be setting a better example for the little one growing in your womb.
Lily licks your hand, giving you a concerned look.
"Don't worry, sweetie. I'm going to be okay," you say as much for yourself as for her.
4th June ~ Dancing Queen ft. James Buchanan Barnes
Welcome to my next entry for #JuneJukeboxScribbles, hosted by the amazing @societynsoelsscribbles
Today is a song swap day for me!
Credit to @societyfolklore for the header. Divider by @saradika-graphics
WC: Approx. 290
Characters: Bucky Barnes x gf!reader (no use of Y/N)
Event Entry Masterlist
“Are you serious right now Buck?” I said as I shoved him up against the outside of the bar. I couldn’t believe it. We’d been out, having a nice night with friends, dinner, then onto a bar for some drinks, darts and dancing.
I was dancing with Nat and Wanda when a guy slid up behind me and tried to get in my business. I moved away with the girls and we went to the bar to get some more drinks.
Not 30 seconds later I felt what I thought was my boyfriend behind me, but when I turned it was the guy from the dancefloor. He slung his arm around my shoulders and had clearly decided he wanted more than I would ever offer him.
As I was just about to react, the guy was torn away from me with great force and flung across the room. All I could see was a blur of black and metal. Bucky had decided the guy’s time was up and nothing would stop him. Well nothing except another super soldier or the Norse god of thunder!
Which is how we got here!
“Hey, what’s the problem? That guy was all over you. I didn’t want him to steal you away.”
“Oh my god Buck. I can’t believe we are having this conversation again! You can’t go around threatening every guy who pays me a little attention.”
“But sooner or later one of them is going to win” he said quietly.
“Win what? Me? Anybody could be that guy Buck. I don’t want that guy. I want you.”
“I know baby, sometimes I get crazy where you’re concerned.”
“I was just in the mood for a dance. That’s all. I’ll always come home with you!”
A/N: Written for the June Jukebox Scribbles. Prompt: “And he shows them pearly white”
A/N2: Reader is plus sized and over 30 years old. No other physical descriptors used.
Warnings: Talk of masturbation. Please let me know if I missed any!
Word Count: 289
Main Story
Amid the chaos after your engagement and before Nick has to leave for his kingdom, there are at least some traditions and ceremonies you find yourself enjoying. Hoviriand royalty traditionally gifts their betrothed a doberman for protection and affection, especially in the time between engagement and wedding ceremony. It is also a helpful gift for someone who is leaving behind their friends and family.
"Oh my goodness, I'm naming you Pookie!" you exclaim as you dote on your new friend. He seems to respond well to the name, even if Nick raises an eyebrow at it. You make sure to thank Nick and Mother for making sure the gifting was done early in the chaos. Petting Pookie helps your anxiety as you're facing unprecedented press attention.
The two of you managed to find some time to talk, even if it's just in whispers between photoshoots. There are things you know you need to tell him before the wedding night. Things that, you pray, won't be a scandal.
"I probably should have said something sooner, but I think I was still dazed from that kiss," you start. Nick's smile turns cocky even as your face heats up. "Though I've never actually slept with anyone, I have...Once I was 'too old' to marry...it's custom for spinsters..."
Nick's smile drops as he takes your hand and looks deeply into your eyes. "You can tell me."
"I've used toys on myself," you quietly confess. "I'm not...physically a virgin."
Instead of being aghast or even patiently understanding, Nick's eyes darken and he grins wide, showing off his pearly white teeth.
Leaning in, almost inappropriately close, Nick whispers, "if you're able, please make sure those toys are brought along for the honeymoon."
Oh my 😳 this honeymoon is gonna be wild and if hasn’t even started yet.
What makes me sad though is that, even though she decided to pleasure herself (which is good), she got those toys because she knew deep down nobody would be interested, marriage or not. Poor Emerald…. Nick will have to go very heavy on the praising.
I am happy you decided to go with Pookie for the name 🤭
The name was just too perfect not to use! And you know he's going to get the prettiest of collars!
You're not wrong about Nick having to go heavy on the praise. Good thing for her, he's ready to do so and he's already established that he doesn't say things he doesn't mean.
Warnings: Flirting, suggestive banter, outdoor sex jokes
Words: 299 words
A/N: Entry for June Jukebox Scribbles over @societynsoelsscribbles
Prompt: June 3rd - “When I look out my window.”
June was suffocatingly warm, Chris was leaning back in the grass, his bare chest catching the silver glow of the moon, looking incredibly handsome and he knew it. He was leaving for training in a few weeks, and it was becoming too real.
He turned his head, a devastatingly charming, lopsided smirk playing on his lips. He leaned down, his voice dropping to a low, seductive rumble against your ear.
"When I look out my window and see all those stars," he started, fingers tracing slow, maddening circles on your hip, "I want to think about your eyes... and how they looked when you were your, wrapped around me. Squeezing me.”
You let out a soft snort, though your chest did a stupid little flutter. You poked him squarely in the center of his chest. "I'm not fucking you outside... so you can be all dreamy while in space."
Beck groaned, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his lips brushing against your collarbone in a silent, warm plea. "Come on, that way when you look up at the stars when I'm gone you'll think of this moment too. It'll be romantic."
"Still not going to fuck you outside," you repeated, though your voice lacked any real bite as his hands slid lower, reaching your thighs.
To be fair, the mental image did have appeal. Chris over you under the canopy of the midnight sky, his body driving into yours on a soft blanket in the grass. But it was June.
You absolutely refused to get your ass eaten alive by mosquitoes just so your dorky astronaut boyfriend could have a rope under the stars.
"Inside," you negotiated, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling his mouth down to yours. "But I'll leave the blinds open."
Warnings: Cocky Lance, flirting, suggestive tension
Words: 290 words
A/N: Entry for June Jukebox Scribbles over @societynsoelsscribbles
Prompt: June 1st - “I never understood a single word he said.”
“So there I am,” Lance went on, arms folding across his chest, “international meet, crowd going insane, cameras everywhere and this official comes storming up to me.”
“Storming?” you questioned, not so sure..
“Storming,” Lance confirmed. “Red in the face. Hands everywhere. Shouting.”
You bit the inside of your cheek. “At you?”
“At me.” He looked deeply offended you’d even ask. “Like I’m not Lance Tucker. Like I didn’t just put three of their countries gymnasts to shame just by existing near a pommel horse.”
“Devastating for them.” God you couldn’t believe him sometimes..
“Exactly.” He pointed at you. “You get it.”
You absolutely did not, but his confidence was doing unfair things to your concentration at times, and even more to that empty place between your legs.
“What was he saying?”
“No idea.” Lance shrugged, completely unbothered. “I never understood a single word he said.”
You blinked. “So.. You just let him yell at you?”
“No, sweetheart.” He pushed off the wall, closing the space between you. “I stood there. Toe to toe. Let him get it all out while I looked him dead in the eye.”
“That was your power move?”
“Then I walked away.”
You tried not to laugh. Truly, you tried. But your smile gave you away.
Lance noticed.
His hand came up beside your head, palm pressing flat to the wall. Suddenly, all that ridiculous confidence had weight. Heat. Direction.
At you.
“You think that’s funny?” he murmured, leaning in until his voice dropped against your face.
“A little.”
His grin softened into something worse. “That’s okay. I’m sure when it’s you screaming, I’ll understand every word that leaves those pretty lips.”
Your cheeks went hot
Lance’s smile turned victorious. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
summary: when you return to work, your colleagues encourage you to move on—using a dating app you already regret downloading. (3.5k).
pairing: jack abbot x reader
content: mentions of hinge (tw), a few bits of information that aren’t necessarily canon, divorce, mild language, mention of age gap.
author’s note: i really didn’t expect this series to do this well at all but thank you guys so much for reading so far!!!
part one. part two. part four.
your students slowly funnel into the lecture theatre in varying stages of exhaustion.
someone is arguing about thermodynamics near the back row with the confidence of a man who is completely wrong. another student is speed-eating a breakfast sandwich while two people behind them are asleep already despite it being barely after nine.
you set your handbag down at the front of the room and tap twice against the microphone.
you get nothing so you wait... but you still get nothing.
then, without raising your voice at all, you say, "i do actually know all of your grades."
the room quiets at that instantly.
"there we go," you say pleasantly. a few students laugh as you pull your laptop from your bag and wake the projector behind you.
"good morning, everyone. apologies for missing yesterday's lecture." you glance up briefly before continuing dryly, "although judging by the attendance statistics from recorded lectures, i assume most of you considered it to be a personal gift from me."
that earns you a louder laugh.
"especially whoever emailed me 'hope everything's okay but thank you for the free afternoon queen.'"
several students immediately turn to look at one boy in the third row.
he looks beyond horrified. "you said you wouldn't say it out loud."
"i neither said nor promised you such thing, jayden."
the room dissolves again.
god, even though you had only been away a day you missed this a little. not the grading. it was never the grading part. but this part—the rhythm of it. the familiarity. the way teaching forces your brain to focus on something immediate and solvable instead of letting it wander toward everything else.
you lean lightly against the desk.
"everything is fine," you reassure them before anyone can ask questions. "just usual family nonsense."
which is technically true you think to yourself as you click to the first slide.
"right. last week, several of you attempted to violate the laws of physics in your lab reports—"
a hand raises immediately.
"that feels accusatory," a student complains from the middle row.
"well it was meant to," you reply without missing a beat.
another hour passes quickly after that.
you move through equations and structural modelling examples while students half-listen and half-panic about an upcoming assessment.
it feels normal but by the time lunch rolls around, your social battery is already wavering. unfortunately, academia is built entirely on people wanting to continue conversations in cafés.
which is exactly how you end up trapped at a small faculty table beside your colleagues priya and max while someone nearby massacres what you can only call the concept of a salad.
you've worked with both of them for almost two decades now bar the year when chase was born. long enough that the lines between colleague and actual friend blurred somewhere around your third accreditation review and never really separated again.
your children grew up side by side, back when play dates meant sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by plastic toys and crushed cereal. long before any of them could form words, while the three of you hovered nearby with the vague illusion of control.
they've seen you survive budget meetings, grant disasters, departmental politics and one memorable nervous breakdown over first-year lab safety violations.
they knew jack too. not just as your husband, but as a fixture in the background of your life for years.
priya never disliked him. not even close.
for a long time, she actually liked him a lot.
she just hates what the absence of him did to you.
for a while, she genuinely thought the two of you would find your way back to each other. she used to think the divorce was one of those temporary fractures people recover from after enough time and therapy and sleep.
heck even max and his husband luca had been separated for a period of time before they eventually reconciled. but over the last year, even max had started to see the difference.
you and jack weren't explosive. there wasn't some dramatic hatred between you. if anything, the opposite was true.
you worked too well together in certain ways. schedules. parenting. practical things. the mechanics of a shared life still functioned almost perfectly. but somewhere underneath all of that, the actual marriage had quietly stopped breathing.
and now, sitting across from you, max thinks you both look... lighter. not happier exactly. just less strained.
which is why neither of them can quite leave it alone.
"i'm just saying," priya says, pointing her fork at you before softening slightly when you look up, "you don't get to pretend your life is over just because you got divorced."
you blink at her. "that is a very dramatic interpretation of me quietly eating soup."
"you've become a bit weird," she says, but there's something gentler in it now, like she's not entirely joking.
"thank you."
"like socially weird."
"oh good. that actually makes me feel so much better."
across from you, max snorts into his coffee.
"to be fair," he adds, leaning back slightly, "you did once say dating sounded like unpaid research."
you glance at him. "it does."
"that's not a normal stance," he replies mildly.
priya ignores both of you. "you and jack have been separated for well over a year."
"divorced," you correct her automatically.
"fine. divorced," she says, waving that away. "and yet every time someone asks if you're seeing anyone, you react like they suggested recreational tax fraud."
you open your mouth to respond, something sharp and dismissive already forming and then you close it again. because she's not wrong and that's deeply irritating.
priya watches your face for a second. "i just don't want you to get stuck," she says more quietly.
"i'm not stuck."
"you still call him first when something goes wrong."
you shrug slightly. "because unfortunately he answers his phone."
"see?" max says immediately, pointing at you. "that's exactly what she means."
you frown down at your coffee.
"that's not romantic," you mutter. "he just has the right tools and he's the father of my child."
max tilts his head slightly, studying you.
"you don't sound over it," he says after a second. "just... organised around it."
you look up at him, mildly offended. "that's not a real sentence."
"it is actually," he replies. "i'm very insightful."
"you're actually insufferable."
"and yet, quite correct."
priya huffs out a quiet laugh beside you, nudging your foot lightly under the table.
"look," she says, with her palms facing up, "i'm not saying go get married again. i just—" she hesitates briefly, then continues, "i would like to see you have a good time for once."
you lean back slightly, crossing your arms. "i do have a good time."
both of them just look at you.
you sigh. "okay i used to have a good time."
"exactly," priya says.
outside the faculty lounge windows, students cross campus beneath a dull grey sky. backpacks. coffee cups. headphones. their entire futures unfolding in every direction.
meanwhile your own life feels strangely paused.
not broken exactly, just... stalled.
"i think you should get hinge," priya says, a little carefully.
you look at her flatly. "no."
"yes."
"absolutely fucking not."
max grins. "i would genuinely pay good money to watch you use a dating app."
"i would rather walk straight into traffic."
"to be fair," he adds, "that's also something you would research first."
you glare at him.
"it could be good for you," priya says, quieter now.
"priya, what part of my personality suggests i would thrive on hinge?"
she considers that seriously. "...none of it."
"thank you."
"but that's why it might work."
you stare at her. "that is not how anything works."
max raises his coffee slightly. "i'm with priya on this one."
you make a face at him.
"also," priya adds, a small smile creeping in now, "chase literally got suspended for breaking a boy's nose. if there was ever a time for a rebound, it's now."
you groan, dropping your head briefly into your hand while max starts laughing.
"she punched him hard enough that jack defended her to a nun," max says, clearly delighted.
"to be fair," you mutter, rubbing your forehead, "the boy was being awful."
"i know," priya says. "that's why it's funny."
before you can answer, your phone buzzes against the table.
jack.
honestly, you should have expected the timing.
jack knew your teaching schedule inside out after years of building his own shifts around it. he knew exactly when your lunch breaks usually fell and exactly when you would finally be sitting still long enough to answer the phone.
the two of them notice instantly. max actually laughs out loud while priya looks personally vindicated but you answer anyway.
"yeah?"
"hey. quick question."
you pinch the bridge of your nose instinctively because every conversation with him now begins like this nowadays.
"what happened?"
"okay, rude. maybe something good happened."
"did something good happen?" you ask immediately.
there's a slight pause. "...no."
you close your eyes briefly. "so then what happened, jack?"
another pause follows before he says carefully, "hypothetically, how bad would it be if i accidentally agreed to let chase get a snake?"
you stare blankly ahead while max nearly chokes on his coffee beside you.
chase, it turns out, made an entire powerpoint presentation. with twenty-seven slides. colour coded. sourced. and deeply manipulative.
jack had nearly agreed before remembering he technically shares parental authority with another person. now your daughter is furious because he told her he had to ask you first.
"she called me a fascist," he says. you can hear hospital noise in the background which means he was called in early while he explains that it's a ball python and "very docile," which only confirms he already googled it.
"jack," you say with a sigh, "she technically shouldn't even be allowed ask for anything while she's suspended."
there's a pause and then he snorts quietly. "that feels a bit excessive even for you."
"good. i want her to suffer." you didn't really mean it but you wanted to make it seem like you were parenting properly.
"you bought her takeout just last night."
right. and now it sounds worse when he says it out loud—like you've been inconsistent, like you are making rules up as you go.
but it wasn't the same thing. it isn't the same thing. takeout is normal. a snake is different. pet is permanent. a yes that lingers long after this week is over.
still, the comparison sits there, stubborn.
"that is completely unrelated jack."
max is openly listening now with the kind of fascination usually reserved for live sports.
eventually jack sighs. "look, can you just call her later? she's currently giving me silent treatment."
your mouth twitches despite yourself. "fine."
"thank you."
there's a brief pause before he asks, more casually this time, how your lectures went. the question catches you slightly off guard.
because once upon a time jack would've known you were nervous about returning after yesterday without needing to ask. you hated missing lectures.
now there's something more careful about it. like both of you are standing at the edge of conversations instead of inside them.
"it was actually fine," you answer quietly. "they survived my absence heroically."
jack hums softly. "good."
then another small pause settles between you.
it's awkward.
you both used to fill silence easily. now it arrives more often than either of you knows what to do with. you can hear voices moving around him somewhere in the emergency department. a monitor beeping faintly in the background.
for a second neither of you says anything at all.
you knew he had therapy after your meeting the previous day. you remember the way he used to mention it—offhand, like it wasn't a big deal, like it was just another errand in his day.
you were the one who pushed him to go, back then. you had sat across from him at the kitchen table, choosing your words carefully, telling him it might help. promising it wasn't a failure to need it.
he used to tell you how it went, too. not everything, not the heavy parts, but enough. enough that you could nod, ask a question, feel like you were still included.
now, you don't ask and he doesn't offer.
you wonder, briefly, how it went and then you let the thought pass, the same way you always do.
"okay," you say quietly.
"yeah," jack answers before there is another tiny pause.
"bye."
"bye."
the line disconnects and slowly, you lower your phone. max looks like he's trying not to laugh himself unconscious while priya looks moments away from climbing across the table and strangling you herself.
"fuck that you are getting hinge today," she says firmly.
"priya—"
"today."
you regret agreeing almost immediately.
"why are there prompts?" you ask suspiciously from beside her desk later that afternoon.
"because people need personality."
"that seems optimistic."
priya ignores you completely while typing aggressively into your profile.
"occupation?"
you glance at her side ways. "you literally know my occupation."
"i need your actual title."
you sigh. "associate professor."
"so hot."
"please never say that again."
max wanders past the office door, notices what's happening, and immediately doubles back.
"oh my god," he says delightedly, clapping his hands together. "it's happening."
"leave."
"oh absolutely not, i have to see this."
you watch in horror as priya uploads photos from your staff gala last winter.
"that one makes me look intimidating."
"you are intimidating."
you fold your arms while she keeps building the profile with the terrifying confidence of someone handling explosives recreationally.
"what are your interests?"
"sleep."
"girl be serious."
max peers over her shoulder, his brows scrunched in thought. "put down cooking."
"i don't enjoy cooking."
"you own six cast iron pans."
eventually the profile is complete and you stare at it like it personally insulted you.
"this feels deeply unnatural."
"that's because you were married since like the birth of flip phones," priya says as she opens the app fully her eyes gleaming.
your face changes immediately. "...why are they all so young?"
max nearly falls against the wall laughing.
"that man has no visible tax history."
"babe, he's thirty-six."
"that is younger than me."
"only by eight years," priya says matter of factly.
"his frontal lobe finished developing during covid."
she ignores you and keeps swiping right anyway.
another man appears and he's gorgeous. suspiciously gorgeous. attractive in a polished sort of way. expensive coat. bright smile. no visible exhaustion anywhere.
you narrow your eyes. "he looks like he says things like 'let's circle back.'"
priya glanced back at you, her eyes meeting yours with a spark of amusement. "you are being unbelievably judgmental right now."
"i've earned it."
another profile. thirty-two. another. thirty-nine.
you look increasingly distressed with every swipe.
"why do none of these men have grey hair?"
"because they moisturise and they’re well relaxed."
max is laughing so hard now he has tears in his eyes. you elbow him in the ribs. hard.
priya snorts softly. "oh my god, there is literally nothing wrong with a younger man."
you give her a flat look.
"i was married to a man six years older than me for almost two decades. my entire type is exhausted orthopaedic mattresses disguised as people."
max points at you triumphantly. "exactly. this is what we call growth baby."
"this is psychological warfare."
"so you want baggage," priya accuses you.
"i want someone who's at least been humbled by life a few times."
"divorce isn't a prerequisite for dating."
"well it should be." you say as you finally snatch your phone back.
"there is nothing wrong with a man who doesn't have emotional damage."
"i didn't say emotional damage. i said perspective."
"same thing."
you sink lower into the chair while another profile appears onscreen.
hiking photo. gym photo. picture holding a large fish for some reason. you stare at it blankly.
"why are men always holding fish?"
"it's cultural," max says solemnly.
you sigh deeply rubbing a hand across your forehead. this is ridiculous. this is completely ridiculous.
and yet somewhere underneath all the reluctance and secondhand embarrassment, there's also something else. something that feels suspiciously like the possibility of moving forward.
which is terrifying.
because for most of your adult life there was only jack.
you met him when you were twenty-five and halfway through a conference you absolutely did not want to attend.
your department chair had practically forced you onto a panel about biomedical infrastructure funding while you silently planned your own death beside a stale blueberry muffin.
jack had been there because the hospital sent him.
he was thirty-one back then and already an attending after some time in the military.
you remembered noticing his hands first.
strong hands. rough around the knuckles.
wedding-ring-free.
he stood with a slight unevenness to his weight that you only fully noticed later, when he crossed one leg over the edge of his prosthetic briefly caught the light.
you remembered hating him instantly because he interrupted your presentation to argue about emergency department resource allocation.
"with all due respect," he said from the audience, "none of these plans account for real emergency overflow."
you looked up from the podium slowly, annoyed immediately by the confidence in his voice.
"with all due respect," you replied, "your emergency department would collapse in under six hours without infrastructure engineers."
someone in the audience made a quiet choking noise and jack stared at you for a second before he smiled.
he actually smiled like arguing with you was the most interesting thing that had happened to him all week.
afterwards he found you near the coffee station still ranting internally about him.
mostly because the man had interrupted your presentation with the confidence of someone who thought being an attending physician automatically made him some kind of infrastructure expert.
you were still standing there aggressively stirring cheap powdered milk into your coffee while mentally composing an academic assassination.
arrogant, you thought bitterly. deeply irritating and so unfairly handsome. the worst kind of man.
"you know," he said casually while reaching for terrible conference coffee, "most people just say thank you after constructive criticism."
you looked at him flatly, though his freckled cheeks seem to cause a weird sensation in your stomach."most people don't confuse criticism with public intellectual vandalism."
his mouth twitched immediately and somehow that became four hours of conversation.
then dinner. then him walking you back to your apartment while both of you kept accidentally extending the conversation instead of saying goodbye properly.
you remembered standing outside your door while cold autumn wind pushed your hair across your face.
"so," jack had said, his hands shoved into his coat pockets, "how often do you verbally assault strangers at professional events?"
"only when i'm provoked."
"good. i was worried for a second that you didn't like me."
you should have seen it coming then.
how easy he became. how quickly he slid into your life after that like something inevitable. like something your body recognised before your brain did.
and now here you are with your friends as they attempt to outsource your emotional recovery to an app designed around curated selfies.
life is deeply humiliating sometimes.
your phone buzzes in your hand and you jump slightly.
"oh my god," priya says immediately. "you matched with someone."
"already?" you ask, horrified.
max leans over your shoulder with entirely too much enthusiasm. "okay wait, let me see him."
you reluctantly look down at the screen.
daniel. forty-one. architect.
there's a photo of him sitting outside somewhere in a navy sweater with rolled sleeves and reading glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt. another at what looks like a museum. another with a very old golden retriever.
you narrow your eyes suspiciously. "this feels curated."
"that's the point of the app," priya says exasperated. before you can answer, another notification appears.
daniel: hi. i was going to make a joke about fluid dynamics but honestly i'm afraid you would correct me.
you stare at the message, then at priya and max and then back at the message.
"absolutely fucking not."
"absolutely fucking yes."
"what do i say?"
"anything normal."
"i haven't dated since christ knows when. what even is normal?"
max grabs the edge of the desk dramatically. "this is incredible."
another message appears before you can even panic properly.
daniel: also your expression in that third photo suggests you hate everyone at fundraising events. deeply relatable.
you accidentally laugh, which is unfortunate because both priya and max clock it instantly.
"oh, you're done for," max says immediately.
"i am not done for."
"you laughed at his text."
"against my will." you look back down at the screen. there's something oddly easy about the conversation already. not forced. not overly polished. just... straightforward.
still, your thumb hovers uncertainly over the keyboard because this is new and this feels strangely intimate in a way you weren't prepared for.
you swallow once before typing carefully.
you: i do hate fundraising events. but i respect your fear of being academically corrected.
the typing bubble appears almost immediately and your stomach does something deeply irritating.
priya sees your face and points at you triumphantly.
Dr. Jack Abbot x (female) reader | Dr. Jack Abbot x you
Summary: A cemetery visit. Neither of you expected it to hurt this much.
A/N: I'm no longer updating the taglist because Tumblr has been glitching way too much lately. If you don't want to miss any updates, feel free to turn on notifications for my posts! <3
Link to "You stole my cart" master list (1)
Link to "You stole my cart" master list (2)
Previous chapter: Throwback: Wanna come over for dinner?
--- --- ---
The Sunday started in the slowest way possible. Lazy cuddles in bed - first with Jack, later with Lizzie then a long breakfast with everything. Afterwards you took a long shower while Jack got Lizzie ready for the day.
Now sunlight spilled through the apartment windows while your toddler sat in the middle of the living room surrounded by toys she was mostly ignoring in favor of ripping some books apart.
You were still in shorts and one of Jack’s hoodies when he appeared in the door, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.
“Hey.”
You looked up from the sofa. “Hey.”
He hesitated for a moment. “Do you wanna go out for a bit?”
“Sure.” You stretched your legs out a little, then yawned. “Where?”
“Hm.” He shrugged lightly. “There’s something I wanna show you. And then probably playground? Before this little minx here destroys all of our earthly possessions?”
That immediately earned him a delighted noise from Lizzie who apparently recognized exactly one word in that sentence like a slightly intelligent labrador. “DADA!”
You laughed softly. “That’s an argument I can’t win. So yeah, sure.”
Jack smiled faintly, then nodded. “Okay.”
You didn’t think much of it at first.
You packed the diaper bag while Jack got Lizzie ready. Snacks. Water bottles. Spare clothes. Some toys. The stuffed giraffe she currently couldn’t emotionally survive without. Sunscreen. Wet wipes. And another dozen things required to keep this toddler alive for a couple of hours.
From the nursery you could hear Jack talking to Lizzie while wrestling her into shoes. Something she clearly considered oppression.
“Okay, bean. Could you please try to cooperate today?”
“NO!”
“... wow” Jack muttered. “That was immediate.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Still doesn’t count as her first word, okay?”
You heard Jack laugh in the nursery. “Yeah, agreed.”
Eventually they came into the hallway - Jack carrying Lizzie, who held his sunglasses in her hands, looking deeply pleased while chewing on the temples.
“I’m already sweating” Jack groaned, grabbing his keys.
You grinned. “Welcome to toddler life, Dr. Abbot.”
The drive started normal enough - Lizzie babbling to herself in the car seat, shrieking every now and then, music’s low, Jack’s hand resting absentmindedly on your thigh whenever traffic slowed.
But after about twenty minutes something shifted - not dramatically, just noticeable. Jack got quieter, more thoughtful.
He drove like he knew exactly where he was going without checking directions once - one hand steady on the wheel, jaw tight.
You noticed eventually. “You okay?”
He glanced over briefly. “Yeah.”
“And where are we going exactly?”
He shrugged. “You’ll see.”
Something in the answer made you leave it alone.
Outside the city slowly gave way to quieter streets. Smaller roads. Older neighborhoods. And then you saw the sign.
Cemetery.
Your stomach dropped so suddenly it almost felt physical. “Oh.”
You turned toward Jack but he didn’t look at you immediately. He only tightened his grip on the steering wheel for half a second. He switched on the blinker and parked in a parking lot beneath old trees.
For a second neither of you moved.
Then he turned toward you in his seat.
“I hope this is okay for you?” His voice sounded quieter than usual. “I just…” He exhaled slowly. “I wanted you here.”
Something in your chest cracked a little. “Okay” you managed quietly, swallowed hard.
He nodded once, then got out of the car. You watched him walk toward the trunk and for some reason you suddenly became hyperaware of the engagement ring on your finger. The sight of it here felt strangely overwhelming.
You swallowed again, then looked up, watching Jack in the rear mirror. He opened the trunk and carefully pulled out flowers. You watched him walking around, lifting Lizzie onto his hip while you eventually grabbed your bag and left the car.
The cemetery felt strangely peaceful. Not cold or sad - just quiet.
Old trees stretched overhead, leaves shifting softly in the warm midmorning breeze. Somewhere birds called to each other. Gravel crunched quietly beneath your shoes while sunlight moved through patches of shade.
The only sound was Lizzie babbling happily to herself.
Jack walked like he knew every turn without thinking - and you suddenly realized that he really did come here regularly. Enough to know exactly where every path led. Enough that this place had become familiar.
That thought hurt unexpectedly.
Eventually he slowed, then stopped.
There it was.
The grave was beautiful - a marble stone engraved with some simple lines:
Hannah Abbot
~ Love remains. Hope endures. ~
The grave itself looked deeply cared for. There were flowers planted with no sign of weeds around. The stone was clean. Everything looked gently loved.
Jack crouched and put Lizzie onto the grass. Then he set the fresh flowers down carefully on the grave, while gathering the old ones that had started fading around the edges.
You stood there awkwardly for a second. You felt nervous. On edge.
Lizzie suddenly let out a loud shriek, then was immediately distracted by leaves and clumps of grass. Jack stood at the gravesite for a moment, in silence, before clearing his throat.
“I’m gonna get water” he murmured, then carried on walking the path.
And then it was just you - and Hannah.
Your heart beat weirdly hard against your chest. You awkwardly rubbed your hands together.
“Um. Hi” you said quietly, just to immediately regret it.
God, that sounded stupid.
“Um. I don’t know.” A tiny nervous laugh escaped you. “It’s nice to meet you?”
You cringed.
“Oh my god.”
This was horrible.
You took a breath. “I’ve actually wanted to come here for a while” you said quietly.
You looked briefly toward Lizzie, who was now fully committed to pulling up grass, getting dirt all over herself. Then you turned back.
“Thank you” you said quietly. “For… um… for taking care of him before me. And for helping make him into the man he is today.” Your voice softened without meaning to. “He’s pretty awesome.”
You heard quiet footsteps behind you. Jack walked closer, watering can in hand. He gave you a small smile, then watered the plants with careful familiarity. You suddenly wondered how many times he’d done this.
When he finished he put the watering can down and moved beside you. His shoulder brushed yours and his hand quietly found yours. You squeezed it gently.
“You okay?” you asked carefully.
Jack didn’t answer immediately, instead his eyes stayed on the grave for a second longer. Then he exhaled quietly. “Today? Yeah.” He paused. “In general? Depends on the day.” He shrugged. “Grief isn’t really linear.”
A tiny humorless smile crossed his face.
“Sometimes I think I’m okay and then something stupid hits me. A song. A smell. Somebody says something.” His thumb brushed absent circles against your hand. “And sometimes… sometimes it feels weirdly okay.”
His eyes shifted briefly toward Lizzie in the grass, then toward you.
“You know I loved her” he said quietly. “And I guess a part of me always will.”
Something small hurt briefly in your chest but disappeared quickly again.
Jack looked at you fully. “I love you.” His fingers tightened slightly around yours. “And I do hope she’s happy for me.” He paused. “For us.”
For a moment he looked strangely vulnerable, like he really wanted to believe that.
You squeezed his hand. “I think she would” you whispered. And somehow you really meant it.
Nearby Lizzie let out another shriek, proudly holding up a tragically mangled dandelion. Jack looked over - and huffed out a laugh.
“Well” he murmured quietly, eyes suspiciously glassy now. “I’m not the only one bringing flowers, huh?”
You tried to laugh but it got caught in your throat.
The walk back to the car happened quietly - or as quietly as it could with a very active toddler babbling and kicking her legs while being carried by her dad. You walked beside them, your hand still in Jack’s.
His thumb brushing over your knuckles every few steps like he couldn’t quite stop checking that you were still there. Neither of you said anything.
The cemetery slowly disappeared behind you while warm air drifted through the trees overhead. Gravel crunched softly beneath your shoes.
You found yourself glancing sideways at Jack more than once. At the familiar shape of him, the gentle tiredness around his eyes, the way he carried your daughter without thinking about it.
He was the same man who made you coffee. Who kissed your forehead absentmindedly when you snuggled up on the sofa together. Who had proposed to you on a jetty with a nervous speech and shaking hands. Who still looked faintly offended every time you carried anything remotely heavy after your neck thing.
And suddenly you couldn’t stop thinking about him younger. With unruly ginger curls. Maybe still with both legs. Wilder, less composed. Maybe with that restless energy of youth. Sitting on a hospital bed, watching somebody he loved disappear piece by piece. Attending every single hospital appointment even when it broke his heart.
Still hoping - until there was no more hope left.
And then grief so large it had hollowed him out enough that years later he still sometimes lay awake staring at ceilings.
Jack unlocked the car and opened your door automatically. He waited until you got in before he buckled Lizzie into her seat with the practiced efficiency of a man who had done this countless times before.
“Okay Bean” he murmured softly. “You behave, okay?”
Lizzie blinked at him like she considered it, then let out a shriek. “No!”
“Impressive argument, princess.” Jack said with a chuckle and closed the door. A minute later he slid into the driver’s seat beside you.
The car stayed quiet for a moment.
Jacks hand found yours gently. You looked down - at the engagement ring that still occasionally startled you. And suddenly, without warning, your throat tightened. You blinked quickly, already feeling the familiar burning sensation in your chest.
You turned slightly toward the window, trying to act normal.
Somehow all at once the whole thing hit you. Not just Hannah or the grave but the sheer unfairness of it. What Jack had lived through. The loss. The grief. The silence afterwards. And years and years of carrying all of that alone.
Before you could stop it tears slipped down your face.
Jack immediately turned. “Oh - sweetheart?” His expression changed - from concern to confusion to gentleness. “Hey.”
You shook your head quickly, laughing weakly through the tears already embarrassing you. “I’m okay.”
“You’re crying.” He shifted closer, one hand lifting gently to brush tears from your cheek. “What happened?”
Somehow that question made it worse, because you didn’t even know fully what happened. You shrugged slightly. “I just…” Your voice cracked. “I’m just really sad.”
His brow furrowed. “About what?”
You looked at him - the man who had survived all of this somehow still gently enough to love again. Your heart hurt unbearably for him.
“About you” you whispered quietly.
Jack blinked, caught off guard. “About me?”
You nodded quickly, still wiping at your face. “I think I only really understood today.”
His expression softened.
“At the grave and…” Your voice cracked again. “I don’t know.” You laughed weakly through tears. “I’m sad for her. I’m sad she didn’t get more life. I’m sad she didn’t get to grow old.”
Jack stayed very still, just listening to you.
“I’m sad for the version of you that had to go through all of that. You loved her so much and I … I just keep thinking about you having to watch that happen. You went through something so awful and I’m… I’m just so sad now. And I’m… I’m also aware that if things had gone differently…” She swallowed hard. “We wouldn’t be together. There would be no Lizzie. No us. No… this. And I feel guilty for thinking about this now” you added hastily, while wiping at your face.
Silence settled softly inside the car.
Jack looked at you for a long second. “Oh sweetheart” he whispered while his face crumpled just a little.
He reached over with no hesitation and pulled you gently closer across the center console. His arm wrapped around you carefully, while pressing his lips softly against your hair.
“You don’t have to cry for me. And you don’t have to feel guilty.”
“It’s not like I have a choice” you replied, the sentence broken around the edges.
That made him laugh softly.
“It was awful, there is no point pretending otherwise.” His hand moved slowly against your back. “There were days I genuinely didn’t think I’d survive it. But-” he said after a second. “- I did. And then somehow I found you.”
Fresh tears spilled out of your eyes again. “Oh no” you whispered miserably. “Don’t say cute things right now.”
He laughed again, then gave a small kiss on your temple. “She mattered, you know?” he said quietly. “And losing her changed me. But… so do you. You don’t have to feel sorry for that version of me that existed before us. Because that person had to go through all of this to become the man he is today.” He paused for a moment. “And I’m not feeling guilty for loving you the way I do. Because you are the best thing that happened to me. I love you so much.”
You swallowed hard and leaned into him. “I’m really glad she loved you” you whispered.
Jack went still for half a second, then he closed his eyes briefly. “Me too.”
“And I love you too” you added, voice still quiet, looking up at him.
He smiled at you, brushing the last of your tears away from under your eyes. Then he kissed you - gentle, careful, loving. And you kissed him back.
From the backseat came an offended shrieking sound. You smiled against Jack’s lips.
“Does she think we’re embarrassing?” you asked quietly, pulling slightly back.
Jack glanced at his daughter. “I thought that kind of sounds were only expected with puberty but hey, she’s just very developed.”
You laughed, the knot in your stomach loosening slightly. “Let’s bring our tiny dictator to the playground.”
Jack started the car, then glanced at you. “Don’t you fear she might start terrorizing the village?”
You shrugged. “Better them than us.”
Jack laughed, leaned over for another quick kiss then pulled out of the parking space.
--- --- ---
You wanna keep reading? - Next part is coming soon, I promise :)
AN: June Jukebox Scribbles day three and I’m revisiting a pairing from January Jumble Scribbles, Mob Curtis and School Teacher reader. This is the start of their story.
Today’s prompt is Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin.
Unbeta’d. Banner by me and divider by @firefly-graphics.
Master list | Jukebox Master list | Join my tag list
Relationship: Mob! Curtis Everett x School Teacher female reader.
Word count: 300
CW: Meet-ugly
All you wanted was a relaxing night out. As a school teacher, often your evenings were spent marking or lesson planning, and inevitably picking glitter glue out from under your nails. However, it was the start of spring break and you’d promised yourself – and your girlfriends – that, for one night only, you’d cut loose. You could catch up on Monday.
Dressed up for the first time in longer than you could remember, all that was standing between you and good time at the nightclub two towns over was the line to get in. The long-ass line.
Behind you, just off to the side of the line, you heard some over the top giggling and turned to see a tipsy looking brunette batting her eyelashes at a handsome, solidly built man with a buzz cut. They weren’t alone, with several other men and women making up their group.
“Thanks for bringing me along, babe,” Tipsy giggled at Buzz Cut, stumbling over her feet, and you rolled your eyes at your friends.
As the loud group got closer you realised that they weren’t lining up behind you, instead walking straight past toward the door. The rule follower in you railed the idea of them cutting.
“Oh,” you shouted out loudly, getting Buzz Cut’s attention. “The line forms on the right, babe.”
It was as though the whole line was holding their collective breaths. Buzz Cut raised his eyebrow, looked you over and then handed off Tipsy to one of his friends. He sauntered over, your friends and the rest of the line seeming to melt away.
“You always a stickler for rules?” he asked, apparently amused.
“You always trying to break them?” you countered.
He snorted with a grin, rocking back on his heels. “It’s not breaking rules if it’s my club.”
Prompt day 3 swap: Wherever You Will Go - The Calling
Summary: space angst
Here's the prompt list if you want to join in
We stan AO3 in this house
Beck honestly knew he was not the biggest asshole on the planet because he wasn't on the planet. He hadn't been for some time and he still had a long time before he'd be back on Earth once they rescued Watney. If they could rescue him. If they could get back safely.
He was admittedly the biggest asshole in space though. All because he decided that the best course of action of your life and his life was to end the relationship of two years. He was logical about it. This whole venture was going to be two years now. That would have been two years of the most extreme long distance relationship. It wasn't fair to you. So, with NASA reading his emails, he ended things. The response was the most professional fuck you he had ever read because again, NASA was reading things.
He didn't know what the future held. He didn't know if they could save Watney. He didn't know if they would come home. At least you could get a goodbye this way. But now in the aftermath and the hurt, because it did hurt him, he remembered the lyrics of an old song his parents played.
‘Who will be there to take my place…’ would you move on? Who would be the next guy? Would they be more successful than him? He was a doctor and an astronaut. How do you compete with that? Well, he figured, they wouldn't leave the damn planet. Would you wait for him to come home and rekindle things? Maybe he could find a way to make it back to you someday. Maybe you'd let him be friends and exist in the periphery of your life.
Lots of maybes. Lots of unknowns. He wished he could go wherever you’d go.
Pairing: Jack Abbot x Reader
Reader: She/her pronouns, no given name
Warnings: Heavy angst, emotional neglect, marital conflict, pregnancy, divorce discussion, loneliness, hurt/no comfort, Jack missing an important event, a painful marriage breakdown, emotional abandonment, public humiliation, pregnancy reveal, divorce papers, and unresolved ending.
Author’s Note: Inspired by the kind of heartbreak that does not end just because someone leaves. Loosely inspired by Janine Berdin’s What If I Miss You For The Rest Of My Life?
This will be one of the few works I’ve decided to allow reblogs on, mostly because I want to see how I feel about it before deciding whether I’ll allow reblogs on future fics. I haven’t been the biggest fan of reblogs in the past, so please be respectful of that.
Summary: Jack promised he would be there. For once, on the most important night of your career, you believed him. But when the hospital takes him away again, you are left to stand alone beneath the lights, accept an award with his chair sitting empty beside you, and carry the secret you had planned to share with him. By the time he finally comes home, the marriage has already broken in a place apologies cannot reach.
I have built a house where I wait for your return
The dress had been hanging on the back of the bedroom door for almost two weeks before Jack finally noticed it.
You had left it there on purpose, though you told yourself you hadn’t. You told yourself it was there because the closet was too full, because the garment bag was too long, because the silk would crease if you shoved it between winter coats and blazers. You told yourself a lot of things because admitting the truth felt too humiliating, and the truth was that part of you wanted him to see it. You wanted him to remember without being reminded. You wanted him to walk past it after a long shift, pause with his hand still on the doorknob, and say, “That’s for the gala, right?” like the date lived somewhere in his head that wasn’t overcrowded by trauma charts, shift changes, hospital pages, and everyone else’s emergencies.
It was a black silk gown, simple in the way expensive things were simple. Off the shoulder, fitted through the waist, smooth over the hips, with a slit that opened only when you walked. It wasn’t flashy. It didn’t need to be. The fabric caught the bedroom light softly, almost like water, and every time you passed it, you imagined wearing it beside him.
That was the part that embarrassed you now. You had imagined it.
Jack in a dark suit. You in the black dress. His hand at the small of your back while people congratulated you. Maybe he would be tired, because he was always tired, but he would be there. You pictured him standing slightly behind you when people asked questions about the hospital contracts, his expression quiet but proud, his thumb brushing your hip like he needed to remind himself you were real. You pictured him leaning down and saying something low near your ear, something dry and teasing, something only meant for you. You pictured walking into a room and not feeling like you had to be impressive alone.
Three weeks earlier, he had stood in the kitchen with the invitation in his hand, wearing sweatpants and an old Pitt hoodie, his hair still damp from the shower. His eyes had looked bruised underneath from exhaustion, but when he read your name embossed in gold, he smiled.
“Dr. Y/N Abbot,” he said, running his thumb over the raised lettering. “Founder and Chief Systems Architect. This is fancy.”
You had been sitting at the island with your laptop open, pretending not to watch him too closely. There was a half-empty mug of tea beside your hand that had gone cold while you answered emails, and Jack had been barefoot on the kitchen tile, still carrying the warmth of the shower and the fatigue of the hospital with him.
“It’s a major industry gala, Jack. It’s supposed to be fancy.”
He looked up, amused. “I know. I’m just saying. This is real fancy.”
“You’re acting like I invited you to prom.”
“Kind of feels like it,” he said, setting the invitation down. “Except I don’t think anyone at my prom was casually entering billion-dollar valuation territory.”
You laughed despite yourself, and he came around the island, slipping his arms around your waist from behind. For a moment, you let yourself lean back into him. He smelled like soap, coffee, and hospital laundry detergent, that clean, sterile scent that had somehow become part of your marriage. His mouth brushed the side of your neck, and for a second, the kitchen felt like a place where both of your lives still fit.
“Don’t say it like that,” you murmured.
“Like what?”
“Like it’s ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous,” Jack said, his voice low against your skin. “In a good way. My wife builds technology hospitals are fighting to buy, and I’m over here trying to remember where I left my badge.”
You turned in his arms and looked up at him. His hands stayed at your waist, warm and familiar. You could feel the small tremor of exhaustion in him, the way he was never fully still after a hard shift, like some part of his body was always bracing for the next alarm.
“So you’re coming?”
His smile softened. “Of course I’m coming.”
“You asked Harper to switch?”
“Already done.”
“You’re not on call?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
Jack’s expression changed then, the teasing fading into something more careful. He touched your cheek with his thumb, and you hated how quickly your heart wanted to believe him. It was always like that with Jack. One gentle touch, one serious look, one promise said in that tired, sincere voice, and all the loneliness you had been trying to gather into evidence loosened in your hands.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m coming.”
You searched his face. “This one matters to me.”
“I know.”
“It’s not just dinner. We’re announcing the hospital network implementation contracts. The rollout plan. Market entry. The valuation estimate. This is the kind of night people remember.”
Jack nodded and kissed your forehead. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
That was the version of him you kept loving. The version that meant it. The problem was, Jack almost always meant it. If he had been careless, maybe you could have hated him properly. If he had forgotten because you did not matter, maybe the grief would have sharpened into something cleaner, something you could hold without blaming yourself. But Jack remembered in fragments. He loved in fragments. He showed up in small, exhausted pieces and looked at you like he wanted to give you everything, right before the world asked him for more than he had left.
And you kept living on those pieces.
A hand on your waist in the kitchen. His mouth against your temple before a shift. The rare mornings where he woke before his alarm and pulled you back against him like sleep had made him honest. The way he still looked at your face sometimes, quietly, almost helplessly, like he was surprised life had ever given him something soft. You had survived on that for longer than you wanted to admit, and that was the humiliating part. Not that he hurt you. Not even that he missed things. It was that one good look from him could still make you forgive a loneliness he had not yet apologized for.
On the night of the gala, he called you at 5:18 p.m.
You were standing in the bathroom in a silk robe while your makeup artist packed up her kit. Your hair was pinned into a low twist at the back of your neck, with a few pieces left soft around your face. Your earrings were already on, small diamond drops that caught the light whenever you moved. Your face looked finished in the mirror — warm skin, dark lashes, softly lined lips — polished enough that no one would know how nervous you were.
The bathroom smelled like hairspray, powder, perfume, and the faint steam from the shower you had taken an hour earlier. On the counter, your lipstick lay uncapped beside a little dish holding your wedding rings, which you had cleaned that afternoon because you thought there would be photographs of the two of you. The whole apartment felt too quiet, too prepared, like a stage waiting for someone who had not arrived yet.
Your phone lit up on the counter.
Jack.
Your stomach dropped before you even answered.
“Please don’t,” you said immediately.
There was a pause on the other end. Then Jack sighed, and the sound told you everything before he did.
“Y/N.”
You closed your eyes. “You said you weren’t on call.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You said you switched.”
“I did.”
“Then why are you calling me like this?”
He sounded tired already. Not physically tired exactly, but braced, like he knew he was about to hurt you and hated that knowing. “Harper’s kid got sick, and they’re short. It’s bad. I wouldn’t go in if they had coverage.”
You stared at yourself in the mirror. Your eyeliner was perfect. Your lips were perfect. Your whole face looked calm in a way that made you feel almost detached from it.
“Did they ask you, or did you offer?”
Jack didn’t answer quickly enough.
You let out a small, humourless laugh. “Oh.”
“They were drowning,” he said.
“So you offered.”
“I said I could come in for a few hours. I’m going to try to get out as soon as I can.”
You pressed your fingertips into the cool marble counter. The makeup artist moved quietly in your peripheral vision, pretending very hard not to listen.
“Jack, the reception starts at seven. Dinner is at eight. Speeches are at nine-thirty.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“That’s not fair.”
You looked down at your wedding band in the dish. The diamond caught the bathroom light, clean and bright and cruel.
“I can’t do this right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
The silence stretched. You could hear hospital noise in the background already: a distant page, someone calling for transport, the low hum of a place that never cared what anyone had planned.
“I’ll make it,” Jack said, but his voice had changed.
You heard the lie before it fully left his mouth.
“Don’t,” you said softly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t give me a second promise to cover the first one.”
He exhaled. “Y/N.”
“I have to finish getting dressed.”
“I love you.”
Your throat tightened. “I know.”
He waited, but you did not say it back. After a few seconds, he said he would text you when he knew more, and you ended the call before he could apologize again.
The makeup artist stood very still, her brush bag in one hand, pretending she had not heard enough to understand. You looked at her through the mirror and smiled with the exact expression you used in investor meetings.
“Sorry about that.”
Her face softened. “No, don’t apologize.”
You picked up your lipstick and opened it even though your lips were already done. “I’m fine.”
She did not believe you, which was kind of her. At least she did you the courtesy of not saying so.
You waited until she left before you put your rings back on. For a moment, you stood in the quiet bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror. The woman looking back at you was composed, elegant, expensive. She looked like someone who knew exactly where she was going. She did not look like someone trying to decide whether it was more pathetic to cry before the biggest night of her career or to still hope her husband might walk through the door in time.
You got dressed carefully. You stepped into the gown and pulled it up over your body, smoothing the silk over your hips with both hands. The dress fit perfectly. That almost made you cry. You had wanted Jack to see it. You had wanted the private little intake of breath he sometimes gave when he forgot to pretend he wasn’t stunned by you. You had wanted him to look at you like he remembered you were not just the person waiting at home with leftovers and patience.
Instead, you zipped yourself up alone.
The first news segment aired from the lobby of The Pitt just after 7:00 p.m.
It wasn’t unusual for the televisions in the emergency department to run local news with the volume low. Most of the time, no one paid attention unless there was a weather alert, a mass casualty incident, or something affecting hospital funding. It was background noise beneath sharper sounds: monitors beeping, wheels rattling, phones ringing, curtain rings scraping open and shut.
Jack was at the desk reviewing imaging when one of the nurses looked up at the television.
“Wait,” she said. “Is that your wife?”
Jack’s head lifted.
The screen showed the front of the Meridian Grand, a luxury hotel downtown with a glass canopy and warm lights spilling onto the rain-dark sidewalk. A reporter stood outside in a wool coat, holding a microphone while guests moved behind her in formalwear.
The lower-third banner read:
L/N POWER SYSTEMS CELEBRATES MAJOR HOSPITAL GRID CONTRACTS
Company valuation expected to climb as implementation phase begins
Jack’s hand tightened around the tablet.
The reporter smiled into the camera. “Tonight, L/N Power Systems is hosting a private gala following a major round of hospital infrastructure contracts that could place the company among the most valuable emerging players in emergency energy systems. Founded by electrical engineer Dr. Y/N Abbot, L/N Power Systems has developed adaptive microgrid technology designed to keep critical hospital units powered during grid failures, natural disasters, and rolling outages.”
A resident standing nearby glanced between the television and Jack. “Dr. Abbot, that’s your wife, right?”
Jack nodded once. “Yeah.”
“Damn,” the resident said, clearly trying to sound impressed rather than awkward. “That’s huge.”
Jack did not respond. The broadcast cut to a graphic showing projected contract values, implementation timelines, and valuation estimates. The numbers were careful, couched in analyst language, but the implication was obvious. If your company hit its implementation targets and the contracts expanded the way people expected, you were on track to enter billion-dollar territory.
A nurse whistled quietly. “Billion with a B?”
Another nurse said, “And she designed the actual system?”
Jack looked at the screen. “Yeah.”
The nurse shook her head. “That’s wild.”
The camera returned to the hotel entrance just as your car pulled up. Jack knew it was you before the door opened. He recognized the way Mara, your assistant, stepped out first and turned back toward the car, one hand hovering near the open door.
Then you appeared.
For a second, the desk around him faded out. The dress looked different on you than it had on the hanger. It followed your body with quiet confidence, the black silk catching silver from the camera flashes and gold from the hotel lights. Your shoulders were bare. Your hair was pinned low, elegant but not severe, and the diamonds at your ears glittered whenever you turned your head. You stepped under the canopy and smiled for the cameras.
It was a beautiful smile. It was also the smile you wore when you were trying not to feel something.
The reporter turned as photographers called your name. “And there she is now, Dr. Y/N Abbot, founder and chief systems architect of L/N Power Systems. Dr. Abbot has been described by analysts as one of the most closely watched engineers in the hospital infrastructure space, especially now that her company’s adaptive grid platform is moving from pilot installations into large-scale implementation.”
Someone at the desk said, “Jack, aren’t you supposed to be there?”
Nobody meant it cruelly. That almost made it worse.
Jack swallowed, still watching as you paused beside the step-and-repeat, your clutch held neatly in both hands.
“I was.”
The answer made the area around him go quiet.
On-screen, a reporter asked you, “Dr. Abbot, tonight is being described as a turning point for your company. What does it mean to have hospital systems moving forward with implementation?”
You smiled, and Jack noticed your fingers tighten slightly around your clutch.
“It means the work is becoming real,” you said. “Designing the system was one part of it. Proving it under stress testing was another. Implementation is where it starts to matter for patients, doctors, nurses, and everyone relying on those seconds when the grid becomes unstable.”
The reporter asked, “There’s already discussion of a possible billion-dollar valuation. Are you thinking about that tonight?”
You gave a small laugh, polite and controlled. “I think my CFO is probably thinking about it more than I am. The valuation matters because it affects growth and deployment, but for me, the focus is still the technology. If a trauma bay stays powered during an outage because of something my team built, that means more to me than a headline.”
The reporter thanked you. You nodded, smiled again, and moved inside.
Jack stood very still until the charge nurse beside him looked over. “You okay?”
He dragged his eyes from the screen. “Yeah.”
She held his gaze long enough to make it clear she did not believe him. Then a trauma page came through, and the whole department lurched back into motion. Jack handed off the tablet, shoved his phone into his pocket, and went where he was needed.
Again.
At the gala, people kept asking where your husband was.
You answered the first few times with patience. “He got called into the hospital.”
Most people responded kindly. Some even looked impressed, as if Jack’s absence made the two of you nobler somehow.
“Oh, of course. Emergency medicine.”
“That must be so difficult.”
“You both do such meaningful work.”
“Power couple, even when you’re in different places.”
You smiled through all of it. “Yes. He’s very dedicated.”
The ballroom was beautiful, but after a while its beauty started to feel almost cruel. The ceiling was high and painted cream and gold, with chandeliers throwing soft light over round tables covered in white linen. Each place setting had a black menu card with gold foil, a small arrangement of white orchids, and a tiny glass votive candle. Along one wall, a projection displayed animated renderings of your adaptive grid system: hospital wings lighting in sequence, power rerouting through alternate pathways, emergency loads stabilizing under simulated failures.
Your company’s leadership team sat near the stage. Your engineers were at the tables closest to you, dressed in suits and gowns that looked slightly unfamiliar on them. You loved seeing the people who had built the system with you getting treated like they belonged in rooms where money moved. Some of them kept taking discreet pictures of the menus and the floral arrangements. One of your junior engineers had shown up in a suit that still had a faint fold line in the sleeve from being fresh out of the garment bag. Another kept touching the stem of his wineglass like he was afraid of breaking it.
You should have been happy. Part of you was happy. That was what made the grief feel so unfair. The night was not ruined. The contracts were real. The applause was real. Your team’s pride was real. Your name on that screen was real. All of it was real.
So was the empty chair beside you.
By the tenth time someone asked where your husband was, you stopped hearing the question as a question. It became part of the room.
Where is he?
In the clink of champagne glasses.
Where is he?
In the scrape of chairs being pulled out for other wives, other husbands, other people with someone’s hand resting warmly against the backs of their seats.
Where is he?
In the empty space beside your plate, where his name sat in elegant black ink on heavy cream cardstock.
Dr. Jack Abbot
You stared at it for too long once, long enough that Mara touched your elbow beneath the table.
“You okay?”
You smiled before you answered, because that had become its own kind of muscle memory. “Yes.”
But your chest ached with something so childish and raw that it embarrassed you. You wanted him to think of you. Not the company. Not the press segment. Not the award. You. The woman in the dress he had promised to stand beside. The woman who had cleaned her wedding rings because she thought there would be photographs. The woman who kept glancing at the doors like wanting him hard enough might make him appear.
You hated yourself a little for that.
You hated that even surrounded by applause, even with your name glowing behind you, some stupid, tender part of you was still waiting to be someone’s favorite thing in the room.
Mara stayed close, fielding conversations when she sensed you needed a breath. She wore a deep green dress and carried a tablet even though you had told her not to work tonight.
“You’re doing great,” she murmured when a hospital executive walked away after asking too many questions about rollout costs.
You looked at the champagne flute in your hand. You had not taken a single sip.
“I’m doing rich-woman cosplay.”
“You are a rich woman.”
“Not emotionally.”
Mara almost laughed, then looked at your face and didn’t.
Your hand went to your clutch, where the white envelope from the doctor’s office was tucked beneath your phone. You had not told anyone. Not Mara. Not your mother. Not Jack.
Especially not Jack.
The result had come through that morning after bloodwork confirmed what the home tests had already said. Five weeks. Early enough that it still felt secret and unreal, but real enough that the nurse had told you to start prenatal vitamins and book a follow-up appointment. You had sat in your car outside the clinic with both hands on the steering wheel, staring at the printed result until the words stopped looking like English.
Pregnant.
At first, you cried because you were happy. Then you cried because you were scared. Then, worst of all, you cried because the first person you wanted was Jack, and you had already known there was a chance he would not be there when you told him.
During dinner, your phone buzzed once. You checked it under the table.
Jack:
I’m still here. I’m so sorry. I watched your interview. You looked beautiful. I’m proud of you.
You stared at it for a long moment. For a second, you felt nothing. Then the hurt arrived slowly, settling into the parts of you that had already made room for it.
Mara leaned closer. “Is it him?”
You put the phone face down on the table. “Yeah.”
“Is he coming?”
You smoothed the edge of your napkin in your lap. “No.”
Mara went quiet. Across the room, your CFO was laughing with two investors. Someone from the hospital network raised a glass toward you, and you smiled back automatically.
“I don’t want to cry in this dress,” you said.
Mara’s voice softened. “Then don’t. Be mad instead.”
You looked at her, and something in your chest tightened. “I’m so tired of being mad.”
That was the truth you never said out loud. Anger took energy. Anger required the belief that something could still change if you made enough noise. You were so far past that now. You were tired in a way sleep could not fix, tired of dressing up disappointment until it looked like understanding, tired of giving Jack the best parts of your compassion while keeping none of it for yourself.
The first time the lights flickered at The Pitt that night, nobody really reacted.
Hospitals had a way of making disaster feel routine at first. A monitor blinked. A ceiling light hummed. Somewhere behind the desk, a printer stopped halfway through a page and then coughed itself back to life. The nurses looked up, annoyed but not afraid, because annoyance was easier to wear than fear.
Jack was in trauma two with both hands pressed around a patient’s bleeding thigh when the second flicker came.
This time, the room noticed.
“Power?” someone asked.
“Backup should catch,” a nurse said, but her voice had gone thin.
Then the overheads steadied. The monitors held. The ventilator kept its rhythm. The trauma bay stayed bright.
A few seconds later, someone from facilities came over the radio, breathless and stunned.
Only for a second, but long enough for the words to land somewhere beneath his ribs.
Adaptive reroute.
Your system.
Your work.
Your sleepless nights, your marked-up schematics, your laptop glowing blue at two in the morning while he came home too tired to ask what you were building. Your hands, your mind, your stubbornness, your company, your impossible little gap between failure and recovery.
The trauma bay lights stayed on because of you.
And he was not beside you when the world clapped for it.
“Dr. Abbot?”
Jack blinked and looked down. His gloves were slick. The patient was still bleeding. The room still needed him.
“Clamp,” he said, voice rough. “Now.”
He kept working because that was what he did. He kept people alive. He kept rooms from falling apart. He kept going until the crisis passed and everyone around him could breathe again.
But after, when the patient was taken upstairs and Jack stepped into the hall, the television over the nurses’ station was still showing the gala.
Your gala.
The reporter’s voice filled the space between ringing phones and rolling carts.
“Moments ago, L/N Power Systems’ adaptive grid platform stabilized a critical load interruption at an emergency department participating in one of its pilot programs. Company officials have not yet confirmed which hospital experienced the event, but analysts are already calling tonight a live demonstration of the technology’s value.”
A resident looked from the screen to Jack.
No one had to say it.
Jack already knew.
The hospital had needed you tonight too. The difference was, the hospital had gotten you.
He had not shown up for you at all.
Jack saw your acceptance speech from the staff lounge.
He had missed the start because a patient had crashed, and by the time he made it to the lounge, his scrub top was damp at the collar and his hands still smelled faintly of antiseptic even after washing them twice. Someone had turned the television volume up because your gala was now the top local business story of the evening.
You were on stage behind a podium, your award resting beside the microphone. The lights made your skin glow and turned the black silk of your gown almost blue at the edges. Behind you, the screen showed a slow animation of your company’s system keeping a surgical wing powered during a simulated outage.
Jack stayed in the doorway.
On the screen, you took a breath and looked out at the room.
“When I started this company, a lot of people told me the idea was too difficult to scale,” you said. “Some were polite about it. Some were not. I was told hospitals already had backup systems, that emergency power was a solved problem, and that the failure gap we were focused on was too small to justify the investment.”
You smiled slightly, and the audience laughed when you added, “The thing about engineers is that if you tell us the gap is small, we tend to ask what happens inside it.”
Jack’s throat tightened. He had heard you practice versions of this speech in the shower, in the kitchen, in the car. He had teased you once for rewriting one paragraph eleven times. You had thrown a pillow at him and told him the paragraph was weak.
Now you were saying it without him in the room.
“We built this system because seconds matter,” you continued. “A few seconds without stable power can change what happens in an operating room, in a trauma bay, in a NICU, in an elevator carrying a patient between floors. The goal was never to make hospitals perfect. The goal was to give them a better chance when everything else is failing.”
The staff lounge was quiet. Jack noticed one of the nurses standing near the coffee machine, arms folded, watching with damp eyes.
You glanced down briefly, then back up.
“I’m grateful for my team. I’m grateful to the hospital partners who believed in the technology early. I’m grateful to the people who asked hard questions, because they made the system better.”
You paused.
Jack knew that pause. He knew it because he had lived with you long enough to hear the breath you took before saying something that cost you.
“Tonight is a professional milestone, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel personal too. Building something this demanding changes your life. It changes your relationships. It tests who shows up, who wants to, and who actually does.”
Jack’s face went still.
On-screen, your expression remained calm, but your voice softened.
“I’ve learned that success does not make loneliness disappear. It can fill a ballroom. It can put your name on a screen. It can bring applause, contracts, and congratulations. But at the end of the night, you still know which chair beside you stayed empty.”
Nobody in the lounge moved.
Jack looked at the floor. He did not have to see the screen to know the camera would have found his empty chair. A place card with his name. A dinner plate cleared untouched. A visible absence.
But the camera did find it.
Not for long.
Just long enough.
There it was on the television: the chair beside you, empty beneath warm ballroom light. A white place card sat above the untouched dinner setting.
Dr. Jack Abbot
Someone in the lounge inhaled quietly.
Jack stared at his name on the screen.
It was different seeing it like that. Not as a missed text. Not as a fight waiting to happen. Not as something he could explain with patients and short staffing and impossible nights.
It was a space with his name on it.
A promise that had a shape.
An absence everyone could see.
You continued, steadier now. “I am proud of this company. I am proud of the team who built it. And tonight, I am proud of myself for believing that the things I needed were worth building, even when I had to build them alone.”
The applause started slowly, then grew.
Jack stood there, unable to move.
One of the residents near the table said quietly, “I’m sorry, man.”
Jack nodded, because there was nothing else to do. A minute later, his pager went off again.
You left the gala after midnight with your award in one hand and your clutch in the other.
People tried to stop you on the way out. A board member wanted to introduce you to someone from a national health system. Your CFO wanted five minutes about a follow-up call. A journalist asked for one more quote. You gave polite answers, promised emails, and let Mara run interference until you made it to the lobby.
Outside, the rain had slowed to a mist. The hotel’s front drive shone under the lights, slick and dark like spilled ink. Your heels clicked against the polished stone as you waited for the car. The night air was cold against your bare shoulders, and Mara draped your coat over you before you could pretend you were fine without it.
“You don’t have to go home,” she said.
You looked at the road. “I know.”
“I can book you a suite upstairs.”
“I already did.”
Mara turned to you.
You kept your eyes forward. “I booked it this afternoon. Just in case.”
Her expression changed, but she did not make it worse by reacting too much. “Okay.”
The car pulled up. The driver took your award and placed it carefully in the back seat. When you slid into the car, the dress gathered around your legs in a pool of black silk. Mara got in beside you.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The city moved past in blurred lights and wet windows. Billboards, traffic signals, restaurants closing for the night, people standing under awnings with cigarettes and phones. The world looked ordinary, which felt insulting. Something inside you had cracked open, and outside, people were still ordering late-night fries.
Mara broke the silence gently. “Do you want me to stay with you for a bit?”
You looked down at your clutch. “I’m pregnant.”
The words came out flat, almost too calm.
Mara’s head turned slowly. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Your eyes burned immediately. “I found out this morning.”
“Does Jack know?”
You shook your head. “I was going to tell him tonight.”
Mara covered her mouth for a second, then lowered her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
That was what undid you. Not the empty chair. Not the text. Not the speech. Just someone being sorry for you without making you explain why you had the right to be hurt.
You bent forward slightly, one hand pressed over your stomach, the other over your mouth, trying not to sob too loudly in the back of the car. Mara moved close and put an arm around your shoulders, careful of your hair, careful of the dress, careful of all the pieces of you that were barely holding.
“I wanted him there,” you said, voice muffled through your fingers. “I wanted one night where I didn’t have to understand.”
Mara rubbed your back. “I know.”
“I hate that I still wanted him.”
“That’s love,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t always leave when it should.”
You cried harder at that, because she was right. You thought you had moved past needing him like that. You thought if you got busy enough, successful enough, full enough, maybe you would not notice the missing parts so much. But then something happened, something beautiful or terrifying or important, and he was still the first person you wanted to tell.
You looked out the window, watching the city smear itself into streaks of white and red through the rain. Pittsburgh looked softer from inside the car, almost forgiving. Like it did not know what had happened to you tonight. Like somewhere behind all those lit windows, people were still coming home to each other.
“I’m sitting here with an award, a company people are saying might be worth a billion dollars, a baby I don’t even know how to feel brave enough for yet, and all I can think is that I wanted my husband to call me his girl one more time and mean it like nothing else in the world mattered.”
Mara reached for your hand.
You let her take it.
“I don’t know where to put all of this love,” you whispered. “That’s the worst part. I can leave the apartment. I can sign papers. I can sleep somewhere else. But what am I supposed to do with all the years I spent loving him?”
Mara squeezed your hand.
You looked down at your wedding ring.
“What if I spend the rest of my life missing him?”
The question was so quiet it barely felt spoken, but once it was out, there was no taking it back.
Jack came home at 2:38 a.m.
He opened the apartment door quietly, like quietness could make his absence smaller. The living room lamp was on. Your award sat on the coffee table, still gleaming, still heavy, still proof that the night had happened whether he had attended or not. Beside it were two envelopes. One cream, one white.
You were sitting on the couch in your gown. You had taken your earrings off. Your hair had loosened, soft pieces falling near your cheeks. Your lipstick had faded, and there were faint marks under your eyes where you had cried and carefully wiped the evidence away. Your heels were lined up beside the couch. Your bare feet were tucked beneath you.
Jack stopped near the door. “Hey.”
You looked up. “Hey.”
He closed the door and set his keys in the bowl by the entryway. The sound was small and domestic, so painfully normal that you almost laughed. How many times had you heard that exact sound? Keys in the bowl. Shoes by the door. His tired sigh. Your voice asking if he had eaten. Marriage had so many tiny rituals that survived even when the people inside them were falling apart.
“You’re still dressed,” he said.
“I know.”
“I thought you might be asleep.”
“I thought a lot of things tonight.”
Jack looked down. He was still in his scrubs under a dark jacket. His hair was messy from running his hands through it, and there was a line across his cheek from where a mask had pressed into his skin. He looked exhausted. He looked guilty. He looked like the man you loved.
That was inconvenient.
That was devastating.
He stepped farther into the room. “I watched your speech.”
You nodded.
“You were incredible.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. The way you talked about the system, the contracts, all of it. You were…” He stopped, searching for the right word. “You were exactly who you are.”
Your eyes filled, but you blinked the tears back. “That would have been nice to hear in person.”
Jack flinched. “I know.”
You looked down at your hands. Your rings caught the lamplight.
He came closer, stopping at the end of the coffee table. “I’m sorry.”
You smiled a little, but there was no warmth in it. “You say that so much.”
“I know.”
“I think that’s part of the problem.”
Jack sat in the armchair across from you instead of beside you. You appreciated that. At least he could still read a room.
“I didn’t want to miss it,” he said.
You looked at him. “I believe you.”
He seemed thrown by that. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you sound like that?”
“Because wanting to be there and being there are different things.”
Jack rubbed both hands over his face. When he lowered them, his eyes were red. “Harper called. They were short. I thought if I went in early, I could help stabilize things and leave before dinner.”
“You thought.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t call me before deciding.”
“I didn’t want to stress you out while you were getting ready.”
You stared at him, and he heard it as soon as he said it.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly.
“You didn’t want to stress me out, so you made the decision alone and told me after.”
Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I made the wrong call.”
“You made the familiar call.”
He swallowed.
The room settled around those words. Rain tapped softly at the windows. Somewhere outside, tires hissed against wet pavement. The apartment smelled faintly like his hospital jacket and your perfume, like two lives still pretending they knew how to touch without hurting each other.
“You don’t understand what it’s like there,” Jack said quietly.
The words came out tired. Not cruel. Not even angry at first. Just exhausted enough to be careless.
You went still.
Jack looked at you and immediately seemed to regret it. “Y/N, I didn’t mean—”
“No,” you said softly. “Say it.”
He closed his eyes. “I just mean, when someone is dying in front of you, when there aren’t enough hands, when people are looking at you like you’re the last thing standing between them and the worst day of their life, it’s not easy to walk away.”
You nodded slowly. “I know.”
“I don’t think you do.”
That one hurt.
You stared at him for a second, and something in your face changed. Not anger. Not even shock.
Exhaustion.
The kind that comes when someone you love finally says the thing you always knew they believed underneath all the apologies.
“You’re right,” you said.
Jack opened his eyes. “What?”
“You’re right. I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be you.”
His mouth tightened. “That’s not what I—”
“But I know what it’s like to keep the lights on when a hospital can’t afford for them to go out. I know what it’s like to have people depend on something I built, something I signed my name to, something that could fail in ways that would haunt me. I know what pressure is, Jack. I know what responsibility is.”
His face softened, shame creeping in.
You looked at the award on the table. “And I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people congratulating me while my husband is on a television screen’s other side, using my work to save people, and still somehow unable to show up for me.”
Jack’s eyes shone. “That’s not fair.”
The words came out before he could stop them.
You laughed once, small and wounded. “There it is.”
“Y/N—”
“No, it’s okay. It’s not fair. Someone was dying. The hospital was short. Harper’s kid was sick. There was a trauma. There was a power issue. There’s always a reason, Jack. There is always a reason good enough to make me feel awful for being hurt.”
His jaw worked, but no words came.
You leaned forward slightly, your voice low. “You know what the worst part is? I believe all your reasons. I believe they’re real. I believe they matter. I believe you’re a good doctor and a good man and that people are alive because of you.”
Your eyes filled.
“But I also believe I have been lonely in this marriage. And you keep asking one truth to erase the other.”
Jack looked down.
You reached for the cream envelope on the table. Your fingers brushed over the thick paper, and Jack’s gaze followed the movement.
“What is that?” he asked.
You held it in your lap for a moment. Jack looked at you like he wanted to memorize you and beg forgiveness at the same time. You wondered if he knew how often you had done that to him.
Memorized him, you meant.
The slope of his shoulders when he came home defeated. The faint scar near his eyebrow. The way his hands looked too capable around a coffee mug, too gentle when they touched you, too absent when you needed them and they were somewhere else holding someone else together. You had loved his face through every version of your own disappointment. You had loved him in doorways, waiting for him to take off his shoes. You had loved him across dinner tables where his phone kept lighting up. You had loved him in bed while he slept beside you, too exhausted to notice you were crying.
You had loved him so thoroughly that leaving him felt less like choosing yourself and more like cutting your own heart out before it could beg you to stay.
“I don’t want you to be a lesson,” you said suddenly.
Jack’s brows pulled together. “What?”
You looked down at your hands. “I don’t want to look back one day and tell people you taught me what I deserved. I don’t want you to become some sad, useful story about growth. I wanted you to be my husband.”
His face broke.
You swallowed hard. “I wanted you to be the person I came home to. Not the reason I had to learn how to stop waiting.”
Jack stared at you, and for a moment, you saw the words land somewhere deep enough to hurt him. You almost hated yourself for noticing. You almost hated that even now, a part of you wanted to soften the blow.
“When you asked me to marry you, I thought I understood what you were asking,” you said.
Jack’s face shifted. “What does that mean?”
You looked at him, and the ache in your chest sharpened. “I thought you were asking me to share your life. I thought it meant we would make room for each other, even when it was hard. I knew your job would be demanding. I knew there would be nights you couldn’t leave. I knew I would have to be patient sometimes.”
Your voice stayed even, but Jack’s expression was already changing.
“I didn’t know I was signing up to become the easiest thing to cancel.”
He closed his eyes. “Y/N.”
“I didn’t know I would have to feel guilty for needing you.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty.”
“But I do. Every time. Because there’s always a patient, or a shift, or someone sicker, or something worse. And I know those things matter. I’m not pretending they don’t.”
You set the cream envelope on the table and slid it toward him.
“I just can’t keep living like my pain only counts if it’s an emergency.”
Jack stared at the envelope. For a few seconds, he did not touch it. Then he picked it up.
You watched him open it. You watched him read the first page. You watched the colour leave his face.
“Divorce,” he said quietly.
You folded your hands together so he would not see them shake. “Yes.”
He looked up at you, stunned. “You want a divorce?”
“I don’t want this version of marriage anymore.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
You breathed in slowly. “I know.”
Jack stood, then seemed to realize he did not know where to go, so he sat back down hard. “When did you decide this?”
You looked toward the window. The city lights reflected faintly in the glass.
“I think part of me has been deciding for a long time.”
He shook his head. “No. We’ve had hard months. I know that. But divorce?”
“You keep saying it like I’m being dramatic.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No,” you said. “You’re trying to find the part where I did this wrong, so you don’t have to look at how long you were doing it to me.”
Jack’s mouth tightened. “That’s not fair.”
The words left him fast.
Too fast.
You looked at him, and he looked like he wanted to reach across the room and take them back.
“Stop saying that to me,” you whispered.
His face cracked. “I’m sorry.”
“I am so tired of being told my pain has to be fair to yours.”
Jack covered his mouth with one hand and looked away.
You wiped your thumb over your ring. “I sat at that table tonight with your name card beside me. People kept asking where you were, and I kept making you sound noble because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
Jack looked crushed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. But I did. Because I’m used to protecting you from how it feels to be married to you.”
His mouth opened, then closed again. That was the first time he really had no defense.
You continued, softer now. “I don’t think you’re a bad man, Jack. That would be easier. You’re kind. You care about people. You work yourself into the ground because you can’t stand leaving anyone unsupported.”
Your eyes met his.
“But somehow, I became the person you could leave unsupported because I was good at surviving it.”
Jack’s eyes shone. “That’s not how I see you.”
“I know. But it’s how you treat me.”
He pressed his palms together, his hands shaking slightly. “I can change.”
You looked at him with so much sadness that he almost looked away.
“I needed you to change before I had to beg myself to stop hoping.”
The room was quiet after that.
Then Jack noticed the second envelope. The white one. It sat beside the award, small and plain, with the doctor’s office logo in the corner.
His eyes stayed on it too long.
“What’s that?”
You felt your throat close. This was the part you had dreaded most. The part that made everything feel impossible.
You picked up the white envelope. Jack watched you like his body already knew what his mind did not.
“This is what I was going to give you tonight after the gala.”
His face went still.
You held it out.
He did not take it right away.
“Y/N,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
“Please just open it.”
He took the envelope. His fingers were careful, almost gentle, as if the paper might bruise. He pulled out the test results, unfolded them, and read.
You watched the exact second he understood.
His lips parted. His eyes moved over the page again. Then again. When he looked at you, his face had fallen apart so completely that you had to look down.
“You’re pregnant,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since this morning.”
“This morning?”
You nodded.
Jack looked back at the paper, then at you. “You went alone?”
“I didn’t know if it was real yet. I took tests at home. Then I booked bloodwork.”
“You didn’t tell me?”
You laughed once, and it came out more like a sob. “You weren’t even there when I tried to tell you after.”
He took that quietly.
He deserved it, and he knew he did.
You pressed a hand to your stomach, more for comfort than anything else. “I had this whole plan. It feels stupid now.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“It was.” You wiped under your eye carefully. “I thought we’d get through the gala, and then maybe we’d go somewhere quiet. Maybe the balcony or the car. I thought I’d hand it to you and you’d look confused for a second, and then you’d understand. And I thought, for once, the night would feel like ours.”
Jack’s eyes filled. “I should have been there.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
He put the divorce papers and the test results down on the table with shaking hands, keeping them separate, like mixing them together would make the whole thing more unbearable.
“I want this baby,” he said.
Your face crumpled. “I know.”
“I want you.”
You shook your head slowly. “Jack.”
“I do.”
“I know you want me.”
“Then don’t leave.”
“That’s not how this works.”
He stood again, and this time he came around the coffee table but stopped a few feet away from you.
“I’ll do better,” he said.
You looked tired suddenly. Tired in a way he had never really let himself see.
“You’ve said that before.”
“I mean it differently now.”
“You always mean it.”
He swallowed hard. That hurt him because it was true.
You stood too, the black silk falling around you as you rose. Without the heels, you looked more vulnerable. Less like the woman from the news. More like his wife, barefoot in the living room, exhausted from being brave in public.
“I don’t want to punish you,” you said. “I need you to understand that. I’m not doing this because I want you to suffer.”
“It feels like suffering.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Your voice broke. “Because staying feels like disappearing.”
Jack’s face tightened as if he had been hit.
You looked down, trying to keep your breathing steady. “I don’t recognize myself anymore sometimes. I used to tell you everything. I used to get excited to share things with you. Then I started editing myself because I didn’t want to add pressure to your life. I stopped telling you when I was upset because you already looked crushed when you came home. I stopped asking for dates because it was humiliating to watch you check your phone the whole time.”
Jack closed his eyes. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The words came out quietly, but they landed hard.
He opened his eyes again. “You’re right.”
That made you cry harder, because you had wanted him to argue. You had wanted him to give you something to push against. Instead, he looked at you with tears in his eyes and finally saw the damage.
“You’re right,” he said again, his voice rough. “I should have asked. I should have noticed. I should have made room for you without you having to keep proving you needed it.”
You covered your mouth for a second.
Jack looked at your hand, then your stomach. His voice softened. “Are you okay? Physically?”
That question broke something small inside you.
“I think so.”
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“Are you nauseous?”
“A little.”
He nodded, doctor mode flickering in, then dying immediately because he seemed to realize how badly timed it was.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m doing the thing.”
You let out a tiny, sad laugh. “Yeah. You are.”
Jack wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “I want to come to the appointments.”
“I know.”
“Will you let me?”
You looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t know yet.”
He nodded quickly, even though it hurt. “Okay.”
“I’m not saying no forever.”
“I understand.”
“I just can’t make promises tonight to make you feel better.”
He breathed in shakily. “Okay.”
You moved toward the chair near the hallway and picked up a small overnight bag.
Jack saw it, and panic crossed his face before he could hide it.
“You packed a bag?”
“Yes.”
“You’re leaving tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“A hotel.”
“Which one?”
You looked at him.
He nodded once, backing off. “Right. Sorry.”
“I’m safe.”
“Okay.”
You slipped the bag over your shoulder. The movement was ordinary, almost boring, and somehow that made it worse. This was what leaving looked like. No screaming. No slammed drawers. Just a woman in a black gown picking up a small bag because she had reached the end of what she could carry.
Jack followed you to the entryway but kept a careful distance.
“Can I drive you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Can I at least walk you down?”
“No.”
He pressed his lips together, trying not to fall apart completely.
You put your hand on the doorknob. For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then Jack said, “Do you still love me?”
You closed your eyes.
Of course he would ask the one question that did not save anything.
“Yes,” you said.
His breath caught behind you.
You turned back to face him, and there he was: wrinkled scrubs, red eyes, hands half-raised like he wanted to reach for you but had finally learned that wanting did not give him the right.
“I love you,” you said, and the truth of it nearly ruined you. “I love you so much that I stayed long after I started feeling alone. I love you so much that I kept making excuses for you because I knew you were tired, because I knew your work mattered, because I knew you were good.”
Jack’s eyes filled again.
“But I can’t keep giving you access to me just because you’re sorry after,” you whispered. “I can’t keep building a home out of promises you only remember once I’m already hurt.”
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he said.
“I know.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
You looked at him for a long moment. You thought of the gala. The black dress. The empty chair. The envelope. The baby. All the nights you had waited and waited, feeding yourself on old versions of him, surviving on memories like they were meals.
“Be someone our child can count on,” you said. “Start there.”
Jack nodded, crying silently now. “I will.”
You wanted to believe him.
God, you wanted to believe him so badly that for one dangerous second, your hand almost left the doorknob.
But then you remembered the chair.
You remembered your name being called in a room full of people while the place beside you stayed empty.
You remembered that love had not been enough to bring him there.
So you opened the door.
The hallway outside was quiet and softly lit. Somewhere down the hall, a neighbour’s television murmured behind a closed door. Life was still going on in all the ordinary ways.
Jack said your name once more.
You looked back.
He stood in the entryway with your award visible behind him on the coffee table and the two envelopes lying open beside it.
“I’m proud of you,” he said.
You gave him a small, broken smile. “I know.”
And that was what made it worse.
Because you knew.
You knew he loved you. You knew he was proud of you. You knew he would miss you when the apartment went quiet and the hospital could no longer give him somewhere else to run.
But knowing had never been the same as being held.
So you stepped into the hallway. This time, when you walked away, you did not wait for him to follow. You heard the door close gently behind you, and the softness of it hurt more than a slam would have.
After you left, Jack did not move for a long time.
The apartment stayed quiet around him. The lamp hummed softly. Rain touched the windows. Your heels were still by the couch, lined up neatly, as if even your heartbreak had manners.
On the coffee table, the divorce papers sat beside the pregnancy results.
The ending and the beginning.
Both addressed to him.
Jack picked up the remote with a hand that did not feel like his and opened the news replay. He did not know why. Maybe because grief made people stupid. Maybe because some part of him thought if he watched the night properly, he could punish himself into becoming the man who should have been there.
The video loaded.
There you were again.
Black dress. Soft hair. Bare shoulders. That careful, beautiful smile.
He watched you enter alone. He watched you answer questions alone. He watched you sit at the table alone. Then the camera panned, briefly, almost accidentally, to the empty chair beside you.
His name card was clear.
Dr. Jack Abbot
Jack paused the screen.
The room went silent.
There it was.
Not a feeling. Not an argument. Not your sensitivity. Not his schedule. Not bad timing.
Proof.
A chair with his name on it.
A space he had promised to fill.
Jack sat on the couch slowly, still staring at the frozen image. His face crumpled, but no sound came out at first. He had cried before. He had cried after losing patients. He had cried in stairwells, in supply closets, in the shower with one hand braced against the tile.
This was different.
This was not the grief of failing to save someone he had only just met.
This was the grief of realizing he had been losing you slowly while calling it survival.
His eyes moved from the frozen screen to the divorce papers.
Then to the pregnancy result.
Then back to your face.
“How do I forget you?” he whispered, but there was no one there to answer.
The apartment seemed to hold the question for him.
Your perfume still lived faintly in the room. Your mug was still in the sink. Your cardigan was still folded over the back of the chair. The book you had been reading was still open on the side table, a receipt tucked between the pages because you hated using proper bookmarks. There was a sticky note on the fridge in your handwriting reminding both of you to buy more oat milk. There was a pair of your socks half-hidden under the coffee table because you always kicked them off when you were working late. There was a framed photo from your courthouse wedding on the console, both of you laughing because Jack had been unable to get the ring onto your finger at first.
You were everywhere.
That was the cruelty of it. You had left, but the life you had built with him remained behind like a house still waiting for its owner to come home.
Jack covered his mouth with one hand and bent forward, shoulders shaking.
For once, no one was paging him. No one was asking him for help. No one was bleeding, crashing, coding, crying out, reaching for him from the other side of a curtain.
For once, there was no emergency left to run toward.
Only the life he had kept meaning to choose.
Only the wife he had loved too late.
Only the baby he had learned about on the same night he learned she was leaving.
Only the empty chair beside you, waiting on a screen for a man who never came.
And the worst part, the part that finally broke him open, was that Jack knew this would not be a clean grief. He would not miss you once. He would miss you in places. In the kitchen when the coffee brewed too strong. In the car when he passed the hotel downtown and remembered black silk under gold lights. In the emergency department when the power held steady because of the system you built. In every waiting room, every hallway, every quiet elevator ride where he would think of you standing somewhere else, living a life he was no longer trusted to enter.
He would miss you when the baby came.
He would miss you when your child had your eyes.
He would miss you when people asked about his wife and he had to learn how to say your name without saying mine.
Jack stared at the empty chair until the screen blurred.
For the first time all night, he understood that you had not left because you stopped loving him. You left because you were terrified you would spend the rest of your life loving him from a room he never came home to.
And Jack, too late, finally knew what it meant to wait. Not for a patient. Not for a shift to end. Not for the next crisis to pass. But for a woman who might never come back.
The television stayed paused on his name.
The apartment stayed still around him.
And Jack sat there in the home you had built together, finally surrounded by all the love he had assumed would wait forever.
AN: Day two of June Jukebox Scribbles, here we go. It’s time for Nick and his Bratty Sugar-baby and look, I finally made them a series. And, yeah, they're both a little unhinged, so head the tags.
The prompt is I wanna be bad - Willa Ford.
Unbeta’d. Banner and divider by me.
Master list | Jukebox Master list | Series Master list | Join my tag list
Relationship: Nick Fowler x Bratty Sugar-baby female reader.
Word count: 300
CW: Explicit Sexual Content, non-consensual voyeurism, murder, dark themes
“You’re being very bad, prinţesă,” Nick growled in your ear even as his hips snapped against your ass. You let out a reedy whine and reached up behind you to grip his short dark hair.
“I wanna be bad,” you breathed out as another sharp thrust rattled your frame and sent stars dancing across your vision. The desk under your body squeaked an inch across the floor.
“I know you do.” He nipped at your ear lobe making you gasp and inched his hand up under your silk negligée. His fingers reached under you, his hips stilling so he could feel where the pair of you were joined, and let out a mona before shifting his digits up to your clit and resuming his brutal pace. “But you know you’re not supposed to come down here when I’m working.”
From beneath your fluttering eyelids you caught sight of the bound, bruised and bloodied man in the chair on the other side of the room.
“But I missed you,” you pouted.
“Draga,” he scolded, “you know I like to keep you away from the messy side of all this. Now, come on my cock like a good girl. You need to go back to bed and wait for me while I take out the trash.”
“Does he have what you need,” you asked, inclining your head toward the petrified man.
“No. Doesn’t know anything,” came the ragged response.
In a flash you grasped Nick’s gun off the desk you were bent over and emptied the clip into the man. It wasn’t your best work, but it did the job.
Behind you, Nick growled and thrust against you harder, but you just grinned at the pleasure-pain. “There, dealt with. You can get someone to clean up later.”
5.5k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: discussion of pregnancy; taking pregnancy test and waiting for and then getting the results; mention that reader had a rough first pregnancy with a few scary moments but no in depth discussion; mention that reader was borderline HG during her first pregnancy; mention that reader is nauseous; quickest second of angst again where Jack thinks about losing you during/after a pregnancy; softness; silliness; cuddling; snuggling; loving on each other; fluff; happy fluffy domestic dad!Jack; no use of y/n.
Summary: You and Jack find out if Baby Abbot # 2 is on the way.
AN: This is set in what I'm calling the Peep AU. 😂 You guys seemed to enjoy those two and their little girl and I had requests for more of them and asks like this one giving me ideas for more of them so here we are! I still feel like I'm in a bit of a writing funk and my writing is worse than usual but I'm trying to tell myself that's just my brain being a dick to me. This feels kind of meh, but I hope that it's fluffy and sweet and sappy and gooey and god I love Jack Abbot. 🫠 Thank you so much for your support and for reading! I hope it's alright and you enjoy! ♥️
You walk out of your en suite and shut the door behind you, let out a long breath as you look at Jack.
It's Saturday morning and your daughter is still sound asleep in her bed so it's just you and Jack right now. And it's perfect. It's perfect that you both woke up before she did and have time to do this together the way you did the first time.
"Come here," Jack murmurs. He opens his legs a little further where he's sitting at the edge of the bed and holds his arms open for you in invitation. He already has his prosthetic on for the day, knows your daughter will be up soon, and with her running around and wanting to play and being the busiest little girl he's ever seen he just prefers to have it on. You walk over and stand between his legs, rest your hands on his shoulders and look down at him. "You okay?" he asks softly with a slight raise of his brows as he looks up at you.
"I…" You shrug deeply and laugh a little. "I feel like I'm going to be sick."
Jack nods slowly, his hands wrapping the backs of your upper thighs. "Like for real or metaphorically?"
You squeeze his shoulders and swallow hard. He knows the answer immediately and you know he knows based on the slight frown that pulls onto his face and the little worried crease between his brows. "For real, unfortunately."
"You think it's morning sickness or just the kind of... nervous anticipation?" Jack leans forward and kisses your tummy a few times. He wishes he could take the nausea away with just a simple kiss, wishes he could transfer it to himself so that you didn't have to go through it. He knows how much you hate the feeling and how much you hate actually being sick. He hates that he can't just make it go away.
"I don't know." You move one of your hands from his shoulders to his curls, run your fingers through them as he kisses at your tummy. He's so sweet you don't know what to do with yourself. "Both, probably. The nausea is on par for last time. If I am pregnant it'll probably get worse in the next couple of weeks and turn into full fledged morning sickness. But there's a lot of nervous anticipation too," you laugh softly. "It's just, I don't know. We might be having another baby, Jack. I might be pregnant."
Jack looks up at you smiling and you can't help but smile back at him, especially when one of his hands rests on your hip and the other starts to rub soothing circles over your tummy. It always amazes you how much it truly does help you with your nausea. You're not sure if it's a psychosomatic thing but you don't really care. It helps. He helps. He always helps everything.
You got your IUD out a month and half or so after you and Jack first started talking about Baby Abbot #2 that night your daughter was up and down a lot and called you in just to change her pajamas. It hadn't happened immediately, not for your and Jack's lack of trying. You knew it wouldn't while your cycle regulated itself out, but there was still some piece of you that hoped it would be immediate. But you can’t complain. Three months after getting your IUD out here you are taking a pregnancy test.
It was kind of funny when you got home last night. Jack didn't work so you got a Friday night as a family. When you went into your room to change once you got home you had to laugh when you walked into the bathroom and saw that Jack, like you, had picked up a box of pregnancy tests. Neither of you wanted to wait until morning but you knew it was for the better so you did. You guys managed to find some incredibly fun and pleasing ways to distract yourself and get you both to sleep.
"But then, you know, I might not be. I might just be late. And that's… I don't know." You blow out a long breath and shake your head. "I'm nervous about both possibilities. Nervous in a good way about being pregnant, of course. It's just a, a, a…."
"A big life event? Bringing another life into the world? Another baby? Being nervous makes so much sense, Sweetheart and is normal." Jack can see you starting to spin and want to over-explain yourself and your feelings so he does his best to reassure you that you don't need to. "I promise I know that you being nervous about the fact that you might be pregnant doesn't mean you don't want to be or don't want this or them. All you being nervous about being pregnant tells me is that you are an incredible, amazing mother who cares and loves her baby and potential babies with her whole being."
He gives you a crooked smile. "And personally, I'd be concerned if you weren't nervous at all about having a second baby. I'm nervous. About all of it," Jack laughs, the sound so reassuring that some of the tension in your shoulders melts away.
"But here's what I know." Jack squeezes your hips and pushes just a little and you take a step back so that he can stand, his hands moving to your waist. "No matter what that test says, everything will be okay." He nods at you. "I fully believe you and I can get through anything together."
"I know," you murmur as you and Jack come together in a tight hug. "I fully believe that too, Jack."
"Good," he whispers back, holds you a little closer and rocks you gently. "Shit," he stills, tries to pull away but you won't let him.
You already know what he's worried about. "It's not making my nausea worse, I promise. I'd tell you if it was."
"You better," Jack laughs softly. He smiles to himself at the way you already knew, resumes holding you tight and rocking you, presses a kiss to the top of your head and breathes in your shampoo.
"I think my stomach would if I didn't," you mumble with a playfully self-pitying laugh.
Jack's smile to himself turns into a frown. It's not that he's not ready to take care of you while you suffer through morning sickness again, or that he resents having to or doesn't want to or anything like that, he'd take your entire pregnancy off from work if that's what you needed, god knows he has the time after all the years he's been at the Pitt and how little he used before he met you.
It's that he knows how much you hate being sick and he hates seeing you suffer and not feel well and it scares him. You were borderline hyperemesis gravidarum during your first pregnancy, luckily getting some relief around 15 weeks, and Jack knows way too much as a doctor about how dangerous HG and borderline HG can be, so you being that nauseous this early scares him, makes him somehow worry about you and your health and your well-being even more than he normally does, kicks his protectiveness over you into overdrive. "That bad already?"
You take in a deep breath through your nose and shrug in his arms. "Yes? No?… I don't really know. I think I need to know if I'm pregnant first. Though, I guess I don't really need to know once I say it out loud. I think either way it's worse right now from the anticipation."
"Alright Sweetheart," Jack murmurs. "But let me know if you want me to ask Robby to call in a script for some zofran."
"I will. Thank you for taking such good care of me." You settle into his arms further, rest one side of your head on his chest in the center and almost hunch into him a bit so it feels like you're tucked up against him as he holds and rocks you. "Also, tests."
"What?"
"You said no matter what that test says." You nuzzle your face into his chest because you realize how ridiculous and silly it seems and feels as you prepare to say it out loud, a little sheepishness in your voice. "It's tests. No matter what those tests say. I dipped six just to be sure."
"Oh." A beat passes and then Jack starts to laugh and you smile into his chest. "I love you," he laughs, the feeling infused into every word so purely it sinks into your bones even more. "I love you, do you know that? I love you so fucking much."
"Of course I know," you giggle along with his laughter. "And I love you that much too." You press a kiss to Jack's chest and continue to rest against him in his arms for another minute or so as his laughter dies down and you soak up a little more time being close like this.
Eventually he presses another lingering kiss to the top of your head and gives you a gentle squeeze. "Come here," he murmurs, loosening his arms around you a little.
You pull back just enough so that you can look up at him, share smiles that reflect the love and adoration you have for each other. Jack leans down and in and kisses you, starts with short, sweet kisses that melt into deeper, lingering kisses until finally you and Jack are standing in your bedroom making out with each other, one of his hands coming up to hold your face and keep you steady for him.
When you break apart for air you rest your foreheads against each other's, Jack's thumb brushing back and forth over your cheek. You both know it's time, that it's past time and the tests have been ready for a few minutes now as you've focused on each other and these moments together.
It hits you both at the same time. You guys have always talked about and seemingly more or less settled on two kids. So if these tests are positive, if you're pregnant, this could be the last time you ever do this, ever stand in your bedroom together and love on each other while pregnancy tests develop on the counter in your en suite bathroom and then find out you're pregnant. This likely would be the last time.
You and Jack nuzzle your noses together and then share a few last kisses before pulling your heads apart and looking at each other the way you did when he was proposing and when you were standing across each other on the altar and when you found out you were pregnant with your daughter and when she was being placed on your chest for the first time.
Jack smiles at you, unwavering and quietly reassuring even with his own nervous anticipation that shows in his smile. He slides his hand to your hips and squeezes softly. "You wanna look together or you wanna look and tell me?"
"I don't know." You think about it for a few seconds. "I'll look." As soon as you say it you change your mind, think you'll be sick if you go look and that's the last thing either of you need right now. "No, you look." And then a better idea hits you. "Okay, okay we'll look together." But then your mind settles on you and Jack finding out in the same exact way you found out about your daughter. "No, okay. I'm going to go look and tell you."
Jack wears a small amused smile as he waits a few seconds to see if you change your mind again. "Okay, Sweetheart," he nods. "No matter what those tests say everything will be okay," he repeats before leaning down and kissing your forehead. "I love you."
"I love you too," you murmur, voice surprisingly steady for as nervous and excited as you feel.
Jack's hands release your hips and you take a step back, look at him for one final encouraging and reassuring smile that he happily gives you and then turn around and walk towards your bathroom door. Once you've turned around Jack steps to the side a little so that he won't see your reaction and know before you're able to tell him.
You pause at the door and take in and let out a deep breath before opening it and walking over to the counter where the tests are laid out. You pause again a couple steps away from the counter, close your eyes and replay Jack's words in your head, no matter what those tests say everything will be okay. And finally you gather enough of whatever it is you need, open your eyes and finish walking to the counter.
Even though you knew it was a possibility you still have your breath taken away and tears still hit your eyes at the answer the first test gives you. As your eyes move over the remaining five tests and find the same answer tears start to stream down your cheeks. You cover your mouth with your hand to hide the way your breaths become shuddery as you keep running your eyes over all of the tests.
You know you need to pull it together so that you can go tell Jack, can go do this and go through these emotions with him. It isn't fair to keep him waiting.
So, you take in a few deep breaths and let them out slowly, wipe the tears from your face and blink back the ones that try to fall and replace them. A shaky hand reaches out and grabs one of the tests, one of the ones Jack bought because you know he trusts that brand the most. You look down at it in your hand and let out another breath before walking back toward your bedroom.
Just as Jack goes to call out for you to see if you're okay you step out of the bathroom. Normally Jack feels like he can read you incredibly well, easily almost, with how well he knows you, just like you with him. But like when you found out you were pregnant with your daughter, Jack can't seem to read you at all right now, doesn't know if he really can't or if his brain is just spinning too fast with the anticipatory nervousness flying through his system.
"Jack," you whisper just loud enough for him to hear you as you walk over until you're standing in front of him. You hold the test out for him and your other hand moves naturally and instinctively over your womb. "I'm pregnant."
"Oh my god," Jack whispers, his eyes stuck on yours, and then on your hand covering your womb and then to the test you're holding out from him. Jack's hand shakes just as much as yours did as he grabs the test from you and studies it, finds the same exact answer you did and that you just told him. "You're pregnant?" he asks in confirmation like he hasn't looked at and doesn't have the test in his hand. His free hand drops to cover yours where it rests against your lower abdomen, large enough that when he splays his fingers out they rest against you, protective and possessive and loving. Jack's eyes are wide and round and teary as he holds your gaze. "You're pregnant again? You're giving me, us, another baby?"
You laugh through a quiet sob and nod, tears of joy and happiness and love streaming down your cheeks. "I'm pregnant," you nod, beaming at your husband and stepping closer to him. "All six agree," you laugh, sniffling as another flood of tears wet your cheeks. "We're going to have another baby."
"You're pregnant," Jack laughs as tears start to stream from his eyes. "You're really pregnant. We're really having another baby." His chin trembles and he chokes back a small sob of sheer joy and happiness. "I love you. I love you so fucking much."
Jack blindly tosses the pregnancy test behind him onto the bed and has his arms open and ready to catch you as you finally nearly fling yourself at him.
You wrap your arms around his neck, one hand fisting his shirt at his shoulder and the other tangling in silvery curls you adore beyond reason. "I love you so fucking much too, Jack. I love you."
Jack beams at you as more tears slide down your face and then leans down and kisses you, your noses smushing against each other and tears mixing together as you exchange kiss after kiss and bask in the news and each other and how much you love each other and your family, your babies. After a particularly lingering kiss you nuzzle your nose against his and rest your forehead against his as you continue to hold each other close.
"Thank you," Jack sniffles, squeezing you a little tighter for a second. "Thank you so much. I'm so excited Sweetheart."
"I'm so excited too Jack," you laugh through some more tears. "I can't wait to get to see you with a newborn again. Watch you do the dad walk out of the hospital."
Jack laughs and rocks you both side to side like he did earlier, still crying just like you as the news fully sinks in. "Holy shit, we're having another baby." He shakes his head, overcome by some kind of wondrous awe just like he was the last time he held you like this when you told him you were pregnant.
"Another little human to love and take care of." Your voice is full of the same awe that Jack's has and that his eyes reflect when he pulls back to look at you. "Already growing away in there."
Something about that sends another heavy wave of emotion through Jack, his tears that he was starting to get under control suddenly back to blurring his vision before he blinks and they spill over and down his cheeks. "You're incredible," he murmurs, voice thick with tears and emotion and love and that same awe because he can't fucking believe how amazing you and your mind and your body are for doing this. Again. "Thank you," he tells you again. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," Jack whispers against your skin as he presses kisses all over your face in between his words.
You scrunch your nose under his lips when he presses a kiss there, smiling to yourself and sniffling. "Thank you Jack," you murmur back to him, fingers scratching at his scalp as you push your lips out for a kiss.
"Nothing to thank me for," he mumbles against your lips before giving you the kiss you seek. And then another and another and another until you're making out a little bit. He smiles down at you, watery but so incredibly genuine and loving. "I just get to do the fun part in making them."
You shake your head at him. "You do more than that. You're the best pregnancy and labor partner. I couldn't have done it without you last time." You release his shirt and let that hand come to his face and wipe away some of his tears. "You being the best is going to be even more important this time now that we have a little girl running around to take care of while this one is growing. And I feel and know that I am so lucky that I don't have to worry about whether my husband is going to help me and if I'll have his support during this pregnancy. I know you'll help me more than I could ever even ask for and that I'll have your support in every way I can think of and fifty I can't."
Jack laughs as another couple of tears escape his eyes, tilts his head at you in a silent thank you. "This isn't about me. This is about you and this amazing, incredible thing you're doing. Helping and supporting you is the fucking least I can do. I love you, Beautiful."
"I love you too, Handsome." You give him a watery smile of your own and adjust to hold his face in your hands before pulling his head down to yours so that you can kiss him again. You never want to stop.
At some point though, you do have to. You almost pout when Jack releases you from his arms and steps away but you stop when he tugs gently on your hand as he sits back on the edge of the bed, pulling you to stand between his legs again.
As your hands find their spot back on his shoulders Jack rests one of his hands over your womb where you held your hand earlier as you told him, his other hand on your hip. His lips tremble as he smiles at you and tilts his head, fingertips pressing lightly into your lower abdomen.
Jack tears his eyes from yours and looks at his hand for a few seconds before leaning closer to it. "Hi," he murmurs, brushing his thumb against you as a little way to feel connected to them. His eyes glance back up to yours. "I need a nickname for them."
"You do," you nod softly. "I'm not good at nicknames. I don't think other nuts work, though." You click your tongue and shrug. “Almond just doesn't quite have the same ring to it as Peanut does, you know?"
He laughs and shakes his head at you. "No, it's not quite the same." Jack looks back at his hand and pulls it off to one side so that he can lean into you all the way and press a kiss against you, as close to kissing them as he can get right now. He presses a few and then rests his forehead against you there for a few seconds as his hand finds your other hip. When he pulls his head off you he gives you one last lingering kiss there and then looks back up at you, wiggles so that he's sitting on the edge of the bed a little deeper. "I'll think of something when I see them for the first time just like I did with her."
You don't really need the invitation but Jack pats his thigh in one anyway. "You will, yeah." You climb onto his lap, adjust so that you're sitting on your butt on his thighs, your legs wrapping around his hips. "And it'll be perfect."
Jack nods and you're not sure what brought it on but you can see the way his thoughts turn down a darker alley of his brain, his eyes growing worried and anxious and scared, mouth pulling down just a touch at the corner of his lips. He swallows thickly before he speaks. "You're going to be okay, yeah?"
You know what he means, know he's thinking about what he voiced when you very first started talking seriously about Baby Abbot # 2. He's thinking about how rough your first pregnancy was at times, about the really scary moments, the moments where he thought he was going to lose you.
"I am, yeah," you nod at him with a gentle, reassuring smile, keep your voice light and confident, but serious enough to reflect how seriously you're taking his question and the thoughts you know he's having and that he knows you know he's having. "We've got this. I have the best OB and I live with the best emergency medicine physician who I know won't let anything happen to me. So I just have a strong feeling I'm going to be okay and we're going to grow old together watching our babies grow up and live the life of their dreams and maybe have babies of their own if that's what they want."
You cradle his face in your hands and wipe the remnants of his tears off his cheeks with your thumbs now that you've both stopped crying. "I'm not going to promise you because I can't and because I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm going to be okay, Jack."
Jack's quiet for a second as he holds your eye contact and lets your words sink in. "Thank you," he whispers. After a couple of seconds he takes in a deep breath and lets it out through his nose while shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to take away from the moment and please don't think this means I'm not excited or happy. I am, I promise. I'm so fucking happy and so excited I can barely fucking stand it. We're having another baby. You're pregnant."
"I never thought that for a second, Jack. I understand, I promise." You lean in and kiss him, let your hands run down his neck and splay over his chest. "I'm so fucking happy too," you murmur against his lips. "We're having another baby. I'm pregnant."
Jack hums as you kiss him again, takes your face in his hands gently to keep you right where he wants you as he deepens the kiss a little and drinks down the contented sigh it pulls from you. When you have to break apart for air you exchange smiles that radiate your love for the other. Like you did for him Jack runs his thumbs over your cheeks to clean up the remnants of your tears.
"So," Jack starts, lightheartedness and wonder back in his voice after your reassurance. He rests his hands on your hips. "Based on your last period you're probably around four weeks right now, which means you're due…" He trails off, looking away from you slightly for a minute as he does mental math before they return to yours. "Sometime around November 5th." He tilts his head at you and pushes his lips together in a little smiled pout like he's thinking about something too adorable for him to process. "We'll have a little turkey for Thanksgiving."
"We will." You click your tongue behind your teeth and almost pout at him a little as you smile, melting at the cuteness just thinking about it and the silly little turkey outfit you already know Jack is going to buy for them. "We'll have a little turkey." Your mind thinks beyond them in an outfit and goes to a shirtless Jack with a newborn looking extra small against the broad, toned expanse of his chest, and Jack's big hands being so gentle with them as he bathes them and Jack with your daughter asleep on one half of his chest and your newborn on the other. "I love you," you murmur, laughing at yourself for being vaguely misty eyed again.
You lean in and share more kisses with him, soft and sweet and almost flirty as you steal them from each other and almost battle with each other to kiss the other's face. Your hands run a bit outward and then up so that your forearms rest on his shoulders and you can play with the curls at the nape of his neck.
"I'm glad I won't be in the third trimester during the summer for the most part," you sigh happily. "Hopefully it's a temperate fall."
Jack hums at you and gives you a little smirk. "I'll take you on a babymoon somewhere nice and cool, I promise." He leans forward and kisses the hollow of your throat and looks back up at you as he pulls back. "Wherever you want."
"Wherever I want, hm?" you smirk back at him, eyebrows raising just a touch. "Seems kind of dangerous to give me that power."
"Not at all." He shakes his head once and looks so matter of fact it’s adorable. "You deserve a nice vacation wherever you want and then a whole lot more."
You hum at him this time and lean in for another kiss. "You're the best," you murmur against his lips. "Don't argue."
He gives you a couple of little playful grumbles but doesn't argue and just takes a couple more kisses from you until you pull apart again. "Peanut's going to be a big sister. She's going to be so excited."
"She is," you nod at him, smiling. "She's going to be the best big sister." Talking about her makes you really think about this pregnancy and what it could look like in comparison to your first. "It's probably going to be harder to keep this pregnancy a secret," you laugh softly.
There are at least two reasons you can think of for it and Jack gives voice to one. "It's going to be impossible to keep it a secret once we tell her. She's going to want to tell everyone, her teachers and her classmates and random people at the grocery store and everyone she sees at the Pitt when she comes to visit."
"Exactly," you laugh. "She's going to want to tell everybody that she's going to be a big sister. I wonder where she gets that chatterbox quality from," you tease him with a wide smile.
Jack rolls his eyes at you playfully. "You love that quality about her and about the man she gets it from."
"Mm," you hum, "I do. I so very much do." You bring your lips to Jack's and kiss him, a little deeper than the previous ones you've shared. "I love my yapper husband and how much he loves to talk." You kiss the corner of one side of his jaw. "I love how vocal he is," you murmur, words sultry as they fall off your tongue. "I love how much he loves to talk me through it."
Jack's lips catch yours as you try to move to kiss the other side of his jaw. It's even deeper than the kiss you just gave him, and before you know it you and Jack are fully making out and pulling little sighs and moans of pleasure from each other.
You kiss until you both need more air and pull away, panting softly as you look at each other. You can't help the amused smile you give him. "We probably want to wait to tell her until the second trimester to tell her."
"Yeah," Jack laughs, nodding, "I think we probably want to wait to tell her until we're okay with people knowing."
You laugh along with him, trail off and tilt your head at him, smirking, because you already know how this is going to go over. "It's also going to be harder to keep a secret because I'm probably going to show earlier this time."
You watch Jack's jaw clench and his eyes widen and pupils dilate a little as he starts to think about it. He rolls his jaw as he takes in a deep breath and then lets it out slowly. "I'm so looking forward to seeing you with a bump in cute spring and summer dresses, and light sleep camisoles and my old shirts," he tells you quietly, voice all gravel and low and unreasonably hot.
You somehow manage to just keep yourself together at the sound of his voice and the way he looks at you, roll your eyes at him playfully and giggle. "You're ridiculous."
"Yeah, but you know what?" he smirks at you as you raise your eyebrows at him in a silent what? "You love that quality about me too."
"I do," you nod, smirking back at him as you repeat your words from earlier just like him. "I so very much do." You lean into your husband again and kiss his forehead as your fingers continue to play with his curls and scratch as his scalp. "I love you, Jack."
Jack does the same as you and kisses your forehead. "And I love you, Sweetheart."
You pull your fingers from his curls as much as it pains you, wrap your arms around his neck again and melt into him in another tight hug, your face nuzzled into his neck. Jack's arms wrap tightly around you and the two of you stay like that for a few minutes until it seems to hit you all over again and you pull out of the hug and look at him.
"We're having another baby, Jack." You let out a soft laugh of disbelief and beam at him. "I'm pregnant." You shrug shallowly as your forearms settle back against his shoulders and your fingers back in his hair. "I know we don't have blood test results, but…"
"You are," Jack beams at you, brings one hand to rest as far down your abdomen as possible. "You're pregnant. I know it. I can feel it." A teasing smirk pulls onto his face, or at least attempts to, his smile so wide that he really only gets a flash of a smirk at you and the lightest air of it to his smile. "Plus, all six agree."
"Yeah," you giggle, lean in and kiss him before murmuring against his lips. "All six agree."
I need him so badly!!!! 🫠😩 I would give him as many babies as he wanted!! I just know he would be the best pregnancy and labor partner and so supportive and amazed by you and would do everything he could for you. 🫠 What a man. Anyway lol, I hope it was okay and enjoyable and that we'd still like to see more of these two! Let me know! And thank you again for all of your support and for reading!! ♥️
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