thank u guys for 100 followers and counting omg... lots more filth to come i promise <3
older bf!jack abbot x controversially young gf!reader.
content warnings: daddy kink, age difference, humiliation kinda?
you get out of the shower and pad back into your room. jack's sitting up against the headboard, prosthetic off and leaning against the bedside table. his eyes are alight with indignation.
"i saw your phone," he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
you stare back at him, completely nonplussed. no shit he saw your phone, it's laying right next to him. "...okay?"
he doesn't explain just yet, just huffs and points a thick finger at it. "yeah. i texted you an article... and your phone lit up."
you're now more confused than you've been in your whole life. "... that is what you'd expect a phone to do, jack??—"
"—why is my contact name 'megadilf' in your phone?"
your eyes widen and your mouth gapes open just a little. he was never meant to find out. you'd saved it as that after a drunken night out with your friends: you'd been drooling over his big freckled arms and the sun-damaged skin on his neck and how he used full stops at the end of his messages. you kept it that way because you thought it was funny (and also because it was true).
jack's not really mad, in fact, he's far from it. he knows you're into the fact that he's a silver fox, and he loves it: it makes him feel good, decades younger, attractive. but he can see that you're flustered, so he plays into it.
"is that how you see me?" he asks, his sharp eyes roaming over your form as droplets of water make their way down your skin. "i'm just an old man to you? a dusty old bastard?"
you open your mouth to protest, no, it was just a joke, but he cuts you off: "drop your towel and come give your dusty old daddy a kiss."
and his voice is so firm and gravelly, how could you argue with him? you crawl into his arms, pressing a sweet kiss to his lips. he turns it hungry, of course. all that dilf talk makes him feel virile.
then he's pounding your brains out, making you confess: "say it for me, baby. say it— say you love old man cock. you love this old man cock, don't you? love my daddy parts even though they're tired? still work good enough to turn your brain off, hmm?" while your eyes roll back into your skull.
"i'm big, thick, and i can still get hard, can't i? that not good enough for you?" and yeah, he fucking can. his dick bullies into your cunt so forcefully that it would probably hurt if you weren't so ridiculously soaked with slick. "that's right, moan for me. let daddy know he's still got it. this dilf can still turn you into a fuckin' fountain, right?"
after he's tired you out, he pulls you close, resting his forehead against yours. "didn't mean it in a bad way," you murmur plaintively into the space between you. "i love being your controversially young girlfriend."
and because jack abbot doesn't use social media, he thinks you invented the phrase yourself, and that you're the funniest person in the world. the whole of the next week he goes around chuckling to himself, "controversially young— fuck, baby, how do you come up with this stuff?"
summary: it's well known across the ptmc that park the shark doesn't like anyone, except for a younger resident he calls 'crybaby,' who also happens to be jack abbot's secret girlfriend. (4k)
characters: jack abbot / sunshine!fem!reader, mentor!brendon park, whitaker & evil whitaker
contents: secret relationship, jealousy, age gap, humor, insecure!jack, not proofread cw for medical inaccuracies, allusions to smut 18+ (MDNI), and r getting turned out that jack takes viagra
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Crybaby.
Dr. Park was the first to call you by that name — or Park the Shark, they called him, on account of his strong features, and the fact that he looked like he could swallow you whole without blinking.
It was your first rotation at the PTMC, when you screwed up a simple tibia plate fixation. The reduction looked clean, in your defense, straight and stable. “You got it?” the attending had asked. And you’d nodded as you adjusted your grip on the patient’s broken leg — only slightly.
The imaging still looked clear from your angle, as the drill went into the bone. But then you looked down, realizing you had forgotten to account for rotation, and found the patient’s foot slightly turned. Your heart dropped to your stomach, and then to your ass at the look Dr. Park gave you when his screw went in off-axis.
“Everyone take a good look!” he’d announced to the crowd of interns and med students watching after the fact. “If anyone here was wondering how to invent a new way to misalign a fracture, congratulations— You just got a live demonstration.”
Your eyes stung with tears, until your attempt to blink them back had failed.
“If this is all it takes to rile you up, wait until something actually goes wrong,” Dr. Park had scolded. “Now do you want me to go easy on you, or do you wanna get better, Crybaby?”
You stayed. And he made you better. But the nickname stuck.
Crybaby became a term of endearment, a symbol of how far you’d come since your interning days, and was shortened to Baby somewhere down the line. “Baby, take this patient down to CT for me, will you?” and “Cut me an ET tube, Baby, six millimeters,” and—
“Good luck getting that consult, baby,” Jack Abbot says from the opposite side of the exam room, with his strong arms crossed over his chest. The nickname sounds different spilling from his lips. It always has. “The OR’s backed up with Westbridge patients. It could be hours before we get a room booked.”
“She doesn’t have hours…” you murmur under your breath, squeezing past Whitaker and Ogilvie as you part from your unconscious patient. “Excuse me…”
“W-What are you doing?” the former boy stammers.
“Getting us a consult…” you say, half-distracted, as you reach for the red telephone on the wall. You press the cool plastic to your ear and dial the ortho extension.
Jack watches attentively from the sidelines as you make the call upstairs.
“You already sound like you’re gonna say no, so I’m just gonna ask quickly,” you say. “I know, I know— Terrible timing. But we both know I’m your favorite, so just hear me out.”
“Favorite…?” Ogilvie murmurs. “Wait— Who is she calling?”
“Park the Shark,” Whitaker answers solemnly.
“Or as I like to call him— Doctor Dick,” Jack says with a cynical smile. “On account of him being a dick.”
Whitaker nods in concurrence. “To everyone but her.”
You hang up the phone and return to your spot at the patient’s bedside. “Ortho consult’s on its way,” you tell them, half-distracted, as you check the ketamine levels in her IV drip.
“How’d you do that?” Ogilivie squints.
“I asked nicely,” you shrug.
Brendon Park comes into the emergency department barely five minutes later, and brings a tense air in with him that matches the unsmiling look on his narrow face. The way his dark blue eyes lock on you the second he walks in can only be described as sharklike.
“What do we got, Baby?” he asks you, and only you, utterly ignoring the other bodies in the room as he makes a beeline to your side. He smells of sea salt and sandalwood when he towers just behind you, standing several inches taller.
Jack swallows down the anger that swells suddenly in his throat like bile.
“Ten-foot fall onto a metal fence,” you tell him. “Tib-fib amputation— Pretty clean cut.”
“Sliced right through the bone like a guillotine,” Whitaker adds.
Park turns slowly, dark eyes zeroing in on the mulleted boy. “Was I talking to you?”
The boy’s cheeks flare red. He clears his throat. “Uh— No. No, sir.”
“Let me see the X-ray,” the attending says to you, much softer in comparison, and follows you the short distance to the bulky machine in the corner.
“See?” you hum. “Not too bad, right?”
His eyes flit from the x-ray to your hopeful gaze. The corner of his mouth flickers faintly upward as he nods once in response. “Yeah. Should be pretty fun— Where’s the leg?”
“Double bagged on ice.” You motion across the room.
Whitaker watches the older man walk past him with an unblinking gaze. “I didn’t know he smiled…” he whispers incredulously under his breath.
“Yeah, me neither, kid,” Jack mumbles, swaying softly in place, as he keeps his eyes locked on the two of you.
His jealousy is misplaced, but inevitable. Everyone had a certain soft spot for you, but he couldn’t quite stand it from Park — the man who didn’t seem to like anyone or anything but his work and you. Jack knows it makes a part of you feel special, you are special, but he wants to be the only one making you feel that way.
“Tell him how we prepped the limb, Ogilivie,” you tell the MS3.
“Oh, please, not me,” the curly-haired boy mumbles under his breath, looking instinctively to Whitaker for assistance. He swallows hard when Brendon’s dark eyes snap to his. “Uh— Sterile saline in the inner bag, ice water in the outer bag. No direct ice to skin contact.”
Park nods and turns away, unwrapping the severed leg on the table below. “Good…”
“Thank you.”
“I wasn’t talking about you,” the attending snaps. His eyes soften the second he turns to you. “Let me guess— You wrapped this?”
“How’d you know?” you grin.
“Because it’s neat,” Park quips drily as he pulls the bluing limb from the plastic. “And I don’t think Abbot suddenly developed fine motor skills.”
“Stop flirting with me, Shark,” Jack monotones.
“Antibiotics?” the man squints.
“Cefazolin and gent,” you answer. “And we’re already cleared her chest, abdomen, and pelvis.”
Park nods to himself, examining the severed leg with his gloved hands. “Clean wound… No rush injury… Rapid transport time…” he mumbles to himself, visibly pleased in a way that makes your stomach do a backflip. “Replantation is a go. I’ll go ahead and book an OR, get it taken care of for you.”
“Thanks…” you say, smiling a little wider than you realize. Because ever since the day he embarrassed you in front of all your coworkers, you’ve made it your personal mission to impress him.
“What’s the catch?” Jack quips from across the room. “You already got a packed OR so… What? You’re just doing us a favor out of the kindness of your heart?”
“Hell, no,” Brendon scoffs. “Baby’s gonna scrub in with me.”
Your breath hitches in your throat. You’re not sure whether to be happy or horrified, ‘cause you haven’t done a surgery with him since you were an intern.
“Holy shit— Really?”
“Yeah. As long as you promise not to fuck up again,” Park deadpans, though there’s something distinctly soft in his eyes as he quips, “And if you can keep your guard dog on a leash for a few hours.”
Your eyes turn instinctively to Jack. You find his features slightly hardened but mostly emotionless. He shrugs despite the distant searing in his chest.
“She doesn’t need my permission.”
“Then why are you glaring like I’m about to steal your favorite toy, old man?” Brendon scoffs.
Jack’s eyes widen. His head swivels slowly over his shoulder, as if he were looking for someone standing behind him. “I know you’re not talking about me,” he quips drily.
“I would love the opportunity to scrub in, Dr. Shark— I mean, Park,” you stammer.
“Alright, then. Let’s go,” he nods, pulling off his gloves with a low pop as he storms back towards the door. “The rest of you, irrigate the hell out of this with three liters.”
“Wait— three liters?” Whitaker blurts.
Park glares. “Of saline, genius.”
“I… I knew you meant saline…”
You stop short in the doorway with Jack at your side, right before you turn to follow Park into the elevator. You flash him a wide-eyed look full of hope and distant worry, “You’re not mad at me, are you? For doing this with Shark?”
“I couldn’t be,” Jack scoffs.
“Well, then, I’ll let you know how it goes later?” you murmur sheepishly, shifting on your feet like a shy child. “Over dinner?”
“Sure,” he nods. “I’ll take you somewhere nice. You know, to celebrate.”
He gives you a soft smile that fades the second you’ve turned the corner. He feels the weight of his own insecurity sitting heavy on his chest. The notion that he’s much too old for you tends to follow him like a shadow, but it rears its mean, green, ugly head a little extra now.
“Hey…” Robby greets, then slows his stride when he walks past the tree men leaving the exam room. “What’s the long faces for?”
Abbot flashes him an unamused gaze. “Shark attack,” he deadpans.
Robby nods sympathetically. “Yeah, that’ll do it…”
The familiar chaos of the ED wraps around you like a blanket when you come down from the OR — the beeping monitors, the rolling stretchers, the hundred different conversations. It feels welcoming, in a strange sort of way; it fuels you in a way it hasn’t in a long, long time. It feels less like you’re surviving your shift now, and more like you could solve every medical inquiry in this hospital if someone asked you to.
You feel ten feet tall and lighter than air as you weave your way through the crowded emergency department. Jack can see it from where he watches you at the workstation with an eagle-eyed stare. Your scrubs are creased from your hours in the OR; your eyes are as wild as the distant smile sitting crooked on the very edges of your mouth.
You plant yourself at the computer next to his, and Abbot pretends like he hasn’t been waiting for you this whole time.
“How’d it go?” he asks distantly, trying to be casual.
“Great,” you nod with a proud smile. “Like really great. There was a twisted artery, and I was the only one who caught it. I got to reroute it all on my own— It was crazy.”
Jack feels himself smiling despite himself, basking in the rays of your sunshine disposition.
“Really?” he hums, nodding once. “Good job, baby.”
You couldn’t possibly count how many times you hear that nickname on a daily basis, but it’s different coming from Jack. It’s warmer, more familiar — makes your stomach do backflips like it’s the first time you’re hearing the word from his mouth. You go dizzy accordingly, as your fingers flit across the keyboard below.
“I’m just glad I didn’t make a total fool of myself like I did the first time,” you scoff.
“Yeah, me too,” a familiar voice quips from behind you.
You glance over your shoulder and catch a glimpse of Dr. Park as he appears suddenly behind you, dropping a file on the desk next to you mid-stride. His sea salt cologne pervades your senses instantly, clashing with Jack’s softer, muskier scent.
“I thought I heard the Jaws theme playing…” the older man quips in a dry monotone.
“You should be proud, Abbot— Your resident was a star in surgery today,” Park says with a knowing smirk hinting at the very corners of his mouth, so subtle it’s barely there. “Can’t wait for her to be my protégé in the OR someday.”
Jack’s frown deepens when the man claps him hard on the shoulder as he walks back for the elevator, though not without tossing a “let me know when you need a letter of rec for that fellowship, Baby,” over his shoulder as he goes.
He watches the younger attending until he turns the corner, and looks back at you with his jaw clenched a little tighter than before. His chest sears at the distant smile on your face, as the flames of his jealousy burn white-hot behind his ribcage
“Well,” Jack hums drily after a beat of silence. “You guys are getting awfully close, aren’t you?”
You scoff like it’s funny to you, because the thought of Park the Shark liking anyone is funny to you.
“What? No,” you laugh, then shrug at the unconvinced look Jack gives you in response. “He’s just nice to me. That’s all.”
Jack lets out a sharp exhale through his nose in place of a laugh. He turns back to his computer and deadpans, “Yeah. Because he likes you.”
You open your mouth to argue.
Jack beats you to the punch.
“And I don’t blame him, either. I think it’d make me a hypocrite if I did.”
Your face flares as a red-hot heat crawls up your neck. Your adrenaline-induced confidence fades into something softer as you struggle suddenly to meet the older man’s gaze. You glance down at the chart Park left, unable to hide the small smile on your mouth when you peer at Jack again from beneath your lashes.
“Where are we going for dinner after this again?” you wonder, half-sheepish.
The expression on his scruffy face shifts slightly, less tense but mischievous still. “We aren’t,” he says and logs out of the computer.
Your eyes narrow into a suspicious squint as you watch the man round the front desk. “What happened to ‘I’ll take you somewhere nice?’”
“Yeah…” Jack nods slowly, huffing sympathetically, as his hands curl around either end of his stethoscope. “I think we’re gonna miss that reservation, baby.”
Your stomach does a backflip.
By the time you make it to Jack’s place, the adrenaline has worn off just enough to leave you pleasantly exhausted.
He can feel it in your kiss, as you straddle him on his sunken couch in the middle of his dim living room — so quiet compared to the ER that it feels like stepping into a completely different world. You prop yourself over his lap with your palms cradling his silver scruff and lick into his parted mouth in slow, languid motions.
You’ve been at it for a while now. So long that Jack can feel your spit down to his chin. You could kiss him for hours and hours and never get bored — a testament to your youth, perhaps, because Jack doesn’t think he’s made out with someone this long since he was in college.
But, for you, he keeps his head tipped back against the sofa and his mouth obediently parted, letting you kiss him however you want — for however long you want. His wide hands fidget with anticipation on either side of your bare thighs, from where your shirt rides up to your hips.
You’d changed immediately into one of his old tees when you arrived, after a shower your body had been craving all day. You smell like his body wash and lotion as you sit on his lap, running your hands down his clothed chest like soft drops of summer rain.
Your fingers brush the tie in his dark navy sweatpants, and he tenses on instinct. You don’t seem to notice, though, as you leave a trail of wet kisses down his scruffy neck.
“Are you gonna fuck me tonight?” you mumble into his pulse. “’S why we didn’t go out for dinner tonight, isn’t it? ‘Cause I’ve been thinking about it all day…”
Jack goes dizzy at your words — at the otherwise innocent mouth they spill from. His stomach warms, and he jerks back from you before he means to; his mouth wet and rosy from the intensity of your kisses.
“Yeah, fuck— Yeah, I just…” he trails off, though it’s more of a dismissal than a true affirmative. “I just gotta go to the bathroom real quick, yeah?”
“Okay,” you smile politely, unaware of his subdued panic that he’s learned to keep well-hidden. You slide off his lap and onto the other side of the couch. “Sure.”
Jack rises from the sunken sofa with a low grunt in the back of his throat. There’s a slight limp in his step from where the long day has taken a toll on his prosthetic. “Feel free to make yourself at home while I’m gone,” he tosses mindlessly over his shoulder, before he disappears down the dim hallway, making an immediate beeline for his lamplit bedroom.
There’s a bottle of sildenafil in his nightstand drawer, with only one pill taken out of it — which he thinks is somehow even more embarrassing. He’d only taken it to masturbate once, after his SSRIs plummeted his libido and he was itching for a release after a long day.
The small orange bottle feels strangely heavy in his hands now, as he tips his head back to shake one of the tiny blue pills into his mouth before he can talk himself out of it. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows it dry. The pills rattle faintly when he sets the bottle down beside him again.
He drops onto the edge of his bed, mattress squeaking under his weight. He rests his elbows on his knees and hunches over to dig his palms into his eyes. He tries to will himself hard for you, even though he knows that isn’t exactly how that works.
He thinks of you — all young and pretty and waiting for him out there — wasting your youth on an old man who can’t get hard to save his life. It leads to a cycle of self-hatred that prevents him from getting turned on at all. And it’s maddening.
The ajar door creaks quietly as you push it open without knocking.
You slink inside the dim bedroom and freeze at the sight of the man on the bed, like you weren’t expecting to find him there. Jack’s head whips to your form across the room and spins when he finds your underwear peeking out from the bottom of his shirt — a soft orange color patterned with dark black bats, several months out of season.
“What are you doing?” he squints teasingly, blanketed half by shadow and half by golden lamplight.
“What are you doing?” you retort. “I’ve been waiting out there forever.”
“It’s only been five minutes,” Jack scoffs.
“Yeah, tell me about it…”
You’re all but skipping to his side then, bare feet padding along the thin carpet as you go. The thin fabric of his shirt swishes around your thighs when you walk to stand between his. When you wrap your arms loosely around his neck and duck down to kiss him, Jack tips his chin back and opens his mouth to welcome you — until the open drawer beside you catches your attention, as well as the orange pill bottle sitting on the corner of the nightstand, as if he’d just pulled it out of there.
“What’s that—?”
“Nothing,” Jack answers, a little too quickly, and reaches less than casually around you to chuck the bottle into the drawer again. The pills rattle loudly in the quiet bedroom when he shoves it shut a second later.
He can tell by the look in your eyes that you’ve already gotten a glimpse of the label. Your gaze is soft with sympathy and glittering with something wild that he can’t quite place.
Jack says nothing for several long moments, and instead waits for your response.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed…” you murmur when you catch his scruffy cheeks flaring a soft pink.
“I’m not embarrassed,” he blurts, less than convincingly, eyes shifting away and back again. “I’m just… selectively unthrilled with this timing…”
Your nose scrunches at the shy smile you give him. His warm hands settle again on your waist while your fingers twist in the silver curls at the nape of his neck. Your eyes soften with something tender when you wonder shyly, “Is that why… Is that why you haven’t wanted to… you know?”
“No,” Jack answers instantly, then tilts his head to think for a moment. “Well, I mean— a little, I guess, but… I only take ‘em ‘cause of my SSRIs, you know? It’s not… It’s not because of you or anything.”
“Okay…” you nod and struggle to meet his gaze when you ask, “Do you know, like, how long it takes to kick in… or whatever?”
“Last time I tried, it took about twenty minutes—”
“Last time?” you echo with raised brows.
“I was just trying it out!” Jack defends with a crooked smile, slightly egged on by your misplaced jealousy after stewing in his own all day. “I was by myself when I took it, if that makes you feel any better.”
“It does make me feel better, actually…”
Jack’s light eyes narrow. “What’s that look for, huh?”
“Nothin’…” you lilt quietly, with a poorly hidden smile. “I just… I think it’s kinda hot… That’s all…”
His expression flickers in an instant — surprise first, suspicion second, then something darker third. A white-hot desire threads through the distant embarrassment still swimming in his stomach.
“Yeah?” he presses lowly, with a voice like honey.
“Yeah…” you nod once, unable to take your eyes off his prying stare.
He studies you for another beat, before huffing a quiet laugh of disbelief.
“You’re somethin’ else, baby, you know that?” he mumbles with a shake of his head, smoothing his calloused palms slowly up your bare thighs until they disappear under his shirt.
“I know…” you mutter on bated breath, trying and failing to be casual when you ask, “What do you wanna do then, huh? You know, for the next twenty minutes, anyway?”
You fight back a shiver when his thumb brushes over the center of the delicate mound peeking beneath the hem of your t-shirt, concealed by the thin cotton panties you wear.
Jack hears your breath catch in his throat. His darkened gaze flits from your Halloween-patterned underwear to your heavy eyes, now glazed over with a layer of honeyed desire.
summary: you have a perfectly casual, no-strings-attached night out with a charming stranger you met at a bar; only for jack to find out that he's slept with his resident the next morning, and that you’ve made a very memorable first impression on your new attending. (7k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, michael robinavitch, louie cloverfield, rogue sightings from the pittlings
contents: strangers to lovers, one night stand, implied age gap, humor, so much sexual tension, so much flirting, jack abbot being a d1 yearner, heavily inspired by s1ep1 of grey's anatomy cw for medical procedures and inaccuracies, brief mentions of death, r has hair that can be put into a hair tie, smut 18+ (MDNI), slightly dubcon bc of alcohol
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Jack Abbot finds the rest of his whole life in the middle of Sonny’s Tavern, sitting on the third bar stool to the left.
There’s a strange sort of glow about you — one that makes the dingy amber light swaying above your head look almost golden when it touches your skin; one that begs to be immediately noticed because, admittedly, there was nothing more overtly special about you.
You’ve come in wearing a simple baggy sweater and a pair of loose-fitting jeans, as if you’d just thrown something on from your bedroom floor before stopping in for a drink or two. You sit slouched at the bar with your head on your fist, talking to the bartender in hushed tones that go unheard beneath the yacht rock playing overhead.
It is more than apparent that you did not come here to be noticed; but even still, Jack struggles to take his eyes off you all the same.
“Alright, who’s in trouble tonight?” the man announces in place of a greeting, as he steps through the threshold into a cloud of sweet beer, charred hamburgers, and skunk weed.
He’s far too familiar with the faces here for anything else. Sonny’s had been standing for longer than he has, to be fair — he had his first drink here, back when no one cared how old you really were, so long as you weren’t totally stupid about it; he had his first kiss here, too, by the dumpster in an alley from a woman much older than he was, who he revered as some sort of god until he got to med school.
Sonny’s had given him a lot over the years, so Jack figured it was only right that he give back in return.
He’d gotten several of its patrons out of a number of sticky situations over the years. Everyone knew to call him if someone had gotten themselves into trouble — whether that be bathroom overdoses, bar fight aftermaths, or kids with fake IDs who’d drunk their weight in whiskey. They knew Jack Abbot would fix them right up. No questions asked, no money needed, no judgment at all.
Except for today, he hadn’t gotten a single call, nor had he heard a murmur of anything medical-related on the police scanner all afternoon. His day off had been exceptionally quiet, which he thinks is why he struggles to sleep tonight, without the adrenaline crash from a long day forcing him into slumber.
That’s why he comes into Sonny’s for an actual drink, for the first time in a long time — to escape the loneliness of his home for a while, and to down a few beers that’ll hopefully put him to sleep when he inevitably has to return to its emptiness. That’s why he welcomes the racing heart he gets, too, when you glance at him over your shoulder at the sound of his voice.
“Didn’t ya hear?” a familiar voice calls from the booth nearest to the door. “We’re celebrating!”
Jack turns his head to find Louie sitting in the cracked vinyl booth, ahead of two men who seem to be around his age. He nurses a sweaty pint in his sun-kissed hand, with two more empty ones sitting at his side.
If Jack knows anything about Mr. Cloverfield, it’s that he’s already had much, much more than that tonight alone. ‘Cause the last time he saw Louie, he had a BAC of .420, and was walking and talking just fine — aside from the shakes he couldn’t quite get rid of.
“Weren’t you supposed to be taking it easy, Louie?” Jack squints.
“I was,” the older man assures with a lopsided smile that says otherwise. “But now we’re celebrating.”
“Oh, yeah?” he scoffs and walks further inside, ignoring the way his shoes threaten to stick to his hardwood with every step. “And what’s that?”
Louie motions to you with his half-gone beer. “That one’s starting a new job tomorrow.”
Jack’s eyes cut back to you.
You duck away on instinct when his gaze locks with yours, only then realizing how long you’d been staring. You keep your head bowed like a shy child when he slides into the bar stool next to yours, replacing the scent of an ancient bar with the warmer scent of expensive cologne.
“Oh, really?” the stranger hums. “Where at?”
“Nowhere special. Just retail,” you say with a lazy shrug, struggling to find the courage to meet his unwavering stare. “But I just moved into town, so… I figured I’d buy a round for the house.”
You reach for the shot rack ahead of you, where three narrow glasses filled with clear liquid sit in a row. You go to pass one over to the strange man beside you, but he dismisses you with a shake of his head — made of greying curls that match the silver scruff on his jaw.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t have a pretty girl buyin’ my drinks.”
A laugh sputters from your mouth, rolling off your half-numb tongue. “Pretty girl? What— Are you flirting with me, or is this just… your usual level of arrogance?”
“Neither. I’m just… stating the obvious,” Jack says with a cheeky half-smile, shifting on the squeaking leather stool to reach for the wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. He turns to the bartender and wonders aloud, “What’s her tab, Johnny?”
You burn red-hot almost instantly. “Don’t tell him—”
“$94.57—” the older man answers before you can get the words out, then cuts himself off with a weathered look of apology. “—Oh. Sorry.”
You grimace and hide your burning face behind your hands. “God, that’s so embarrassing…” you whine, muffled into your palms.
“Hey. You’re celebrating,” Jack shrugs. “I get it.”
You hear the man’s leather wallet flip open. You peek through your fingers to find him pulling out a heavy credit card. Your features flood with horror when he hands it off to the bartender.
“Oh, no— I can’t let you do that.”
“You’re not letting me do anything,” the older man scoffs, folding his freckled arms along the counter’s edge. “I want to. ‘Cause we’re celebrating, remember?”
You meet his smug smile with an unsure wince.
Jack caves with a sigh. “Okay, you can make it up to me by drinking with me tonight. How about that?”
Your chest warms with a funny feeling that you’d rather blame on the alcohol. You purse your lips to the side of your mouth before he catches you smiling too wide and nod slowly in response.
“Sure…” you shrug, feigning an air of nonchalance you lost the moment the pretty stranger caught you staring. “I guess I can handle that…”
The stranger — he hasn’t yet given you his name, nor do you bother to ask for it — buys you two more drinks after the fact.
You sip slowly at the first one, then forget to taste the second, too busy catching his gaze every time he looks your way. Lingering eye contact had always perturbed you, but not his. You liked it when he held your stare whenever you turned to face him; you liked it even more when you could feel his eyes on you whenever you looked away again.
You give him this smile from time to time, a barely-there sort of smirk that glittered mostly in your eyes, whenever you tilted your chin to peer at him through your lashes. It was as sweet as it was heavy, honeyed and full of gravity, like you knew something about him that he didn’t — like you were searching somewhere deep in his soul.
Really, though, you were just wildly skeptical of him — eyeing him in silence and trying to figure out if he was real, if this was real. How many times have you played this game, old man? you’d ask him if you had the courage. How many hearts have you already broken? Am I gonna regret it when mine breaks next?
You’re not sure, but you let him walk you to your place anyway, and talk him into letting you buy him a donut from the shop across from your apartment building on the way. He tells you it’ll sober you up, even though you aren’t all that drunk anymore; you tell him that he’ll never want anything else once he’s tasted this one, and he fights the urge to make a sex joke.
“Thanks for walking me home,” you tell him through the wad of donut still stuck in your cheek, standing a step above him on the stony stairs to your building. “And for turning out not to be a serial killer.”
Jack balls his napkin of crumbs into his fist. “Well, there’s still time— You know, if you’re disappointed.”
“Eh,” you hum playfully, swallowing through the mouthful. “Maybe just a little.”
“Then I’ll see myself out, I guess…” the man huffs, feigning a morose disposition, and distantly praying you’ll stop him. “It’s getting pretty late.”
Your eyes narrow into thin slits, and it feels like his heart has stopped — like you’re using some sort of secret superpower to steal his breath.
You shake your head and tell him, “It’s not that late.”
So Jack follows you up to your apartment despite his better judgment, drawn to a siren song that he knows is bound to kill him sooner or later.
Your apartment is mostly empty, he finds, considering you had only just moved into it.
There’s a couch, an air mattress, and a small television on a plastic bin shoved into the quaint living room. There’s one chair at the kitchen island, and a sea of boxes on the counter. You apologize profusely for the mess as you weave through the maze of cardboard for the refrigerator. You bring him a chilled bottle of white wine on the way back.
“I’d pour it into a fancy glass or something, but… I don’t have any,” you confess as you plop down onto the couch beside him, which still smells like the house you just bought it from. “I don’t even have cups. Or silverware. I barely even have a kitchen.”
Jack laughs. “You just moved here, and the first thing you thought to buy was wine?”
“Well, yeah,” you shrug like it’s obvious. “I had to get the essentials, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he echoes with a scoff.
The wine is bad. Almost comically bad. He nearly chokes on it when he takes his first sip, like he’s a teenager again, taking his very first ever drink of alcohol. It’s bitter with an extremely sweet aftertaste that coats his tongue long after he’s swallowed it down. But you don’t seem to mind it, though — you drink it like it’s some sort of delicacy, which he knows it must be for you, ‘cause he was young and broke once, too.
He takes slow sips every time you pass the sweaty bottle his way, if only because doing so means putting his lips where yours once kissed.
“So…” Jack starts after you’ve run out of things to say, sitting with his thighs spread and his heavy head tilted against the couch. He licks the sheen of alcohol from his mouth, passes you the wine, and wonders aloud, “What’s your story, huh?”
“My story?” you laugh into the lip of the bottle, curling your legs beneath you to face him better as you take a short sip. “Why do I have to have a story?”
“Everyone has a story,” Jack scoffs. “Think about it— There was something that led you to that bar tonight, right?”
“Most people would call that fate.”
“What about you?” he asks, then follows at the look you give him. “Would you call it fate?”
You think for a moment, then nod your head against your fist. “Yeah… I guess so.”
Jack nods slowly, scruffy cheek brushing the cushion beneath him. “So if I… I don’t know… If I kissed you right now… Would you call that fate, too?”
Your laugh washes over him like drops of summer rain.
“Real smooth…” you croon drily.
“It’s just a hypothetical.”
“Then, no. I wouldn’t call that fate.” You huff and lean forward to set the bottle onto the box you’re using as a makeshift table. “I think I’d call that taking what I want.”
Despite his own forwardness, Jack is still slightly surprised when you close the distance between you, rather than sit back into place across from him. You rest your knees on the sunken cushions instead, and rest your fist on the space between his spread thighs as you lean in closer.
Jack gets a whiff of the perfume on your skin, then the bittersweet alcohol on your tongue, right before your wine-slick mouth catches his own.
He tenses on instinct at the feeling of you, then relaxes with a heavy breath through his nose a second later, when you lick into his parted mouth. It takes him a moment to kiss you back, because he doesn’t realize until that very second that he hasn’t made out with someone in years.
He reaches for you with trembling hands, curling one around your arm and the other around the back of your neck to cradle you closer to him.
You kiss him lazy and slow. You touch him lazy and slow, too, trailing your palms from his scruffy jaw to his broad chest as you straddle his lap. He wonders if you can feel his heart pounding beneath the thin t-shirt he wears — or his cock growing slowly stiff in the confines of his jeans.
He tries to touch you with a similar confidence, with his wide hands resting on your hips, but he can’t seem to stop shaking.
You kiss and lick the thoughts from his brain. He thinks of nothing but the way you feel against him — feels nothing but your warm weight on top of him. He doesn’t realize he’s grinding you over his lap until he feels you moan into his mouth. Then he pulls away with a quiet smack, wearing your spit down to his chin and something honeyed in his eyes.
“We really doin’ this?” he wonders through panted breaths.
You smile with kiss-bitten lips, twirling your fingers in the silver curls at the nape of his neck. “Depends… Do you wanna do this?”
“Depends,” he echoes. “Are you too drunk for this?”
“I’m not drunk,” you scoff. “I’m a big girl— I can hold my liquor.”
Something dark flickers in his heavy eyes.
Your smile widens.
“What about you, huh? Do you think you got drunk off a few sips of wine? Or can you handle your alcohol… big boy?”
Jack feels his chest flare with a white-hot feeling. He forces himself to breathe through it as he jokes back, “Big boy, huh? Are you flirting with me or is this just— what was it you said— your usual level of arrogance?”
“Neither,” you hum with a cheeky grin. “This is me very humbly, and only slightly embarrassingly, asking if you wanna fuck me on that air mattress over there?”
He’s fleetingly stunned by your forwardness but recovers even quicker. He thinks he’d do just about anything you asked of him in this moment, without question or second thought. It frightens him almost as much as it excites him.
“Yeah…” Jack sighs, half-breathless. “Want me to prove it to you?”
You nod until the words catch up to you.
“Yes, please.”
You’re a pair of anxious limbs on the cheap air mattress across the room. Jack can’t seem to stop apologizing — first when his pants are off and you see his prosthetic for the first time — “Sorry,” he’d said, only because it felt like he should, “For what?” you shrugged back, with your bra strap slipping off your shoulder.
He apologized a second time when the flimsy mattress shifted under his weight and sent him toppling gracelessly on top of you; and then a third when he pierced you for the first time, a little rougher than he intended to.
“Sorry. Are you okay?” he wonders, half-strangled, ‘cause you’re gripping his cock like a vice. “Is this too much— Do you need me to—?”
“No, no. It’s okay,” you assured through labored breaths. He had prepped you with his fingers beforehand, to be fair. The orgasm he’d given you with them had you slicker than honey, but hadn’t totally prepared you for the girth of his cock. “It feels good, I promise.”
“You don’t want me to stop?” he presses, just to be sure.
“I’m already close, and you haven’t even moved yet,” you confess through a breathless chuckle. “So, no… I don’t want you to stop…”
The only way he can fuck you properly is on your side. The air mattress gives less under your weight in that position, with you wrapped in his arms and with your leg thrown over his hip. He curls one hand under and over your back while his other digs bruises onto the plush skin of your ass, pulling you into him every time he thrusts inside of you.
Your strangled whines and his grunted moans echo through the expanse of your empty apartment.
“Tell me it feels good,” he pants against you — warm breath fanning over your jaw, nose bumping against your own. “Tell me you want me.”
You obey without thinking, babbling brainlessly.
“Feels so good…” you whine through gritted teeth, digging crescent shapes into the skin of his freckled shoulders. “Want you so bad— Want you to make me cum— Fuck, I want you—”
Want you, want you, want you.
You repeat it like a mantra.
You cum on his cock a second later, and it feels like praying.
The pretty stranger is not next to you when you wake up on the half-deflated air mattress the next morning.
Golden sunlight peeks through the blinds in flaxen streams from where you’d forgotten to close them the night before. You squint your eyes and blink rapidly to clear the haze of sleep, trying to place when the stranger must’ve left. You hadn’t felt him get up, so you figure it must’ve been pretty early — right after he fucked you so good it put you to sleep, maybe.
His clothes are gone. The only trace of him ever being there is the imprint of his body in the tousled sheets beside you, and in the soreness in the very pit of your stomach where you can still feel him inside of you.
A distant part of you misses the stranger, but a bigger part of you is thankful — because the only thing worse than a one-night stand with a stranger you just met, is having to share awkward goodbyes the morning after with a stranger you just met.
“Thank god…” you grumble as you stretch your tired limbs, plucking your phone from its charger on the floor before trudging down the hall for the bathroom. You only vaguely notice that the door is shut, and that there’s a thin strip of light peeking out from underneath it before you swing it open.
“Morning,” a familiar voice greets, gruff and half-muffled.
Your head snaps up from your phone. Your tired eyes go wide when you’re faced suddenly with the pretty stranger from last night — already dressed for the day and brushing his teeth by the sink. Your feet stumble backward on instinct. Your back hits the doorframe as your free hand flies to your pounding chest.
“Oh, my god—”
“Shit. Sorry,” the older man laughs. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He bends at the waist to spit into the sink.
You try to catch your breath.
“I… I didn’t know you were still here… Sorry…”
He scoffs like he’s half-offended by the notion. “I wasn’t just gonna leave. I’m not that big of an asshole…”
Your brows furrow as you tilt your head to the side in a confused sort of look. Because that was sort of the point of one-night stands, after all — the leaving.
“Oh, and I, uh— I found a pack of toothbrushes under the sink,” he tells you. “I hope that’s okay.”
“No, yeah, that’s… That’s fine,” you shrug and cross your arms over your chest. You slouch slightly in place, trying to keep the hem of your sweatshirt from rising and revealing that you’re naked underneath it — ‘cause it still feels a bit weird, even though he got pretty well acquainted with your naked body barely six hours ago. “But, um… I do have to leave for work. Like, super soon, so…”
“You wanna ride?” the man wonders through the orange toothbrush in his mouth. “I can walk back down to Sonny’s. Bring my truck back around.”
“No, that’s— that’s okay.” You shake your head and laugh before you mean to, because so much kindness from a one-night stand feels nothing short of alien to you. “You know, we don’t… We don’t have to do… all this…”
Jack plucks the toothbrush from his mouth. The look of confusion that contorts his scruffy face matches your own as he echoes, “…All what?”
“You know…” you trail off with an awkward laugh. “The whole… song and dance of it all… The pretending we care…”
“I do care.”
“Right. Yeah. But… We’re never gonna see each other after this, right? So… Does it really even matter?”
Jack only then seems to remember that he had only just met you, not even twelve hours ago, and that the night before would very likely be the last time he ever got to touch you. He forgot that very important fact somewhere along the line, and tricked himself into thinking you really wanted this, wanted him. The realization hits him like a fist to the stomach.
“Oh… Right…”
He turns away again, half-mournful, and runs the toothbrush under the faucet. Your bleary eyes dart wildly over the weathered edges of his profile, right before you face twists with mortification.
“Oh, god…” you murmur to yourself. “I didn’t take your one-night stand virginity, did I?”
Jack manages a quiet laugh as he wipes his hands on a nearby towel.
“No. Not— Not really,” he tells you. “I think I’m just a little out of practice, you know? I haven’t been with anyone since I got married.”
“Oh, my god— You’re married?!”
“No!” he shouts, laughing louder at the horrified look on your face. “I mean, I haven’t had a one-night stand since before I was married. And definitely not since my wife died, so…”
“Oh, jeez…” you wince, shifting awkwardly on your bare feet. “Sorry…”
The sorrowful look you give him is the same look he’d been trying to avoid this whole time. It finds him very suddenly wanting to get out of here as quickly as he can.
“I’ll, uh… I’ll see myself out, I guess,” he tells you.
“Okay,” you nod with a wavering smile. “Thanks…”
He pauses mid-stride in the doorway, towering over you as he flashes you an amused look — all furrow-browed and smiling. “For what?” the man scoffs.
“I don’t know, actually…” you laugh. “I don’t know what I said that, I just… I felt like I should, you know? I had a pretty good time last night…”
You trail off, and only then realize that you hadn’t yet gotten his name.
“…Jack,” he finishes for you.
“Jack,” you repeat with a firm nod and a shy smile.
And he’s heard his own name a million times, but something about the way you say it sounds different — like everyone else has been saying his name wrong his whole life; like he’s spent years hearing it in a foreign language, and yours is the only one he really understands.
When he leaves your apartment, it’s with the knowledge that he’ll probably never hear his name the right way ever again.
You make it three hours on your first shift at the PTMC before all hell breaks loose — or, rather, a rollercoaster.
Several carts derail from the tracks at a nearby theme park, injuring everyone on board and many more on the ground below. It sends a sudden influx of patients straight to your emergency department. You do more in an hour than you did in weeks at your small-town hospital back home, where you interned and did the bulk of your residency, which now feels rather lackluster in comparison.
You’re still wearing the bright crimson blood from the emergency thoracotomy you did in the ambulance bay, when the heart of a young boy with a steel rebar through his chest gave out before he could be wheeled inside. You were forced to work quickly to cut through his chest cavity and reach through his ribs for his heart. You knelt on the gurney and pumped manually at the artery while the EMTs wheeled you to the nearest trauma room.
You’re only just finishing the transfusion on the patient when another trauma is called in.
You can still feel the boy’s heart in your hand when you peel off the bloodied PPE, replacing it with a fresher set of gown and gloves, as you follow Dr. Robby to the ambulance bay. You struggle to keep up with the man’s longer strides as he passes through the automatic doors, where the fresh air outside smacks you in the face with its sudden reminder to breathe.
“Holy shit…” you hear yourself huff, still half-dazed from the previous operation. “Is it always this bad? Please tell me it’s not always this bad.”
“It’s not always this bad,” the older man affirms without looking back at you. “But I have seen a whole lot worse than this, R3, trust me— Alright, what do we got?”
Robby peers through the back of an open ambulance parked crooked in the bay. He grits his teeth to help lower the gurney to the ground, and an older man comes into view. He’s bloodied and unconscious, and his camo uniform has been cut down the middle to accommodate intubation.
As you rush to Robby’s side, a familiar voice fills your ears: “My buddy, Officer Hiro, high-velocity GSW— He’s getting harder to bag.”
Another camo-wearing officer steps out when the gurney hits the ground. He stands at the head of the narrow bed, squeezing rhythmically at the intubation bag in his fist. His hand is stained with dark red blood. He’s immediately familiar to you, though in your daze, it’s hard to place from where.
You blink once and realize it’s the stranger from the night before — the one you all but kicked out of your apartment this morning. The man from Sonny’s who cleared your tab, who you shared a bottle of cheap wine with on your secondhand couch, who fucked you dizzy in the center of your flimsy air mattress barely twelve hours ago.
You’re filled with an immediate horror at the sight of him. You think death would be a kinder fate when his gaze locks suddenly with yours.
Jack’s eyes squint the same way yours did, like he’s not sure if it’s really you he’s seeing. They widen with realization a second later, but he turns away without a word, continuing to brief Robby on the man’s sustained injuries while you rush him to the nearest trauma room.
“Help me cut down a 6-0 ET tube,” he tells you without glancing your way.
You’re grateful for his apathy, feeling like you’ve been spared from the awkwardness of being faced with a stranger you were never supposed to see again. You wouldn’t have let him into your empty apartment at all if you knew, much less fucked him on an air mattress. And you maybe would’ve practiced a little more humility before kicking him out this morning if you realized he was gonna be your goddamn attending.
You’re only able to breathe again when you leave his side to cut the tube. The exhale gets knocked out of your legs all over again when you turn to face him once more, finding him wearing a smile that you already know means trouble.
“Fancy meeting you here, by the way,” he squints behind his safety glasses.
“Likewise,” you nod once, gaze averted, as you pass him the clear tube in your gloved fingers.
Jack works with deft hands, utterly concentrated, even despite his nonstop teasing. “That retail gig didn’t work out for you, I take it?”
“Retail?” you hear Robby murmur from somewhere behind you.
Your face burns hot.
“I was let go this morning, actually,” you try to joke, though your wavering voice gives your timidity away. “And I realized I always wanted to be a doctor anyway, so I just… Snuck in here, threw on a coat, and nobody was the wiser.”
You flash him a playful grin, which fades when you get a weird look from the nurses standing just behind him.
“I’m kidding!” you blurt with an awkward chuckle. “I-I’m totally kidding. I’m in R3— I just moved here from—”
“Hey,” Jack blurts, peering up at you from the glasses sitting low on his nose, and saving you from yourself. “Help me out with this ET tube, please?”
“Yes, sir…” you nod and don’t miss the smug grin he gives you in response.
You somehow manage to make it through the rest of the endotracheal intubation without making a total fool of yourself — until Robby catches you on the way out, that is, once Hiro is finally stabilized. He chucks his gown and gloves into the biohazard bin beside the door and asks how you and Dr. Abbot know each other.
Jack answers honestly before you can think to make up a lie.
“We met last night, actually,” he’d said. “At Sonny’s.”
“The bar, huh?” Robby nodded slowly. “Hope you didn’t come in hungover, R3.”
Your mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, until you were finally able to stammer out a measly, “O-Of course not, sir!”
Robby only laughed. “I’m joking, kid. I watched you keep a boy’s heart going with your hand shoved in his chest cavity… If you’re hungover, I can’t wait to see what you can do sober.”
He claps you on the shoulder before he walks away. You feel an overwhelming sense of relief at his words. Jack’s praise, on the other hand, makes you feel a little like dying.
“Good work back there,” he says, pulling off his gloves with a dull pop.
“Thanks…” you say with a wavering smile that you hardly mean. “But I, uh— I should probably get going, Dr. Abbot. Dr. Al said she needed me for—”
“Dr. Abbot, huh?” the older man scoffs. “This morning I was Jack.”
“Yeah, well, this morning you were a stranger and notmy attending, so…”
Your gaze is stern but glittering still. You tilt your chin to keep his stare when he towers over you — feet spread shoulder length apart, hands crossed behind his back, light eyes peering at you from the bridge of his nose.
Even despite his strong stature, something playful swims in his squinted stare as he jokes, “Would you have taken advantage of me, then? You know, if you knew I was gonna be your boss?”
You shove him hard by the shoulder, arguing in a sharp whisper. “I did not take advantage of you, Dr. Abbot.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack shrugs. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
You meet his smug smile with a pair of narrowed eyes that dart back and forth between his softer ones — all squishy around the edges with a look that makes your chest feel warm.
“Don’t look at me like that…” you deadpan.
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve seen me naked,” you scold under your breath, brushing his shoulder with yours as you storm past him down the hallway. “It’s not appropriate, Dr. Abbot.”
Jack watches you with a smile, anyway, while you walk away from him with something swift in your step. He can’t help but eye the way your scrubs cradle your body, which he had held in his hands only last night. He can still remember how your ass felt in his palms; how the sweat on your neck tasted on his tongue; how your features crumpled together right before you came for him.
He goes half-dizzy at the memory.
Not appropriate, indeed.
You’re about an hour away from finishing your shift when you nearly lose your first patient.
Everything that came before ceases to exist in that moment.
You had seen death. A lot of it. You had scrubbed in on numerous surgeries where patients flat-lined on the operating table. You’d seen illnesses eat a person from the inside out. You’d seen children try and fail to fight off infections that their tiny bodies just couldn’t handle.
But this time was different — because this time felt like your fault.
Amara was a six-year-old girl who was rushed in, barely conscious, with a fever of 105. By all accounts, she should’ve been your easiest patient of the day — considering the shitshow that preceded her arrival. And you did everything right. Everything that med school taught you.
You wrapped her in ice packs along her major arteries, gave her a cold IV to cool her internally, and did every test in the book to determine the cause of her raging fever.
“I just don’t understand why her fever isn’t slowing down,” you’d rambled to Jack in the break room, where he’d insisted you take a breather, when he saw the moment getting to you. “I’ve done everything right. It should be going down by now, right?”
He’d stopped your pacing with a firm but gentle hand along the outside of your elbow.
“Fevers can be stubborn. You know that,” Jack had told you, ducking down to catch your gaze when you tried to look away. “This isn’t about you missing something, alright? It’s just her body taking time. We can reassess when the tests come back. We’re not out of options yet.”
But then she started seizing, and it triggered an arrhythmia in her heart, and the organ started to fail altogether. She’s flat-lining before you can blink.
You quickly lose count of the minutes you spend doing compressions. You vaguely hear Jack from behind you, telling you to switch positions like you’re supposed to, but you keep on going.
“I got it,” you’d spat through gritted teeth. “I’m fine.”
Your arms grow slowly numb from the strong, never-ending rhythm. Beads of sweat begin to pearl along your forehead, rolling slowly down your temples. You can feel your hair tie slipping from its place, already loose from the long day, before it hits the ground somewhere by your feet. The wild strands fall around your face, billowing with every punched breath from your mouth.
When you feel Jack standing behind you, gathering your hair into his gentle fist, you don’t think about how he was a stranger to you barely a day ago.
You don’t think about what he did to you with the hand he uses to pull your hair back. You don’t think about the awkward exchange from that morning, or the constant teasing all afternoon, or the way you haven’t been able to think without running into thoughts of him.
You think only of saving this girl.
It takes three rounds of epi to get her heart back into a shockable rhythm, and 40 joules to reset it to its natural beat.
Jack helps you off the bed with two firm hands around your arms — because your legs had all but locked into position from the lengthy compressions — and tells Langdon to take over the remainder of the young girl’s care.
“You alright?” you hear the man ask, while you blink the haze of adrenaline from your eyes. He pats you gently on the back, in a silent reminder to breathe. You nod slowly through a wavering inhale, and he smiles at the wordless affirmation. “You ever thought about going into cardiology?”
“That’s not funny,” you deadpan.
“I’m not joking,” Jack scoffs. “I think you might be the heart whisperer, Doc.”
The nickname catches on by nightfall.
Robby tells you to clock out early, that you deserve it, and you don’t push him on the matter.
You don’t say a word, actually, as you trudge to the locker room for your bag and leave through the waiting room doors. The cool night air rushes over your burning skin like silk. Your tired body migrates on autopilot to the park across the street, where two benches sit facing each other, lit only by a single amber streetlamp.
You don’t know how long you sit there by yourself — only that you’ve counted nearly a hundred bricks in the pavement by the time Jack Abbot finds you.
“You’re not thinking about quitting, are you?” he wonders aloud, shattering your train of not-quite thought.
“Hm?” you perk on instinct as your head whips to face him. “Oh. No. Of course not… No one else would take me.”
Jack exhales a quiet laugh at your quip and slides his camo bag from his shoulder. He huffs as he plops down onto the creaking bench beside you, leaving an aching inch or more of space between your bodies.
Though he’s out of the tactical gear he’d arrived in — left now in his baggy pants and a form-fitting undershirt — the scent of blood still lingers on his skin. It’s only partially drowned out by his cologne; the smell of musky leather reminds you instantly of Sonny’s Tavern.
“Well, I’m sure Common Thread around the corner is probably hiring,” he jokes.
You feel yourself laugh for the first time all day.
“I don’t think Common Thread has been around since the 90s.”
“Really?” the older man huffs, crossing his strong arms over his chest and exhaling a punched-out breath. “Jesus… I need to get out more.”
Your eyes dart over the edges of his profile when he turns away. Your gaze grows soft and wet with the apology you’ve been thinking about all day, which rises to the tip of your tongue just now.
“I’m sorry, by the way,” you blurt. “For lying to you last night.”
Jack shrugs. “Who cares? We didn’t even know each other.”
“Yeah, but now we do— And now the rest of our relationship is gonna be built on the foundation of a stupid lie.”
Jack arches a greying brow in your direction. “Our relationship, huh?”
“Our working relationship,” you squint. “I’m not going out with you again, Dr. Abbot.”
“I didn’t even ask if you wanted to go out with me!”
“Well, no, but—”
“So do you wanna go out with me?” he blurts with a smug grin.
“No!” you shout, giggling despite yourself. “It’s not appropriate. We have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah?” he hums. “Where?”
“Here!”
“Right here?”
Jack glances down at where you motion to the space between your bodies. You nod with a poorly held back laugh, and he slides to close the distance between you. You feel almost suffocated by the warmth of his body heat. Your head spins when his thigh brushes the outside of yours.
“So, by your assessment, would you say that I am now crossing that imaginary line?” the older man jokes drily.
“I’d say you’re crossing several lines, Dr. Abbot.”
He meets your smiling eyes with something more serious glimmering in his.
“Do you want me to stop?”
You know that you could say yes and that all of this would be over with. All the teasing, all the lingering touches, all of the everything that came before. You could start over. Clean state. You’d be the R3, and he’d be the attending, and that’d be that. Only now that sounds like a total fucking nightmare. The thought of having any less of him now feels like ripping your own heart out through your chest.
You swallow hard and shake your head. “No… I don’t want you to stop.”
“Good,” he nods.
“Good,” you echo with a firm nod and stupid smile.
“We are clocked out now, you know?” Jack tells you, feigning an air of nonchalance. “I technically wasn’t even working in the first place, so… You know, if we kissed right now, I don’t think it’d violate that many HR policies.”
He catches your eyes flitting somewhere over his shoulder before you quip, “No, but your friends might look at us a little funny…”
Jack glances behind him and finds the rest of the day shift crossing the street together. Their distant chatter draws nearer, and you fight back a laugh when the older man slides slowly away from you — before any of them could catch how close the two of you had been. Donnie arrives first, and places his square cooler in the space between you.
“Dr. Abbot and The Heart Whisperer…” the man croons in place of a greeting. “Here. Take the first beer. You deserve it.”
“Thanks…” you murmur shyly and take the chilled can he motions to you. It opens with a heavy click and a faint hiss. You take a slow sip from it, and nearly forget how to swallow when you feel Jack’s eyes still on you. “Do you… Do you guys do this after every shift?”
“Not always,” Robby answers from the bench across from yours, popping open his own beer with an expert hand. “Usually it’s a lot more lively than this, but…”
“So it’s not always that crazy in there?”
“No, it’s always a little crazy,” Santos quips from where she stands between Mohan and Whitaker. “But today, Heart Whisperer, is what we call baptism by fire.”
“Yeah,” Samira scoffs. “Our first shift was the Pittfest shooting.”
“Oh, shit…” you grimace.
“But the good thing is, I can pretty much guarantee that the next shift will be easier.”
You meet Mohan’s kind smile with a wavering one. “Yeah… I hope so.”
“So, what do ya say, R3?” Robby asks with a smile that’s mostly concealed behind his greying beard. “Think you’ll stick around after today’s shitshow?”
You ponder for a long moment, glancing down at the can you nurse in your lap. You trace the circular edge of the aluminum with your free hand as a smile curls slowly at your mouth.
“Yeah, I think I will…” you hum with a slow nod. “If only because I live right across the street from this really nice donut shop— like the best you’ll ever have, so...”
“So now you have to like it here, huh?” Jack finishes for you, with a knowing squint in his light eyes — because he can still taste your mouth the same way he can still taste the late-night pastry he’d shared with you the night before.
“Yeah,” you smile back. “And it’s crazy because I really wasn’t planning on liking it here…”
“Well, donuts tend to have that effect on people, I’ve found,” he squints behind the beer he brings up to his mouth
“Oh, do they?” you wonder sarcastically.
Jack nods slowly, licking the sheen of alcohol from his mouth. “Yeah, actually.”
“Oh, please, tell me more, Dr. Abbot,” you say, giggling despite yourself.
While you watch Jack talk out of his ass about a statistic he totally made up, you vaguely hear Santos turn to Whitaker and mumble, “Okay, so is ‘donuts,’ like, a euphemism for something, or did this shift make us all ten times dumber?”
summary: when jack catches you spiraling after a taxing double shift, his worry for you spikes when he discovers that robby has been less than sympathetic with you, and that the ptmc is your only emergency contact on file. (4k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, michael robinavitch, dana evans
contents: friends to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, protective!jack, so much yearning, not proofread cw for medical inaccuracies, mentions of patient death, abuse and sexual assault, heavy talks of suicidal ideation, brief mentions of jack abbot's ptsd
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
The refrigerator door seals shut with a suctioned click under your trembling hand, far too quiet for all the horror it holds. The worst night of a person’s life, reduced to the evidence in the collection fridge — to labels and barcodes and detailed forms.
Two boxes lie inside when there should only be one: the kit you logged two weeks ago, which should’ve been picked up the day after, is still there. Still waiting to be seen, still waiting for someone to notice it, but still ignored all the same.
It feels like a metaphor for your own life, and it starts to strangle you before you can help it.
Because you’d spent three hours in that room with Ilana — three hours of talking her through every step, every swab, every scan — three hours of telling her how much her being there mattered. And now her kit sits there, just as forgotten as the one before, just as forgotten as you.
Something cracks.
A sob sputters from your chest before you can choke it down. Your hand shoots up to your mouth in a feeble attempt to shove it back inside. And then the door opens.
“Oh, shit—” a familiar voice calls from the doorway.
You flinch so hard your shoulder hits the fridge. You swipe your palms over your wet eyes and cheeks, rapidly scrubbing the evidence of your misery away, before turning in the direction of the masculine voice. You find Jack Abbot lingering in the threshold, eyes wide and attentive, with one weathered hand still wrapped around the silver handle.
Neither of you says a word for several long moments. It could’ve been three seconds or three years; you can’t quite be sure.
“Are you… okay?” the older man presses.
“No. Yeah. I’m—” Your voice breaks, betraying you instantly. You shake your head despite yourself. “I’m fine.”
Jack’s head lowers. His light eyes squint. He doesn’t try to argue; he just looks at you, really looks at you.
“I know I seem crazy,” you laugh through a quiet sniffle. “But I’m fine.”
He steps further inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The chaos of the crowded ER goes muffled in an instant.
“Did something happen?” the attending asks lowly. He’s visibly on edge from the Code Hula Hoop from earlier that day — silver head bowed to keep your gaze, strong arms crossed over the chest of his thin black tee.
“No. Nothing like that,” you assure him quickly. “It’s just… It never gets easier, you know?”
Jack’s expression shifts when you turn away to lock up the small fridge behind you. His alarm ebbs into something more sympathetic. “Yeah. I get it…” he mumbles. “Go take a breather, if you need it.”
You shake your head, dismissing the thought immediately. “Robby’s been on my ass all week about taking too much time with my patients as it is. If I don’t pick up a few before I go, he’ll—”
“I’ll deal with him,” Jack cuts in, firm but not entirely unkind. “You go take a break.”
You turn back around, looking half-shy as you cross your arms tight over the chest of your wrinkled scrubs. “I… I can’t…” you mumble.
“…You can’t?”
“I’m like a shark— if I stop swimming, I’ll die.”
Jack would’ve laughed at that if you weren’t so solemn about it; if he hadn’t remembered, in that moment, that you’ve been working since seven the evening before. Almost twenty-four hours ago. “You haven’t slept today, have you?”
“I was going to,” you tell him, a little too quickly. “And then we got all those patients from the waterslide collapse, and then the systems went down, and then Ilana came in, and…”
His brows knit together. “So you haven’t slept since you started your double?”
“No,” you shrug. “I’m just… I’m not tired.”
Jack studies you for a long moment — your wet eyes, your worry-bitten lips, your arms crossed like you’re trying to make yourself as small as possible. You wear the long day all over, along with the grief you’ve been trying to hide all day. Jack knows the signs; he’s seen them in his patients, in his staff, in himself.
It usually starts with a double, and then a patient or two that spikes the adrenaline like a triple shot of espresso. That’s when the mania sets in, the belief you don’t need sleep despite the obvious, which inevitably leads to a crash. And that’s exactly where you’re heading.
“Can I ask you something?” Jack wonders lowly, taking a slow step forward and never once taking his eyes off of you. “Something kinda… personal?”
You hesitate, brows lowered, then nod despite yourself. “Yeah?”
“Do you… Do you see someone?”
You blink owlishly at him. “See someone?”
“Yeah. You know, like a… therapist,” he clarifies. “It’s good, you know, to have someone to talk to about… all this.”
He motions vaguely all around him, to the muffled chaos outside.
“No,” you shake your head, almost amused by the thought. “I’m fine. I don’t need a therapist—”
“Everyone needs a therapist,” Jack huffs a faint laugh. “Especially the people who choose to work here. We’re all lunatics.”
“Well, I’m fine,” you shrug and look away. “It’s everything else that’s so… fucked up.”
Jack exhales hard through his nose, nodding sympathetically. “Yeah, I… I heard about Barry. And his mom. I’m sorry…”
That’s what does it. The reminder of the memory — only from earlier that morning, which you had not forgotten but had tried hard to bury anyway — does it. You feel the dam break, crumbling into nothingness under the weight of an unrelenting pressure.
“See, that’s— that’s what I’m talking about,” you start with a wet, maniacal sort of laugh. “I spend two hours coding a pre-school teacher, then another two treating her four-year-old, all while trying to get him to talk about what happened. And then I have to act like none of it fazes me, or else I’ll get that whole spiel from Robby— again. And then I do a sexual assault kit that no one will pick up because nobody gives a shit!”
Your voice rings through the quiet room.
You don’t seem to notice it, though, so Jack pretends he doesn’t either. He knows you need this, knows you’ve spent the past near twenty-four hours keeping all of this trapped inside.
“Barry’s dad won’t see the inside of a jail cell for what he did to them, and Ilana’s abuser won’t either, because the police won’t do their job— because nobody fucking cares—”
Your breath comes out sharp, like the air is being punched out through a tight chest. Your words spill from your mouth faster than you can stop them.
“And I’m supposed to help them, right? But how can I when nobody else gives a shit?”
“Hey— Hey…” Abbot coos, taking another step closer when he catches you starting to spiral. “Take a breath, kid…”
His voice is grounding. Steady, almost. A firm sort of comfort you’ve been searching for all day — a tenderness that feels like proof that you’re broken. Suddenly, you feel like you’ve said too much.
“I’m sorry,” you huff with a shake of your bowed head. “I-I have to go— I’m sorry.”
You storm past him to the door, and don’t stop when he calls your name.
Jack looms over the monitor of the now-functioning workstation.
While the rest of the PTMC scrambles to scan their paper documents into the system, Jack peruses your file. His narrowed eyes flit across the screen, searching for your emergency contact. He holds his phone in his free hand and prepares to dial the number — to tell whoever is on the other line that you need them.
Because someone did it for him once upon a time, and sometimes he thinks that’s the only reason he’s standing here now.
He’s got his thumb hovering over the green button to call when Robby catches his eye — the same way a dark black storm cloud swirling overhead would catch his eye. The older man tilts his head to glance at the overhead monitor and scratches at the grey patch in his beard.
“Who’s supposed to be overseeing the kid in pedes?”
“I’ll do it,” Jack tells him, half-distracted.
“I have a senior resident who’s supposed to be doing it,” Robby scoffs.
“I told her to take a break.”
The older man’s head snaps in his direction in an instant. His brows lower as his lip twitches into a faint smirk, looking half-offended as he crosses his arms over his chest. “And why would you do that?” he squints.
“She’s had a hard day,” Jack shrugs.
“We’ve all had a hard day,” Robby laughs. “And if we all took off because of one bad shift, none of us would be on this floor right now.”
“And if you had a little bit more basic human empathy, maybe your residents wouldn’t be falling apart, brother.”
He flashes the older man an unamused glance. Robby flinches slightly at his words, chin jerking like he feels them physically. Jack would’ve apologized for being so harsh any other time — if he hadn’t almost gotten shot today, and if he weren’t already slightly angry at Robby for mistreating you.
“Excuse me. I gotta take this,” he mumbles and brings his phone up to his ear.
Robby scoffs a quiet laugh and shakes his head as he walks off in the opposite direction.
Jack watches him go with an unblinking stare as his phone starts to ring. Once, twice, and then—
A sharp, grating chirp fills the crowded ER, swelling over the droning chatter and distant beeping. Jack’s eyes snap to the red phone on the other side of the work station, while his own stays pressed to his scruffy jaw.
Dana peers at the man over the top of her glasses. Her eyes flit from his shocked face to the ringing telephone at her side. She picks it up with a lazy hand and holds it to her ear.
“PTMC charge nurse,” she greets without taking her eyes off Jack. “You mean to call this number?”
“Yeah, I was just—” Jack clears his throat and glances at the monitor below. “This was the emergency contact on file.”
“Well, sorry to get your hopes up…”
She flashes the man a sympathetic smile before hanging up the phone.
The dial tone beeps in his ear for several long moments. He tries to guess why you would’ve made the E.D. your emergency contact — because you don’t have anyone outside of work, maybe, or because all of your closest friends work here, or because you’d want the ER to know first if something ever happened to you.
It makes his chest hurt either way.
He exhales a slow, heavy breath and shoves his phone back into his scrub pocket. He turns on his heel and makes a beeline for the stairs, hiking up to the roof despite the distant ache it puts on his prosthetic. Because he knows that’s where you are.
Because it’s where he would’ve gone, too.
“Y’know…” a familiar voice cuts through the quiet of the roof, lit only by distant streetlamps. “You’re in my spot, kid.”
You don’t turn to look at him. You’re too tired to take your eyes off the pitch-black hills rolling in the far-off distance, further away from the PTMC than you’ve been in months. Years. You get lost in your own head, and only vaguely register the sound of Jack’s nearing footsteps scuffing against the concrete rooftop.
“It’s getting pretty late…” the man continues, all casual, like you’re not standing on the very edge of the hospital roof. “If you’re hungry, there’s this DoorDash guy. Name’s Marco. He’ll trek up here for an extra ten—”
“Twenty if you want beer,” you finish for him, voice weighed down by something heavy.
“Ah…” Jack hums, closer now. “You come up here often then, huh?”
You exhale a heavy breath that he thinks is meant to be a laugh, though it comes without a usual smile. “I guess you could say that…”
He reaches the metal railing just a few feet from the ledge, where you stand on the other side, with only a thin glass pane keeping you from the roof’s edge. Even though you aren’t looking at him, you can feel him just beside you. The silken summer breeze carries the scent of his cologne as he bends at the waist to rest his elbows along the barrier between you.
“You wanna talk about it?” he wonders quietly, after a few beats of not-quite silence, filled by the sound of passing cars and chatter from the city below. “It’s good to talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” you shrug with a shake of your head. “I just… I thought I was doing some good, you know? By showing up here every day…”
“You are,” Jack insists, firm and immediate. His stare hardens as it flits across your emotionless profile, silently begging for you to look back at him. You avoid his gaze at all costs. “Those people down there— They need you. They need all of us.”
“But what’s the point?” you scoff. “If I can’t help him, then what’s the point?”
“You do help them.”
You scoff a teary laugh.
Jack burns from the inside out.
“You may not see it, kid, but I do,” he tells you. “That little boy in there— He’s still alive because of you.”
“But his mom’s not,” you argue in a detached tone of voice. The starry sky above you starts to blur as you blink back the warm tears gathering at your waterline. “And when Barry grows up, he won’t remember his mom— what she smelled like, what kinda music she liked to listen to in the car— but he’ll remember how the system failed her… Both of them…”
You trail off. Jack stays silent, letting you say all the words that have been raging in your head all day — untrue or otherwise.
“And it’s the same with Ilana, too, you know? I spent three hours with her in that room, doing something I know was triggering for her, and… for what? For the kit to sit in that fridge for two weeks because no one else gives enough of a shit to actually pick it up?”
The dull amber streetlights turn your unshed tears to gold when you finally turn to look at him. Your features are largely emotionless, fixed into the sort of automatic deadpan you train yourself to do as a doctor. But your eyes are wide and glittering with emotion despite yourself when you turn to the man beside you.
“I tricked myself into thinking I was actually doing some good for these people, but…” Your jaw clenches to stave off a sob as you shake your head at yourself. “Turns out, it’s all just… bullshit.”
The corner of Jack’s lip flickers upward into a sympathetic smile, because he knows exactly how you feel. “It’s not, kid…” he murmurs lowly.
“It is,” you insist, still stern despite the way your features crumble. “What I do in there doesn’t matter— None of this shit matters—”
Jack can sense you spiraling, can sense you about to turn away from him before you’ve even done it. He reaches out for you, catching your chin between his thumb and pointer finger to keep your eyes on his.
Your gaze flickers with surprise at first, stunned momentarily by the warmth of his touch, before it softens around the edges with something tender — as if you’d been craving this kindness all day. Your glitter irises follow Jack when he rises to full height, towering over you from the other side of the thin metal railing.
“Hey,” Jack snaps, firm but still strikingly soft with you. “You saved a life today, kid. That matters.”
Your eyes sting.
“You helped a girl through the hardest day of her life,” he continues, with a stare just as merciless as his words. “That matters, too.”
You shake your head against his calloused hand, trying and failing to repel his words. You need them more than anything, and still, you can hardly stomach them.
“The officers will pick up that kit, I promise you that. And the asshole who hurt her will pay for what he did, I promise you that, too.”
“But you can’t,” you whimper. “You can’t promise me that. You can’t promise anyone that.”
“Well, I am,” Jack says. “Because I’m gonna make sure it happens. Because I believe it— Because I believe in Barry and Ilana, just like I believe in you. And without you… If you weren’t here for them today… Who knows what would’ve happened?”
His gentle grip on your chin softens when he knows you aren’t going to turn away from him again, but he still doesn’t let you go.
“That’s the point,” Jack tells you, so softly you could cry. “That’s why it matters. That’s why we need you here, understand?”
You sniffle quietly and nod despite yourself, if only to free yourself from this suffocating moment — from Jack’s unrelenting tenderness, which you feel hardly deserving of now.
He clicks his lips against his teeth and smiles softly as he murmurs, “Yeah, I’m gonna need to hear you say it…”
Your wet eyes are stern with unsaid protest, with lashes all clumped together from unshed tears. Your voice is small and more fragile than glass as you abide him anyway. “I understand…”
“Oh, c’mon…” Jack lilts drily. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, kid— At least try to make it sound like you believe it.”
You roll your glassy eyes, more in embarrassment than annoyance.
Jack grins wider. “Yeah, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I can get real annoying if I need to…”
A faint smile pulls at the corners of your mouth despite yourself.
“…I understand,” you repeat, slightly steadier this time.
“Yeah…” Jack praises with a slow nod. “There we go…”
There’s a lingering beat thereafter, where you think he’s about to let go of your chin. Only he doesn’t.
And it isn’t till then that you realize how intently he’s looking at you now, with eyes heavy and glittering beneath the dim starry night. Your heart lurches in your chest when you think he might kiss you — a fleeting, irrational thought that makes your breath shudder and your mouth fall gently agape.
A sudden boom cracks suddenly through the air.
You flinch hard as a blue-pink firework crackles in a navy black sky.
“Shit…” you huff, clutching at your racing heart. “That scared me…”
Jack’s chest aches with a similar fear. He reaches for you on instinct as his own hands start to tremble.
“Here. C’mon,” he mumbles to himself, calloused hands firm on the outsides of your elbows. “Come back on this side before you give me a damn heart attack, kid…”
He assists you over the railing. You swing one leg over, and then the other, in a motion that feels practiced. Familiar. Until your left foot catches slightly on the edge, that is, and sends you stumbling into the older man’s chest.
“Whoa—“
“I got you,” Jack murmurs, steadying you with firm hands.
For a second, you’re closer than you’ve ever been. You can feel his heart racing against your palms. He can feel your breath fanning across his scruffy cheek. You can see his heavy eyes flitting wildly between yours, and again, you think he might kiss you — you want so desperately for him to kiss you.
Then the heavy door to the roof swings open, and the two of you jerk rapidly apart.
Laughter and muddled conversation come spilling out as a handful of the day shift emerges, with Donnie and Princess leading the charge, carrying a square blue cooler between them. The former smiles when he finds the two of you standing there together.
“You guys are early to the party, I see,” the man shouts over another set of booming fireworks.
“You kinda have to be when you’re the life of one,” Jack shoots back. “It’s more polite that way.”
“Here,” Princess says, handing the man a chilled beer. “Figured you could use one after getting shot today.”
“Shot at,” he corrects drily and takes the can from her grasp. “But I’m not drinking— I’m still on the clock… But she’s not.”
He turns to you, holding the beer out expectantly between you.
“I-I still have a few rounds to finish up,” you shake your head.
“I’ll do ‘em,” Jack shrugs. “You take a load off, alright? You deserve it.”
You hesitate for a moment, swallowing hard before reaching for the can with trembling hands. “…I deserve it,” you repeat under your breath, as though you were trying the words on for size.
“Yeah, you do,” Jack squints.
The can cracks faintly when you open it. You bring it to your mouth and take a slow sip, watching as the fireworks continue raining down overhead.
The day shift gathers around you at the railing with their own beers, while sparkling rainbow hues decorate the dark rooftop. You lean against the cool metal, now on the other side of it, and a little bit better than you were before.
Jack lingers just next to you, and forgets to watch the show playing overhead.
He doesn’t even realize he’s staring until you turn to look at him, eyes wide with worry.
“You’re okay, right?” you mutter sheepishly, licking the sheen of alcohol from your mouth. “It’s not too loud out here, is it? ‘Cause we can go back inside if you want.”
The corner of Jack’s mouth lifts in a smile at your concern, and at your use of ‘we.’ The warmth you put in his chest far outweighs the lingering panic settled there.
He shakes his head with a glassy-eyed gaze, “I’m right where I wanna be,” he assures in a honeyed voice.
You turn away, face flaring, and hide your smile behind your beer.
HOW TO DISAPPEAR
─── jack abbot & michael robinavitch
summary: robby makes you hate him as his last act of kindness before he leaves for his three-month sabbatical. but then he sees you getting close to jack, and it ruins all his plans. (3k)
characters: michael robinavitch / fem!reader, jack abbot / fem!reader, trinity santos in charting jail, dana evans, noelle hastings
contents: lovers to exes w robby, friends to lovers w jack, angst, hurt/comfort, jealousy, implied age gap cw for medical inaccuracies bc i don't know what i'm talking about :D, and mentions of robby's suicidal tendencies
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Robby breaks up with you on a Friday, which you think is especially cruel, considering that every Friday since then has served only as a bitter reminder of the day he told you to leave.
Your relationship had been long in the dying, to be fair. You had stopped recognizing him some months ago — after he brought home that motorcycle, which brought a week’s worth of arguments in with it; and after you found out he made a habit of riding around without his helmet, which nearly gave you an aneurysm with how angry you got at him for it.
You found yourself more mad with him than you were without him, but you stuck around anyway, just torturing yourself with the hope that he’d change. That you would be enough to change for.
“Do you have any affection in your heart for me?” you’d raged from the other side of the kitchen table, burning as hot as your pretty red dress. “Any? At all?”
“Of course, I do!” Robby laughed as he gathered the empty plates, as if he found your anger a quite humorous thing. (It was, in truth, quite funny, because only he could plan a date night that turned into nothing but a total screaming match.)
“Then why do you keep doing this to me?” you’d asked, voice breaking as you blinked away burning tears. “You know I can’t stand that stupid motorcycle to begin with, but you know I hate when you don’t wear your helmet. It’s like you’re purposefully trying to piss me off!”
“Well, believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around you, honey,” Robby answered in a dry monotone as he dropped the silverware into the sink with a thunderous clang.
“Yeah,” you scoffed. “‘Cause it revolves around Noelle.”
“Oh, Noelle!” he laughed louder, turning to face you with a cynical sort of smile on his face. “That’s what this is about?”
“It’s about all of it, Robby!” you thundered. “But, yeah, you flaunting your old fling around at work in front of me doesn’t make it any better—”
“If you don’t like what I do…” he spat, voice even and coated in a layer of venom. “If you’re not happy here… Then feel free to leave. I won’t stop you.”
His words hung in the air for several long moments. They wrapped their cold hands around your neck and stole the breath from your lungs.
“If I go…” you’d told him, voice stern and slightly strangled. “If I walk out that door right now… I am not coming back.”
Robby only shrugged. “If that’s what you wanna do…” he trailed off and turned away, doing the dishes like you weren’t falling apart across the room.
So you left.
And he didn’t stop you.
Robby stuck to his word. And now you’re trying hard to stick to yours.
As the Friday evening draws near — marking five weeks since you walked out the door — you stand at the workstation to finish up your charting. You type slowly, while the rest of the day shift rushes around you to head home, because you have zero plans of returning to your empty apartment so soon. Not until you’ve totally tired yourself out, at least.
It was much easier to be at home that way, you found, when you were only ever there to eat and sleep. It meant never having to face how lonely you truly were without him.
“Are you busy tonight?” Santos wonders aloud as she plants herself at the computer across from yours.
You turn away from the screen for the first time in several minutes to flash the girl a quietly amused look. “You and Dr. Garcia are fighting again, I take it?”
“What?” Trinity scoffs, less than convincingly. “No! Why would… Why would you even ask that?”
“Because normally you’re busy with her,” you answer, partially distracted, as you continue click-clacking at the keyboard in front of you. “And if you’re asking me if I’m busy, it means Garcia isn’t coming over. Which also means Whitaker’s probably going out with Amy, and you just don’t wanna be alone.”
You glance up from your monitor once more, finding the girl scowling at you over the top of hers.
“Is that a fair assessment, would you say?” you quip with narrowed eyes.
“I was just gonna ask if you wanted to watch Drag Race and get wine drunk with me,” Trinity deadpans. “I didn’t need the psych consult.”
You scoff a tired laugh and turn away again. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’m going out with the street team tonight— But you’re always welcome to tag along if you want.”
“And work outside of work?” she scoffs. “No, thank you…”
You tense when you feel a warm, wide hand brush along your lower back.
Your head whips over your shoulder to find Dr. Abbot sliding in behind you, placing a sticky note beside the keyboard on your desk. Cologne clings to the thin black t-shirt he wears, tucked into a pair of camo fatigues. He smells of tobacco and leather and sea salt. A dizzying concoction for a girl so strikingly touch-starved.
“Here’s Mr. Turner’s address,” the man tells you. “Or where he says he’s been hanging around recently, at least.”
Your eyes scan over the half-legible scrawl on the paper below, brows furrowing because it feels half-familiar to you. When you turn back to Abbot, you find him towering over you, much closer than you’d anticipated. “Isn’t that the overpass across town?”
“I think so, yeah,” Jack nods, scratching at the silver curls at the nape of his neck. “I’m pretty sure that’s where the ambulance picked him up when he overdosed, too…
“I’ll add that to his chart,” you murmur under your breath and turn away again. “I was gonna extend his prescription for Clonidine anyway— you know, so he didn’t have to come in so often. But this way, I can bring it to him with the street team. Make sure he’s doing well and everything.”
“You going tonight?” Jack wonders aloud.
“Mhm,” you nod as your fingers flit across the keyboard.
“Got room for one more, you think?”
Your squinted eyes cut suddenly in his direction, eyeing the man tentatively as he leans against the desk beside you. His freckled biceps strain against his t-shirt sleeves when he crosses them over his chest.
“Aren’t you working tonight?”
“Nope,” he answers. “Technically, I’m off ’til tomorrow.”
“…Then shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“And miss out on all the action?” Jack scoffs.” No way.”
A laugh sputters from your mouth before you can help it. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s very healthy, Dr. Abbot.”
“Of course, it’s not. But my therapist told me I needed a hobby, so…”
“So you decided getting shot at was the next best thing?” you finish in a deadpan.
“What can I say?” he shrugs. “I suck at golf.”
“You should try jogging,” you tell him, crossing the workstation for the printer on the other side of it. You feel a smile hinting at your mouth when Jack follows the short distance behind you. “It’s like running away from your problems, but, you know… pretend.”
“I tried that, actually,” Jack tells you. “But it’s harder, you know… With my leg.”
You pluck the warm paper from the buzzing printer and turn to face the man behind you. He sports a barely-there wince on his scruffy features, as if the mere mention of the amputated limb has reminded him of the phantom pain that never quite leaves him.
“Is it the sweat?” you ask with a sympathetic grimace.
“The sweat...” Jack nods slowly. “And the constant adjustments, and the strain it puts on my hip and… All of it’s a mess, to be honest.”
“You use liners, right? When you run, I mean?”
“Silicon ones, yeah.”
“You should try double-stacking knit-rite over the silicon,” you tell him, shifting awkwardly on your feet as you struggle to meet the man’s unwavering stare. You swallow hard and fidget with the paper in your fingers. “I, uh… I hear the knit helps with the sweating. Keeps the skin from blistering and everything.”
Jack’s eyes narrow, sparkling with the quiet grin that tugs at his mouth. “Where’d you learn all that, huh?”
“I’m trying to get a vascular surgeon fellowship,” you confess with a shy smile. “I’ve been working with a lot of amputees, and… they’ve taught me a whole lot, you know?”
Jack nods slowly, impressed and half-shocked. “Nice…” he hums. “Let me know if you need a letter of rec.”
He pats you gently on the shoulder as he walks by. You feel your skin burning beneath your scrubs, in the place where he’d touched you, like your brain is scarring his touch into memory.
“And, you know, if you ever wanna take up running again— We could always go to the track by the park,” you blurt. “I can help you make some adjustments, and you can help teach me a thing or two?”
You wince on instinct, preparing for rejection after being so blatantly forward.
Jack only smiles in response.
“Sounds fun,” he says, before sauntering off in the opposite direction. “Come find me before you leave with the street team tonight. We can take my truck.”
“Sure thing,” you call back, with a big dumb smile on your face. It fades the second you realize how dumb you sound. “Sure thing…?” you repeat under your breath, half-disgusted, as you return to your computer.
“About fucking time…” Santos grumbles, still in the same spot you left her in.
“Time for what?” you scoff.
“For you to get laid,” she answers like it’s obvious. “Instead of moping over Robby all the time. It was starting to get a little depressing, to be honest.”
Your face burns red hot.
“I’m not trying to get laid—” you say, then argue in a sharper whisper, “And I’m most definitely not moping over Robby.”
“And I’m not on my third breakup of the day with Garcia,” Trinity deadpans. “Since we’re both lying to each other now…”
“Only third, huh?” you quip. “Must’ve been a slow day today.”
You laugh when she flips you off.
Robby spends the better half of the afternoon just watching you.
It’s not totally his fault, to be fair, his eyes have always had a way of trying to find you in every room he’s in — even when he knows you aren’t there. But then he sees you talking to Jack, and it becomes virtually impossible to work through the sudden heaviness in his chest.
It had been thirty-five days and counting since he talked to you last, and he feels the weight of every single one of them.
He replays the words of that argument ad nauseam. He sees the face you made right before you left whenever he closes his eyes — the furrow that had formed between your brows, the way the lamplight glittered in your unshed tears, the way the tendons tensed in your neck as you fought back the urge to cry.
He thinks he’s only managed to make it this long without talking to you because he finds a strange sort of companionship in his loneliness — in the knowing that you were grieving the same way he was; that you returned to an empty room in a dark apartment every day just like he did. It’s selfish and it’s cruel, but he liked that you were just as hurt as he was. It made him feel less alone that way, like he was still close to you despite the obvious distance.
But then he catches you laughing, and his chest warms instantly at the sound — the prettiest he’d ever heard. His heart deflates a second later when he looks up from his tablet to find Jack standing in front of you, so close that you have to tilt your chin just to keep his gaze.
You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes, half-shy; the way you always looked at Robby in the very beginning of your not-quite relationship.
“Come find me before you leave with the street team tonight,” he hears Jack tell you as he walks away. “We can take my truck.”
Robby thinks a knife to the stomach would hurt less.
“Don’t you dare,” he hears Dana scold from just beside him, when she catches the man about to follow after you when you walk by without a glance thrown his way — as if he were a ghost, doomed to watching the rest of the world move on without him.
His head snaps to the side and finds the woman glaring at him over the top of her glasses.
“Don’t what?” Robby scoffs.
“You know what,” the older woman answers. “Give the girl a break, Robinavitch— You put her through enough as it is.”
“Oh, my god!” Robby exclaims with a cynical laugh. Something manic and half-hurt glitters in his dark eyes as he argues, “I got a fucking motorcycle! Why is everyone acting like I shot someone?”
Dana’s eyes harden as she pulls off her glasses, crossing her thin arms over the chest of her grey scrubs. The look she gives him then nearly makes him cower — it’s not quite angry, just colder than ice, and it cuts through him like steel.
“It’s not just the motorcycle, Robby, and you know it.”
“Do I?” he scoffs a humorless laugh.
The woman shakes her head and turns away, sneering slightly to herself, ‘cause it’s almost like he’s trying to miss the point. “If I have to spell it out for you, Robinavitch, then you’re a bigger lost cause than I thought…”
Robby spends the rest of the day stewing in her words.
Because he thought he was doing both of you a favor, in truth. He thought leaving you would make it easier to leave all the rest of it — that not having to miss you the entire time he was gone might make the trip a little more bearable. And if he knew you weren’t missing him too, then maybe he wouldn’t be thinking about you every second of every goddamn day.
That’s why he got that stupid fucking motorcycle; why he slipped up and told you he rode around without his helmet, just to pick a fight; why he told you about Noelle, because he knew it’d make you second-guess everything between the two of you. He wanted you to distance yourself from him — he needed you to distance yourself from him — because he wasn’t man enough to do it himself.
But now his foolproof plan is biting him in the ass.
And he’s missing you before he’s even left the building.
Robby asks around for you before he leaves, and Shen tells him that he saw you around back through sips of his iced coffee. So he goes to find you while the rest of the day shift trickles slowly out, with his metaphorical tail tucked between his legs. When he finds you sliding miscellaneous supplies into the back of Abbot’s truck, it feels a little like a punishment — one that he knows he deserves.
“So… About that offer from before…” Jack grunts as he slides another two cases of bottled water into the bed of his truck. “I was thinking maybe we could stop by the track tomorrow morning. You know, before your shift.”
Your eyes narrow despite the quiet smile pulling slowly on your face. “I wasn’t joking about you needing to sleep after this— You do need to sleep at some point, Jack, you know that, right?”
“And I will get some when we’re done out here,” he promises and takes the stack of hygiene kits off your hands. “So… What do ya say?”
You ponder for a long moment, with your lips pursed to the side of your mouth. You can’t help but think of Robby in that moment, if you getting this close to his best friend would break his heart — or what Jack would think about you, if he found out what had really happened between Robby and you.
Because he knew the two of you were close — everyone knew, and everyone had their own speculations — but only a few knew the true extent of it; of how long you and Robby had loved each other, and of how it all crashed and burned in the end.
“Well, we’d have to go pretty early,” you mutter sheepishly. “My shift starts at seven, so…”
“That’s okay,” Jack shrugs with a grin that makes your stomach do a backflip. “I like early.”
You feel your face flare.
“I like early, too…” you mumble sheepishly as you turn back for the rolls of sleeping bags stacked on the sidewalk.
Your gaze locks with Robby’s from where he stands off in the distance. It’s like your pupils are made of magnets, like your eyes were created to be drawn immediately to his. He walks slowly through the parted double doors with his hands in his pockets and something sad in his eyes. Your heart drops at the sight of him.
“Hey, brother,” Jack greets. “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”
“Yeah, I’m… I’m headed that way…” Robby huffs with a slow nod. His brown eyes dart wildly between the two of you — from Abbot’s oblivious grin to your wide-eyed gaze. “Where are you guys off to, hm?”
“Street team,” Jack tells him.
“Jesus,” the older man scoffs. “You never slow down, do you?”
“I would, but… No one ever taught me how,” Jack quips and takes a step forward to close the distance between them. You continue packing up while the two men share a brief hug. You vaguely hear them murmuring from behind you. “Make sure you come back… Call me if it gets too dark… I’ll take care of her, I promise…”
Robby knows it’s supposed to make him feel better, but it only makes the knife twist further.
He can feel the blade piercing a lung when he asks to speak with you alone; he’s already close to bleeding out by the time he walks you to the edge of the dark sidewalk, leaving Jack to pack up all the rest.
“You gonna be alright while I’m gone?” he asks.
The smile you give him is cynical and doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “Yep… I’ve been doing alright without for a while now, so…”
Robby nods, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I… I deserve that, I guess…”
“I’m not saying it to hurt you, Robby,” you sigh. “I’m saying it because it’s true— That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t take pleasure in making you feel like shit.”
“I was trying to— I just wanted to—” He stumbles over himself trying to get the words out. He huffs and runs his palms down the length of his bearded face. “I think I was just trying to make it easier on us, you know, me going away… I thought if we hated each other, I’d be able to leave, but now…”
“Now what?” you press.
“Now you hate me!” Robby answers with a laugh. “And I still don’t want to leave!”
You sigh hard through your nose. Though your stern stare never wavers, you soften visibly around the edges as you confess, “I don’t hate you, Robby… But I do want you to leave.”
He flinches like you’ve hit him “…W-What?”
“I want you to go. I want you to have the… best three months of your whole goddamn life. I don’t care where you go, who you see, or if you— take Noelle with you. I don’t give a shit, I just…” You trail off with a heavy sigh and firm glare. “I want you to come back. That’s all I care about.”
“Of course I’m coming back…” he tells you gently, hands aching as he fights the urge to hold you. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, honey.”
His words make your stomach swirl with a warm feeling. He grins down at you like he knows it, too.
“Bye, Robby,” you deadpan and turn on your heel to walk away.
“Are you still gonna be here?” the man calls after you. You look at him over your shoulder and feel your throat closing at the look he gives you — dark eyes wet and squishy around the edges, glimmering gold beneath the amber streetlamp. “When I came back, I mean. Are you… Are you still gonna be here?”
“I’m always gonna be around, Robby,” you tell him. “You know that—”
“Yeah, but… Will you still be here?”
Waiting for me, he doesn’t say.
You don’t have the right words to answer him.
“…Call me if you need me, okay?” is all you can think to say in the moment. “I’ll answer. I promise.”
Robby feels his heart breaking when he watches Jack help you into the passenger seat of his truck. Because a part of him knows, not so distantly, that he’s bound to find you by Abbot’s side when he returns.
was listening to noah’s new album and now i cant stop thinking about doomed situationship w robby, reader moving away from pittsburgh (maybe even moving w samira and becoming roommates in the new city their in!!) but still keeping in contact with robby thus resulting in a long distance situationship/relationship even if the two keep saying their just friends, ugh the angst, the heated arguments over their deniability about their relationship, the fact that in order for them to work one of them has to move either to the new city or back to pittsburgh (something of which neither of them want to do), the fear that the other thinks its just casual
(bonus points if samira throws a dinner party at their place and reader invites robby which just leads to the inevitable questions about their relationship)
a/n: guyssss i did it i wrote something short (kinda)
wc: ~1.5k
content: 18+ mdni, sexually explicit content (not really, mostly just mentioned in passing), UNRESOLVED angst, lots of angst, secret relationship/situationship whatever, swearing, alcohol, implied age gap
You could feel the heat of his gaze even from the opposite end of the table. The apartment was muggy from all the cooking, windows thrown open for some reprieve, but sweat still beaded up on your brow. Your fingers were cold and wet from the perspiration on your wine glass, chilled orange wine sliding easily down your throat. Too easily. You were overcompensating for your nerves.
It was you that had invited him here, but you didn't think he'd show. He was always bitching about how he hated Manhattan, how it was hot and smelt like piss, how it was too crowded.
And yet, here he was in yours and Samira's East Village apartment eating dinner and acting like everything was normal. You had dismissed the twinge in your chest when you overheard him talking to one of Samira's friends, telling them he was a friend of yours.
"Oh," Samira's friend Zack, ever the gossip had said knowingly, "A friend? Because I've heard she has a secret boyfriend but I can't get it out of her or Mira. It wouldn't be you, would it?"
Robby had chuckled dismissively, "No, no. We're just friends."
Just friends. The ease with which it had rolled off his tongue made you feel sick. Never mind just an hour earlier he'd been between your legs as you sat atop the bathroom sink, his tongue shoved deep inside you and your fist in your mouth to keep from moaning too loudly.
You were so out of control around him you felt like a runaway train about to run out of track. Constantly you were denying your feelings for him, but since you moved, you knew it didn't really matter. You remembered telling him you were leaving, still in his bed, his arms wrapped around you and mouth pressing kisses to your bare shoulders. He had frozen, his mouth still pressed to your shoulder when you said it.
"Oh." Was all he'd said.
You'd hoped he'd ask you to stay, finally stop tiptoeing around whatever you were doing. But he hadn't done that. Hadn't remarked on it much at all, in fact.
Your last night in Pittsburgh he'd shown up at your door and your heart had lifted the tiniest bit. A strand of hope still pulling at your heart, reaching out for him. He doesn't want me to go. But still, he hadn't said anything real. He'd fucked you on the air mattress, the only piece of furniture still in your apartment, and slipped out with a kiss on your forehead and a quiet Good luck whispered in your ear.
You'd cried partway through the drive to Manhattan, shaking your head silently whenever Samira asked what was wrong.
"I just hate moving," You'd said. And it was true. But it wasn't why you were crying.
You'd thought that was it, that he'd never talk to you again, but two days later he called you.
"Hey, how's the Big Apple?"
You frowned as you climbed out onto the fire escape outside your bedroom window, hoping to avoid Samira overhearing, "It's okay. Loud."
"Are you sleeping okay?"
You paused, unsure of what exactly was occurring. The sound of his voice in your ear was soothing, as it usually was, but you thought two days ago was the last time you'd hear it.
"Like I said, it's loud. It's an adjustment."
He hummed, "You should get one of those, uh… white noise machines. That'd probably help."
"Maybe."
You let the silence fall, no matter how badly you wanted to fill it, no matter how badly you wanted to ask him what he was really calling about—
"The Pirates are playing at Yankee Stadium this Thursday."
You blinked, "Oh."
"I have tickets."
"You hate the Pirates."
"Yeah." He paused, then, "Do you want to come to the game with me?"
That was how you ended up in his hotel room a few days later, riding him as he looked up at you reverently, your fingers curled around the gold chain at his neck. He gifted you a white noise machine before he drove back to Pittsburgh.
It went like this for weeks and weeks, Robby making any excuse he could to come to see you. You acting like it was normal. Rolling your eyes and not commenting every time Samira teased you about your secret boyfriend.
He wasn't your boyfriend so how could he really be a secret?
Samira had pestered you when she found out you were inviting Robby to her dinner party, "Oh my God… is Robby your secret boyfriend?"
You'd rolled your eyes, "Don't be ridiculous, Samira. We're just friends."
She'd laughed, "That man doesn't have friends."
You'd gone quiet after that and Samira apologized for upsetting you, but you insisted she hadn't, that you were just tired. Later, when you were winding down for bed, Robby had called you.
"I was just about to go to sleep," You said, stifling a yawn.
"Sorry," He said, "I was just calling to tell you I picked up that book you recommended the last time I saw you, This Is How You Lose The Time War."
You hummed, pleased he listened to you, "Oh, that's great."
"Do you think… Could I read to you? Until you fall asleep?"
Your eyes burned. You couldn't keep doing this, this game, whatever it was. It was starting to take up permanent real estate in your heart and you weren't sure you'd survive it if he took a match to it.
Still, you reached over your bed to turn off the lamp on your nightstand and nestled yourself into your bed, allowed yourself to be lulled to sleep by the sound of his voice.
Afterwards he'd gone back and forth about whether or not he was coming to the dinner party until last night when you'd finally snapped and told him not to bother. You hadn't spoken since he'd gotten here, but he'd cornered you into the bathroom, getting on his knees in front of you by way of apology.
You already knew he was at your back before you turned around, the two of you by an open window and partially separated from the rest of the party.
"Can I get you more wine?" He asked mildly, gesturing to your now empty wine glass.
"No thanks."
You heard him inhale deeply through his nose beside you, something you knew he did when he was irritated, "You wanna explain to me why you're mad at me?"
"I'm not mad."
"Bullshit."
You closed your eyes in an attempt to quietly dispel your exasperation, "Don't cause a scene."
"Is that what you're so worried about? All of your friends finding out I'm the old man you've been secretly fucking?" You were so shocked by his outburst, you turned to him, confusion clear on your face, "Yeah, you think I don't know? That you invited me here out of obligation? That you're terrified they'll find out and you'll be humiliated?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Christ, you probably fucking moved all the way here to get away from me and here I am, following you around like a stray—"
"Have you lost your mind?"
"Why don't you just admit it?"
"Because it's not true!" You hissed, "If anything it's you who's embarrassed of me!"
He laughed quietly and rubbed at his beard, "Yeah, I'm mortified by you, that's why I've been openly staring at you all night." He shook his head, "You notice how no one ever asks you if we're together? It's always me who gets asked. Because I'm constantly fucking looking at you like you put the stars in the sky."
Your chest was tight as you looked at him, his eyes wet and skin flushed, "I invited you here because I wanted you here. Because whenever I haven't talked to you in a few days I feel this… inescapable fucking ache in my chest." You swallowed, "I wanted you to ask me not to go. When I told you I was moving."
He stared at you for a moment and then shook his head, turning away, "You wanted to move here."
"I did, but I wanted you more."
He let out a soft, humorless laugh and shook his head, "Makes no difference how in love with you I am when you won't move back home and I don't want to be here."
You blinked slowly, "Did you just say... that you're in love with me?"
He stared at you for a moment, eyes widened a fraction, open and vulnerable in a way you weren't sure you'd ever seen on him previously.
But just as quickly, it shuttered, "Like I said, it makes no difference," He shouldered past you, "Excuse me."
🕯️ x robby where there's a betting pool on how long it'll take for him to ask her out but he's conflicted cause well he's robby?? coworkers to lovers?? pretty please??
thank you angel for requesting, hope you enjoy! robby x pediatrician reader cw for like, mildly sexual themes, age gap (it's robby i'm legally required to make it age gap, he's mid 50s, reader is early 30s and an attending) <3 0.8k words
1.5k follower fairy garden party celebration ⋆˚ʚɞ you're invited!
Robby's hand is in your pocket, and he is decidedly not happy about it.
You're down on a consult and he's pretty sure your residents are going to send someone down here to look for you if you take much longer. There's a little boy in peds who needed a shot (mom's being taken care of in Central 14 after taking a header; she'd gotten a little lightheaded at the diagnosis but had consented to the needle), and the only way you could get him to sit still was to let him sit on your lap. He's draped over you, arms wrapped around your neck, barely big enough to reach. He's not even your patient, but you'd caught sight of Jesse struggling on your way back up and offered to help him out.
Robby had asked him to go check on another patient and taken over, leaving the two of you alone with the cartoon animals. Things had been quiet for just a second, and then your phone had started buzzing nonstop.
You've got gloves on and an antiseptic wipe in your hand. Little Ethan, barely old enough to understand what's going on, doesn't like the noise. You don't have a spare hand, Robby has two. It only makes sense for him to reach in and grab it to turn on do not disturb.
If it means he's so close to you that he can feel the residue of your lotion on your skin then so be it.
He's caught sight of an enthralled Mckay and Santos staring at the two of you from across the room, Ahmad right behind them. That can't be anything good, and he cringes at the way Ahmad immediately turns and starts ripping down the post-its from the last betting board.
"Sorry," you tilt your head apologetically at your phone in his hand. "I usually keep it on silent, I'm not sure why it wasn't."
He's forgotten it's there, vibrating steadily in his palm. When you hold it the phone looks much bigger; his hand swallows it. Robby coughs awkwardly, declining the call and putting it face down on the nearest surface. "Boyfriend?"
You snicker mirthlessly, finally getting the injection finished. Your tongue pokes out of your teeth while you concentrate and Robby absolutely hates himself.
You're pretty, he'll lie to himself about a lot of things but he can't deny that. Pretty and soft and kind and capable, an attending on the third floor for a few years now, but still so much younger than him. He's pretty sure he was a med student when you were born.
You don't need him perving at you while you do your job, but goddamn he just can't help himself.
"Landlord," you say instead. "Keeps trying to set me up with her son."
Little Ethan is calm as you give him a Spider-Man bandaid, half asleep as the early morning catches up to him. Robby has to busy himself looking at the chart so he can't see the gentle smile you have on your face. It's way too early in his shift for him to have to deal with this.
You do eventually leave to go back up to the childrens' ward, bidding him a charming smile and a "See you later, Dr Robby," that sends him into a tailspin. At the last all-hands meeting you'd sat beside him, Abbot on his other side, and whispered into his ear the whole time. He'd left with pink cheeks and a bruised rib from all the times Jack would elbow him playfully.
Robby beelines it directly for the security office - Princess, Whitaker and Javadi immediately falling silent as he arrives. You'd walked past it on your way out, bidding them both a kind farewell. Robby hopes desperately you hadn't seen the board.
When - one month, four months, five months and three days, a 'never' scrawled in Trinity's handwriting that hurts his feelings.
Who - most of them say 'her' with different people's names after them, but at least a couple of his staff seem to think he'll be the one to ask you out.
How long - most people have written seven weeks, which is frankly hurtful, according to her post it Cassie thinks 6 months, and Princess is right in the middle of handing cash over for a 'forever' bet when he gets there.
"Don't you have patients?" Both Javadi and Whitaker scramble off back to work, but Princess stays put. She's got a shit-eating grin on her face and Robby knows whatever he says can and will be used against him when she debriefs with Perlah later. "What's that about, huh?"
Perlah mimes zipping her lip. She's not going to tell him she's got an inside source on the third floor who knows all about your little crush on the chair of the ED. She'd promised to split the winnings with you if you manage to work up the courage to ask him out in the next month.
summary: One glitchy tablet, one HR email, and suddenly you’re married to your attending, Jack Abbot. HR thinks it was intentional and has already started merging your records. Claim it was a mistake, and your residency could be delayed. With only three months left until you're an attending, Jack agrees to play along. Pretending to be married might save your career—but can your heart survive the side effects?
tags: accidental marriage, slow burn romance, HR involvement, nosy coworkers, reader is a PGY-4 resident, jack is not a widow in this fic, possible medical/legal inaccuracies, mutual pining, angst, two people being dumbasses, drinking, hangover
word count: 6.6k
a/n: wooo another chapter done and over 100k words written!! this is actually sooo insane to me. when i started this fic i never imagined that it would go on for this long🤭 thank you for being here <333 i hope you enjoy! and as always, since this is an ongoing process, your ideas and thoughts for future scenes are more than welcome! big kisses to everyone who has sent in ideas already<33
i'm not keeping a tag list for this series anymore. follow the diagnosis: married? masterlist and turn on notifications instead <33
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Jack's been counting down to this day all week—his first day off in a little over a week. It's slightly pathetic just how much he's built it up in his head, but it's the truth.
Every day feels like an exercise in restraint. Every morning, he wakes up after barely sleeping, stares at the drawer where his police scanner is hidden and has to look away before temptation wins.
He made a promise to himself the day you moved in, and he's gonna keep it—he won't touch it while you're still in the house. Even if his entire body is screaming for it. For the radio in that drawer. For the SWAT uniform hanging in his closet. For anything that'll dull the restlessness.
Jack's a man of his word, even as it gets harder with each passing day. Even as the lack of sleep hollows him out enough for people to notice. Even when you notice.
He can still feel the touch of your fingers under his eyes from two nights ago, soft against the dark circles as you frowned up at him. Asking him if it was because of his leg and telling him you bought him more of that cream and that he could use your heating pad. He'd nodded because telling the truth wasn't an option—and besides, his leg had been giving him hell that day.
But it wasn't the reason for him not sleeping, not that he could ever tell you that. He couldn't tell you that it was the thought of you drifting away from him, of you leaving, that kept him awake. That only seeing your face for a handful of minutes each day was driving him insane. That every day brought the end closer, and he could feel the countdown in his bones.
Tonight, however, he finally gets a semblance of relief. No work. No interruptions. Just an entire evening with you. An evening where he'll watch whatever you want to without complaining if it means he gets to sit next to you, listening to your laugh and teasing you.
He just wants your company.
It's around half past seven when the front door cracks open. Jack had offered to come pick you up, but you insisted that it was too nice not to walk, and so he'd relented. He didn't want to start the evening out on the wrong foot.
"Hey," you greet him, sending him a quick smile as you move towards your room. "I'm gonna shower real quick."
He sends you a smile back from his position on the couch and grabs his phone. He has it all planned out: takeaway, a bad movie, and if he's lucky, you'll fall asleep on his shoulder.
He opens the app, finds that place around the corner that you'd mentioned before and scrolls through their menu. He hears the shower turn off, then the sound of you rummaging through the closet and by the time you come into the living room, he's halfway through speaking, "I was thinking we could order in toni—"
And then he looks up.
His smile fades as he sees you standing in the doorway, bag slung over your shoulder and a confused look on your face. It dissolves into an apologetic one as you step further into the room, "Shoot," you say. "I forgot to tell you—I'm going out with Parker and some of the other girls tonight." You bite your lip, adding, "She's been asking me for days..." as if it's some sort of consolation.
For a second, he just stares at you, the air leaving his lungs so fast it almost hurts. Tries to process the fact that this was a night he'd been waiting for all week, and to you it's just another night.
"Oh," he says. "Okay." He stands, forcing his expression into something neutral as he follows you into the hallway. "That sounds fun," he adds, the words stiff in his mouth.
"Yeah," you reply as you shrug on a jacket. "We're going to that club near the park."
Jack folds his arms and leans against the doorway, trying to breathe through the sting in his chest. "Okay," he says. "Be safe. I'll come pick you up when you're done."
You look up from the shoes you're slipping on and shake your head. "You don't need to wait up for me. I'll just call an Uber."
He frowns. "I'm gonna be up anyway," he says. He won't be able to sleep until he knows you're home safe. He adds in a softer tone, "I don't mind. Call me."
For a brief second, your hand loosens on the bag strap as your eyes flicker over his face. Can you see the hurt and disappointment he's trying to contain? Your mouth parts like you're about to say something. Something like: Maybe I can stay. Maybe I can reschedule.
The words hover on the edge of your lips, so close Jack can almost taste them. And for one stupid second, he thinks you might actually say them because he sees how your shoulders soften and your weight shifts, like you're reconsidering leaving.
Then the moment passes. Your fingers tighten around the strap again, and your feet turn to the door. "I'll see you later," you say and disappear out the door faster than he can respond. He stares at the shut door.
He notices you never actually agreed, and before he can second-guess it, he pulls up Ellis’ contact.
>> Text me when you're ready to leave. I'll drop you and the others off, too.
He hesitates for a second. Then adds:
>> Trouble wants to pay for an Uber. But I won't be asleep, so call whenever.
He gets a reply seconds later.
<< Sure thing, boss
He stares at the screen for a second before locking it and sinking back onto the couch. He flicks on a random sports channel, though he knows he won’t take in a second of it. He curses Robby's name one more time in his head, despite having talked it out. Still, he can't help but put some of the blame on him; it lessens the blame he can put on himself.
You sit cross-legged on Parker's bedroom floor, your makeup bag spilt open around you in a mess of brushes, palettes, and lip gloss tubes. The room smells faintly like vanilla body spray and the citrus candle Parker lit twenty minutes ago. Music hums low from the speaker on her dresser, some playlist she made in your first year of residency.
You sweep a glittery brush across your lid, tilting your head for a better angle. Behind you, Parker's bathroom door is open, steam still curling out from her shower. You can see half of her face in the bathroom mirror as she expertly draws a sharp wing. For a while, the only sounds are the music, the rustle of brushes, and Parker humming under her breath.
Then she says, casual as anything, "So, you gonna tell me what's up with you and Abbot?"
Your hand stills mid-swipe. The brush hovers near your eyelid as your shoulders tense, but you force yourself to relax, lowering the brush to the palette in your lap.
"Nothing’s going on," you say, aiming for light and dismissive.
Parker lets out a short laugh from the bathroom. "Sure," she says.
You glance toward the doorway and catch her raised eyebrow in the mirror. "Then why do you look like you haven’t slept in days?"
You stare down at the eyeshadow palette, pretending to inspect the colours even though your mind goes completely blank. "Uh…"
Does she know? Does she see the same things you do? For an overwhelming second, the urge to spill everything to her fills your chest. You suppress it. You can't betray Jack like that.
Parker snorts softly, caps her eyeliner, and steps into the doorway. She leans one shoulder against the frame, mascara wand in hand, watching you with the kind of knowing look that makes lying feel impossible. "You know, if you both sleep that badly without each other," she says, "maybe you should consider coming back to nights."
You blink at her and let out a quiet breath of relief. Her assumption wasn't even close, or well, it was right, but she hadn't figured out the reason for the distance. You're even more glad you kept your thoughts to yourself now.
"It’s only a week until I’m back," you say, dipping your brush into the eyeshadow again. You can deal with another week. Robby had already offered to move things around and get you back on nights early, but you'd refused before he could finish the sentence. You're not ready to see Jack and Lily interacting just yet. Not sure that you would be able to hide your heartbreak well enough.
Parker disappears back into the bathroom, and you hear drawers opening. "I’ll cover half your patients if you come back early," she calls out.
You laugh, shaking your head as you blend the shadow into your crease. "You literally cannot do that."
She reappears with a lipstick tube in hand, shrugging, "Fine. Shen will buy you coffee before every shift."
That makes you laugh harder. "Every shift?"
"Mm. And after!"
You reach for your mascara, twisting the tube open. "You're resorting to bribery now?"
She shrugs. "Whatever works."
You lean closer to the mirror, carefully brushing mascara onto your lashes. "Parker," you say, smiling, "I’m not coming back early. So you can drop it."
She groans dramatically.
"I don’t mind day shift," you continue. "And it’s just temporary." You cap the mascara and toss it back into your bag, then look up at her through the mirror. "So, can we please have one night where we don’t talk about work?"
Parker presses her lips together, considering, then she sighs heavily—the theatrical kind meant to show she's only giving in under protest. "Fine," she says.
You grin. "Good. Because you have to help me figure out what to wear."
"Ooh," she says, dropping onto the edge of her bed. "Okay, show me everything."
By the time you and Parker join the other girls, you’re feeling that pleasant buzz of tipsiness. And after just another half hour with Trinity pushing drinks into your hands, you're drunk.
The place is packed—shoulders brushing past in every direction, voices layered over the pulse of the bass, the air warm with the smell of liquor and perfume and too many people in one room. Coloured lights flash across the dance floor as you move in between the throngs of people. It's nice, letting go of all your worries and just having fun.
It even makes the guilt of leaving Jack alone at home subside. You hadn't anticipated that he would look that sad—you'd actually expected the opposite. It was the whole reason why you agreed to go out tonight, to give him the house to himself.
Limiting the time you spend alone with him is the safest. Working days has been hell, besides the obvious, but having him find you the second he enters the Pitt, the smile he gives you as he kisses your cheek, and the way his shoulder keeps brushing yours during rounds, it's enough to make your resolve wobble.
It's enough to make you doubt if you really do have it right—until you see him talk to Lily, and then the confidence surges again. Not even Olivia’s increasingly exasperated insistence that you're reading it all wrong could shake that certainty.
Since the argument at the lockers, Jack hasn’t pushed back on the shift change. He still checks if you’ve eaten, still keeps a protein bar in his pocket if you haven't, still brings you tea at the start of his shift—but he hasn’t fought for more, and somehow that hurts worse than when he did.
So instead of being curled up beside him on the couch, you’re here—pressed into a cracked vinyl booth with a drink in your hand and Parker half draped across the seat beside you.
"Pleeease," Parker whines, dragging the word out as she collapses dramatically against the backrest. Her margarita sloshes dangerously in her hand. "Come back to nights."
Across the table, Trinity snorts into her drink as Princess mocks her.
You laugh, shaking your head. "Parker, no. You promised no work talk."
Parker presses a hand to her chest like you’ve mortally wounded her. "So that’s it? You’re abandoning us? Leaving us in the clutches of hell when salvation is right there?"
You stare at her flatly. "Wow. Since when did you become so poetic?"
Parker lifts her glass solemnly. "Since Abbot started nitpicking my charting. Trauma changes people."
Lily bursts out laughing beside her, the sound bright enough to cut through the music. The bruising around her throat has faded into mottled yellow and green now, and her voice has almost completely recovered. Her scans had come back clean, no concussion, no lasting damage, and she’d been one of the first people demanding a night out the second she was cleared.
"No, seriously," Parker says. "He told me to fix my chart because I wrote 'patient states pain is better' instead of 'the patient’s pain is improved'."
"That sounds fair," Trinity says, her head tilting as a small smirk plays on her lips.
Parker glares at her. You laugh, louder this time.
Parker swivels toward you. "He was never this bad when you were on nights."
You shrug, "Maybe your charting got worse."
She narrows her eyes at you.
Trinity leans in over the table, "I, for one, hope you won't ever go back." She lifts her glass. "To day shift, where I hope Trouble stays forever."
Parker groans but lifts her glass anyway. "To Trouble, who abandoned us to die." Lily nods emphatically.
You roll your eyes and clink your glass against theirs.
"No, but seriously," Parker says, nudging Lily with her elbow, "Tell her she needs to come back. Abbot is terrifying right now, right?"
Lily shrugs. "He’s just tense."
Parker scoffs. "That's because he likes you. He’s less scary with you."
Lily laughs and shakes her head. "No, he isn’t."
"He is," Parker insists. "You’re the only person he hasn’t snapped at all week."
Lily rolls her eyes. "That’s because I’m still on light duty."
She says it casually, thoughtlessly, but the words hit somewhere tender. Because, of course. Of course, he’s gentler with her. Of course, people notice. You'd noticed.
You stare down into your drink, the ice shifting softly when you tilt the glass. You force a smile. "That’s nice of him."
Lily nods. "I'm back on normal duty Monday, and I cannot wait." She leans in, adding with a little grin, "I might also have a date with a radiologist..."
Parker's eyes widen, "What?"
Your eyes widen. "When did that happen?" you ask. Does Jack know?
"When I went for that scan the other day," Lily grins.
"Damn girl," Parker laughs.
"Hey, at least something good came out of it," Lily says. "I think we're going to that place nearby. Momo's or something—"
You lift your drink and take another swallow, eyes drifting to the dance floor while the conversation moves on around you. If Jack loses his chance with Lily because he was doing this with you, would he forgive you?
A new song blasts through the speakers, bass vibrating through the floor beneath your feet.
"Oooh, I love this song!" you hear from your left as Parker rushes out to the dance floor.
Lily laughs from beside you and reaches for your hand. "Come on."
You hesitate for half a second, but let her pull you up. Because, despite everything, you still like Lily. She’s warm and funny and kind. None of this is her fault. You can’t blame her for the ache that opens in your chest every time you look at her and think about Jack. So you let her lead you into the crowd.
And for the next half hour, the night becomes loud and stupid in the best possible way, and for a little while, you let yourself disappear into it.
You try not to picture Jack at home. Maybe stretched out on the couch. Maybe reading with those stupidly adorable glasses on. Maybe glancing at his phone every now and then, waiting for it to ring because he told you to call.
That thought should make warmth bloom in your chest. Instead, it hurts. Because even now, while you’re pulling away for his sake, he’s still there. Still showing up. Still making space for you. Still offering in a way he never should have to.
So you drink. Shot after shot. Trying to soften the ache. Trying to drown the guilt. Trying not to think about the fact that if it weren’t for you, he could probably be moving on with his life instead of waiting around for your call.
By the time you stumble back toward the booth, your head is pleasantly foggy, your limbs loose and warm.
Parker drops beside you, breathless from dancing. "You good?" she asks.
You nod, then immediately regret the motion when the room tilts. "Yep."
She gives you a sceptical look. "You are not getting any more drinks."
"I’m fine," you insist, reaching for her cocktail on the table.
Parker snatches it first. "Nope."
You glare at her. "Parker."
She folds her arms around the drink protectively. "You're wasted."
"I'm not."
She shoots you a disbelieving look. "I'm gonna call Jack," she says, pulling out her phone.
"No!" you say, grabbing her hand quickly.
She blinks at you, surprised.
You try to soften it, "I'll just get an Uber once I sober up a bit. I don’t want him coming out at one in the morning because I had too much to drink."
Parker studies you for a second, then nods hesitantly. A few minutes later, Trinity drags Parker back onto the dance floor when another song comes on, and you stay in the booth, sipping water, trying to steady the spinning in your head. Lily joins you after a moment, giggling at something on her phone.
You’re staring blankly out into the crowd when something shifts. Even through the music and the blur in your head, you feel it. That strange awareness that has nothing to do with sight. Your body notices him before your mind does, gaze lifting automatically toward the entrance.
And there he is.
Jack stands just inside the bar, arms folded behind his back as he scans the room. The second his eyes land on you, your breath catches. Every ounce of drunken warmth drains out of you. "What the fuck?" you mutter.
You whip around to Parker, who has just returned to the table, suddenly looking guilty.
She winces. "Sorry."
Your stare hardens. "You called him?"
"You were too drunk to get home alone."
"I told you not to."
Trinity appears behind her shoulder, adding with no remorse. "Abbot said he’d drive all of us home."
You stare at them in disbelief. "I see," you say flatly. So much for not disturbing him. But then again, you should've thought about it—Lily's here, of course, he'd come.
Before you can say anything else, Jack reaches the table.
"Hey, girls," he says, warm and easy, that small familiar smile on his face. "Looks like you’re having fun."
"Oh yeah," Parker says brightly, then points at you. "This one had way too many shots."
Jack’s gaze moves to yours, and the smile softens. "I can see that."
You're leaning against the back, staring hazily at him. He steps closer and gently brushes a loose strand of hair away from your face. Your body leans into it before you can stop yourself, then you remember Lily is sitting right there.
You straighten immediately.
"I’m fine," you say. You stand to prove it. The room lurches violently.
Before you can stumble, Jack’s arm is around your waist, steady and immediate. "Mm-hm," he murmurs. "Sure you are."
He's warm, a scorching heat that sends fire through your veins. You hate how natural it feels to lean into him. Hate how easy it is to stay there. You’re too tired—and too drunk—to pretend you don’t want the support. Even if Lily is looking. She'll get to have him forever; you only have a short time—she'll have to forgive you.
Jack glances at the others. "Come on," he says. "Let’s get everyone home."
The girls pile into the car, laughing and arguing over seats as Jack opens the passenger door for you. You slide in without looking at him. He sets a bottle of water in your lap, then reaches over to buckle your seatbelt.
You stare out the window while quiet music plays through the speakers. One by one, he drops everyone off. Parker is last, leaning through the window with a drunken grin.
"Love you," she sings.
You glare at her. She laughs and shuts the door. Then it’s just you and Jack. The silence in the car feels enormous. Jack keeps one hand on the wheel while the other taps lightly against his thigh.
"You have fun?" he asks after a minute.
"Yeah," you murmur.
"That’s good."
Silence settles again.
"Day shift treating you okay?" he asks.
"Yeah." You can feel the heat of his gaze on the side of your face, but you don't look at him.
"Good," he nods.
"Mm."
He’s quiet for a second before speaking again, fingers tightening briefly on the wheel. "I miss having you around."
You grip the hem of your shirt and almost turn toward him. Almost say I miss you too. But Lily’s words echo in your head. He’s been checking in a lot.
You stare harder out the window. "I’m coming back soon," you say instead.
"Right." He nods once.
Normally, you’d say something, anything, to fill the silence. But tonight you can’t. You don't know what to say that won't make things awkward.
You lean against the window pane instead, listening to the soft murmur of the radio, and tell yourself you’re just resting your eyes. Just for a second. Sometime between one red light and the next turn, sleep pulls you under.
Jack turns into the driveway slowly, careful not to take the corner too sharply. He cuts the engine and sits there for a moment, looking at you in the dim glow of the moonlight.
"Hey," he says softly. You don't stir. He leans over and brushes a hand over your shoulder. "Hey, we’re home."
You hum lightly and turn your head onto the headrest, brows pulling together faintly, but your eyes stay shut.
He exhales a quiet laugh. "Alright."
Jack gets out, walks around the car and opens your door. "Come on, sweetheart," he murmurs, reaching for your hand. "Can you stand?"
You blink slowly, eyes glassy and unfocused. "M'awake," you mumble.
"Mm," he breathes.
You try to stand up, but the second your feet hit the ground, your knees buckle. Jack catches you instantly.
"Okay," he says gently, one arm steady around your waist. "That answers that." You mumble something incoherent into his shoulder. Then, before you can protest or he can overthink it, he slides one arm under your knees and lifts you.
You let out a sleepy noise of surprise, one hand grabbing weakly at the front of his shirt. "Jack—"
"I’ve got you," he murmurs into your hair as he walks up to the door. Your head drops against his shoulder almost immediately, too exhausted to argue.
He sets you down just long enough to unlock the door, then lifts you again and carries you inside. He nudges the bedroom door open with his shoulder and carries you straight to the bathroom.
"Alright," he says softly, setting you carefully on the sink, one hand still holding your waist. He grabs your toothbrush and puts toothpaste on it. "Here."
You stare at him and obediently open your mouth. He lets out a short huff of laughter.
"Honey, no. Here." He places the toothbrush in your hand. "Brush your teeth."
"Oh." You begin brushing with slow, clumsy movements, squinting at yourself in the mirror.
Jack leans against the counter beside you, arms at each side of your legs, making sure you stay upright. When you finish, you spit, rinse, and immediately wobble. His hand catches your elbow.
"Come on. Let’s get you to bed." He helps you down from the counter and guides you toward the bedroom. But instead of heading for your room, you stop in front of his bed and tug weakly at your shirt.
Jack freezes. "Wait—"
You frown at him. "Need t'sleep."
"I know, but—"
You’re already trying to pull your top over your head and failing miserably. Jack turns around so fast it would almost be funny if he weren't so flustered. You let out a tired little huff as you wrestle with your clothes. There’s the sound of fabric hitting the floor. Then silence.
Jack glances back over his shoulder just long enough to see you standing there in only your panties. He catches a glimpse of the curve of your ass before his gaze jerks away immediately.
"Hang on." He pulls one of his T-shirts from the dresser and holds it out without looking directly at you. "Here."
You take it, and stumble into his eye line while pulling it on. He catches your arm without thinking. "Okay?"
"Mm," you hum. He expects you to walk past him, but you don't—you crawl straight into his bed instead. He almost can't remember the last time that happened, but you don't notice how he stares, already curled onto your side with your eyes shut.
He debates whether or not to tell you that you're in the wrong bed, when he wants nothing more than to just slip in beside you and not say anything. But he can't—not when he knows that's the last you want.
So, he says, "This isn't your bed, sweetheart."
You blink sleepily up at him. "Wanna stay here." The words are slurred and soft and so completely unguarded that his chest tightens.
"You sure?"
You make a sleepy little sound and scoot further into the bed, like that settles it.
Jack stands there for a long moment. Every instinct tells him this is a terrible idea. Not because he doesn't want this—god, he wants it too badly—but because you're drunk, and things between you are already fragile. One wrong move could break whatever trust still exists between you.
So he keeps his distance, decides that he'd better sleep on the couch tonight. He pulls the blanket higher over your shoulder, then he reaches to move the hair away from your face. Indulging himself for a moment.
You catch his wrist with barely open eyes. "Stay." The word is so quiet he almost misses it.
He should say no. He knows he should. But the word won’t come. He looks at you for a second, then nods once. "Okay."
He's not that strong.
He walks around to the other side of the bed, takes off his prosthetic and lies down, leaving space between you. For a minute, everything is quiet. Then, half asleep, you roll toward him. Your hand finds the front of his shirt, curling there lightly as your head nestles into the space between his shoulder and neck. You breathe in deeply and sigh contentedly.
Jack closes his eyes.
A few seconds later, your breathing evens out again. Jack stares up at the ceiling in the dark, every nerve painfully aware of how close you are. He wants to wrap an arm around you, but he stays still.
After a long moment, he carefully pulls the blanket over both of you and lies awake beside you, trying to memorise this—your weight against him, the sound of your breathing, the faint scent of your shampoo. This might be the last time he ever gets this. He'll be damned if he doesn't take advantage of it.
He falls asleep faster than he intends to.
You wake up slowly, dragged out of sleep by the dull ache behind your eyes and the heaviness of a hangover settling into your body. For a moment, you stay still, half buried in warmth, then awareness catches up.
The blankets are softer than yours. The pillow smells like clean laundry and something familiar, and beneath your cheek, it rises softly with each breath.
Your eyes snap open.
Morning light spills pale through the curtains, washing the room in soft gold, and the second you register the shape of the dresser, the angle of the chair in the corner, the familiar navy comforter—
Your stomach drops.
Jack’s room. Jack’s bed.
Heat floods your face instantly. You vaguely remember the night before, fragments flicker back—the bar, the car, him carrying you inside. Flashes of his hands on your waist, the brightness of the bathroom light, stripping in front of him (oh god) and then crawling into his bed. Asking him to stay.
A groan builds in your throat, and you swallow it down. Oh god. Slowly, carefully, you glance beside you.
Jack is asleep on his back, one arm tucked under his neck, the other around your waist, hair rumpled, face slack with sleep. He looks peaceful. Too peaceful for someone who had to deal with your drunk ass the night before.
You stare for a second too long. In sleep, all the tension leaves his face. This is the version of him that always weakens your resolve. It would be so easy to forget the distance you’ve been trying to create, to stay here in his arms.
You force yourself to move. Cautiously, you slide toward the edge of the bed, lifting the blanket inch by inch.
The mattress shifts under your weight. Jack stirs. You freeze. Then his breathing evens again. You exhale silently, then you slip out of bed and stand, clutching the hem of his shirt. Fuck. You won't drink ever again.
You make your way into the bathroom as quietly as you can. The second the door closes, you lean against it. Drag both hands over your face as you whisper: "Fuck."
You turn the shower on and step under it as soon as the steam rises. Water runs down your face, hot enough to sting. You scrub your body harshly, trying to wash away the shame clinging to you. Trying not to think about what it felt like waking up there and how badly a selfish part of you wanted to stay. Trying to dismiss the voices that whisper that maybe this meant something—that Jack deciding to stay wasn't a thoughtless decision.
You shake your head, wrap a towel around yourself and stare at your reflection in the fogged mirror. "Act normal," you mutter to yourself.
Jack's awake when you open the door again, sitting on the edge of the bed, hair still tousled from sleep. His head lifts the second the door opens.
For one second, neither of you says anything. You’re standing there in a towel, droplets dripping down your shoulders, too panicked earlier to remember to bring clothes with you. A decision you regret very much right now.
His gaze flicks over your body before returning to your face. The glance is brief, but your pulse jumps anyway as heat floods your body.
"Hi," you say, managing to sound normal at least.
Jack gives you a small smile. "Hi."
Silence stretches. The air feels heavier than it should.
You tighten your grip on the edge of the towel. "I’m sorry about last night."
Jack’s brows pull together slightly. "For what?"
You stare at him. "For Parker calling you. For being drunk. For… this?" you say, motioning vaguely toward the bed.
Jack glances behind him, then back at you, confused. "You sleeping here?"
You nod.
"You’ve slept here before," he says, like it means nothing.
"I know, but—"
Jack tilts his head, watching you carefully. "But what?"
You shrug. "I don’t know..." It's not like you can tell him how, despite the hangover, this is the best you've felt in days—that you haven't slept more than two hours unbroken ever since moving from his bed to your own.
"I'm gonna—" You point vaguely toward the closet, grab some clothes, and hurry back into the bathroom.
From the other side of the door, Jack says after a moment, "I’m gonna go get breakfast. You want your usual?"
"Yeah, thanks!" you answer, head buried in your hands. Fuck.
Later that day, when the hangover has almost slipped its grasp on you, you begin studying. Hunched over the dining table, surrounded by colour-coded notes, flashcards and three different review books, you answer old exam questions.
After two hours, your neck aches, your eyes burn, and the words begin to blur into meaningless strings of letters.
You stare at a question about differential diagnoses for metabolic acidosis and realise you’ve spent five minutes on it without making any progress. With a groan, you rub both hands over your face and lean back in the chair.
Across the house, the television murmurs quietly in the living room where Jack has been stretched out on the couch for the last hour, giving you space while you study. You hear the soft click of the TV being turned off, and a moment later, he appears next to the table.
"You okay?"
You let out a tired laugh, too tired to even pretend. "No."
Jack glances down at the table, then steps behind your chair, scanning the questions. You can almost feel the heat radiating from his body, and you have to force yourself to not lean back. You flip your pen between your fingers and stare down at the question in front of you.
"You want help?"
You hesitate, unsure if this crosses any lines. But he’s still your attending, and this—this could just be work, so you agree, "Yeah, thank you."
"No problem," he says and pulls out the chair beside you.
You shift your notes aside to make room. He picks up your review book, skims the page, then glances over at you. "Walk me through what you’re stuck on."
You hesitate, then start explaining the question. At first, your voice feels stiff, your answers clipped. But Jack listens the same way he always does—calmly and patiently. When you get something wrong, he doesn’t correct you immediately. He asks another question instead, nudging you toward the answer.
Within fifteen minutes, the panic in your chest has eased. Within thirty, you’re actually remembering the material.
And somewhere in the middle of him explaining anion gap calculations on the back of a notepad, you forget to be careful. You laugh when he teases you for overcomplicating the answer. You roll your eyes when he smirks at you for getting something right. You blush when he praises you. For a little while, it feels easy and familiar, like nothing between you has changed at all.
Eventually, you lean back in your chair and exhale. "Okay, I'm beat," you admit. "But that really helped."
Jack’s mouth lifts at one corner. "You know these things. You just have to trust yourself."
You huff but smile at him. "That's easy enough to say."
He doesn't answer that, just leans back in his chair and looks at you.
You shake your head, smiling faintly, then your gaze drops back to the books spread across the table. Soon you’ll be an attending. The thought should feel exciting. Instead, your stomach tightens. Because once residency ends, so does this. Your smile fades.
Jack notices immediately. "What?"
You tap the edge of the flashcard against the table. "Nothing."
He waits.
You stare at your notes for another second before saying quietly, "I was just thinking... this is the last big hurdle."
"The boards?"
You nod. "I'm gonna be an attending after residency ends," you say quietly.
"That's how it works usually," he teases.
You twist the flashcard in your hands. "And after that, everything changes."
Jack drops his grin and studies you for a second. "Meaning?"
"Meaning once I’m an attending..." You force yourself to keep your tone even. "We won’t need to stay married. We can get a divorce"
The room goes very still. Jack doesn’t move. For a second, you think maybe he didn’t hear you, then he sets the pen down slowly. "I see."
You keep talking because silence feels unbearable. "This whole arrangement was about residency. About making it through—"
He says your name softly, but you push ahead.
"—once I'm done, there's no reason to keep pretending."
You can't bear to look at his face, to see the relief that you'd brought it up, so he didn't have to, so you stare at the table instead.
Jack's hands flex once on the table before stilling. "We can’t," he says.
You blink and look up too quickly, hope flaring so suddenly it almost hurts. "What?"
He folds his arms loosely. "If we separate right after you become an attending, people are going to notice." He continues, voice calm and practical. "They’ll put it together. HR might even call us back in."
You nod slowly. "Oh... Right." He was just worried about appearances. It wasn’t the divorce that bothered him—just the timing.
"There’d need to be some time in between," he says. "Otherwise, it looks suspicious."
You force your expression to stay neutral and nod, "That makes sense."
Jack watches you, waiting.
You nod once more. "Okay."
Then, because you need to say something to prove you’re being reasonable, you add, "I’ll start looking for a new place after boards." You try smiling, but it feels more like a grimace.
His expression shifts. "What?"
You keep your eyes on the flashcard in your hands. "It might take me a bit. So the sooner I start, the sooner I can get out of your hair."
Jack lets out a short breath through his nose—almost a laugh, but not quite. The silence that follows feels sharp. Slowly, you look up.
His face is unreadable. But something in it has changed. His jaw is tight. His shoulders have gone still. And for just a second, there’s something in his expression that looks almost like hurt. The sight catches you off guard. His mouth parts slightly, then closes like he was about to speak and swallowed it back down instead.
You frown slightly. "I just—you've been very kind in letting me stay, but I don't wanna overstep." You’re not sure why you’re explaining yourself, only that the sudden overwhelming gap between you makes you want to fix it.
Jack looks away for a moment, like he needs a second before answering. "You're not overstepping." Then he adds in a quieter voice, "But fine, if that’s what you want."
Something twists uneasily in your stomach. You try to smooth it over, "I just mean... I don’t want to make things harder for you."
Jack gives a short nod. "Right."
You wait for him to say something else. He doesn’t. The warmth that had settled between you while studying is gone now.
You glance down at your notes, then back at him. "Jack—"
He stands before you can finish. "You should get back to studying." He gathers the notepad he was using and sets it beside your books. "Let me know if you need help with the rest."
Then he turns and walks back toward the living room. You watch him go, unsettled. The plan has always been temporary. He knows that. You know that. So why did the room feel like it cracked open the second you said it out loud?
You stare down at the notes in front of you, but the words blur uselessly on the page. Your chest feels tight, your thoughts louder than they were a minute ago. Right now, leaving doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. Though you suspect it won't ever—not truly. Not when it's not what you want.
I need these two idiots in love to TALK! I was so thinking Trouble was gonna let something slip to give Jack some ✨hint✨ of what was going on. But alas, they are two emotionally constipated fools, but in a loving way.
SUMMARY: you hide the fact you're pregnant from robby, bc what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. right? (3k words)
WARNINGS: unplanned pregnancy, fluff, angst, hurt/comfort (aka the works), age difference, i'm gonna call it like vague miscommunication too
i saw this man hold a baby and this just kinda spilled from me (also my first fanfic in a while, i feel like i'm trying to dust off the old typewriter aka my laptop and my desire to write, so i apologise if i'm a little rusty)
It’s been three weeks since you finally decided that the mornings of vomiting and the sudden distaste for eggs had to mean something. Three weeks since you took the pregnancy test when Robby was out picking you two up a takeaway on that motorbike you were trying really hard to like still. Three weeks since you hid it behind books you knew he’d never touch when you saw the little pink plus sign, and kissed him like nothing had happened when he walked in with your sudden craving of Thai food.
It's not like you hid the fact you were pregnant maliciously. You knew he had the makings of a great father in him, even if the two of you weren’t actively trying. And whilst the idea of having a baby whilst being a fourth year resident wasn’t exactly ideal, you knew you didn’t want to get rid of the baby either. But you felt like maybe – just maybe – you didn’t have to tell Robby just yet. Again, not because you wanted to baby trap him or anything like that. No. Because for the first time in years, Michael Robinavitch was taking a holiday and the last thing you wanted was to ruin it for him.
You knew his sabbatical seemed to most like a midlife crisis. Admittedly, it did to you too. Riding across the country on a motorbike was stupid, but you’d bought him the best helmet money could buy and he’d sworn to you that he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. He planned to miss you very much during the three months and make up for how much you’d missed him before returning to his job.
Deep down, the both of you knew how much he needed a break. He’d been getting snappier and angrier with every day that had passed over the last few months. Mostly at work, but on occasion with you too. You’d had your first big fights of the relationship. Ones that had him crawling across the floor to whisper apologies, looking up at you with those big dark brown eyes of his all wet and begging for a forgiveness you always gave. But that was you. You knew Robby didn’t afford that same privilege to his other coworkers. Abbot and Dana, occasionally, with a push. But Mohan was a different story, one you knew you couldn’t let him keep writing. It had been you who had suggested he find himself an adventure far away from Pittsburgh and any reminders of it – even if that included yourself.
Maybe it was because you saw what you reckoned others couldn’t; that Robby was pushing and pushing and forcing people away so they wouldn’t miss him. But you weren’t about to let him have a reason to leave the world. Not when you both loved each other so much.
Should that be a reason to tell him, you wondered as you sat cross legged on your shared bed, smiling at him as he talked to you about his plans for the drive. As Robby spoke of tourist traps he’d marked on his map, you decided it wasn’t. You could practically see the responsibilities lifting off of him one by one as he talked about his plans, the lost weight bringing back a version of him you had briefly genuinely feared was lost. You weren’t about to make that all crash down around him.
So instead, you lay a hand over your stomach, rubbing small subtle circles into it as you nodded along to his conversation. He tried on shirts for you, posing just to have you giggle at his over exaggerated flexing, before folding them messily and throwing them into his backpack. Once the backpack was half packed, Robby pushed it from the bed with a sigh, eyes flickering to you. “You’re still good with this, right?”
For a brief moment, your stomach twisted with something close to guilt. You hated lying to him, you’d usually crumble in seconds. But this was for him, not against him, you reminded yourself. You had to be good with this.
Your eyes softened, hand slowly leaving your stomach to reach for him. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I am. You need to do this. It’s okay.”
Robby had crumbled within seconds. He climbed up the bed and cupped your face in his hands. “You promise?
“I do. Don’t worry about me.”
He sighed, leaning down to kiss your nose. “Too good for me, honey. That’s what you are. Way too good.”
God, you begged he didn’t see the guilt eating you from your inside out.
It took you until the morning of Robby’s last shift to confide in anyone else that you were pregnant.
You honestly thought you’d been hiding it perfectly. The sudden lack of eggs for breakfast was easily disguised by your sudden affinity for waffles and bacon, and your vomiting wasn’t noticed so long as you were careful to lock the bathroom door at work with a ‘Cleaning in Progress’ sign on the handle.
But knowing Robby’s sabbatical was only hours away had thrown you off your game. You slipped the sign on as usual the second you started your shift, but in your haste to make it to the toilet you’d forgotten to lock the door. And Dana had started to get more than a little pissed off that the easiest bathroom to access was always locked at the start of the day. When she tried the handle, she expected the usual frustration of rattling it for a minute or two before giving up, not to find it open and you vomiting into a toilet like your body was trying to get rid of all the nutrients it held.
“Oh, honey,” she said as she moved to hold your hair away from your face, rubbing your back with all the care you’d come to expect from her. “It’s okay. Get it all up.”
After enough time had passed that you were sure it was over, you sat back against the stall, wiping tears from your eyes as Dana flushed the contents of the toilet away. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, kid,” she murmured as she sat beside you, her shoulder nudging against yours. “Now, do I gotta send you home?”
You shook your head with a sniffle. “I’m – I’m not sick.”
Dana snorted. “Looked pretty sick to me.”
Slowly, you tore your gaze from the floor to meet hers, swallowing around a lump in your throat so big that you worried it was about to choke you. “I’m not sick, Dana. I’m pregnant.”
You’d half expected a stunned silence from Dana, but instead she was looking at you with an expression so soft it hurt. “You’re sure?”
“Took four tests, all positive. Gave myself an ultrasound,” you whispered as you nodded shakily. “There’s a baby in me, I’ve seen them.”
Dana watched you for a moment, cataloguing the way your breath hitched, how your lip trembled and your eyes looking at the floor like you were awaiting a charge of ‘guilty’. “Robby doesn’t know, does he?”
“I can’t tell him. He’ll never go on his sabbatical, and he’ll just get worse, and it’ll be all my fault.”
You hated hearing how your voice broke. You especially hated the tears forming too thick and too fast to stop. After weeks of keeping it a secret - of keeping all the fear in – your resolve dissolved into sobs you didn’t know you held. Dana’s arms slipped around you, rubbing your back again as she let you stop being strong.
It was the first time since you’d taken the test that you’d actually said the words ‘I’m pregnant’. Of course they’d been stuck in your head; at the moment, all you could think about was baby and Robby. There had been no you until you’d said it aloud. You’d forgotten that in taking all the weight away from Robby, you’d been crushing yourself into a fine dust.
Dana didn’t say anything until you’d quietened again, knowing she needed your focus to make any sort of leeway. “Listen to me, yeah? Robby may be pissing us all off a little at the moment, but I can say for certain that he loves you. He would love a baby with you. He wouldn’t want you keeping it from him.”
“But – ”
“No buts. He can have his sabbatical sat at home with you just as easily as he can in the middle of fucking nowhere on a motorbike,” she sighed, wiping your damp hair and tears from your face. “Let him choose you. Don’t push him away.”
You knew, deep down, that she was right. Of course she was. But that part of you that was so scared of being hurt and hurting others was so strong it threatened to drown you forever. “You don’t think he’ll be mad?”
Dana shook her head instantly, smiling in that warm way that made everything better. “No, kid. I think he’ll be over the moon.”
It wasn’t your fault that it took you until the end of the shift to work up the courage to tell Robby.
You really hadn’t meant to take so long. The problem was that every time you got close, one of you was pulled in a different direction. There was Langdon, and Robby’s determination to be wherever he was not. There was Louie passing and the grief that seemed to suspend the hospital. There was the influx of patients from Westbridge and the rush to ensure they were treated properly. And in between it all, there was the beautiful little baby girl who had been left in the hospital.
When you went to find Robby after you’d finally finished your shift, you felt it was cruel of the universe to show you him holding baby Jane Doe in the darkened paediatrics room. He was swaying her as she cried, trying to soothe her no doubt. God, he really would make a good father. Your hand went to lay over your stomach at the sight as you found the lump in your throat returning with a vengeance.
For a moment, you considered running to anywhere else – the toilets, Dana’s arms, your soon to be empty home. But then Robby looked up. His eyes, watery and soft, found you and he seemed to brighten. Just a little. Just enough to melt something inside of you.
You couldn’t keep running from him. Not the way he usually did. So instead, you made yourself step into the room.
“You okay?” Robby asked softly, patting the baby’s back as he watched you, looking for the signs you didn’t want to show. He’d gotten quite good at it, if he did say so himself. But he could see nothing. It was like you were closed off even from yourself. The observation made his frown deepen.
You nodded, chewing the inside of your cheek. “I’m good. I just… wanted to see you before you left.”
“Still here, baby,” he murmured.
You liked it when it was quiet between the two of you. You didn’t need loud and obvious to love Robby. You just needed a hand on your back, his voice whispering in your ear as you watched a movie late at night and him beside you in bed. Your heart ached at the sudden remembrance that he wouldn’t be there for the next three months.
You moved until you were directly in front of him, smiling at the baby as your hand joined his on her back. “God, aren’t you just perfect?”
Robby watched the way your eyes shimmered with barely restrained tears, the quiet longing ache that had settled in your bones struggling to hold you steady the way it had before. You were watching the baby as if she held secrets you’d wanted to know for so long, and maybe she did. Robby just wished he knew how to give them to you too.
“She is, isn’t she?” he said back, giving you the space he knew you needed to let him in.
Your tongue darted across your lip, trying to buy yourself time to find the right words before he pressed too hard. But your brain was so tired and the pain in your chest wasn’t easing the way you needed it to. It wasn’t your fault that the word’s seemed to tumble from your mouth without really consulting your brain. “Would you have a baby?”
You felt the air in the room shift. Not in a way that made you want to run, but similar to that of the moments before a storm you know won’t do too much damage. Robby’s eyes weren’t so soft anymore; they were confused and cautious, as if he was aware you’d stepped into territory he wasn’t prepared for. “A baby? What do you mean?”
“With me,” you whispered, biting your lip. You would be lying if you said you hadn’t imagined it already. Growing bigger, growing a life inside of you, and watching Robby as he built a crib or painted a room when you got too sore to help. Him letting you have your pick of names when the baby finally came. Watching him as he learned to love a mini version of the both of you that you’d made. From the moment they would enter the world to the minute they left you for college, you’d thought of it all in excruciating detail.
“Are you asking if I’d have a baby with you?” he asked as one hand left the baby to cup your face, his thumb rubbing across the apple of your cheek so gently it brought tears back to your eyes. “Why?”
And you knew what was going to happen before it even did. You saw it the way people described a car crash – watching as if you were a bystander to the event. You felt it as the tears finally spilled over and your voice wavered whilst choking out, “I’m pregnant.”
Robby stood frozen before you, eyes darting over your face as if he could find a trace of a lie or a joke. But he didn’t find the tells he had become used to throughout your relationship. You were pregnant, and he could see that you were certain of it. He didn’t ask you if you’d taken a test as he lay the baby back down. He didn’t ask if you’d actually had it confirmed as he took your face in both of his hands. What he asked instead when he leaned down to make sure he saw you properly was, “How long have you known?”
“Three weeks,” you said through tears, hands going to hold his wrists so that he couldn’t let go of you.
He repeated the timeline in a quiet whisper. You could practically see the cogs turn in his head as he thought of your sudden hatred for eggs, your over exhaustion at the end of a shift and the few times he’d caught you vomiting, which you had waved off as a result of a bad takeaway. But mostly he thought of the quietness he’d started to notice in you. At first, he’d thought it was because of his sabbatical. It was your way of preparing for the three months you’d have without him to talk to constantly. But he could see now that this was a different kind of withdrawal; one he wasn’t meant to have noticed.
“Why didn’t you tell me, honey?”
You sniffle and hiccup, trying to get the tears to stop as he soothes you with the gentle brush of his thumbs. “I didn’t – I didn’t want to ruin your sabbatical. I didn’t want to stress you out more and ruin everything.”
You expected him to yell. Maybe even to curse you out. Possibly even to say that you had ruined everything and that he was going on his sabbatical and not coming back. That was the kind of man you had come to expect in your past, and had started to notice in Robby too.
What you hadn’t prepared for was kindness.
“Oh, sweetheart, this wouldn’t have ruined anything,” he cooed gently, kissing your forehead like he could absorb all your overthinking.
“No?” you say as the tears slowed.
Robby shook his head with an exhausted half-smile. “No. I would have hated to come back and find out that you’d kept a baby from me.”
Your lip trembled again, and he sighed before pulling you to his chest. Slowly, in that soothing way he’d perfected after over a year of being with you, he rubbed a hand up your back. He kissed your hair and whispered comfort that you’d been desperate to hear since that pregnancy test had come back positive. “I don’t hate you. It’s okay,” he murmured, eyes creasing with a love that truly weighed him down. It wasn’t a weight he hated; he found comfort in it. There was a steadiness, a familiarity, a calm he found there that he hadn’t anywhere else. He wasn’t about to give that up – not in a million years.
Slowly, your panicked breaths slowed, and you met his gaze hesitantly. “I didn’t mean to hide it from you. I just didn’t want to ruin your road trip.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He shook his head and stroked your hair from your face like he did every morning when he finally climbed from your bed. Robby looked from your face to your stomach slowly, moving one of his hands to rest over it like he could already feel the physical difference in you. “I don’t think I want to go on my sabbatical anymore anyway.”
“Because of me?” you asked in a panic, rushing to come up with reasons to make him go.
“No, because everyone’s right. It is a midlife crisis,” Robby said, exhaling through his nose, lips quirking up into a smile at the corner when you let out a shaky laugh. There she is, he thought. The kind, easy, giving girl was the one he loved, not the one who sat up all night with her stomach twisting from omitted truths. “We could go somewhere instead. You’re overdue for a break yourself. Especially if there’s gonna be a baby on the way.”
A million thoughts rushed through your head. That you should push Robby to go on his sabbatical still. That you didn’t need a break, not yet anyway. That he still needed space from everything that was pulling him down. But at the same time, all you could really hear echoing in your ears was that the plans had changed because of the baby. “You want the baby?”
“Of course I want our baby,” he said softly, kissing your cheek so gently you barely felt it. “I’m fucked up. You’re a mess. But I’m not missing out on this. Not when it’s with you.”
You waited for your brain to supply excuses, reasons not to do this. But for once, you found your thoughts to be blissfully quiet. You wanted this. He wanted this. It was okay to want to do this together. So you didn’t argue. You let yourself want it. You gave yourself permission, finally, to fully love the life inside of you.
Reaching up, you cradled the side of his face in your hand. “Okay then. Where do you wanna go?”
contents: smut! twitter was asking for an erectile dysfunction fic so i started drafting and well, this might have been my calling. ED, a little blue pill, drug talk (jack’s on depression meds), some wine consumption, a whole host of second-hand embarrassment for jack, world’s best wife in the reader, and of course ED wasn’t enough… loosely inspired by 02x02.
[jack abbot x fem!reader. wc: 7.2k ]
masterlist | other jack abbot fics
He was a doctor—of course he read the side effects of his pills. Right?
Right?
God. Jack could barely think for himself let alone think what the fuck was on the prescription label. He especially couldn’t think straight when you were on top of him, fingers carding through his curls, and your chest pressed against his own.
Everything would be fine. Everything is fine.
It wasn’t fine. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him and when Jack Abbot’s internal alarm bells went off, anyone in a ten mile radius could hear them. All it took was one look, a not fully present kiss, and you knew something was amiss.
“Jack?” You murmured softly in his ear. He loved the feel of your breath; the warmth your body brought to his.
He swallowed hard. His jaw tensed as his chest shuddered in immediate nerves and your hands moved to cradle his face instead. Jack’s eyes avoided you like the plague, sticking to a spot over your shoulder in the direction of the tv.
“Yeah?” He barely whispered.
“Are you okay?”
Oh, goddamnit. Shit.
Everything was really not fucking fine.
Jack hated when his shifts never lined up with your schedule. Summer’s were easier, so were those few breaks you’d get during the year, but most weeks it felt like you were ships passing in the night.
You were his wife, not a “sometimes companion” depending on the day. So, when he had off, there was nothing he loved more than being at your side. Watching mindless television, going to the grocery store, listening to you complain about your job, and everything in between. He loved it. Jack never thought that chance would come again and when it did, he promised himself that the time he gave to you would be nothing short of devotion.
And, when the time to “love” became a little more intimate, Jack gave you everything you could ask for. You’d never had a more generous lover, in all sense of the word.
He cared so deeply about you that he was too easily forgetful about his own needs. Jack never liked when you tried to make it all about him—he’d had enough attention in the last twenty years to last him a lifetime in solitude. In return, Jack’s altar was beside you, on top of you, under you, and anywhere near you.
Therefore, when he sacrificed his time away from you to save the lives of strangers, it was only right for him to recompense through the most natural form of intimacy.
But it had been five days. Five days of back to back night shifts where he left you sleeping in bed and you left him walking out the door with your work bag in hand. There had been a light in the distance, Saturday, when his schedule finally broke and you were both off to enjoy each other’s company.
He cooked, you cleaned, and then you’d both retired to the sofa where your feet landed in his lap and a movie you’d seen a thousand times played quietly as days-long lodged conversations started to flow.
Then, you shuffled into his lap and Jack knew something was wrong before even started.
His lips met yours and you melted. You’d been so quick to fall into him, wrapping your arms around him, and pressing down into his lap that it felt needy. Tilting his head back, your fingers pulled at his curls to open him up to you. His kiss deepened and you couldn’t fight the smile on your face.
You laughed, breaking apart.
“What?” Jack asked incredulously. His eyes darted between yours as your hand brushed back his hair.
“Nothing.” You shook your head. “I just love you.”
Jack’s hands ran up and down your sides gently. “Well now it’s cheesy if I say it back.”
“No.” Your nose bumped into his. “You could never make it cheesy.”
“I’m pretty sure I could,” Jack admitted with a peck. He let his hands wander down your sides, feeling the skin of your ass before smoothing down your legs and holding them down on himself. “I love you.”
“How much?”
“Eh. ” He shrugged causing you leaned back and swat at his chest immediately before pressing into his pecs with your palms.
“Cruel,” you gasped. “You’re just evil.”
“I don’t know about that.” He removed his hands from you and placed his on top of yours. “But I don’t think a measurement exists for how much I really do.”
Not cruel. Just utterly adoring beyond comprehension.
You leaned in, kissing him again and again and each one ended longer than the last. He brought your hands back to his hair and encouraged a rougher grip. Jack’s tongue was the first to ask for silent permission to which you welcomed it with your own.
You couldn’t remember the last time you made out like teenagers on the couch.
And for ten minutes, you did only that.
Lips swollen and blood rushing in your body, there was something exhilarating about having waited so long to have sex this week. Five days wasn’t a world record for either of you but it felt like a necessary end to it.
Only you were expecting to feel something after ten minutes.
One of your hands slipped from his shoulders and entered the few inches of space between your bodies to grope him above his sweats. You had felt that simply being on top wasn’t enough—you would have felt his erection if you did—but this was the second time in three weeks that grinding on him didn’t work in getting him aroused.
Jack’s attention broke away from your lips and to your neck. His stubble grazed your skin with a roughness you’d only accept from his face. He lathered and sucked, teeth grazing your skin just enough to make you feel his desire through his lips.
As you met his groin, you felt the outline of his cock still limp between his spread legs. Gently trailing to the head, you molded your hand around it and rubbed to the base. Jack’s forehead fell to your shoulder and you couldn’t help but be satisfied, leaning your own into him.
Jack. Your Jack.
Your hand never stopped going. Slowly, you felt the minutes pass and you put more pressure in your grip and the air around Jack began to change. His kisses stopped, your fingers intertwined with his curls at the base of his head weren’t met with the same sighs, and his own hands loosened their grasp.
On the inside, Jack was having an existential crisis.
He knew it was going to happen.
It was the same goddamn thing from three weeks ago and he’d wrote it off as some kind of fluke. He was tired. He’d worn himself thin from a bad night and three weeks ago, sex wasn’t in the cards he’d been dealt. But now? Again?
Jack dug his forehead further into your shoulder to think—which was practically impossible for him to do in this state. Yet he tried. He thought back on any changes to his body and any signs he might have missed but the only possibilities he could think about were his age and his meds.
If it was his age, he was just about ready to croak off now. 50. Jack was only 50 fucking years old and he never imagined what the hell life would be like with erectile dysfunction at this age. He’d take it to his grave, he swore to God, but there was one other problem that he just couldn’t shake.
Those meds.
A switch from his therapist a few appointments ago to Zoloft, which was what he was supposed to be taking for years. But just like good medicine, sometimes finding the right balance was hard and it took time.
His therapist had warned him, right?
He was a doctor—of course he read the side effects of his pills. Right?
Right?
God. Jack could barely think for himself let alone think what the fuck was on the prescription label. He especially couldn’t think straight when you were on top of him, fingers carding through his curls and your chest pressed against his own.
Everything would be fine. Everything is fine.
It wasn’t fine. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him and when Jack Abbot’s internal alarm bells went off, anyone in a ten mile radius could hear them. All it took was one look, a not fully present kiss, and you knew something was amiss.
“Jack?” You murmured softly in his ear. He loved the feel of your breath; the warmth your body brought to his.
He swallowed hard. His jaw tensed as his chest shuddered in immediate nerves and your hands moved to cradle his face instead. Jack’s eyes avoided you like the plague, sticking to a spot over your shoulder in the direction of the tv.
“Yeah?” He barely whispered.
“Are you okay?”
Oh, goddamnit. Shit.
Everything was really not fucking fine.
He was falling apart. Jack couldn’t even look you in the eye because now he couldn’t have sex with his beautiful fucking wife and the world was basically ending.
“Yeah,” he barely squeaked out.
You saw through him and he could feel the pity in the way your thumbs rubbed softly on his cheeks.
“I think I need to use the bathroom,” he blurted out and discarded you to the side of the couch.
In his first attempt to stand, Jack struggled to gain momentum off the couch and the redness of embarrassment from another one of his problems inched up the back of his neck like a rash.
Holy shit, he thought. This is the worst day of my life.
He tried harder the second time to avoid your helping hands and rushed off to the bedroom, shutting the door so hard it reverberated throughout the house. Beelining for the sink, Jack’s hands strained the edges of it until his knuckles were white.
“What the fuck!” He scolded himself in a brash whisper. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”
This wasn’t happening to him. This was all a dream. A really, god awful, terrible, no good dream that would be over in a matter of minutes. He’d wake up, sun shining, and never deal with this again.
He slapped a hand across his face. It was not a fucking dream.
“Holy shit,” Jack’s words were now nothing but saddened, pathetic whimpering. “This is not fucking happening to me right now.”
From outside the door, you leaned against the frame and let him wallow. Those little blue pills in the back of the cabinet had been pushed away out of spite and this time, you knew he just needed to face the reality of his situation. But that reality was hard to fathom after a lifetime of one activity never having been a problem. He couldn’t have just this one thing?
Jack opened the cabinet and pulled out his Zoloft bottle. Unraveling the prescription label, his eyes raced down to side effects and right there “Erectile Dysfunction” laughed at him. He tossed the bottle in the sink.
“Jack?” You knuckles rapped against the door. “Are you alright in there?”
“Fine!” He replied too quickly.
“Can I come in?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’d rather you not.”
“You’re not gonna dump your meds are you?”
“No,” his tone was still sad. “That’s probably a bad idea.”
Jack could hear your hum. He imagined the look on your face and how you’d probably kick him to the curb now that he was completely defective.
“Jack, I think you need to talk to me about this.”
“No,” he drug out the word. “I don’t think so.”
“Honey.”
He said your name firmly in return.
“I’m coming in.” You didn’t give him any time because as soon as he got a syllable out, the door was open.
Jack’s eyes caught yours in the mirror.
“It’s okay, Jack.”
He shook his head. “It’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well that’s easy for you to say,” he couldn’t help the attitude that slipped out. “You don’t have a broken fucking dick.”
“I don’t have a dick but I do have a libido.”
“It’s not that, baby,” Jack sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to have sex. I do. Very badly, might I add. But it’s like this—” he pointed to his brain “—just doesn’t want to work and tell the other parts of my body to do their jobs.”
Your brows furrowed in concern. “Is it the nightmares again?”
“No.” He shook his head and realized that you didn’t fully grasp it because of two things: you weren’t in healthcare and you didn’t have PTSD like he did. “They’re fine. They’ve been fine.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me, Jack.”
You approached him, settling for resting your hand along his back and feeling his tense muscles underneath the fabric of his tee.
“A side effect of the meds,” he gestured weakly to the bottle in the sink. “I can’t get it up.”
“That’s one way to put it,” you mumbled and picked up the bottle.
“My doctor gave me—“ Jack didn’t want the words to form.
Your rubbed soothingly on his back. He loved you so much.
“What did he give you?”
Jack reopened the cabinet and shuffled items to the side before landing on a small white bottle with VIAGRA plastered in blue on the front. His stomach lurched at the thought of needing to take one. Jack held it tightly in his fist in a refusal to show you.
You saw the bottle immediately when he brought it home. Jack was never as sly as he thought he was. He tried hiding your engagement ring for six weeks before proposing but you found it the day after the purchase because he stuffed it the garage where he kept all the spare keys.
He just hadn’t thought that maybe you’d lock your keys inside of the house one day.
Still, he clutched onto the white bottle as though if he dropped it, his problem wasn’t real. He could keep trying. Maybe it would just take a little bit longer than normal but eventually, he’d get hard and you could sail smoothly into the night.
“Are you gonna show me?” You asked patiently.
“I don’t really want to.”
“I’m not embarrassed if you need to use one, you know?”
His eyes pinched closed. “I feel like a fucking failure.”
You exhaled deeply, placing your hand over his fist, and dipping your head to better look at him.
“Look at me, Jack.”
He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
“Jack,” you pressed once more. “Look at me.”
“This has never been a problem,” he said lowly. Jack’s tone lingered on disappointment but aired a frustration that sounded sexier than he meant it. “I don’t know why I can’t be normal in this one fucking way but of course not! Of course not. No… the goddamn leg just wasn’t enough. The stupid fucking depression and the nightmares and my joint pain isn’t enough!”
Jack rarely yelled. He bottled everything inside until it was ready to explode and it was just leaking out of him like a dam bursting.
“None of that is your fault,” you assured.
“What does it matter if it was?” He loosened the grip on the bottle and it rolled into the sink beside the Zoloft.
“Jack. I don’t care if we have sex tonight, okay? It’s not the end of the world for me.”
“It sure fucking feels like it for me.”
“I know it does,” you empathized. “But if you’re not ready to try the pills, then we don’t have to do anything. I can wait for you.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Jack whispered. “This is so inconvenient.”
“What would life be without them?”
He breathed in as your hand continued to rub his back and calm him down. Jack glanced down at the bottle, cursing the elephant in the room. He mumbled underneath his breath and even though you were standing beside him, you didn’t catch it.
“What?”
“It takes…” his words were muffled again.
“Are you having a stroke?” You asked honestly.
“No,” he heaved. “If I take one… it would take around an hour to work.”
“Okay,” you replied cautiously. It was his choice, you made that clear.
“And it’s not like… magical. Plus we had a whole bottle of wine with dinner and that might make it worse.”
“Trying to get hard or the erection?”
“Both?” He said like it was a question. He’s the doctor. He should know.
“If you wanted to try it, and it doesn’t work out, then you never have to use one again.”
Jack hummed. “I might have to eat you out for awhile.”
“Jesus,” you laughed. “Don’t try to be sly about it.”
His lips quirked into a small smile, one you’d missed seeing in his despair. Jack picked up the bottle and unscrewed the cap.
“I swear to God that if anything goes wrong, I will jump off the fucking roof.”
“You can’t say that,” you lamented. “You’re literally the last person who should joke about that.”
“I’m kidding.” He popped a pill into his mouth. “I can’t let you fall in love with someone else.”
“How kind of you to think about me.”
Jack flipped on the sink, cupped his hands under the faucet, and swallowed the pill in one gulp. There was no turning back now.
“Well?” You asked him as he wiped his mouth dry.
“Well what?”
“You want to finish what you started?”
He locked eyes with you in the mirror and opened his mouth to object to the statement. You climbed into his lap. You kissed him first. But he saw a glimmer of hope that maybe the little blue pill would be a good thing for the both of you tonight and forgot about it. Jack nodded instead.
“Get on the bed.”
Whatever the little blue pill did, it gave Jack an ounce of courage back and fuck, could you feel it.
Jack had been on you from the moment you laid down on the bed. In silence, he stripped off your clothes one by one and settled between your thighs ready to give. And for the past thirty minutes, you’d been close twice before he drew back and smiled at you as his cheek rested against your leg.
Every time he did, you had to look away.
He was so sweet. Jack, the man who does anything for anyone, looked at you like you held the moon.
You fought a grin by biting down on your lip and had your arm flying over your eyes to shield his own impenetrable stare from reaching you. And then his mouth was on you again, tongue lightly flicking your clit as he slipped two fingers inside.
You writhed, body shaking lightly in pleasure as his hands grew more firm around your thighs and minimized any distance between you. Jack figured if he could lay atop the mattress and grind into it that it would replace the need for you to jerk him off for five minutes, and he was right.
The combination of periodically rutting against the mattress, listening to your sweet sounds, and feeling you squeeze his fingers was sheer poison.
He curled his fingers up inside of you, sliding them in and out in the same direction until your moans turned into a whine that spelled out his name.
“Jack,” you breathed in heavily.
Your hand fell from your eyes and trailed over one of your breasts, squeezing it, pinching the nipple just hard enough before fanning out on the comforter. Jack removed his fingers to let his tongue sink lower, pushing into you softer and wetter than before. His mouth devoured you; a sickening slurp of his saliva and your wetness had your mouth falling open, silent in disbelief that not an hour ago, you didn’t think this was going to happen.
“S-shit, Jack.”
He slowed down, sparing a glance at your face before deciding to back off. His pointer finger replaced where his nose was grazing your clit. Jack pressed down there, moving in small circles as your hips moved with him.
“That feel good?” He asked softly.
“I think that fucking pill gave you superpowers,” you spat out fast. “Holy shit.”
“Magical” his ass. It was certifiably otherworldly.
“Might just have been a long time since we’ve done this.”
You agreed, moaning a “yeah” in reply.
“Sweetheart,” Jack said like a question. “I hate to do this to you…”
“What?” You sat up so quickly that you got a little dizzy. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Jack couldn’t hide his blush. There was no easy way to say “I’m hard now, let me fuck you” after having a meltdown.
His throat bobbed and you caught it.
“You ready?”
Jack nodded and you retuned it with a nod of your own. “Okay, yeah. Alright—”
“Why does this feel like I’m losing my virginity again?” He joked. His laugh barely sounded like one because the second he sat up on his knees, his erection was all he could look at.
Jack had never been embarrassed by his cock before.
“If this is how you lost your virginity, I’d be a little nervous,” you scoffed. “Sit back against the headboard.”
He didn’t argue with you which was a rarity it terms of control. Nothing was really in his control right now and it was making his anxiety shoot through the roof.
Jack shuffled back to the headboard and slipped off his shirt. He helped you pull down his sweats carefully and even though he didn’t feel like you had to be, he was grateful for your gentleness. At the sight of his prosthetic, you tipped your head knowingly at him.
“Why didn’t you take this off yet?”
“I forgot,” he feigned innocence.
“Mhm,” you judged and took it off for him. “Sure you did.”
With his prosthetic resting on the floor against the bedside table, you resumed your position in his lap and wrapped an arm around his shoulder while your free hand wrapped around him. You’d never been with someone who needed to take a Viagra before. Jack felt different and you knew how he felt in your hands.
His dick felt firmer—less like his own and more like one that was being controlled.
Your hand went from tip to base and back and he jolted.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “It’s like my nerves are on fire.”
“Does it feel bad?”
His nose brushed yours as he shook his head. Jack didn’t tell you to stop so you kept pumping him mildly.
“It feels really fucking good, actually.”
“Yeah?” You smiled.
“Yeah.”
Jack kissed you with everything he could muster. He gripped your bare hips tightly, sinking his fingers into your skin until he felt like you weren’t going to disappear. You put more tension in your fist and he groaned, precum escaping him and making your job easier.
“Do you feel like you’re ready?” You kissed him lazily, pulling on his bottom lip enough for it to bounce back.
He chased your lips. “What if—”
“Honey,” you soothed. “We’ll get there, okay?”
“Okay,” he accepted. He nodded, looking you in the eye and giving you the reassurance he also needed.
Lifting up in his lap, you guided him to your entrance and sunk down slowly. The feeling was overwhelming and you both needed time to adjust. Jack’s head fell back against the bed frame as far as he could go, clenching his jaw enough where the muscles strained on his face.
“You’re fine, Jack,” you cooed in his ear. Soft pants met his cheek as his hardness was unlike anything you’d experienced. “Breathe, baby.”
Your nails raked the base of his skull.
“Keep going,” he bit out. “You’re squeezing me so tight.”
“I guess we’ve both been ‘rejuvenated,’ huh?”
Jack wasn’t overly appreciative of your humor but you moved anyway, testing the waters of your bounces and grinds before settling into a rhythm that suited you. His cock stretched you wide and every time you sank back down, it was as though he never filled you in the first place. A spark of exhilaration bloomed. This was so different, so minutely different, that it felt new.
Jack’s hands groped your ass to help ease the strain on your thighs the longer you went. His lips swapped duties between connecting with yours and finding the skin of your neck, collarbone, and chest peppered with affection. Jack listened to your soft mewls. He soaked in the whispers of sweet nothings and the shaky gasps you couldn’t help.
He wanted you close.
Jack needed you to mold into him like he was showered in rain. He pulled you close; arms wrapped up around you so tight there was no escaping his embrace.
He nipped at your chin. Low and rough, Jack spoke to you. “I love you so much.”
Jack’s nose trailed up your cheek, bumping into yours and seeking your lips again.
“You have no idea how much I love you.”
“Jack,” you whined with a grin. A shake in your legs had him running his hands over your back, soothing you now instead.
“I know you’re ready, baby.
“Yeah,” you nodded. “I’m close.”
“What do you need from me?” He asked willingly.
You shook your head. “I-fuck, nothing. I just—”
Jack bent his knees the best he could and the angle his cock was hitting changed on a thrust. Deep and unforgiving, your fingernails dug into his skin hard. Jack murmured appreciation, egging you on to the finish line and neglecting himself.
You were too wrapped up in the feeling. The building of a week, the racing of your heart, to think for a second that he was nowhere near close to his orgasm.
“Come on, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
He felt the falter in your hips.
Your orgasm shook you from Heaven to Hell and back—even if believing it was hard to fathom. Jack’s hand flew to the back of your head, holding you into him as the aftershocks of muscle spasms lingered seconds after your breathing began to settle. You returned his kisses with your own against his neck and shoulder. The freckles on his body were reminders of all the places he had ever been kissed and you were adding to that—on top of ones that already existed, beside them, and in the spaces that laid empty of any.
He wouldn’t remember them in every lifetime but you liked to imagine that all of his freckles were kisses from you.
As your brain recovered from the fuzzy glow and you realized that Jack was still rock hard inside of you.
“Do you want me to—”
“No,” Jack cut you off. “No, it’s fine. It’s just… I think it takes time.”
“But now you haven’t even…” you trailed your response with a flick of your eyes downwards. “I can’t leave you like that.”
“Baby, it could take an hour.”
You glanced at the alarm clock on his side of the bed. The time read 11:47.
“We’ve got time.”
Jack shook his head. “I’m not gonna let you give me a handy for an hour.”
“Hey,” you tugged on his earlobe lightly. “I’ve got a mouth too.”
“It’s fine,” he reassured but you weren’t buying it. His mouth quirked to the side in thought. “Would you hate me if I asked you to clean up alone?”
You ran your thumb along his jawline.
“I could never hate you, Jack. I’ve lived this long, I think I can handle one less aftercare shower.”
“It makes me feel like an asshole.”
“You’re not. I promise you.”
Carefully, you lifted up from his lap and let him slip out. You avoided looking at him so he didn’t find another reason to be embarrassed about something that impacted millions of men—especially those who were on medication for concerns far more important than simply erectile dysfunction.
He watched you disappear into the bathroom and shut the door with a click before he put his pillow to his face and yelled into it.
The prescription tag read as follows:
Prolonged erection greater than 4 hours and priapism (painful erections greater than 6 hours in duration) have been reported infrequently since market approval of VIAGRA. In the event of an erection that persists longer than 4 hours, the patient should seek immediate medical assistance. If priapism is not treated immediately, penile tissue damage and permanent loss of potency could result.
Jack had to put his readers on to even see the label.
“… if priapism is not treated immediately, penile tissue damage and permanent loss…” he repeated the label back to himself to make sure he read it correctly.
His eyes flitted to his phone, touching the screen to light up a big 7:30 AM and a picture of both of your smiling faces beaming back at him.
This might not have been the actual worst day of his life but it was second.
His crutches clicked against the floor as he approached your side of the bed. He hated waking you up when you were clearly dead to the world. Laid face first into your pillow, he rested a hand on your back and shook you gently.
“Baby?”
You barely bristled. He repeated the action, calling out your name louder.
“Hm?” You grumbled in slight annoyance.
Jack shifted uncomfortably on the bed, wincing as he turned wrong and made his sweatpants tighter than they already were.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he started and realized how quickly those were the wrong words. You sat up abruptly, face twisted in concern as he tried not to cry from the pain his fucking dick won’t stop causing.
“What!?” You searched his face for an answer. “What happened!?”
“You gotta calm down.” Jack moved his arm to block your view.
“About what? What’s wrong?”
“I seem to be having a little… complication.”
Your brows furrowed. “A complication?”
Jack clicked his tongue with a nod. Your eyes darted down too obviously to his pants and back to his face. His erection was blatant. It practically waved at you from behind his arm.
“Does it have anything to do with that?” You said above a whisper. “Why do you have such bad morning wood?”
Jack groaned, again, completely at odds with himself.
“Remember when we had that bottle of red with dinner?” You nodded. “Well it turns out that sometimes while meds can cause the problem, mixing alcohol with the little blue pill causes… other problems.”
“And this can’t be solved with an orgasm?”
“Not after more than six hours.”
Your eyes bugged out of your head. “Six hours!? Jack, what the fuck!”
“I thought it was going to go away!”
You swiftly moved out of bed and shrugged on a sweatshirt. Jack watched you pilfer the room for socks and shoes and leggings and just sat there helplessly on the edge of the bed with his crutches one inch from sliding off of it. You didn’t say anything and that made it worse for him.
“I’m sorry,” Jack spoke up.
“What are you sorry for?” You opened his drawer and pulled out a fresh tee. “It’s not your fault.”
“It feels like it is.”
“Well it’s not, Jack. So stop apologizing and get your leg on.”
“I can’t bend over.”
You tossed the shirt to him. “We’re going in.”
“Where?”
“The ED.”
“No,” he said with a nervous laugh. “No the fuck we are not.”
“You say that like you have a choice, Mr. Abbot.” Oh. He didn’t like that. “Turns out that doctors are truly the worst patients. Your night shift is gone, Robby’s gotta be—”
“I am not letting Robby see me like this.” The thought repulsed him so badly that it made his skin crawl.
“Then someone else will help us,” you clarified. “The longer we wait the worse I’ll assume it will be for you. I’m not driving you to Presby or Mercy when I know the ones that can help you the best.”
“I’ll never live this down.” His eyes filled with ashamed tears and every now and then, you’d seen Jack down on his luck.
A terrible shift, a long week, anniversaries he’d rather not have… but he stared at you from the bed and he looked so small. His salt and pepper hair was flat from restless sleep and the scruff on his face couldn’t hide the jumble of thoughts pouring out of him. You moved to stand in front of him, grasping his face between two hands, and forcing him to look you in the eye.
“You are the strongest, most resilient man I have ever met. You’ve taken care of me more times than I can count and now, it’s my turn to help you the best way I know how. This is bad now, yeah… it is,” you nodded in agreement, “but it’s not forever. After this, you’ll call your therapist and tell him what happened and we will try again when things are better.”
A tear steamed down his cheek and you wiped it away with your finger.
“It’s okay to be embarrassed, honey.”
“I’m gonna make this up to you,” Jack settled. “I promise.”
“Okay.” You didn’t need him to. However, if it made him feel better, sure. Your hands tapped his face twice before letting go. “Let’s go, Soldier.”
The PTMC Emergency Room wasn’t an unfamiliar sight, but it wasn’t one you frequented.
It bustled with far too much chaos and while your own career had its fair share, there was something about Jack’s place of work that made you feel ill just looking at it. Death, hurt, pain, and suffering wrapped up in four walls, some windows, and doors.
And now Jack sat outside of it in a wheelchair because he refused to go in on his crutches.
“Just go in and tell Dana I’m out here.”
“Someone is going to have to come and get you anyway, so just come with me.”
Jack begged, “please.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Luckily, Dana was talking with a young nurse at the hub when the ambulance bay doors opened wide. You kept in a straight line to her, not distracted by the sounds and the yelling coming from one of the many rooms. Dana was halfway through a sentence when she glanced over her shoulder and did a double take.
“Hey stranger,” she beamed. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
The young nurse beside her, Emma, smiled at you in the awkward way you did when you didn’t know someone’s friend.
“Hi Dana,” you greeted.
“Jack’s not here,” her eyes questioned you. Jack had been scheduled off for the next couple days so there was no telling where he’d be other than at his house.
“Well,” you let out a loose, barely amused chuckle, “funny you should say that.”
“Is he okay?”
“Not really… I just—we just—need this on the down low, alright? He really doesn’t want anyone to know he’s here.”
She nodded understandingly and grabbed an iPad from the counter. “Where is he?”
“Out in the ambulance bay. I put him in a wheelchair.”
“Should I get Robb—”
“No!” You said loudly and shook your head. “God, no. Sorry.”
Emma jumped at the sound and her eyes darted to the bay. “Can I help?”
Your face scrunched. Jack would rather not traumatize a new nurse so early in the shift.
“Is Donnie around? Or Dr. Al-Hashimi?”
“Yeah.” Dana patted Emma on the shoulder. “Go get ‘em and we’ll put Dr. Abbot in Room 7.”
Dana rounded the hub and put a hand on your shoulder. As she stepped further away, she pressed about the situation.
“You know, you two aren’t getting any younger. You can’t go at it like rabbits.”
“Dana,” you scolded with a smile. “That’s—that’s not it.”
“What happened?”
All that was needed to be said were three little words:
“Little blue pill.”
Jack heard the hiss of the ambulance bay open and Dana walked up to him with a laugh buried in her throat. Jack was wearing a hat and glasses like a superhero in disguise and his backpack flipped over so no one could see the name angled in his lap.
“Don’t fucking say it, Evans. Don’t.”
“I’m not!” She held up her hands in defense.
“Dana said she’s gonna help. No one needs to know.”
You grabbed his crutches off the wall and followed closely as Dana wheeled him into Room 7 and pulled the curtains. She left still fighting amusement as Donnie entered with Baran.
“Dr. Abbot,” she said fondly. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
“I think we both had different ideas about how today would go.”
Jack took off his glasses and hat, passing them off to you. The bag stayed lumped in his lap.
“So, what brings you in today?”
There was a second of silence and then:
“I seem to have a bit of a… priapism problem.”
Baran’s eyes widened and Donnie hesitated putting on his second glove.
“And how long has the erection lasted?” Jack hated how she pronounced the word loud and clear. He looked at you, shrugging for a loose approximation of time.
“Maybe around… since 11 or so?” You informed.
“So somewhere around 8 hours?” She asked and motioned for Donnie to put the bed rails down. “Does that seem accurate?”
You both nodded. Donnie wheeled Jack over to the bed and he hesitated, looking at you to help him instead. You handed Jack his crutches and as he stood, both Donnie and Baran tried to be respectful and looked away from Jack’s body.
“Dr. Abbot, I’m going to have to ask you some questions about your medical history, medications, and so forth. Is that okay with you?”
“I think you can just call me Jack now,” he grunted as he shuffled onto the bed.
“Can you tell me what medications you take?”
“I-uh, take um, 100 mg of Zofolt, 3 mg of Prazosin for sleeping, and Cyclobenzaprine as needed, 5 mg three times a day, but I haven’t needed it lately.”
“And for the priapism problem?” She slipped on her own gloves.
“I took one Viagra.”
“Have you taken one before?”
“No,” Jack admitted. “My therapist changed one of my medications to Zoloft two months ago and ordered it as a precaution.”
Baran nodded in understanding and as she sat down on a stool and rolled closer, Jack’s hand shot out to yours and squeezed tightly.
“Did he explain the side effects of taking those medications together?”
“Yes,” Jack recalled. “But we must have had… three glasses of wine last night and I’m pretty certain that’s the reason it won’t go away. A reaction, if you will.”
“You’re not wrong.” She smiled at him kindly, then to you.
“How long have you been married? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“Six years,” you told her. “And it seems we’re always finding something new to experience together.”
“It’s a good thing,” Baran assured. “Imagine living a life where it’s normal and boring all the time. At least you’ll be able to laugh about it later.”
Her eyes found Jack’s and he knew she needed to look at him more closely.
“What happens in this room, Dr. Abbot, stays in this room. Got it?”
He nodded and focused on a spot across the wall as Donnie hovered behind Baran. Your hand covered his, rubbing gentle circles to ease the discomfort.
“Was this a special occasion or something?” Donnie asked Jack. “Or just a regular Saturday night for you two?”
“Just a Saturday night,” he said shyly. Jack, being bashful? You relished it.
“I gotta say Doc, your wife’s a lucky woman. Who knew Dr. Abbot hit the genetic lottery.”
The blush that overtook his body was a deeper red than his penis. Your hand flew to your mouth, covering the choked laugh before it could escape but Donnie was grinning like the Cheshire Cat and keeping it in was practically impossible. Baran bit down on her tongue.
But Jack knew how to bite back too. “If your idea of the genetic lottery is a guy with 1.75 legs, then sure. Whatever floats your boat.”
“Okay.” Baran finished her inspection.
“I have a feeling this isn’t a cold compress kind of procedure,” Jack wished.
Baran shook her head.
“We’re going to need to aspirate.”
Jack was back on his crutches after an hour with a soreness that would last hours.
“I don’t think I need to tell you what you can and cannot do in the next 24 hours,” Baran opened up the curtain and immediately Jack locked eyes with Dana.
“No, you don’t.”
“Maybe also speak to your therapist about the prescription the next time you go?”
Jack gave you a closed mouth smile. “I already heard that from this one.”
“She knows what she’s talking about it seems,” Baran nodded in approval.
The door opened up and Donnie held it for Jack to escape from. The RN held out his fist, asking Jack wordlessly to bump it.
Jack obliged.
“My man,” Donnie grinned. He slapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder before walking to a computer.
“I’m never filling in for day shift again, ever,” Jack told you over his shoulder.
“All good, Jack?” Dana asked from the hub as you both passed by.
“Never better.” Jack kept going towards the door.
“Thanks Dana for your help,” you said appreciatively. “If he never tells you, he’s thankful too. And I’m sure it won’t happen again.”
The doors to Trauma Bay 2 opened with a whoosh. Jack, still on the slow run on his crutches out of the ED never looked back, but Robby caught sight of him as he sanitized his hands.
“Woah!” He exaggerated. “What’s Jack doing here?”
“He’s going home,” Dana informed and you gave a small wave to Jack’s work wife. He hated when you called Robby that but it didn’t make it any less true.
“Just a little accident.”
“Jack!” Robby called after him but Jack didn’t care.
“Adios! Goodbye!” He said your name loudly followed by a “hurry up!”
You tapped the counter. “Sorry. The princess needs a ride home.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to call him that,” Robby laughed.
“It’s the least of his problems right now.”
They watched you trail behind your husband who, once through the second door, turned and waited for you patiently. You kissed him gently before walking out of view and inside of the PTMC, the world continued to turn.
Robby looked at Dana with a question and Baran walked away before he could ask her anything remotely related to Jack. But Donnie… Donnie just can’t keep anything to himself.
He turned to Robby in his swivel chair.
“Did you know Abbot’s packin’ heat down there?”
A/N: i wrote this straight over three days after not writing for about a year. crazy how that works, huh?
i hope the twitter divas find this.
comments, reblogs, and likes are appreciated! it keeps us writing!
a loose sequel has been posted: the heart skips a beat
date night gets interesting when robby unknowingly interrupts yours and jack’s dinner with a date of his own—and no one is more nosy than the Abbots.
contents: smut, references to erectile dysfunction (i couldn’t help myself, sorry), being lil judgy and sexy together 🫶, a whole lotta fluff and smut tbh, lighthearted bullying of robby (he deserves it sometimes).
[jack abbot x fem!reader; wc: 6.0k ]
masterlist | other jack abbot fics
The restaurant was crowded for a Tuesday night.
Clinking glasses and consistent chatter, it would have been easy to get lost in the noise but when Jack was in front of you, smiling with those eyes that never seemed to leave you, it was practically impossible to be distracted by anything but him.
“…So Henderson came around looking around for an attending and of course—” Jack gestured to himself proudly and you scoffed over the rim of your glass.
“How humble of you.”
“Of course.” You motioned for him to continue, biting the side of your lip to disguise the effect of his charm.
“He takes me to this guy, maybe thirty years old, who can’t sit down. The reason? He lost a bet and shoved a piece of wood up his asshole.”
“Jesus, Jack!” You shushed. Your eyes darted around to the surrounding tables. “We’re in public!”
“And I’m a doctor,” he replied casually. “Things happen. I can’t keep them bottled inside or I’ll implode. Besides, this was like… a ‘you need to know this kind’ of thing.”
You lifted your glass again to wash the taste of his story out of your mouth. “I think I want to be left out of the ‘need to know’ from now on. Save that discussion for Dr.—”
Just as you felt the wine hit your tongue enough to muffle his therapist’s name, you caught a figure over Jack’s shoulder. Tall and unmistakable, the wine shot out from your lips and back into the glass like a waterfall.
“Holy shit,” you mumbled.
“What?” Jack asked concerned. His hand flashed across the table, clattering with your utensils. “What’s wrong?”
“Robby.” You coughed, “He’s on a date. Here.”
Jack’s neck careened in question as if he didn’t catch your words. You tried not to bring attention to the table, muffling your coughs with a napkin, and Jack took the glass from your hand carefully.
“He didn’t say anything at rounds this morning.”
“I’m not kidding.” You put the napkin back down. “He’s literally right there. Did you tell him we were coming here?”
“No.” Jack shook his head. He spared a fraction of a second to glimpse over his shoulder and clock Robby and his date near the host stand at the front of the restaurant.
Goddamn. Perlah was right. The rumors, which he had always taken with a grain of salt, were true.
“I thought he wasn’t dating anymore.”
Jack shrugged. “Every time he dumps someone he swears it off. But he’s a shit liar and gossip spreads fast whenever he makes eyes at someone.”
Your face curled in aversion of Robby’s romantic life. Just the thought of him… yeah, it made you want to seek out therapy too.
Michael Robinavitch was a serial dater—or, a serial wine, dine, and “leave someone behind” type of guy. Nothing ever worked out for him and you were always glad to give him a list of things to work on when he and Jack watched a Steeler’s game in the garage.
You’d seen it hundreds of times. Well, maybe not hundreds of times but enough for you and Jack to both come to the conclusion that Robby was never going to be one to marry. It wasn’t in his cards because he made stupid decisions and you, more than Jack, felt terrible for the women who fell into Robby’s little trap.
But you were a woman. There were some things that even if Jack tried his absolute best to understand, he wouldn’t be able to.
“So the woman is…?” You asked curiously.
As they stood behind rows of tables and decor, Robby and his date conversed differently than you and Jack did. It was new, a little nervous, and complete with a layer of discomfort anyone with a soul could feel 20 feet away. The uneasiness of their stature didn’t surprise you in the slightest. After a certain age, what people expected out of dating wasn’t the same as if they were young and without commitments. Robby had a million of them, you’re sure the woman did too, and that’s a tricky path to navigate.
“Noelle Hastings,” Jack said flatly before grabbing a piece of bread from the basket at the center. He ripped it in half and handed you one.
You took it without thought. “Who is…? Jack, you gotta be more specific here.”
“She’s a nurse—more often a case manager of insurance cases that fall through. She’s a rain cloud in a suit but works a lot of days so I don’t see her much.”
“High praise,” you droned and he sighed, chewing hard on the bread.
“One of the day shift nurses said it’s been goin’ on for a while.”
“And he didn’t tell you?”
Jack shook his head. The glass of water in front of him was suddenly more interesting than the conversation and you quirked a brow. His morose imitation of disappointment was cute.
Maybe they weren’t really good friends, he thought disappointedly. Was he really going to be stuck with his friends at the VA, some first responders, and the six elderly women who harassed him, sweetly, at the YMCA?
He didn’t even want to think about the women of your once-a-month book club.
He didn’t need to read about hockey players who fucked and World War II nurses who fell in love with soldiers.
You had a soldier right in front of you. You could just live out those fantasies with him instead.
“Are you upset that he didn’t tell you he was dating again?” You asked him and Jack pursed his lips in annoyance.
“No.”
“Yes,” you corrected with a chuckle.
“I think it’s a dick move not to tell your best friend that you’re dating someone.”
“Just like it was a dick move to not tell him about your little blue pill incident?” You pried with a smile and he met your eyes in a flash. Jack’s finger pointed at you accusingly.
“Hey now,” he warned. “I’m drinking water on purpose this time for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to, honey. I’m only joking.”
“That’s unconvincing.”
“Okay, soothsayer.” You grinned, elbows on the table and chin resting against your locked fingers. “You think you know everything? Let’s play a game then.”
“Baby, this was supposed to be a nice dinner.”
“A game won’t ruin it.”
Jack breathed in hard. He loved the dramatics; acting like the world was going to fall to pieces if he wasn’t one hundred percent present in the moment. It was a game, not a blindfolded eating contest where he’d accidentally eat a bug instead of his steak.
“What kind of game?” He settled instead.
“Better strangers.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a why.”
“I don’t really want to imagine whatever the fuck Robby is talking about just to get into that woman’s pants,” Jack explained but it was choppy and his eyes bounced around the tables behind you rather than look directly at you.
“You’re so jealous, Mr. Abbot,” you gave a playful accusation. “They’re being sat—should I call them over? Let them join date night instead?”
Jack’s fingers dug into his eyes. “Why are you such a menace today? After all I do for you?” His tone lifted. “And what happened to Doctor? I’ll also option Staff Sergeant or Professor—for your choosing, of course.”
“Jack,” you lamented. “You worked two doubles and two SWAT shifts this week. I’m allowed to be a pest.”
Touché.
He was the one who made the reservation to make up for his absence in the first place. Jack knew, he always did, when he wasn’t being the A+ worthy husband he should be. It was a casualty of his species, or, perhaps just his sanity, but he knew what to do to make you feel wanted when his career shifted things around.
“Fine. We can play.”
“Kinky, Dr. Abbot,” you winked. “Just beware. They’re sat in a booth—” you counted the tables with your eyes “—seven tables away.”
“Well it’s not like I’m gonna scream Robby’s fictional conversation across the room.”
You picked up another piece of bread and repeated what Jack had done before.
“Save the screaming for later. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
“Now who just said that in a public place?” Jack tipped his head to the side, accepting the air kiss you sent hurling in his direction as a result.
“You know it’s true.”
“Yeah,” he murmured lowly. Jack’s eyes crinkled at their sides, appreciating the light he’s caught you in at the moment.
Robby’s presence couldn’t ruin date night. It was an intrusion into your bubble, sure, but Jack would swim through a million Robby’s to reach your shore and he would play a thousand silly games with you to hear you laugh. If you wanted to make shit up about Robby and Noelle? Fuck it. He did too.
“So…” you tapped your fingers on the table. “What do you think they did before they got here?”
Jack sipped on his water in consideration. “I think Robby worked until 7 but she got off a little earlier or didn’t work today. He showered at work, brought his stupid sweater with him, and picked her up on the way here.”
“Solid choice.”
“How do you think they met?” He asked you.
“Work, obviously,” you said, matter-of-fact.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jack snickered. “I meant… romantically.”
“I think someone set them up on a blind date. Maybe someone from her side of the hospital—not someone from the ED.”
Jack nodded and caught the server returning to your table with your dinners in hand. Over Jack’s shoulder, you watched the back of Robby’s head turn to their own server and order drinks.
You didn’t think for a second that your constant glancing in their direction would be an issue.
With thanks, the server left you both to eat but the questions kept going.
“Alright.” You halved the portion of hericots verts on your plate and scooped them onto Jack’s one-note plate. “Why do you think they’re at this same restaurant, right here, right now?”
Jack ate one of the beans first. “Destiny.”
“That’s a lame answer.”
“I thought it was transcendent and that’s your opinion.”
“You really think it’s destiny? To be at the same place as his very annoying, very married, friends?”
“He might have a problem with himself getting married but I don’t think he hates hanging out with us. It’s like a little family of sorts.”
“Ah yes,” you awed. “The child I never wanted to have: Michael Robinavitch.”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied truthfully this time. “It’s a pretty popular place and not far from our work so I think it was probably out of convenience. Do you think he’s in love with her?”
You laughed, audibly, and not quietly. Eyes flicking back to the booth and accidentally catching Noelle’s gaze at the same time.
It didn’t change your answer.
“Fuck no.”
“I agree,” Jack smiled. “Fuck no.”
“But I’ll give him a chance,” you admitted, sipping on your drink. “He deserves to be happy with someone… even if it’s hard to imagine.”
Jack cut a piece of his steak and held his fork out to you. “What do you think they’re talking about?”
“Work.” You eyed the piece of meat to see if it was cooked enough but you should have known Jack would have cut up his entire dish to find the one piece you’d eat.
“Boring,” Jack heckled.
“Were you not talking about a piece of wood up someone’s—” you motioned with your fist “—you know?”
“That’s different.”
Your eyes narrowed in a challenge. “Not really, honey. It’s basically the exact same thing.”
“Well it’s different because we’re married. And when you’re married, you can talk about boring stuff.”
Now your eyes rolled. Jack smirked, cutting up another piece for himself.
“I wish I knew that when you talked about MREs.”
“You wound me,” Jack quipped. He popped the steak into his mouth and chewed when you came back with:
“No—an IED did that for me.”
He just about choked.
“Careful,” you warned him casually. The light glint in your eye didn’t disappear. “You can’t die on me yet. We have plans later.”
“What the fuck happened to the game?” He asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “Why am I catching these strays, baby?”
“Catching strays? Did you learn that from the kids at your work?”
“They’re like twenty-two,” Jack corrected. “And yeah, I did. I think I used it correctly.”
“Mhm,” you hummed and finished off your wine. “What do I think they’re talking about? My answer hasn’t changed: work.”
“Still boring.”
“Agreed.” You nodded.
A quiet lull met the table as the food became more important. For all the nights you had to eat alone, having Jack present was a gift enough. He silently invaded your space. Filling every nook until shapes of him left indents in places he hadn’t existed before—at the kitchen table, on the couch, a second toothbrush in the holder, and a dip on his side of the bed.
As you ate, your gazes would meet across the table for brief moments in time.
No one ever looked at you like Jack did. Whatever he was feeling, you saw it in the curve of his eyes. The lines, as they stretched in pleasure and listened to you animatedly talk about anything, grew in adoration the longer you were together.
You imagined by the time you are old and the wrinkles have overtaken what you looked like in the present, Jack would still see you in the same light.
And not everyone is that lucky.
Jack cleared his throat and reached out his left hand onto the table top. You grabbed it as his thumb ran back and forth over your knuckles.
“Sorry about picking up the extra shifts.”
Two doubles. Two SWAT shifts in one week.
“Sometimes I don’t realize that I’m even doing it,” he admitted.
“I just want my husband home, Jack,” you squeezed his hand. “I think you need to start putting your schedule on the fridge.”
“Maybe… do you think Robby ever apologizes for not being a great… partner?”
“Oh hell no,” you amused. “He’s never apologized for anything in his life.”
“No he has not.” Jack agreed with a grin. “But really, sweetheart. I’m sorry about that.”
Your heart skipped a beat. “I love you, you know that?”
“I think you’ve told me once or twice.”
“Possibly a few times more.”
“Yeah,” he hummed. “I love you too.”
Seven tables away, Noelle Hastings was trying not to overthink on her fourth date with Robby.
Her hands folded over her napkin thrice in two minutes and as they waited for their beverages, she couldn’t help but feel the nerves of dating begin to catch up to her. Robby had been nothing but a gem—different from what she had heard and seen around PTMC and unexpected, based on the looks she’d been getting the last few weeks whenever she stepped foot into the ED.
Noelle took in the restaurant. She observed the people in the room to calm herself down—people watching, it was easy. She could imagine their lives and not focus so heavily on her own before she spiraled completely.
There was a gaggle of friends in a booth on the opposite side of the room chatting animatedly; an elderly pair of sisters catching up at a table in the center of the room, and then, a pair she couldn’t stop looking at.
The first thing she noticed was the smile on the woman’s face. Noelle was never the most confident in her abilities to read exactly what people wanted, but she knew what it was like to be in love and to feel it in every ounce of your body. She knew the ways in which a smile could stretch across a face, blurring your vision during fits of laughter. Noelle knew when a woman leaned across a table to take the hand of her lover’s in hers—only to press a kiss into his palm and bring it back down—was something only those truly at peace with their adoration did.
And she couldn’t stop staring.
The ring on the woman’s finger glinted every time she talked. Occasionally, also with a knife waving around unknowingly—to which the partner (the assumed husband) would try very hard to make her put down. Noelle glanced down at her own barren finger and wondered if that would ever be her fate if she kept chasing men like Robby.
“You alright?” Robby asked her after fifteen minutes of spotty conversation.
Noelle nodded, straining a wry smile. “Yeah, fine. Just tired.”
Robby accepted the excuse. “Shifts have been long lately?”
“Very. It doesn’t make for great conversation though. I’d rather not go over the mountains of Medicare paperwork sitting on my desk right now.”
“I don’t blame you.” Robby shook his head, picking up his glass and holding it out to her to toast.
“To a week done and a… weekend free of distractions.”
Their glasses clinked softly in the space around them. As Noelle drank, her eyes strayed from Robby again and landed back to the table of the married pair but as she looked, the woman caught her eye and lost it in an instant.
“You know,” Robby started. “I’m not really believing you when you said everything was fine.”
“It is. I just—nothing. It’s fine. Truly, it is.”
“Then why do you keep looking everywhere else but at me?”
Noelle looked at the table again, catching the woman’s sight another time before Robby followed the trail. Like a hound on a scent, he turned around, arm perched on the back of his booth seat, and fell on the table of Noelle’s attention.
“Oh, fuck.”
Noelle’s face dropped. “Do you know her?”
Robby turned back around and ran a hand over his beard. His head wobbled from side to side before deciding on the easiest way to answer.
“Yes, I know her,” he said slowly.
“Okay,” she nodded just as deliberately. “And is this like an… ex-girlfriend situation or…”
“Oh no,” Robby blurted. “Hell no. I would never—she’s,” he laughed “I would be six feet under if I even had an inkling of a thought about her.”
“Well she keeps looking over here, so.”
Robby glanced back over at you and Jack.
“See the man she’s with?” Noelle acknowledged it. “That’s her husband—Dr. Abbot, from the night shift.”
“Oh,” Noelle said. “The Abbots, then.”
“Mhm. And from where they’re sitting, they’re probably just as confused.”
“Confused about what?”
“You see, Jack there, he’s a friend. A good friend. Maybe my best friend but I don’t know… you know I don’t have a ton of those. I told him that I wasn’t looking for anyone right now because I didn’t want him to—”
“Know about us?” She finished for him.
Robby agreed with a bob. “Yep.” He popped the ‘P’ and drew his finger around the lip of his scotch glass.
“If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t told anyone about us either.” It did make him feel better.
“Do you mind if I?” Robby gestured with his thumb to your direction.
“Are you going to ask them to join our dinner?” Noelle asked jokingly. Robby’s mouth quirked but he ignored it because of course not. The last fucking thing he wanted was for you and Jack to start interrogating him about his love life.
He had married friends. He had married co-workers. But you and Jack? Together? It was like he was handling a live grenade and if it went off, half of it was for the amusement of you both and the other was out of spite for his… lackluster history.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Shit, Jack,” you sputtered. “I think Robby saw me.”
Jack put his fork down and rose his eyebrows. “You weren’t being very subtle, baby. Every five seconds you’re looking over there.”
“I was trying to be,” you explained.
“Let me just—”
From your peripheral, Robby slid out of the booth and straightened out his sweater before pivoting on his feet and walking toward your direction.
“—he’s coming over here.” You gave Jack a giant smile. “Do I have anything in my teeth? Jack.” He wasn’t looking fast enough. “Teeth?”
Jack squinted, barely able to see a speck of anything because of the lighting—he had to pull out his readers to even read the menu. “No you’re fine.”
“Robby?” You feigned innocence, dazzlingly him with a toothy grin. “What a small world.”
“Hey!” Jack played it off too. Fairly well, you thought. He could have been an actor. “What are you doin’ here?”
Robby’s eyes bounced between you and Jack. He thought it was slightly hilarious how, even though he’d caught you staring, that the niceties and horror-like smiles the two of you were giving were cute.
“Oh you know,” he started, “just on a date.”
“Really?” You gasped, suddenly interested and Jack kicked you under the table with his bionic foot. “You’re dating again?”
Robby shrugged. “Here and there.”
“Well good for you. Really.”
“I came over here because—” he cleared his throat and dipped his head as he stepped closer to the table, “—you’re being really fucking weird to my date.”
You scoffed, seeking out Jack who sat back against his chair casually. Your eyes shrunk in distrust that he was going to make you fend for yourself.
“Please. I was just shocked to see you, that’s all.”
“And you, Jack?” Robby asked.
“I didn’t even know you were here,” Jack said and you kissed your teeth.
“Really?” Robby laughed. “That’s funny.”
“A small world after all.”
“Alright, alright.” Robby didn’t believe either of you. You two were also shitty liars. “Actually, Jack, I’ve been meaning to ask you about something anyway. I heard it a few months ago and I just never got around to it.”
Jack glimpsed at you in caution.
“Yeah, brother, what’s up?”
Robby glanced at you, quirking his head to decide whether or not it was worth it. “You know what… nevermind.”
“You sure?” Jack asked with a critical stare.
Robby thought on the rumors he’s heard and the uncontrollable embarrassment that would follow Jack. The man would be mortified to have those words, the idea of him exposed for the sake of Robby’s pettiness.
“It’s nothin’ that can’t wait until next shift.”
“That’s in a few days.”
“Still,” Robby said. “It can wait.”
“So a co-worker?” You asked Robby not meaning to be overly judgmental. “Again.”
“And you’d rather see me with one of your reading friends, huh?” Robby observed dryly.
“Not sure.” You placed your napkin onto the table beside your finished meal. “I just think that someone outside of the field might give you peace of mind.”
“Well, maybe if you met her, your perspective might change.”
Robby looked back over his shoulder at Noelle and gave her a tight smile. Jack shook his head, disbelief washing over him at Robby’s assumption that this one will stick.
“You gonna let her eat by herself or do you wanna pull up a chair?” Jack wondered aloud.
“I just want to make sure that our… business won’t be intruded upon.”
“Business?” You couldn’t help the laugh that came out. “Shit, Robby. Do not call her ‘business’ ever. You’ll never get her to come out with you again.”
“And how did Jack get you to go out with him more than once, let alone marry him?”
Now he was just being petty.
“Have you seen him?” You feigned trivial spite. “He could be mute and still have more charisma than you.”
“I think we see Jack in two different lights.”
“Jack is right here,” Jack spoke up. “Please include said man in your conversations. And I bagged her, she didn’t bag me, brother. A good man knows that.”
Jack sent a wink tumbling into your direction and you felt your cheeks warm.
“You two are… something.”
“We’ll leave you alone,” you told Robby. “We’re almost done here anyway.”
“Thank you,” Robby said half-heartedly.
“Now go back to her. She’s probably more bored than she was before,” Jack waved him off.
Robby retreated back to his table and Noelle gave him a coy face as they settled back into their date and you and Jack made amends with the end of half of yours.
“And that’s why we don’t play games at dinner,” Jack followed Robby’s absence with.
“Oh, please,” you mourned with a flair. “Don’t act like you didn’t like getting to knock him down a peg.”
“I’d much rather—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Dr. Abbot.” You warned.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Maybe it’s time to leave, huh?” You pushed your plate further away from the edge. “Move on to something…new.”
“Yeah?” Jack said wisely. “Got any ideas?”
“A few.”
He dug into the pocket of his dinner jacket and flipped open his wallet before the check had been printed. Jack’s mind began to wander to a million different places, impatient to make it to the car and speed home for the sake of his own wants.
“What if we just dine and dashed?” He asked seriously.
“And be banned here forever? I can already see the headline: local veteran flees establishment for sex.”
“They don’t know it’s ‘for sex,’ though.”
Your eyebrows lifted in incredulity. “Sure, Jack. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“I think we will both sleep very well.”
“Is that a challenge?” You asked him, leaning forward on your elbows.
Absentmindedly, Jack rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt and your eyes locked onto his arms immediately. Anyone else there, Robby and his date, be dammed. What the fuck were you thinking? A game to guess whatever Robby was talking about when you had a fucking feast of a husband right in front of you?
Dipshit. You scolded yourself the more time he took rolling the fabric over each crease.
Jack nodded lightly. His head barely moved.
“I’ll have you out like a light by ten.”
You short circuited for a second. A glitch in your matrix running scattered, barely coherent thoughts by your brain.
“Where the hell is our server?”
It had taken Jack a long time to love his body after he came home. Though it had been many years and he’d come to accept that his memory of self would never be the same, when he was naked beside you, there was nothing to protect him from his thoughts.
And after the many attempts at trying the little blue pill? He performed sporadically and each time was a shot in his armor already scuffed with damage.
Yet you held his face in your hands so gingerly that it paved over the cracks in his facade. It helped build him up, strengthening his conviction that he was still worthy to be the man who pleased you and was able to satisfy you in the end.
A softness in your countenance made the muscles in his back contract. You felt him tense beneath your fingertips, the sides of his torso drawing rigid. You loved so deeply. It poured from every ounce of you but most in the way you looked at Jack. He witnessed you in vulnerability; the sheen of sweat on your forehead a testament to it. Your eyes flicked down between your bodies and he grunted as your reflex made your walls constrict around him.
Your breath hitched. Hands sliding from the sides of Jack’s face to his neck, pulling him in closer until one inch more would contort your view. His gaze turned hooded. The side of his mouth pulled, lines forming as he thought about you and nothing but you.
Jack’s pace picked up, challenging himself and his position. Leg be dammed—he’d deal with the soreness later. He pressed his thumb in the spot behind your ear; the joint of your jaw moving it as your mouth fell open softly, a whine he hadn’t heard in awhile meeting the audible thwop of his cock thrusting into you. It was an obscenity he’d welcome time and again so long as it meant he could feel you like this, have you between his hands, and loving him all at once.
“Shit,” you let out a quiet, warm laugh that tickled his face. “Holy shit, Jack.”
He kissed the side of your mouth and let his lips linger there.
Your chest blossomed with tenderness that nearly hurt. You loved him. You loved the curls on his head and the way his heart burned with empathy; his drive to keep moving forward amidst nights where his memories consumed every bone in his body. Jack was unyielding in his support of you and God, you could feel it in the way he moved.
“Keep breathing, love,” he whispered.
A hand fell down to grasp his forearm hovering above your chest. Small indents of crescent shaped moons met his graying hairs and defined veins before smoothing out. Your hand was damp with toil, seeking to mark him with remnants of you he’d never want to wash away.
His voice was honeyed around words of soft reassurances. Jack’s eyes rarely left yours when so vulnerable. Even when your body was arching into his, chasing after a high only he could help you reach, he watched you and your lips and your sighs.
His teeth pulled back on his bottom lip as he drank you in. And before he even realized he had let go, your hand was splayed against his jaw, thumb gliding over the same lip.
Jack leaned forward, pushing his mouth against yours. You opened up for him without him needing to ask. His tongue slipped against yours, pulling a sound from you that the heavens created just for his ears. Jack took the your hand resting against his face and guided it back to the pillow above your head. His fingers slotted between yours as he slowed down his hips, rocking his cock into you as deeply as it could go.
“Oh fuck,” you careened. Eyes fluttering and rolling with your head tipped back against the pillow.
Jack’s free hand slinked from your head to between your breasts to your clit where it settled with pressure. He bobbed his head at you, urging you to continue down that path.
“Baby,” he said lilted. “I got you. I got you.”
“Ja—” you started but he nodded as though he knew what you were going to say. His fingers moved fast and rough with the help of the lube that left its residue around you.
“You’ve got me too, yeah?” Jack said lowly and it vibrated within your bones.
“Of course,” you exhaled.
Jack’s muscles trembled in an effort to hold himself back because he knew you weren’t there yet. He felt your toes curl in as they brushed the back of his legs. Your left leg dug into the mattress behind the clean line of what existed before and the other into his thick calf.
His voice continued barely above a whisper. “God, I fucking love you. So much. I love you so fucking much.”
Maybe it was the tone, or combination of his hands and his unrelenting pace but you groaned, a cry of appreciation, straight into Jack’s heart.
“You almost there, baby?” He begged. “I’m there. I’m there. I wanna feel you. I’m gonna wait for you.”
You couldn’t remember the last time you finished together. Usually it was half and half. Jack would get you off, then you’d fuck and he’d come later. Swap it a million different ways but it still didn’t happen together frequently. Except it had been days. Long, tiring days of wishing to be beside one another and finally you were as close as you possibly could be.
And Jack pleaded for you.
He coaxed an orgasm from your body that had been dormant for days. Your shoulders trembled, quivering when you felt the delicate pulsing of his own fill you as his hand in yours nearly crushed the feeling left in it. His fingers removed themselves from your clit and grasped your hip tightly.
Jack’s mouth captured yours immediately.
You both chased the electricity that sparked on all nerves. There was no time to allow breaths to catch up. Every second that surpassed as the high faded into a tired relief lingered in a gentle preserve of desire.
You bit down gently on his lip and tugged. Jack’s hand loosened its grip on yours but didn’t let go completely.
His eyes stayed closed.
He listened to you recover and felt himself soften against the spasms you had no power over. There was no rush to clean up, to change the sheets, or lay down completely. Jack held you close and reminded himself that his time outside of your union could be reduced for the sake of these moments.
Your hands ran up his back and around his shoulders, pulling him closer. They burrowed into the back of his head and into his hair damp with sweat.
“I’m so proud of you,” you sighed.
For all that he’s done, all that he’s given, and whatever might come next. A small piece of him rewarded himself on not needing his support in the back of the medicine cabinet for the first time in months—a strange, selfish reason to be proud of himself. But you were proud.
And he prided himself in that.
“Come on.” He rubbed his thumb into your hip. You shook your head, placing your lips to his again.
“I don’t wanna,” you murmured against his mouth. “Five more minutes.”
“If we shower, you can wash my hair,” Jack suggested as though it would move you—it didn’t. Nevertheless, he still kissed you back.
“Lay with me, Jack.”
Five minutes turned into ten… then you got to wash his hair.
And you were asleep by 10:05, just like he promised.
Four days later, Robby arrived in the ED with a newfound pep in his step. Everyday was unpredictable for him lately and the good days were far and few between, so, he took an inch and made it last a mile when the satisfaction rattled through his soul.
Jack was already talking to Dana at a computer about a patient in South 17 when Robby joined them, setting his bag down on the floor where Jack’s was already packed and ready to go.
“Did I miss hand offs already?” Robby asked both of them.
“Jack asked me to come in early so he could get a jump start home,” Dana detailed and Jack logged out.
“I’ve got places to be, people to see,” Jack said causally. Robby scoffed, eyes looking around the hub at his staff.
“You mean your wife.”
Jack nodded once. “And if I get out of here in—” he glanced down at his watch “—five minutes I can catch her before she gets out of bed.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” Dana cooed. “Take notes, Robinavitch. You might need it someday.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Robby put his glasses on, dipping them low on his nose. “Abbot might not have the best advice.”
Jack saddled his bag onto his shoulder. “Did the date not go well?” His brows lifted in no apology. “It was quite a fun thing to experience, if I do say so myself.”
Robby laughed an “uh oh” as though he were being challenged.
“Well, I’d hate to be on the other side of what dates look like.”
Jack narrowed his eyes, gazing at his friend with speculation before walking out of the hub. Dana backed off as Princess came snooping with an air of gossip waiting to be unleashed.
Robby gave Jack a few steps head start before jogging up to catch him.
“It actually went very well, if you care,” Robby said quietly. “We’re getting drinks after work tonight.”
Jack stopped. He looked at Robby’s face and knew in an instant that he was being honest. He did like Noelle—even if he had a strange way of showing it.
“Good for you, brother.” Jack slapped a hand on his back. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks…” Robby tilted his head. “Is she?”
“Is she what?” Jack asked. “Who?”
“Is your wife happy?”
Jack’s enjoyment broke. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Robby chuckled. He shook off an imaginary thought. “I was gonna talk to you about this, remember? I heard from someone a few months back that there was a little… problem? An age related one?”
“An—“ Jack paused, lightly offended. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“I don’t know… just this like… little blue pill problem?”
God. Jack’s face lit on fire. Who the fuck blabbed?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Who the hell talked? Who told the only person that Jack specifically wished never knew about his Viagra problem?”
“No?” Robby’s mouth quirked into an amused frown. “Okay, so nothing’s wrong in that department?”
“N-no.” Jack could have slapped himself for the stutter. “But it’s not fucking age related, Robinavitch. And you’re older than me, fucker. So, don’t even go there.”
“I’ve never had a problem.” Robby shrugged and Jack began walking away before anymore questions could be asked.
“At least I’m married!”
“See ya, Abbot!” Robby bid easily as Jack threw up his middle finger. “Mind your own business next time!”
“Fuck off, Robby!”
And the ambulance bay doors closed behind him with a swish.
a/n: jack has such vibes that i simply can’t resist him. he’s an itch we can’t (don’t want to) scratch.
reblogs, comments, and likes keep writers writing. thank you for reading! plus reblogging is like… super cool tbh
and if you’re looking for a little more jack abbot erectile dysfunction lore that can totally be tied in here, check out fic: i got a bad desire
summary: he can’t help that he likes you more than others
warning: age gap (40s!abbot, mid 20s early 30s!reader), praise, resident!reader, minor favoritism, fluff, minor flirting, physical touch, eye tag, literally no personal boundaries, medical terminology and talk
w/c: 2.8k
notes: I’m sorry I got lazy towards the end, if yall want another part I will make one. if I missed anything don’t tell me, ty to anon for telling me of the t.p edit (this is in no way related to the curtain season and episode)((dividers by @uzmacchiato))
There was absolutely no doubt in the world that Jack’s favorite resident on the night shift was you. No— scratch that. Jack’s favorite resident, period, was you. It was an immediate attraction. If he was forced at gunpoint to explain in one sentence why you were his favorite, he’d had lived a long, blissful life knowing he was blessed to be in your presence.
Of course he would never admit that to anyone but Robby, and he’d quickly shut down any doubts anyone else had. That didn’t matter. What mattered at all times was you.
You were perfect in every way possible. From the way you looked, the way you treated your patients, the way you worked with others. You were easy to talk to, kind, respectful, and had not one bone of malice in you. No one could complain. You were a literal saint.
His eyes instantly found yours as he stepped in for the shift switch off, watching as you lingered and talked to Mel who looked like she was genuinely appreciating the distraction. You didn’t seem to notice him yet, and he was fine with that, the last thing he’d want is to interrupt a meaningful conversation.
“You’re staring again, brother.” Jack has to force his eyes away from you at the sound of Robby’s voice, giving him a small lopsided grin. He quickly straightens up, turning towards Robby at the sound of your laughter to keep from immediately looking over.
“I tend to check on my residents when I arrive. You might want to do the same.” He retorted lightly, glancing over at a nurse as she turned around the corner towards the computers.
“You saying I neglect my residents?” Robby asks with slight mock offense, resting a hand on his chest. He nods over to Dana as she makes her leave, which catches Jack’s attention who glances over his shoulder to offer the nurse a silent smile.
“I would never say that.” Jack trailed off slightly, giving Robby a certain look to which he just chuckled and shook his head.
The two of them simultaneously look your way as you finished your conversation with Mel. Jack’s already pushing off the counter as you found the corner and make your way towards a nearby board. He gives Robby a quick pat on the back before disappearing completely from his field of view as a nurse calls out for him.
“Hi sweetheart.” Your head nearly snaps off as you quickly turn around, bringing your attention down as you look up at Robby. Giving him a bright smile and a polite nod, you step back half expecting him to tell you to follow him.
“Oh, hi Dr. Robby. H’you doing?” Your eyes follow him as he gives you a little shrug, patting the counter before pushing off of it. He approaches you, giving you a tiny smile before glancing up at the board himself.
“Good. Long day, but… nothing too bad,” you nod slightly, glancing up at his side profile as his eyes dart along the screen. You subconsciously turn your body to face him, before hesitantly turning to mimic his stance as you face the board too. “Let’s hope it’s still like this.”
You hum softly, staring up at the board as you’re looking through available patients before turning at the sound of his footsteps departing. “Leaving already?” You ask curiously to which he hesitates for a moment, looking around for someone you’re unsure of before tucking his hands into his pockets.
“If I stay any longer, I might jinx the place’s peace.” He says lightly, shrugging away the question as he walks backwards. You roll your eyes playfully, shooing him away before quickly waving the air from his bad luck.
“Fine, fine. Have a good night, Dr. Robby!” You wave him away as he grins down at you, waving over his shoulder with quick, wide steps out the building.
When you turn around you nearly bump into Jack, who quickly provides a steady hand on your shoulder to walk around you. “Oh, Dr. Abbot! I was just gonna look for you.” He pauses mid-stride, glancing back over his shoulder at you. Giving you a small nod for you to walk with him, he slows down his step just enough for you to fall into step beside him.
“What’s up?” He looks up from the chart in his hand, flipping a page as he stops just in front of an unoccupied room.
“I just wanted to update you on the patient from last night, the one with the uhm…” you trailed off, snapping your fingers together as you tried to remember the condition of the twelve year old patient. “The aden— ameb…”
“Appendicitis.” He corrects gently, watching the way you quickly nodded and echoed after him.
“Right, yes,” you sighed heavily, shaking your head to yourself at forgetting something so important as that. You looked up at him, as he kept his gaze on the paper in his hand, but you could feel the attention shift toward you. It was a subtle shift, the same familiar way he does when he’s listening but trying his best to not look. “Well, the surgery went well, and she’s currently set on a diet of lime jell-o and apple juice.”
He nods slowly, gently nudging you to walk with him as he redirects you back to the board. The two of you weave through the controlled chaos of the unit, swerving around a small group of nurses who were busily chatting while they had the opportunity to. “Sounds like a child’s dream.”
“Certainly was my dream.” You snickered to yourself, looking up at the board again at the extremely slow roll of patients. You quickly looked over at Jack as he cleared his throat, holding the clipboard out to you.
You hesitate for a moment, glancing between his extended arm and the board before carefully grabbing it from his hand. You glance down at the report, reading over twice before looking up at him as he speaks. “Go ‘head, take him,” you stare at him in momentary confusion, glancing towards the room before looking back at him with a wide smile but he’s quickly cutting you off as you’re getting ready to thank him. “Buttt, come grab me to present.”
You nod quickly, doublechecking the report. “Okay, I will. Thanks.”
You quickly make your way towards S8, making sure your presence is known to the patient as you gently knock on the door. Inside, your patient is an older male, maybe in his late forties, early fifties. He’s sitting upright, breathing a little too fast, hands twisting in the blanket as his eyes frantically find yours.
“Hi sir, I’m one of the residents here, I’ll be helping you today,” you gently close the door behind you, quietly approaching him. “I’m just here to check your vitals, and ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”
The man stares at you for a moment, taking a forced heavy breath before wiping the sweat from his brow line. “Can I get some water? I’m dying here.”
You hesitate for a moment, searching the cabinets and drawers for a thermometer before turning back to him. “I’ll let your nurse know you’re thirsty, and she’ll come with a cup of water. But I just have to check your vitals so your doctor has a basi—”
The patient sighs, smacking his lips together dryly before nodding again. He motions for you to take his temperature, quickly dabbing away the sweat there with his sleeve. You’re quick to check his vitals, taking his forehead temp, listening to his lungs, asking him to rate his pain. You try to get his histories and notes down quickly, not wanting to drag on his discomfort but also allowing yourself enough time to get the proper information.
By the time you step back into the hallway, a nurse is already making her way into the room, offering you a polite smile as you slip around her. You’re slowly looking around for Jack, eyes immediately falling on Dr. Ellis as she quickly walks your way. You tuck the clipboard under your arm, clearing your throat as you side step to walk with her. “Excuse me, Dr. Ellis, have you seen Dr. Abbot anywhere?”
She looks down at you with a small grin, giving you a little shake of her head as she motions down the hall to a room. “He’s with a patient right now. Why? What’s up?”
You nibble on your bottom lip as you glance over at the room he’s in and then back at her before motioning to the clipboard. “I just had a patient with a fever of 100, a cough, pleuritic chest pain, crackles on the right. I was supposed to present but..” You shrugged slightly, turning back to Dr. Ellis as she nods for you to continue.
“And?”
You hand her the clipboard, eyes glued onto her as she reads through what you’ve written and what you’ve noted. “I’m thinking it could possibly be pneumonia? I want a chest x-ray and labs.”
She nods once, giving you an approving smile. “Good. Order them,” she turned slightly towards the nurses’ station before looking at you again. “I’ll go in and introduce myself if Dr. Abbot’s still with his patient in five minutes.”
You blink twice, eyes following her. “You— don’t need to re‑do the exam or anything?”
She glances back at you, raising an eyebrow at you before leaning forward slightly. “I trust you. Don’t forget to order those labs.” You nodded as she walked away, letting out a little sigh of relief.
You lingered in the hallway, slowly making your way towards the nurses’ station to study the board. You set the clipboard down, neatly running your hand over the sheet of paper before looking up at the nurse who entered S8 with a small paper cup of water. Your attention diverts towards Jack as he exits a nearby room, eyes finding yours before stopping at a nearby computer.
You turn back to the screen of the board, glancing his way from the corner of your eye as you slowly inched your way towards Jack. You’re already stepping closer before you realize you’ve done it— drawn in by the gravity he carries. He’s settled into the chair, chart resting against the countertop, reaching for another file as he types in the computer. He hums softly at your close proximity, blinking up at you as you leaned against the desk. “So whaddya got?”
“Forty five year old male, fever, chest pains, crackling on the right,” he nods at you, typing away in the computer as he looks down at his own clipboard. “I put an order for labs and an x-ray.”
He looks at your reflection in the computer as he turns in his seat to stare up at you. The corners of his lips curled up into a pleased grin, nodding again as he slowly stands upright. “Good, that’s good. Let me know the results.”
He doesn’t send you off right away, just gives your lower arm a gentle squeeze before turning to grab the clipboard from the desk. “I’ll go in and introduce myself. You already did the heavy lifting.”
You hesitate, already moving to follow him. “Do you want me to come with you?”
He quickly glances over at you, giving you a small grin before shaking his head. “No. You’ve done your part. Go put in those orders.”
Your eyes follow him as he turns to leave, glancing down at your clipboard before letting out a little sigh. He stops and turns around last second, just within arm’s reach. His expression softens just a fraction as he watches you make your way towards the nurse’s station. Dr. Ellis appears from seemingly nowhere, arms crossed as she looks at him with a knowing smile.
The shift kept moving around you, it was light and easier than your last shift. Four patients, four presentations with Jack, twelve hours of stolen glances and five ‘good job’s. Not that you were counting, put you were definitely putting those in your praise piggy bank. The world keeps moving around you, silent synchronization meshing into something more vulnerable.
You’re busy talking to Dr. Ellis about a patient you had earlier, a little kid with a bad eczema rash. You’re entirely unaware that Jack had been watching you from the opposite corner of the nurse’s station, leaning against the counter as he not so subtly looks down at the time on his watch.
Morning shift was already starting to file in. Dr. Ellis gives you an appraising nod and a quick fist bump as a goodbye before making her way out the building. You linger by a nearby board, and just as Jack takes a step towards you, Victoria comes up to talk to you. He does a quick u-turn, nearly bumping into Robby who’s also just walking it.
Robby steadies Jack with a hand on his upper arm, giving him a worried look before glancing over Jack’s shoulder to the sight of you and Victoria giggling together. Jack rolls his eyes at Robby’s teasing grin. “When are you gonna pull your big boy pants on and talk to her outside of the shift?”
Jack looks over his shoulder at the sight of you laughing comfortably with Victoria, before shrugging slightly at Robby. “Maybe when she isn’t a social magnet.”
Robby shakes his head at his friend’s obvious hesitation, thinking for a moment before turning back to you. He calls your name, getting your attention with a short wave of his hand as Jack turns around. You excuse yourself from your conversation with Victoria, quickly approaching the two of them.
“Morning, Robby,” you greet him with a wide smile, looking between Jack and Robby before tucking your hands into the pockets of your scrubs. “Sleep good?”
“Like a baby.” Robby grins down at you as Jack is more focused on staring at your side profile than attempting to take part of the conversation.
“How was the shift?”
“Oh, it was good? Yeah?” You subconsciously look over at Jack, who gives you a slight nod. “Yeah, it was good.”
Robby slowly looks over at Jack, tilting his head slightly before looking at you with a hum. “Let’s hope we get that good vibe.”
You wave at Robby as he makes his way to speak to Dana. You watch him leave before turning back to Jack who was no longer looking at you. “When’s your next day off?” He asks suddenly, blinking up at you as he steps forward.
You raise an eyebrow at him, opening your mouth to respond before looking up at the ceiling as you thought. “Uhm,” you trailed off, not even registering the warmth of his hand hovering over the small of your back as he subtly guided you out the building with him. “I think… on Friday?”
“Yeah?” He mumbled slightly, eyes darting down to where his hand lingered against the fabric of your scrubs before stopping you once you got too close to the street.
“Why’d you ask?” You look at him curiously before looking left and right along the street.
“Do you drink?”
You fix the sleeve of your undershirt, peeking over at him before giving him a small, confused smile. “Oh, well not really. I’ll have a drink with my friends if I’m at a bar or something but it’s typically not my thing.”
He stares at you as you speak, really listening to what you said before nodding. “That’s good.” He speaks quickly, eyes shifting along your face before taking a small step closer to you.
“Dr. Abbot? Why are you asking all these questions? Am I getting quizzed or something?” You teased lightly, laughing at your own joke with a shake of your head. He smiles down at you, and if this were a cartoon or some cliche romance movie, he would’ve had love hearts circling around his head.
“You can call me Jack, hun.”
“Oh, right. Jack,” you let the word sit on your tongue before stretching your arms out in front of you. “Are you just trying to get to know me better or—”
“Do you want to grab pizza on Friday?”
You look up to him in surprise, looking around as if this were some prank being played on you. He watches the confusion on your face before letting out a quick laugh.
“Sorry, I probably should’ve clarified. Do you want to go grab pizza on Friday with the rest of the night shift?”
“Oh, oh, for a second I thought you were asking me out or something.” His laugh dies down slightly, studying the shyness on your face as you slowly nodded.
“Don’t worry, I’ll save that for another day.”
Before you could even get a chance to respond, he waves at you in a silent goodbye as he makes his way to the parking lot. You stand there with furrowed eyebrows, trying to comprehend what just happened.
Now all Jack has to do is somehow convince the night shift to suddenly be interested in pizza just so he can spend more time with you. Sounds easy enough.
Synopsis: On one of your rare days off from PTMC, you end up at a dimly lit bar with Trinity and Dennis, trying to shake off the weight of the hospital while Jack — who you’ve been secretly seeing for months — covers a shift for someone else and stays late, his messages lighting up your phone just enough to pull your attention away. Your friends quickly pick up on it — the smiles, the constant glances, the way you hover over every notification — and what starts as casual teasing turns into full-blown interrogation as they try to figure out who has you so distracted.
Word count: 2k
Warnings: Established relationship, workplace relationship, mentions of medical setting, power imbalance (attending/resident), age gap, secret relationship, coworkers to lovers, mentions of alcohol, suggestive dialogue
It’s a rare thing: all three of you off at the same time.
No one’s checking the clock. No one’s half-listening while trying to catch up on charting. For once, it’s just noise, dim lighting, and cheap drinks instead of fluorescent bulbs and exhaustion pressed into your bones.
You’d almost forgotten what that felt like after nearly two years at PTMC.
Currently, Trinity is halfway through retelling the events of her ‘date’ with Yolanda — something about how one of them wanted to keep it casual, and how it ended in a fight that somehow turned into a hot-and-heavy make-out session — while Dennis listens quietly beside her, nursing his drink and nodding along.
You try to focus. You really do. But your phone keeps buzzing against the table.
Not constantly, just enough to be obnoxious.
You flip it over, quickly glancing at the screen.
Jack: Still at the hospital. Leaving in ten.
Your lips press together, something soft tugging at the corners before you can stop it.
“You’re doing it again.”
You look up too fast. “Doing what?”
“That,” she says and points a finger at you.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“That little—” she gestures vaguely at your face “—thing you do when you look at your phone.”
“I don’t do a thing.”
“Yeah, you do,” Dennis chimes in immediately. “You’ve been doing it all night.”
“I have not.”
“Yes you have,” he insists. “You keep checking it, and then you go all—” he makes a face that’s supposed to mimic yours but fails miserably “—like that.”
“That is not what I look like.”
“It kind of is,” Trinity says.
You huff, reaching for your drink just to have something to do. “It’s just work stuff.”
Trinity raises an eyebrow. “Since when does work make you smile?”
Your mouth opens, ready with a response — but your phone buzzes again, cutting you off.
All three of you glance down this time. You grab it before they can even blink.
“Okay,” Dennis says slowly, setting his drink down. “Why are you being so secretive?”
“I’m not.”
Dennis cocked his head, an exasperated expression on his face. “You practically dove on your phone.”
“I did not dive.”
“You dove.”
“I reached.”
“You lunged.”
“I—” You stop, glaring at him. “Whatever.”
Trinity leans forward, resting her chin in her hand, eyes sharp with interest. “Who are you texting?”
“No one.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s not,” you huff.
“It’s such a lie,” Dennis says, grinning now. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not lying,” you say as you shake your head. “Can you guys not turn this into something?”
“Why?” Trinity leans in a little more. “You in a secret relationship or something?”
“I—” Your mouth opens, then closes again as you glance away.
Both Trinity’s and Dennis’s faces shift into realization, their eyebrows lifting.
“Oh,” Trinity breathes.
“No,” you say immediately.
“Oh my god,” Dennis echoes, sitting up straighter. “There is a secret someone.”
“There is not—”
“Then let me see your phone,” Trinity teases.
“No.” Your response was too fast and too sharp for someone not to be hiding something.
Silence drops over the table. Trinity covers her mouth as laughter threatens to fall. Dennis just stares at you.
You press your lips together, glancing between them.
“Fine,” you say in surrender. “There is someone.”
“How long?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Oh yes it does,” Trinity says. “Who is it?”
“Do we know him?” Dennis asks.
You hesitate just a moment too long.
Dennis slaps the table. “Oh my god — it’s someone we know!”
You groan, dragging your hands over your face. “You guys are insufferable.”
“And you’re deflecting,” Trinity says.
“I’m not deflecting.”
“Yeah you are.”
“I just—” you stop, exhaling. “It’s not important.”
“Then say who it is.”
You shake your head. “You’re going to make it a big deal.”
“We’re absolutely going to make it a big deal,” Dennis says. “That’s the whole point.”
You let out a quiet breath through your nose, shoulders sinking as you lean back into the worn wood of your chair. The music in the small bar suddenly felt too loud and the air felt too warm.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” you mutter.
“Way too late now,” Dennis adds.
Your phone buzzes in your hand jst loud enough to cut through the conversation for a split second.
You don’t look down, already knowing who the notification is from. But both Trinity and Dennis do. Their eyes drop to the screen as it lights up briefly, then flick back up to you.
Trinity leans back slightly, studying you now instead of whatever she was saying before, her head tilting just a little.
“…So,” she says slowly, “this special someone — are they from work?”
“Yeah…” You say with a sigh, already knowing there’s no getting out of this.
“Same department?” she asks.
You hesitate briefly. It’s small and barely there but it’s enough for Trinity to figure out an answer.
“Oh my god,” her eyebrows shoot up. “They’re in our department.”
“No he’s not,” you say, but there’s no conviction behind it.
“Yes,” she says immediately, sitting up straighter. “You hesitated.”
“I was thinking.”
“You don’t think when the answer is no,” Dennis says, pointing at you. “You just say no.”
You exhale, dragging a hand through your hair. “You guys are so annoying.”
“And you’re bad at lying,” Trinity shoots back. Then, more focused, “Okay — same department… nights or days?”
“…Nights,” you say.
Dennis lets out a quiet “ohhh,” leaning back like something just clicked into place. “That narrows it down.”
“It doesn’t narrow anything,” you say quickly.
“It narrows it a lot,” Trinity counters, already thinking. “Okay, nights…”
She starts listing names, half to herself, half to you.
“Is it Shen?”
“No.”
“Mateo?” Trinity continues.
You shake your head. “Nope.”
“Okay… so who’s left?” Dennis asks.
Trinity’s fingers tap once against the table, then still. Something clicked into place as she studied your face a second too long.
“Trinity,” you warn.
“…No,” she says, her eyes widening. “There’s no way…”
Dennis frowns. “What?”
She lets out a quiet, disbelieving laugh, shaking her head slowly. “Is it Abbot?” She asked.
Your mouth falls open, but the words snag somewhere in your throat, refusing to come out.
Dennis goes completely still beside you, like the air’s been knocked out of him. “…No way.”
You sink further into your chair as your hands come up to cover your face.
“Don’t,” you mumble into your palms.
“Oh my god,” Trinity breathes, half-laughing now. “Oh my god, it’s Abbot.”
You drag your hands down your face slowly, cheeks burning. “…Yeah.”
Dennis is staring at you like he’s trying to recalibrate. “You’re serious.”
“Yes, Dennis. I’m serious.”
“For how long?” he asks, still in shock.
“Only a few months.”
“A few months?” Trinity repeats, sitting back like she’s been hit.
“And you didn’t tell us?” Dennis adds.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” you say, more defensive now.
“It is absolutely a big deal,” he says. “That’s… he’s your attending—”
“Not really,” you cut in quickly. “I don’t work nights so technically Robby’s my attending.”
“He’s so much older than you,” she says, leaning back and shaking her head, a disbelieving smile still stuck on her face.
You groan, dropping your head back. “Can we not do this?”
“We’re just saying—”
“Well, stop saying it.”
Dennis runs a hand over his face, still trying to process. “How did that even happen?”
You hesitate, then shrug a little. “It just… did. We worked a few shifts together, and then we started talking, and then—” you trail off, shoulders lifting slightly. “I don’t know. One thing led to another and then suddenly I was in his bed every night.”
“And you’re — what, dating?” Trinity asks.
“Yes,” you say, a little sharper than intended.
“Like, actually dating?” Dennis presses.
“Yeah.”
“Going out, spending time together, sleeping together, all that?”
“Yes,” you repeat, exasperated now.
Trinity leans forward again, studying you more carefully this time, like she’s trying to piece together a version of you she hasn’t seen before.
“You’re in love with him,” she says.
You freeze. “…I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
You look down at the table, lips pressing together as you try — and fail — not to smile just a little.
“Oh my god,” she says, pointing at you. “You’re so in love.”
“Stop,” you mutter, heat creeping back into your face.
“This explains everything,” she continues. “The phone, the weird little smiles at handoff, the fact that you’ve been, like—” she gestures vaguely “glowing lately.”
You make a face. “I am not glowing.”
“You are a little bit,” Dennis says.
“I hate both of you.”
“We know,” Trinity says easily.
There’s a brief moment of silence. Then her eyes narrow, something mischievous slipping in.
“…Okay, but be honest.”
“Don’t say anything weird,” you say immediately.
She grins. “Do you call him Daddy?”
You let out a short, disbelieving laugh, shaking your head. “I mean… I wouldn’t not—”
As if on cue, warm hands settle on your shoulders.
“She only does when she’s trying to get something out of me.”
Everything around you stops. Your breath catches as your entire body goes still.
Slowly, you turn your head.
None other than Jack Abbot is right behind you. He looks exactly like he always does after a shift — tired, but in that steady, grounded way that never really dulls him. His hair’s slightly out of place, like he’s run a hand through it one too many times, sleeves pushed up just enough to show his forearms, his posture relaxed despite the weight of a full day still clinging to him.
There’s still that faint, familiar scent of antiseptic, but it’s mixed with something warmer now — something unmistakably him. And somehow, even after twelve hours on his feet, he still looks unfairly good.
Dennis makes a strangled noise beside you.
Trinity’s mouth drops open. “Oh my god,” she whispers.
You stare at him. “Why are you here?”
“Good to see you too baby,” he huffs a quiet laugh, thumbs brushing absentmindedly against your shoulders. “You weren’t answering your phone. Thought I’d come in and get you myself.”
“I was a little busy,” you mutter.
“Yeah,” he replies, glancing briefly at the table, clearly taking in the situation. “I can see that.”
Neither of your friends have moved. Dennis is still staring, wide-eyed. Trinity looks like she’s seconds away from either laughing again or interrogating you both on the spot.
Jack looks back down at you, expression softening just slightly.
“You ready to go?”
“Yes.” You don’t even hesitate.
You grab your bag quickly, sliding out of your chair before either of them can fully recover.
“Wait — no, hold on—” Trinity starts.
“We’re not done!” Dennis adds.
“Oh, we are absolutely done,” you shoot back, already backing away.
Jack’s hand shifts from your shoulders to your back as you move, steady and familiar.
“See you guys at handoff tomorrow?” he asks casually.
Neither of them responds. They’re still staring. Completely stunned. Trinity’s mouth is still slightly open, and Dennis looks like he hasn’t blinked in at least ten seconds.
You don’t even tell them goodbye. You just shake your head under your breath and let Jack guide you toward the door, the noise of the bar swallowing the moment as soon as it closes behind you.
Jack’s hand stays warm at your back as he leads you out into the cool night air, the noise of the bar fading behind you.
Neither of you says anything at first. You just walk.
His car isn’t far. He unlocks it, opens the passenger door like it’s second nature, and you slide in, still feeling the heat sitting high in your cheeks.
By the time he’s in the driver’s seat, the silence has shifted. It’s quieter now, but not awkward.
The engine hums to life.
You barely have a second to settle before—
“Daddy, huh? That’s what you’re gonna start calling me?” he asks, glancing at you, voice low and amused.
You turn your head slowly, staring at him. “You’re insufferable.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, pulling out of the lot. “You didn’t say no.”
Your face burns all over again as you look away, crossing your arms.
summary: on your very first day as an attending at the ptmc, you're forced to navigate the chaos of the night shift, a code silver, and the fact that jack abbot would (and did) take a bullet for you. (7k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, samira mohan, john shen, crus henderson, princess de la cruz, michael robinavitch, jack's dead wife also gets a wee mention
contents: friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, heavily inspired by greys anatomy s6ep24, not proofread soz cw for so many medical inaccuracies (like so many), hostage situations, heavy mentions of blood and gore, mentions of trauma and grief
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
It was your first day as an attending, and almost your very last.
Other than your newfound position, there was little else different about this night compared to all the others. The late evening was filled with all the usual chaos that you’ve come to find a strange sort of refuge within. Your first patient of the day was a woman in a pretty sequined dress, who’d sustained a collapsed lung after screaming a little too hard to “Bohemian Rhapsody” during karaoke — something you’d only find while working the night shift.
“First needle aspiration as an attending…” Jack Abbot said with a nod of approval when the procedure was done. “How’s it feel?”
The simple question made you dizzy. It was as much of a reminder of your new ranking as the foil balloons in the break room, bobbing lazily against the ceiling tiles. Or the crooked banner strung above the coffee maker, reading CONGRATS in cheap gold letters. Or the plastic container of store-bought cupcakes someone definitely bought last-minute, with neon-colored frosting smeared slightly on the lid.
But what really sent you reeling, though, was the inadvertent acknowledgment of the simmering tension between you and Jack — which had always been there in some ways, but was much easier to ignore before now.
The constant will-they-won’t-they between you was buried under layers of hierarchy, rules, and morals — under the unsaid understanding that whatever this thing between you was could never be acted upon. Not while you were his resident, anyway.
The obvious power imbalance was a line Jack Abbot would not let himself cross, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
Only now, that wretched line isn’t there anymore. For the first time since he met you, you’re both on even ground. The world is your oyster, as it were; all the opportunities lie now at your feet. You need only to reach out and take it.
“First intubation as an attending,” Jack hums from the opposite side of the hospital bed, eyes glittering with amusement behind his safety glasses. “How’s it feel?”
You scoff a quiet laugh and shake your head. “That question got old about the fourth time you asked it, Dr. Abbot…” you deadpan, sewing the trachael to the unconscious patient’s neck.
Reggie Brice; thirty-two-year-old male; exhibiting crush injuries to the chest and pelvis from a gnarly car pile-up. Seven people, including this one, were rushed in requiring immediate assistance. The rest were brought in with sustained head injuries, concussions, or minor fractures that needed tending to. You know that there has been at least one confirmed death.
“Well, it’s a big deal,” the man scoffs. “Why do you think we all chipped in two dollars to decorate the break room? Those grocery store cupcakes actually mean something, you know?”
“Well, I am honored…” you sigh in a distracted monotone.
Jack squints. “Yeah, I can tell. You look downright emotional—”
You take a step back to assess, gaze flickering to the monitor at your side. You find the man’s blood pressure continuing to climb, which is less than ideal for the injuries he’s sporting now.
“Pressure’s too high. We gotta fix that, or he’s gonna crash,” Jack announces in a sharper tone, though it never quite loses its laid-back edge. He always works best under pressure, in truth. “We could always crack the chest, cross-clamp the aorta— buy him some time till we get him a room.”
“What about preperitoneal packing?” you suggest, gesturing over the patient’s lean stomach with gloved hands. “We do a simple midline incision below the umbilicus, pack like hell around the bladder, keep the bleeding in check until we get him upstairs.”
Jack’s silence is less than reassuring.
You peer at him behind the glasses sitting low on your nose, stumbling over yourself as you brace for an inevitable rejection. “I know it’s more of an OR procedure, and I’ve only done it once, but—”
“Hey…” Jack cuts in softly, brows raised to his hairline. “You’re the boss here, kid. Remember? We’ll do whatever you wanna do.”
Your eyes narrow, despite the funny feeling flaring in your chest. His voice, all deep and gravelly and gentle, has always had a way of piercing right through you.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Abbot,” you remind him.
So there’s nothing standing in your way anymore, old man, you’re really saying.
Jack grins wide, like he can hear it in your silence.
“Force of habit,” he shrugs. “Now, c’mon. Let’s do it your way, boss.”
You’re wrists-deep in the conscious man’s pelvis, packing the blood clot around his bladder while Jack holds the Deaver retractor in a steady head. You fall into a strange sort of rhythm together, the way you always do, moving with each other without ever having to speak. Though, for some reason, you can’t seem to stop your hands from shaking.
“This is good, right?” you murmur behind your mask, shoving more gauze beneath the man’s sliced skin.
“You’re doing great,” Jack praises muffedly, without missing a beat, though he flashes you a stern look behind his glasses a second later. “You’re an attending now— You know what you’re doing.”
You swallow hard with an unsure nod. “Right… Yeah…”
Jack smiles at your sheepishness — a stark contrast to how methodically your hands move — though the expression gets hidden behind his blue surgical mask. “Don’t worry. It’s always a little weird at first. You’ll settle in in no time.”
You scoff a harsh breath through your nose. “You’ve been uncharacteristically sweet to me today. You know that?”
“I’m always sweet,” Jack squints. “But I can always get meaner, if you want. You know, if my kindness isn’t impressing you.”
“Hm,” you shrug and swipe your gloved fingers under the fatty tissue of the fleshy linea alba. “Jury’s still out.”
“Well,” his brows bounce. “I guess I’m just gonna have to try a little harder, then, aren’t I?”
“What can I say? I have high standards, Dr. Abbot.”
Your concentrated gaze flickers from the incision to the man standing across from you. Something mischievous glimmers in your eyes, crinkling at the edges with a smile he can’t see behind your mask. The air between you charges in a flicker.
“You doin’ anything after this shift?” the man wonders suddenly, passing you another stack of gauze with his free hand. “You know, to celebrate?”
“I don’t know…” you sigh and turn away again. “I guess it depends.”
“On?”
“Whether someone can give me something better to do than collapsing face-first into my bed.”
“I think I could make a pretty strong case,” Jack quips.
“Ooh…” you hum. “Do tell.”
“Something involving food. Definitely,” he starts. “Maybe something a lot more filling than two-dollar vending machine snacks.”
“Very compelling start, Dr. Abbot…”
“And maybe— if you’re so inclined,” he croons drily. “Something where we don’t talk about work for an hour. At least.”
You flash him a deadpanned stare. “Well, now, that’s just way too far.”
“Hm. It was worth a shot,” he shrugs.
“I guess we’ll just have to see how the rest of your performance goes...”
His eyes widen in amusement at your sudden teasing, not nearly as shy as he’s grown accustomed to. “Oh, so I’m the one being evaluated now?”
“Yep,” you nod once, popping the p.
“And what happens if I pass?”
You meet his gaze once more, with something a little shier around the edges. “Then I’ll… let me take you somewhere for breakfast in the morning,” you shrug, trying to be casual, though your wavering voice gives you instantly away.
A smile curls slow at Jack’s mouth behind his surgical mask. You can see it squinting the very edges of his light eyes as he nods in response. “Looking forward to it—”
The glass door across the room swings open without warning.
Your heads whip simultaneously, half-expecting to find a grey-scrubbed nurse standing there, hopefully with some information about the state of the suddenly flooded OR. You find a strange man there instead — late fifties, bearded, tall but with a beer gut that hangs over the top of his baggy jeans. There’s dark blood on his t-shirt and the collar of his beige jacket, dripping from a cut on his temple.
His narrow face is strikingly hollow; his eyes are painfully empty. You figure he must be one of the victims from the pile-up. He wears the shock of it all over, no doubt.
“This is a sterile room, sir,” Jack tells him, authoritative but never unkind. “If you’re family, I’m gonna need you to wait outside. I’ll have a nurse give you the details— and maybe take a look at the cut of yours.”
“I’m not his family,” the man says in an even monotone, with a gritty drawl that insists he’s from somewhere further south. There is little inflection in his voice, the same way there is little emotion on his bearded face. He just lingers there in the doorway, frozen still in a way that feels almost uncanny.
Your wide eyes flit to Jack, glimmering with apprehension. Your stomach twists with it, too.
Jack’s firm gaze never wavers from the stranger across the room. “Either way, sir, you can’t be in here—”
The older man’s weathered right hand reaches slowly for the inside pocket of his jacket. Something silver glints beneath the bright white fluorescents overhead. It takes you a second too long to realize what it is — a gun.
The world narrows in an instant. The oxygen gets sucked out of the room all at once. Your chest hitches for a breath it cannot take.
You don’t realize until then that you’ve never seen a pistol this close before — or at all. Your brain detaches in an instant accordingly, protects you now by convincing you that this is no longer your reality. That you’re only dreaming. That everything around you is just a movie you’re watching from faraway.
“Hey, hey, hey…” Jack cautions on bated breath, bloodied hands raised in surrender.
His wide eyes dart between the man and the glass door, where the stranger is just out of view of the hallway. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, as he takes slow steps towards the assailant.
“Let’s just— Let’s just take a breath here, alright, man?”
The monitor beside you begins to beep wildly when your hands freeze. Your body jerks when the sound fills the silent room.
Your gloved hands move on autopilot, adjusting the Deaver retractor in Jack’s absence and continuing to pack the bladder with the remaining gauze. The work is the only thing anchoring you now — the glaring acknowledgment that, if you don’t finish up here, the man in the bed will die before he makes it to the OR.
“That man there…” the stranger says in a distant voice, like he’s not all the way here either. “He was driving the car that hit my wife… Blew a red light… Came out of nowhere…”
Jack’s expression shifts. He reaches for his jaw with slow hands, plucking the surgical mask from his right ear, and letting the left side hang by his chin — allowing the man to see his face.
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“He killed her… On the scene…” the man continues, gravelly voice tighter now. “I was trying to scoop her brains back into her skull— Do you have any idea what the kinda shit does to a person?”
“That’s hard, man,” Jack nods sympathetically but stands his ground at the head of the hospital bed all the same, planting himself firmly between you and the stranger across the room. “I get it.”
“You don’t—” the man snaps, harsher now.
You flinch when his voice rings suddenly through the room, trying to pack the wound tight with half-numb fingers.
“You don’t just get to— to fix him like nothing happened. Like her life didn’t matter—”
“It does matter,” Jack assures with a rapid nod. “Your wife matters, I promise.”
“Then let me do something about it—”
Jack’s chest tightens when the man’s knuckles turn white around the gun. He holds it steady despite his troubled state, like he knows exactly what he’s doing with it. Jack understands, then, that if he lets that gun off, it’ll hit exactly whatever this man wants it to — wherever he wants it to.
“There are two other people in this room who had nothing to do with what happened to your wife, man,” Jack tells him. “And I know you don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I know that.”
“You’re right… I don’t want anyone else to get hurt…” the man nods, voice heavy and trembling. “So tell her to stop—”
The gun shifts over Jack’s shoulder, aiming right for your head.
A pained whimper sounds in the pit of your tightening throat. You can hardly see the incision below you as burning tears gather at your waterline. Your shaking fingers scramble for the sutures to stitch him back up again.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Jack blurts, stepping in front of the gun again without a second thought. He keeps his gloved hands raised, but his sympathetic stare turns stern in a flicker. “You’re talking to me right now, alright? So put the gun back on me— We’re gonna figure this out together.”
“I said— tell her— to stop!”
His thumb flicks the hammer of the gun with a daunting click.
“I know, kid…” he says without looking back at you, with a voice much more even compared to yours. “I know. Just keep going.”
“Stop!” the man bellows. “Or I swear to god, I’ll shoot you both in the goddamn head!”
Jack is not perturbed by his yelling. He wants him to yell, wants him to cause a scene so that someone’ll check in and call in a Code Silver. He just doesn’t want that gun to go off. So he keeps his voice calm as he counters gently, “And what happens next? If you kill us— If you kill him. What are you gonna do after?”
The man hesitates for a moment. His grip falters on the gun, as if he hadn’t considered the question until that very moment.
“I know you want your wife back… But this isn’t gonna make it any better.”
“Maybe not,” the man says. “But it’ll make it stop.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what ‘it’ exactly is, but Jack doesn’t need him to. He’s been where this man is standing — not physically, maybe, not with a gun in his hand; but in the deep, dark void reserved only for a special, gut-wrenching sort of grief.
“It won’t. Trust me,” Jack says with a shake of his silver head. “I lost my wife ten years ago. Not like you did, but it still hurt like hell, man, I can tell you that…”
The man softens slightly. It’s the first time since the crash that someone’s tried to level with him, that someone’s actually understood.
Jack takes a hesitant step forward when he catches the stranger’s resolve starting to slip.
“And I can tell you it doesn’t stay that way forever…” he continues. “Whatever you’re feeling right now, I know you think it’s never gonna stop. But it will. You just have to let it.”
Another step forward.
“You see the woman you’re pointing that gun at?” Jack wonders with raised brows, nodding his silver head in your direction. “I like her… I really like her. And I didn’t think I was capable of feeling anything again.”
Your chest aches at his words. Your glasses fog from the warm tears clinging to your bottom lashes. Your clammy hands fumble with the surgical needle.
The man’s finger loosens slightly on the trigger, and Jack takes another cautious stop.
“And this is really bad timing, man, ‘cause I was gonna take her out after this,” he confesses with a not-quite smile. “But for that to happen, I need us to walk out of here. All of us.”
The beat of silence thereafter feels borderline suffocating. It wraps its cold hands around your neck and strangles you.
Jack almost thinks he’s gotten through to the man. He can see the cracks starting to fissure throughout his hollow face; the flicker of hesitation, the realization of what he’s doing — where his dark mind has led him.
“So you’re saying…” the man trails off and swallows hard. His drawl is much too soft for the words that spill from his mouth a second later. “…If I shoot her, you’ll understand how I feel?”
Your blood runs ice cold in an instant.
Jack’s shoes squeak hard against the tile as he lunges for the man before you can blink. He pushes him into the wall with an aggressive thud and tries to shove his gun out of your direction. You bend over the bed on instinct, covering your patient without a second thought.
Two shots ring out.
You expect to feel both of them, or perhaps nothing at all, as your limp body hits the floor. You keep your eyes shut and your jaw clenched tight, bracing yourself for pain or certain death.
The harsh ringing in your ears is slow to fade. When your hearing finally returns to you, and your eyes peek slowly open, you find a sea of bodies crashing into the room like a tidal wave — and you, yourself, still standing.
Your head swivels on your shoulder, still half-hunched over your patient. Your gaze drags unwillingly past the blur of bodies and dark scrubs until it finds Jack, lying flat on the ground instead of you.
It takes your brain a long moment to make sense of it — the strangle ngle of his body, the stuttering of his chest, the tear in his shirt from the bullet, and the wet crimson darkening the tile beneath him. The sight doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong. Not to Jack, anyway; not to the man who’s far too steady, too solid, to ever look like this.
And the worst part of it all — the part that will follow you long after this moment ends — is that that bullet was meant for you, and that Jack didn’t even hesitate to take it instead.
The ED descends into a different sort of chaos than you’re used to. The PTMC fractures, splinters into something unrecognizable, as voices overlap and distort in your ears. “Gunshot wound— Attending down!” you hear someone shout, followed by a quieter, “Help me get him up,” and a harsher, “Someone get me a fucking line!”
None of it feels all the way real.
It’s like looking through the rest of the world through a fishbowl, where everything is blurred and warped and muffled. You can see armed guards detaining the crying gunman in the foreground of it all, along with Jack’s body being transferred to a stretcher, right before Samira ducks into your tunnel vision.
Her dark brown eyes are lined with exhaustion from her double shift as they dart attentively across your face — the first person to reach out for you in the midst of all the chaos.
“What do you need me to do?” is all she says.
Your voice comes out strangled. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else entirely as you choke through panted breaths, “F-Finish up his— his sutures, and… and get him to the OR... Walsh has a… has a room ready for him, I think—”
Your legs feel half-numb as you step back from the patient before you, left totally unaware of the chaos surrounding him. You stumble for the entrance, peeling off your stained gown and bloodied gloves as you go, and follow Jack’s body as they lead him out of the room.
You migrate to his side like it’s muscle memory to you, struggling to find your footing in the midst of the growing crowd as the doctors rush the gurney to the elevators. For every step you take, Shen and Crus seem to take three more. It makes it nearly impossible to keep up in your stupor.
You crane your head to catch a peek of the man from behind the towering bodies before you. “I-Is he okay?” you wonder breathlessly.
The gurney jerks too hard around the corner, scraping the side of the wall.
“Motherfucker!” Jack groans.
“Well, shit— He definitely sounds the same,” Parker quips from beside you.
“How are you feeling?” Crus calls from the man’s side. “Talk to me, Abbot— You’re still with us, right?”
“Not unless you two learn how to maneuver a goddamn gurney,” Jack jokes through gritted teeth.
“Page Walsh,” Shen tells Lena with a stern nod, pushing the button for the lift. “Make sure she’s got a room open.”
The doors part with a ding. They wheel the stretcher inside, and you make sure to squeeze in with them, elbowing past the attendings and nurses to get to Jack’s side.
He’s clammy and pale when he comes into view, writhing in place as he clutches at his ribs. His black scrubs are stained a darker color from the blood spilling from the wound, which turns the white towel pressed there a deeper shade of scarlet than you think you’ve ever seen.
Your trembling hand reaches for him on instinct. You press your palm over his bloodied knuckles — keeping some pressure there, reminding him that you’re still here.
“Jack?” you call to him in a voice taut, as your teary eyes dart wildly across his scruffy face. “Jack? A-Are you okay?”
He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His head turns slowly, just enough to find you, and he blinks wildly to clear the blur in his vision. The corner of his mouth twitches in a faint hint of a smile when he spots you standing over him.
He clears his throat, but his words still come out a little gravelly as he arches an expectant brow and says, “Told ya…”
You shake your head, features screwing in confusion. “Told me what?”
“That I’d make a good case…”
Your chest flares. Something wells suddenly in your throat, though you can’t be sure if it’s a laugh or a sob. You just scold him instead. “It’s not funny, Jack—”
“Hey. You’re the one who said you had high standards, kid…” he rasps.
His eyes fall over your form, trying to assess you despite his dwindling vision. You watch his scruffy features twist with concern a second later. His chest stutters as he questions breathlessly, “Whoa— Is that… Is that my blood? Or yours?”
You tilt your chin to follow his gaze. Only then do you feel the warm blood trickling down to your elbow; only then do you feel the white-hot, searing pain of the bullet that had grazed your shoulder.
You feel very suddenly like the world is spinning around you.
The stares you get return, as everyone else seems to notice too, only adds to the dizziness.
“You’re bleeding,” Shen observes sharply. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you got hit?”
“I-I’m fine,” you insist despite the waver in your voice, shaking your head to fight the lightheadedness away. “I can’t— I can’t even feel it, okay? I swear.”
“Get someone to take a look at that when we get upstairs, alright?” Shen commands with a stern glare. “I mean it.”
Your wet eyes harden in an instant. “I’m not leaving—”
Jack’s hand, still weak on his side, twists over the damp towel to grab yours. His bloody fingers are cold and trembling as they struggle to find purchase on your smaller ones. You hold him with enough strength for the both of you.
“You got hurt ‘cause of me, kid. At least let someone—”
“Hey,” you snap, meaner than he’s ever seen you. “That was not your fault.”
“Let ‘em take a look at you, alright?”
You shake your stubborn head. “I need you to focus on yourself right now—”
“I am,” he insists. His gravelly voice never loses its humorous edge, and neither do his glassy eyes lose their tenderness as they flit back and forth between yours. “And I’m not gonna be okay if you aren’t, alright? So just… please.”
Your features crumple at the pleading look he gives you — with his eyes all squishy around the edges, and glazing over with unshed tears.
The elevator stills with a ding, shattering the tense moment. It jolts faintly, just enough to make your swimming stomach feel sicker. You catch yourself nodding despite your better judgment.
“Fine…” you tell him in a fragile voice.
Jack tries to smile but finds the strength to slowly leave him, a little like the blood trickling from his side.
“I’m in good hands,” he assures you, then turns to the attending on his left. “Right, Dr. Shen?”
The younger man’s brows lower. “Didn’t you just call me a motherfucker?” he quips.
Jack’s weathered face twists as he’s wheeled out of the elevator. “…Did I?”
Your hand slips from his as you watch him go. Something about it feels wrong, though you can’t exactly place why. You just know it feels like something ripping in two — like the torn skin of your bloody shoulder, times a thousand.
The room they put you in is achingly quiet; the kind of quiet that makes everything else seem ten times louder. The green-white fluorescent bulb clicks and buzzes mercilessly over your head, drilling straight into your skull. The AC hums gently alongside it in a mundane sort of symphony that matches the empty room you’re in — where only one hospital bed sits beside a shuttered window, in front of a porcelain sink and mirror.
Everything smells like stale air, sharp antiseptic, and metallic blood.
You stand before the cloudy mirror with your scrub sleeve pushed up your shoulder, kept awkwardly in place by your chin. You struggle to do your sutures with a hand that won’t stop trembling.
You don’t realize how ardently you’re still shaking until the needle slips across your skin — not enough to do any real damage, but enough to make you hiss through your teeth when it stings. You clench your jaw and pull the thread through, until the raging skin around the laceration pinches together again. Your features flicker as you try and fail to ignore the dull burn that spreads up and down your arm a second later.
The fiery sensation is the only thing keeping your mind distracted from all the rest of it — the way the gunshot made your ears ring; the way Jack’s body jerked before it hit the ground; the way the man called out for his wife when security pinned him to the floor.
You tug the sutures harder, relishing in the sting. You push the needle through once more, harder than necessary, and let it slip a little sloppier than you should — anything to take your mind off of it.
“Careful…” a voice cautions from the doorway.
Your head whips over your shoulder. You blink rapidly as your brain struggles to catch up — like you half-expect to find yourself back in that room; like you half-expect to find the man from before standing there.
You feel a little like the ground has been pulled from underneath you when you find Robby there instead, rubbing disinfectant between his calloused palms.
Someone downstairs must’ve called him about Jack, and about the Code Silver currently turning the PTMC to shambles. And, based on the surgical mask sticking out of his jacket pocket, you figure he must’ve just gotten back from checking in on him in the OR.
His dark eyes flit from your face, to your shoulder, and to the supplies scattered across the sink before you.
“They said you were supposed to be getting looked at,” he says. “Not playing DIY surgeon.”
You huff out a breath that would’ve passed for a laugh any other time.
“Everyone else is busy… At least I can make myself useful this way…”
You can’t bring yourself to meet his gaze. You can’t stand the way he’s looking at you now. His gaze is too sharp, too focused. It’s like he’s studying you, cataloging, assessing — the same way you do with your patients. The thought of being so helpless makes your stomach twist.
Robby doesn’t argue, but instead lets his eyes linger on the slight tremor in your hands. The leftover adrenaline is likely buzzing like electricity in your veins just now. You’re bound to crash at any second.
“I know you don’t want my help,” he starts slowly, sauntering further in with his arms crossed over his chest. “But at least lie and say I did your sutures— so Jack doesn’t try to kill me when he wakes up.”
“I think he’ll know you didn’t do ‘em when he sees how neat they are,” you joke drily.
“Rude…” Robby scoffs, sneakers scuffing as he plants himself at your side. You can see the leftover slumber in his swollen eyes more clearly now, as he ducks down to look at you. “Want me to get you something for the pain, at least?”
You shake your head instantly, not trusting your voice enough to speak without wavering.
“You sure?” he presses.
“I’m fine,” you snap. “I’m not the one in surgery.”
He is not dismayed by your anger. He knows it’s not meant for him.
“Well, Jack’s doing just fine. Walsh is finishing up with him now,” he tells you. “Honestly, I think the hardest part is gonna be keeping him off his feet for the next little while…. ‘Cause there’s about a hundred percent chance he’s gonna want to come back to work when he’s discharged.”
You exhale sharply through your nose in place of a laugh as you tie the sutures and cut the excess with a pair of small medical scissors.
You just barely catch sight of your delirious smile in the cloudy mirror before a chuckle sputters suddenly from your mouth. The sound of it fills the quiet room as you tumble into a fit of half-drunken giggles, bowing your head and propping your gloved hands on the porcelain sink.
Your shoulders shake as your laughter turns quickly into sobs.
Robby softens instantly. “Shit… I’m sorry…”
“I’m fine,” you blurt once more and shake your head. Your voice is strangled through the tears in your throat, but you dismiss him anyway. “I’m fine. I-I don’t even know why I’m crying, so..”
“You went through something traumatic tonight,” he coos. “Everything you’re feeling is completely normal.”
You shake your head again. “I should’ve gone with him— I should be helping in there—”
“You’d just be a liability,” Robby shrugs, a little blunt but not entirely unkind. “You’re still in shock. Your hands are still shaking— I wouldn’t let you anywhere near an OR like this… You’re better off here, and you know it.”
You turn your head to flash him a teary-eyed look. Your chin quivers as your taut voice trembles, “He asked… He asked me if I wanted to go out with him when we got off,” you confess in a strangled whisper.
Robby’s brows raise to his hairline. “Did he?”
You nod slowly. “And I was gonna say yes…”
“Good…” the older man nods, lip flickering into a smile beneath his beard. “About time…”
“So he can’t… He doesn’t get to…” You stumble over yourself to get the words out. “He doesn’t get to not come back after that.”
Robby’s sympathetic grin widens at the stern, wet-eyed glare you give him. He takes a slow step closer and splays a warm, comforting hand along your back.
“Jack Abbot is the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” he tells you. “If there’s even the slightest chance of him coming out of that OR just to take you out, then… He’s gonna take it. Trust me.”
“Yeah,” you quip drily. “He better…”
Jack wakes after surgery to a tingling ache in his side and a heart monitor beeping faintly overhead, pervading the strange silence surrounding him — a silence he doesn’t usually allow himself.
His eyes crack slowly open, dry and unfocused for several long moments. They dance across the ceiling tiles as he blinks the haze of sleep from his gaze. He struggles to recall how he got here — in this dim recovery room, which he had never seen as a patient until now. He remembers the stranger with the gun first, the warmth of the blood that came spilling from his side second, and the way you cried from him third.
Your name spills from his dry mouth like it’s the only word he remembers.
“Great. Now I owe Crus twenty dollars,” he hears a familiar voice joke from his side. Jack’s head swivels until he finds Princess standing there, checking the IV hanging by his bed. She smiles softly down at him and quips, “He said the first thing you’d do is ask for her. I thought for sure you’d want a beer.”
“Yeah…” Jack rasps, then clears the gravel from his throat. “I could go for that, too…”
“Want me to go grab her for you?”
He hesitates. “Is she… Is she okay?”
“She’s great. Last I heard, Robby was patching her up,” the woman grins. “And, for what it’s worth, she was asking about you, too…”
The anticipation of seeing you again was somehow worse than the pain, blooming something sharp in his abdomen, and only slightly ebbed by the morphine drip.
The minutes drag on. The heart monitor at his side counts the seconds instead of his pulse. His fists curl against the stiff hospital sheets when he remembers the sticky red blood that had dripped slowly down your arm — the way you so easily brushed it all off, the way you so desperately wanted to stay at his side.
The door creaks softly open.
Something tightens in his chest.
You linger in the doorway for several long moments, as if you aren’t allowed to come any closer just yet. You’re bathed in the shadow of the lamplit recovery room and backlit by the too-bright hallway outside. He can only vaguely see the outline of your features from here — weighed down with fear and exhaustion and relief.
The laceration on your arm has been cleaned and sewn. It’s still raging a little around the marred edges, but will heal into a thin scar in a few weeks’ time — a story you’ll tell for years to come.
Jack grunts as he struggles to sit further up on the raised bed, but hides it by clearing his throat. “You look good…” he observes in a rasp.
“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Abbot?” you joke with narrowed eyes.
“I am,” he quips back. “Thanks for finally noticing.”
You scoff a faint laugh and shut the door behind you with a quiet click. You can’t help but feel a little like the air has thinned as you walk further inside. You focus on your wringing hands the entire way to his bedside. You don’t have the strength to meet his unwavering stare, still puffy from a medically induced slumber, but never once straying from your face.
“You okay?” he wonders aloud, shattering the silence between you.
You huff a weak laugh. “I’m not the one who just came out of surgery, Jack…”
“Fair point…” he nods.
“But yes… I’m okay,” you add, if only to appease him. “What about you? How do you feel?”
Jack exhales a heavy breath, chest deflating behind his thin hospital gown. “…Like I got shot.”
That almost gets a real laugh out of you.
“Yeah. That— That makes sense…”
You flounder in place for a moment, before reaching for the chair by the curtained window and dragging it closer to his bed. Jack is able to eye you more clearly when you settle into the cushioned seat by his side. He can see the redness in your eyes, the tension in your jaw, the way your clammy hands hover like you’re not quite sure what to do with them.
Whatever closeness you had before those shots rang out is long gone now. You orbit around him like he’s a stranger to you, like you’re not quite sure what to do with him, like you’re too scared to get any closer.
He bows his head, made of mussed silver curls, in a feeble attempt to meet your stare. He silently begs you to look back at him, but you never do.
“I’m okay, you know?” he coos to you, equal parts because it’s true and because he knows you need to hear it from him.
“No, I know, I just—” You cut yourself off when your fragile voice finally breaks. You shake your head to yourself and swallow hard, picking at the skin of your thumb until it starts to bleed. The scratch there blurs as burning tears gather once more in your gaze. “I can’t stop thinking about it, you know? If you wouldn’t have— have gotten as hurt if… you know, if you weren’t standing in front of me like that—”
His chest twists at the thought of you blaming yourself for it. The burning sensation there hurts him far worse than the one at his side.
“You would’ve gotten it a lot worse if I hadn’t.”
Your eyes snap finally to meet his gaze, though your stare is much more hardened than he’d like.
“But what if something worse had happened to you? Huh? What if you died, Jack?” you scold in words that spill faster from your lips than you can stop them. “Were you even thinking about that?”
“No.”
His honesty stops you cold as much as his lack of hesitation.
“I guess I was just thinking about you…”
The room goes eerily quiet, saved only by the even beeping of the monitor at his side and the distant voices talking in the hall.
Jack holds your gaze even as it weakens around the edges, even as it glazes over with burning tears you can’t seem to keep away. A rogue droplet clumps your bottom lashes together when your eyes flick down to his abdomen, to the place beneath the blanket where you know the damage lies.
“You’re not supposed to do that to a person, you know?” you whimper. “It’s cruel.”
Jack’s brows furrow. “Do what?”
“Make someone like you, and then— And then get yourself shot,” you stammer, gesturing wildly with your anxious hands. “Make someone almost lose you before—”
Your breath hitches.
Jack leans further in. “Before what?” he presses gently.
“Before they’ve even gotten to have you…”
His lip flickers with a weak smile. “You do have me,” he assures. “You’ve had me way before I ever asked you out— You know that.”
“Yeah,” you scoff with a grin of your own, much sadder in comparison. “So much for that date, huh?”
Jack’s eyes narrow in a challenging stare. “And what makes you think it’s not happening?”
You blink owlishly back at him. “Do you want a list, or…?”
That earns a weak chuckle from him, until he winces at the ache it puts in his side a moment later. He cradles the bandaged wound with a grimace, and your chair scrapes the tile when you stand. “I’ll tell Princess you need more morphine,” he vaguely hears you say, though he reaches for your hand before you can stray too far.
You still in place. Your wide eyes fall to the fingers around your wrist, warm like a furnace, and calloused like softly textured velvet.
“I’m okay,” he tells you, then takes a wavering breath in before repeating more firmly. “I’m okay— And you’re not going anywhere— And I’m not missing our date for the world, alright?”
Your features screw, hardly convinced.
“We’ll order something here,” he shrugs. “Hell, we can eat the cafeteria food for all I care, just… Don’t leave. I mean, I kinda got shot, so…The least you could do is indulge me a little…”
You cave instantly under the weight of his light-eyed stare. Your chest hitches with a quiet laugh. “It’d be a pretty grim first date…” you quip.
“Yeah, well…” he trails off, smoothing his thumb over your knuckles. “I plan on having plenty more, less grim ones with you, so…”
Your eyes narrow in a cynical squint despite the smiling tugging at the edges of your mouth. “That’s very presumptuous of you, Dr. Abbot…”
“Well, you could always so no,” he croons drily.
“Not a chance,” you argue without pause, gripping his hand with great strength — an unsaid promise. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Getting rid of you?” Jack echoes with a scoff, wincing when it hurts him but smiling up at you anyway. “That was never a part of the plan, kid— I took a bullet trying to keep you, in case you forgot."
eleven years ago, robby had a fling with a first year medical student, only for her to drop out and disappear without even a note. forward to present day, and a precocious 10 year old has shown up in the pitt demanding to see her dad, a photo of a familiar face gracing her phone screen.
series cw: mdni. kidfic, fem!reader, age gap (early 20s/30s, early 40s/50s), miscommunication, exes to idiots in love, romcom nonsense, medical/legal/scholastic/child-rearing inaccuracies, overuse of the word puppy, all lowercase. no physical reader description other than shorter than robby, no physical child description other than having curly hair (unspecified from whose side) and robby’s eyes. additional cw on each chapter. pics just for vibes. (ao3)
Tags/warnings: soft dom!jack abbot, brat/good girl!reader, D/s dynamics, power imbalance (but consensual), explicit age gap (reader is mid 20s, jack is however old he is), pet names (kid/kiddo/baby), sub drop, aftercare
Summary: Jack takes care of you when you drop into subspace at work.
a/n: for myself and the lovely anon that requested feisty!reader sub drop (I'm working on it I swear but this came out of nowhere and thought we'd both enjoy it)
Disclaimer: YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO REPOST MY WRITING ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT MY CONSENT. REBLOGS ARE ENCOURAGED THOUGH. YOU MAY NOT FEED MY WORK TO ANY AI DATABASES OF ANY KIND OR TO USE MY WORKS TO TRAIN AI. FUCK AI.
The first time Jack notices it you’re working of a double. You’ve been on days for the past week, ready to go into a long weekend when Lena called — short staffed, doing them a favor, blah blah blah. So you’re doing them a solid and staying on through the night shift as well.
It’s nearing three in the morning when Jack feels it, a shift in the air when you become hangry and snappy and the only way to calm you down is to force feed you goldfish and coffee.
Shen’s rambling on about some stupid PTA thing that you can solve with literally one text message and you’re staring at him like he’s the dumbest person on earth.
He a smirk quirks on his lips before he catches Shen sip on his now watery iced coffee, the condensation raining from the cup and down onto your pristine ED floors. You shift slightly backwards, a silent warning that the man in front of you is clearly oblivious to as he continues to ramble and swing about his drink, water now splashing against your scrubs.
You close your eyes, sighing deeply before Jack is instinctively dashing across the room, ordering Shen to go deal with an oncoming trauma. Perfect timing too as you look like you’re about to sucker punch him — which Jack knows you can do with no problem and that’s what scares him. Shen would not last a single second.
“C’mon, kid,” he murmurs, hand hovering over your hip to move you away. “Break time.”
“I’m fine.” You practically bark.
Jack fights back the urge to widen his eyes, to give you a stern look, to scold the attitude out of you.
Oh.
Ohohoho.
The realization hits him like a freight train.
He’s never thought of you this way, at least not directly. You’ve always been opinionated, done things your own way, never concerned yourself with what others think of you. But you’ve always been kind, gentle, standing up for yourself and your fellow nurses, your doctors, your patients. It’s one of the things Jack admires about you the most.
But tonight…tonight he understands where it comes from. How it’s been left unchecked and how he wants to be the one to put it back where it’s supposed to go.
He takes a step forward, making sure to tower over you while still keeping a respectably professional distance from you. His hand no longer hovers, instead it makes contact with your hip, fingertips lightly digging into your plush skin.
A slight jolt of pain sparks through your body and your eyes snap up to meet his, defiant and angry. How dare he baby you? Who does he think he is?
You don’t even register the glimmer in his own gaze, how he’s practically beaming with excitement at this newfound information about you and all the ways he’s going to exploit it.
“You’re not,” he states, tone steady and commanding. “You’re going to take twenty minutes, get something to eat, something to drink, take a nap upstairs and come back.”
You fight back a shiver, searching his gaze for the smallest crack you can use to fight back but you find none.
Damn, you really must be tired.
Without another word, knowing you’ll do exactly what he told you, Jack lets you go, returning to the ebb and flow of the ED as if nothing just happened.
But everything did.
Only you don’t know that yet.
After that night, Jack starts out small.
He returns your smile as you cross paths at shift change.
He stands a little too close to you when you linger to talk with Lena about what your nephew and her kid have been up to in school.
He places his hand on your hip and moves you when he needs you out of the way instead of telling you.
He praises you.
It’s always “good job, kid” or “atta girl” when you do your job well or you fill him in on how you managed to bake a three layer cake all on your own or filled your taxes on time or actually finished a book for the first time in months.
But he also corrects.
He doesn’t scold, at least, he hasn’t had to yet.
It’s little comments here and there — showing disappointment that you didn’t finish your water intake for the day, bringing a chamomile tea for you instead of the cup of coffee that Shen always gets you, raising his eyebrows when you let it slip that you haven’t had anything to eat since morning.
And little by little, it starts working.
You’re back to sleeping properly, you start going to yoga so you can take care of your mobility, you show off your empty water bottle to him every night and even send him pictures of your lunch every day to encourage him to eat his own (well, breakfast but it still counts).
It isn’t until a couple of months later when it all comes to a head.
It’s supposed to be your day off but as Jack hunches over the nurse’s station, deep in conversation with Robby and Dana, a loud whistle from Ellis catches his attention.
His gaze whips towards the sound and then towards the reason for it.
It’s you.
Dressed in an absurdly beautiful, absurdly tight dress that leaves nothing to the imagination.
“What are you doing here looking like that?” Ellis asks and it takes everything in you not to burst out in hot, frustrated tears.
“‘M working,” you reply, giving her a kiss on the cheek as you move further into the pitt.
“What happened to tall, dark and handsome?” Dana asks, handing over the pad she’s holding for Robby to sign off. The attending practically glues his gaze down on the screen, refusing to look up at you, gently kicking Abbot’s leg so that he stops staring.
He doesn’t.
He simply can’t.
His gaze is piercing, serious and cold.
The fuck do you mean you had a date?
You shrug. “Didn’t show.”
You look so defeated it’s making Jack unbelievably angry. You put effort into looking like this, hair and makeup done, fresh pedicure, you look so gorgeous. And some loser piece of shit could not bother to show up?
Jack may be furious but he’s also glad he didn’t.
You stop beside him, head dropping to rest on his arm as you continue your conversation with Dana.
“Can I borrow your extra pair of shoes?”
“Why don’t you just go home?” She offers.
You shake your head, shifting closer to Jack who has practically stopped breathing, arms crossed over his chest as he tries his best to look forward and not down towards your cleavage which practically sparkles from all the lotion and oil you used to moisturize.
“I’m gonna lose my mind if I do.”
Dana scoffs and immediately looks at Jack who she catches in a silent duel.
“You’ve come to the right place then,” she jokes without looking away but Jack doesn’t back away either. If the charge nurse in front of him knows anything about the myriad of experiments he’s been conducting for the past few months, she doesn’t say. But her gaze…oh Jack is fucked. “You know my code?”
You nod against Jack and the friction goes straight to his dick.
“Thank you, Dana.”
You finally peel yourself off him and shuffle back to the locker room to change. The second you’re out of earshot, Robby and Dana let out a laugh.
“Oh you are so fucked, brother.” Robby teases as Jack grabs the pad from him and the two start their rounds for shift change.
He doesn’t see you around until much later.
You’re sitting beside Lena at central, staring at your phone like it’s personally wounded you.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Your eyes lift up to meet his, all round and doe like.
You don’t answer him, just go back to staring off into space.
His brow scrunches as he sits down beside you, opening up his charting on the computer you’re clearly not using.
“You doing okay?”
You hum in response, still not breaking.
He says your name.
Nothing.
“Sugar plum, honey bun, sweetheart,” he pauses, concerned now. “Baby?”
You shudder in response.
What has that boy done to you? How could he leave you like this?
“Alright, that’s enough,” without a second though, Jack rolls back, his hand shooting up to wrap around the back of your neck.
The second his warm skin makes contact with your own, commanding, grounding, caring, you can’t help the whimper that left your lips, and Jack knows, if he where anywhere else, he’d broken at the sound.
He maneuvers you to your feet and there’s not an ounce of pushback in your body. You follow him blind, body moving on autopilot as he squeezes in response, a silent praise that’s gone far too quickly as he remembers where you are and your relationship to each other.
The hand releases your neck and trails down your spine, a pleasant comfort before it settles on your lower back, gently pushing you towards the locker room.
Once you’re safely inside and he’s made sure to inspect every nook and cranny for stragglers, he sits you down on one of the benches before closing the door and locking it.
You fiddle with your nails, clearly uncomfortable with how you’re feeling. He crouches in front of you, in between your open legs that have seemingly created space for him without you even thinking about it.
His hands come down on your thighs to keep himself up but also to ground you.
“Kid, I need you to know that you’re safe,” he starts, choosing his words carefully. “I’m not judging you, I would never, okay?”
You manage a hum to let him know you’re listening.
“Okay,” he squeezes. “I don’t want you dropping at the ED, I know I’ve been a little reckless with my…affections—”
Your gaze shoots up to his, as if finally, finally, all those little moments have come together to form a full picture. Jack can’t help but chuckle, you truly had no idea, did you?
The panic in your eyes quickly forces him to grow serious once more.
“Were you going to meet this guy tonight to play?”
It takes you a second to let go of the panic and Jack understands. He’s your boss after all, whatever connection the two of you have is always going to be overshadowed by that.
“I…” you try and fail miserably, tears swelling in your eyes, only causing more frustration to bubble over within you. “Fuck this is so stupid.”
You jerk away from Jack, trying to get out of his hold, but he’s having none of it, his grip tightening, his resolve only growing.
“No—” the word rumbles from his chest, deep and heavy, and it does the trick.
You freeze, the panic in your eyes real, the shiver that travels through you heartbreaking.
He shushes you gently at that, his grip lessening, his expression back to one of care and concern.
“I’m sorry, kid, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “You’re okay, I’m not mad, I’m not— I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for exactly, but he can feel it.
Can feel your heartbeat roaring, crashing through your body, your hands trembling as they clench into fists inside your — his — hoodie pockets…
Fuck.
A wave of guilt rushes through Jack as he reckons with what he’s been trying to get you to fall into for months. Even though he didn’t cause this, he still feels like such an asshole for wanting to see if he could make you so needy, so airy and soft that you would crash and show him exactly just how much you need structure, you need someone looking out for you, you need him.
He wants you to need him.
And now that he’s here, there is nothing holding him back from striking.
“It’s not stupid,” he states, calm and collected. “You’re not stupid, kiddo.”
He shifts closer, positioning his head below your and tilting it upward so that you’re forced to look at him.
“You are safe here, with me, and I am sorry that idiotic excuse of a man left you hanging in such a vulnerable headspace.”
A sob breaks free from your lips as you can’t hold yourself back any longer. You practically fall into him, arms shooting up to wrap themselves around his neck as you burry your face into the crook of it.
Your body shakes violently as he soothes you.
This is what he’s wanted for so long. This is what’s been missing.
He stays with you for a long time, ignoring his phone going off in his pocket, ignoring the pages from Ellis and Shen. Nothing else matters right now, the only thing in his mind being keeping you safe and helping you get regulated.
It’s no secret how touchy you are with everyone. You’re always the first to comfort, to connect, to put yourself in the shoes of everyone but yourself. He knows this because you tease him about it too. He knows this because he cares, he watches, he listens.
And for you to seek him out when you’re having a bad day and need a hug, advice, a shoulder to cry on — it means the world to him.
But tonight is different. Tonight you’re blurring the line between boss and employee even more, opening up to him about a part of both your lives that you never have before. And in return, he’s showing you just how similar the two of you are.
It takes you a while to return to yourself, to let your breathing stabilize and accept what you have been feeling.
Jack doesn’t stop running his hands over your legs, your arms, your back. He’s consistent and diligent, determined to show you that he’s not going anywhere, that you can count on him (unlike your stupid date).
It’s easy to give away to all of your reservations. Easy to cross over every single line you’ve drawn up for yourself inside your head, inside your heart. None of it matters anymore. Not when Jack is staring at you with those galaxy filled eyes like you’re the sun and he’s just lucky to be in the presence of your warmth.
You don’t think he realizes he’s crying until you run your hands over his neck and up his cheeks, thumbs carefully wiping away the wetness that has streaked. He turns his head to the side and kisses your palm, his stubble tickling your skin and eliciting a giggle to escape your lips.
His eyebrows shoot up in contentment. That is the most beautiful sound in the world and Jack wants nothing more than to hear it for the rest of his life.
“There’s my pretty girl,” he murmurs against your skin, causing you to squirm in his grasp, clearly embarrassed, and he’s never been more thrilled at the prospect. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better,” you whisper, leaning down to lean your forehead against his. “Tired.”
“I bet,” he kisses your palm again, lower his time, over your pulse point. “Must’ve been pretty scary, huh?”
You nod, hands dropping back down to rest against his chest.
You can feel his heartbeat underneath your fingertips. It’s strong and fast, matching your own as you both silently battle with your own internal demons.
“Thank you,” you tell him, unsure what comes next, unsure just how much you can ask for before the bubble pops and you’re right back where you began at the start of your shift.
“Anytime,” he replies, so sure of himself, of you, of this, and you instantly try to get back out of his grasp. “Hey, hey, slow down. I mean it. I—” he catches your gaze in his, finally allowing himself to show you. “I want more too.”
You’re certain you stop breathing. “I…we shouldn’t—”
He stops you with a kiss.
He shouldn’t have, most certainly, but words aren’t processing in your pretty little brain right now and he simply needs you to understand.
You practically melt into him. It’s endearing to say the least. It’s soul encompassing at most.
He’s completely, absurdly, passionately whipped. He decides right then and there that you’re his, and that he is yours, and that he’s never going to let you go.
You try to deepen the kiss and it snaps him back to reality. He pulls back and you whine, you actually whine.
“I know, kiddo,” it’s so hard to keep his emotions at bay when you’re being this needy and all he wants to do is— “I’ll give you everything you want, I promise. But we have to get through this shift first.”
Whatever lasting brain cell that you’ve got working manages a nod of understanding and he softens.
“You think you can finish up?” He asks.
You take a deep breath in, mentally checking in with yourself before ultimately nodding. “Yeah, I got this.”
With the soft cadence of your voice back to what he recognizes as your normal, he finally stands up, his joints cracking obnoxiously.
A groan escapes his lips while a joyous and teasing laugh erupts from yours. He shoots you a glance, a warning, a thrilling appetizer to the world you cannot wait to enter with him.
“What’d you expect, old man?” You tease, back to your usual bratty self.
“Oh yeah?” He pulls you into him, chests pressed together as you stand off. “You gonna call me old man like it doesn't turn you the fuck on?”
Your eyes widen in unbridled desire. He can tell, he can see the fire, the excitement, the adrenaline start to take over.
Fuck this is going to be so much fun.
“I thought we had a shift to finish," you poke.
“I’m just setting the groundwork for later.”
You scoff, pressing yourself further into him, into his growing erection.
“Two can play at that game.”
He groans. “Looking forward to it, kiddo.”
"Bring it, old man."
a/n: don't mind me just manifesting I guess. lmk if y'all have any thoughts/requests for them <3
