Hey besties! I’m a 23-year-old girl who likes to remain anonymous here because of my digital footprint. I love to write for House of the Dragon (specifically Aegon and Aemond) and anything about Adam Driver and his characters! House of the Dragon & The Pitt are my recent hyper-fixations. I’m focused on writing for my current fics, His Love &The Gods We Can Touch. Feel free to interact with me!
All Things Adam Driver
Living In the Moment |Jack Gladney x Fem!Reader| (complete)
Rapture |Jack Gladney x Fem!Reader| (complete)
The Most Tragic of Mistakes |Charlie Barber x Fem!Reader| (hiatus)
Ruined |Jacques le Gris x Fem!Reader| (complete)
Let Me Into Your Heart |Mafia!Kylo Ren x Fem!Reader| (hiatus)
House of The Dragon
His Love |Aegon II Targaryen x Fem!Reader| (ongoing)
The Gods We Can Touch |Aemond Targaryen x Niece!Reader| ft. Yandere Aegon and Alicent (ongoing)
The Blood of Eden |Lucifer!Aemond Targaryen x Eve!Reader| (complete)
Stay Another Day |Jack Abbot x FemNurse!Reader| One Shot
Summary: At PTMC, you’re the beloved night-shift nurse known as “Nurse Sunshine,” admired for your joy, humor, and ability to bring light to even the hardest shifts. Dr. Jack Abbot begins to notice that your kindness runs deeper than simple optimism, and your connection slowly grows through each case, quiet conversations, and moments of unspoken tension. You both navigate grief, exhaustion, and complicated feelings that neither of you fully knows how to name until it all comes to a breaking point.
Author’s Note: Hello everyone! This is my first-ever fic for The Pitt, though I’m definitely a veteran writer. This fic isn’t what I normally write and is very angsty, but there will still be smut... eventually. After like 15k words... I hope some of you can find some comfort in this and know that whatever struggles you may face, you aren’t alone. Your life will get better.
Warnings: major depressive disorder, suicidal ideations, and suicide attempt. If you or someone else you know is experiencing suicidal ideations or has a plan, please talk to a trusted safe person or contact 988 Lifeline. You are not alone. You are loved. Please, stay another day.
At night, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center revealed itself. The night shift sharpened edges and changed rhythms. Silences thickened; fluorescent lights erased all softness. Corridors stretched; urgency sliced through stillness. Machines hummed—a measured, steady symphony. You moved with purpose, made for both chaos and calm.
They called you Nurse Sunshine, an upgrade from Shen’s first mocking name, which implied you shot rainbows and glitter from a southern orifice. It wasn’t your fault caffeine fueled the night shifts. The thrill of seeing a parent’s relief after helping their child was more intoxicating than any drug.
You were the steady force in The Pitt’s storm during late nights and early mornings, just as you’d been the peacemaker at home growing up. Instinct drove you to bring calm to chaos, even as your pulse thundered. Comfort became second nature.
You never fought the nickname, especially when the handsome, competent, old enough-to-be-your-dad attending said it. The moniker stuck—sweet but occasionally stinging. At first, you wore it like a badge, basking in smiles and gratitude. But over time, lightness faded; what felt fresh grew heavy, obligation replacing happiness until the emptiness made you unsettled.
For a time, your energy outpaced exhaustion and doubt. Times were good.
During your first few months, Dr. Jack Abbot noticed you for your positive efficiency. Not just your lack of spectacles attracted his attention. You greeted coworkers as if you’d known them for years and brought extra coffee and energy drinks on shift. Your high fives and ‘good jobs’ were constant, your aura contagious. When he saw you in action, he knew the night shift would never be the same.
At first, Jack told himself it was simply relief. Relief that someone new on nights possessed the ability to soften the sharp edges of the emergency department without compromising competence. He had worked alongside enough eager nurses to know the difference between performative optimism and genuine steadiness. Yours was the latter. You were not careless with your kindness. You wielded it deliberately, instinctively, like another piece of medical equipment strapped to your body.
He noticed it most during the difficult hours—between three and five in the morning—when exhaustion hollowed everyone out, and tempers became fragile. Somehow, you remained warm without becoming naive. You laughed with housekeeping as you helped strip a bed. You remembered the names of anxious family members in hallways. You praised uneasy interns with enough sincerity that their tight shoulders visibly loosened. It unsettled him how naturally you breathed life back into rooms he had learned to survive by emotionally distancing himself from.
And God, he tried not to look at you too long.
Jack was not a foolish man. He understood attraction well enough to recognize its early symptoms. His unconscious search for your voice over the steady monitors. He felt subtle disappointment when your assignment kept you across the department most of the night. His body seemed to ease whenever you entered during a difficult case. He knew what it was. That was precisely the problem.
For a while, guilt settled beneath his ribs like a chronic, quiet ache. Some nights, he would catch himself smiling at something you said. Grief and guilt would arrive immediately—sharp enough to make him feel disloyal and dirty. His wife had once occupied every corner of his life. Loving her had not been temporary or fragile. That love was rooted so deeply that, even now, years later, traces of her still existed in his smallest habits: the coffee he drank was too black, half-read books by the couch, the absent reach for the passenger seat before remembering no one was there.
He believed surviving loss meant sealing the door. But over time, Jack faced the truth in therapy, sleepless days, and quiet drives home: loving his wife and wanting you weren’t mutually exclusive. Grief was not devotion’s final form. His heart didn’t stop belonging to the dead simply because it responded to the living again. Recognizing this frightened him; new fear mixed with emerging hope.
You were younger, luminous in ways he no longer felt. Hope lived on your face, not hidden behind sarcasm and fatigue. Sometimes, he watched you glide through the chaos, smiling, and wondered if proximity to him would ultimately dim that spark. He knew what years in emergency medicine could scrawl across a soul. He bore all the proof: permanent fatigue set in his face, the stiffness of his prosthetic after long shifts, the protective distance he once mistook for resilience.
Despite every reason to stay distant, he came closer anyway. Not because you were young or beautiful—though you were. It was your ability to stay soft, not naive; to comfort a patient and command the trauma room, never losing yourself in either. Each moment broke his defenses, reminding him compassion didn’t have to sacrifice survival. Jack forgot that once; feeling it, he awoke to a longing he hadn’t expected.
Sometimes, after especially brutal nights, he would catch you sitting at the nurses’ station: tired eyes, messy hair, still offering someone the last energy drink from your bag with an exhausted little grin. In those moments, the pull toward you stopped feeling reckless. Instead, it started feeling inevitable.
The trauma bay pulsed with electric energy—a place where life and death danced in an eternal struggle. One moment, fragile stillness hovered; rhythmic beeping of monitors pierced the space, a quiet heartbeat. Then, in an instant, calm was shattered. Chaos erupted as bodies rushed in, desperate for help. Each night hummed with tension so thick it felt as if the very walls held their breath, anticipating the next wave of emergencies. Doors swung wide, unleashing torrents of urgency. Instincts kicked in before your mind caught up. Into the fray, you plunged.
“Twenty-eight-year-old male, GSW to the abdomen, hypotensive en route,” the EMT rattled, locking the stretcher into place. Blood-soaked gauze at his hip, silent proof of what the monitors would soon confirm. You moved before the briefing ended: scrub, glove, assess, your gaze cutting.
“Pressure’s eighty systolic,” you announced, your voice splitting cleanly through the noise without rising above it. “We’re losing him.”
Dr. Abbot stepped in alongside the new intern, Toomarian. Jack’s presence was immediate and grounding, his focus narrowing with a kind of gentle intensity that seemed to steady the room itself.
“Large bore access,” he ordered, though you were already there, threading the IV with fluid efficiency, your hands unwavering despite the urgency pressing in around you.
“Second line in. Blood’s coming,” you said, not glancing up as you anchored the catheter, your hands precise and assured. You caught his glance for a heartbeat—a silent affirmation needing no words.
“Let’s not wait,” he said with a tilt of his head, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Start O-negative.”
Mateo sprinted over, dark curls bouncing, arms loaded with two bags of blood. You’d already directed him, one step ahead of Abbot’s order.
“Hanging O-neg,” you returned, glancing up just long enough for your eyes to meet. There was something there, brief, fleeting, but unmistakable. A spark of recognition. A shared understanding that existed just beneath the surface of the work. You pushed it aside before anyone noticed, hopefully.
Mateo puffed, shaking his head as he set the telemetry leads. “You two know the rest of us exist, right?”
“Barely,” Olive muttered, though there was a shade of amusement beneath her breath as she handed you a pressure bag.
Dr. Abbot didn’t show any visible reaction, but you noticed a slight shift at the corner of his stubbled mouth. His lips pressed together a bit tighter, suggesting the beginnings of a smile that the tense atmosphere wouldn’t allow to surface.
“Let’s focus,” he said, though his tone was softer than usual, lacking its typical bravado.
“Focused,” you replied lightly, a sing-song lilt to your voice, your hands already moving to assist as he assessed the wound. “Just keeping you on track, doctor.”
“Is that what you call it?” he murmured, looking down at you from his lashes, just quiet enough that it belonged only to you.
Your heart stumbled at the sound of his voice, smooth and deep, still tinged with mint from his discarded gum. Warmth flared in your stomach, tightening your insides, but you stamped it out. You reminded yourself: whatever Jack Abbot awakened in you would never see the light of day, nor would it ever be returned. He was a colleague, shaped by years you could only guess at and stories you had yet to hear. There was simply no space for a novice nurse who stared at him as if he arranged the stars.
The patient stabilized, barely enough to be sent upstairs after a maddening wait that the admin would never pay to fix. The ED exhaled, tension loosening its grip as the night went on. Even after a save, the nearness of loss lingered. You peeled off bloodied gloves, flexing your fingers as adrenaline faded and emptiness rushed in. You banished the unwelcome feelings. That was not who you were allowed to be.
Dr. Abbot remained in the trauma room a moment longer, his gaze lingering on the space where the patient had been, pristine white sheets now wrinkled and stained with crimson. His shoulders tensed, a stiffness in his posture that you recognized as something deeper than the case. You noticed a slight shift in his weight onto his good leg and the tightening of his jaw, the quiet signals he rarely let others see.
You stepped closer, your voice softer now. “You called that early,” you said, nodding toward the area where the bleeding had been worst. “It could’ve gone south quickly.”
He glanced at you, the tension in his expression easing just slightly. “You had the blood ready before I finished the thought.”
You shrugged lightly, a playful glimmer in your eyes as you fought to contain the smile that threatened to break free from his flattering words. “I’ve learned to anticipate your worst-case scenarios.”
“That so?” There was a quiet note of something in his voice, something almost curious, almost amused. “And what does that say about me?”
You pretended to contemplate a moment, pulling at the ends of your stethoscope. “That you’re predictable,” you said, the hint of a smile tugging at your lips. Without thinking any better of it, you added, “in the best way.”
He let out a soft, bemused chuckle, the sound escaping from his lips like a gentle breeze, while a wry smile curled at the corners of his mouth. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Relieved, hopefully,” you replied, your voice slightly trembling as you turned away to gather supplies. The lingering excitement of being so close to Dr. Abbot made your heart race. You busied yourself with the equipment, trying to focus on the task at hand. “After all, it’s what keeps your patients alive,” you added, feeling a mix of anxiety and admiration.
There was a pause, brief but noticeable, before he spoke again. You dared not look at his face for fear he might see just how deeply you admired him. “It’s not just me.”
You avoided his gaze, yet the weight of his words lingered between you. You could feel his eyes on you, the warmth of his half-lidded stare igniting a flush in your cheeks that spread like wildfire.
“I know,” you admitted quietly, trying to conceal a smile. You hoped it didn’t reveal how his compliment left you feeling both vulnerable and thrilled beneath your professional composure.
On a night when everything seemed to be unraveling, a middle-aged woman staggered through the doors, gasping for breath. Her face was a mask of desperation as her oxygen levels plunged, even in the midst of high-flow support. Each inhale was a painful battle, her body visibly trembling with the effort. Breathing, a simple act often taken for granted, had become an insurmountable challenge, a heavy weight she struggled to bear.
The woman came apart at the threshold, as though the night itself had pressed its weight against her ribs and found them wanting. Each breath she drew in was shallow and fractured, a stuttering rhythm that faltered beneath the monitors’ scream. The high-flow oxygen hissed uselessly at her face, an artificial wind that could not fill the hollow her lungs had become. Her skin bore that unmistakable gray, too pale to be called alive, too flushed to be mistaken for calm, and the tremor in her hands spoke of a body already beginning to surrender.
You were moving before the room had fully understood the gravity of it, your steps quick but measured, the practiced cadence of someone who had long since learned how to carry urgency without letting it spill. Then her hand caught you.
It was not strong, not truly, but there was intention in it, fingers curling with a desperate insistence that rooted you in place. For a fraction of a second, instinct clawed up your spine, a memory of flinching away from hands that grabbed too tightly, too unpredictably. But this was different. You felt it in the tremble of her grip, in the fragile way her thumb pressed against your pulse as though she could borrow it, steady herself against it.
Her eyes found yours, wide and glass-bright, and something in your chest gave way. You covered her hand with your own, your touch deliberate, grounding. Your thumb traced the sharp ridge of her knuckles, slow and certain, an anchor in a body that was slipping loose from itself.
“I’ve got you,” you murmured, low enough that it belonged only to her, though you did not know if she could hear you through the roar of her failing breaths.
“BiPAP’s not cutting it,” Toomarian announced, already shifting settings, her voice clipped with the kind of focus that bordered on urgency.
You didn’t glance at the monitor. It wasn’t necessary. The sounds told you everything you needed to know. You could hear the subtle shift in the rhythm, each breath becoming a drawn-out struggle. Inhales elongated, as if the air was a burden, while each exhale seemed to release so much more than just breath.
Dr. Abbot stepped in beside you, and the atmosphere changed. It was subtle, almost imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know him, but you had begun to recognize it, the way his presence narrowed a room, how chaos seemed to bend around him rather than through him. His gaze swept over the patient once, precise and calculating, and then settled into something sharper, something edged with decision.
“She’s tiring out,” he said, his voice even, though there was no mistaking the weight beneath it. “We’re going to have to intubate.”
You were already moving. The woman’s hand slipped from yours, not because she let go, but because you had to. It lingered at your wrist for a moment longer, fingertips brushing your skin like a question you couldn’t answer, before gravity claimed it. You forced yourself not to look back.
Your hands were steady as you gathered the intubation equipment, each motion clean, efficient, almost instinctive. You had run this sequence a thousand times, but tonight it felt sharper, more immediate, as if you were not just anticipating the steps, but anticipating Jack Abbot.
“Tube’s ready,” you called, holding it up just long enough for confirmation before placing it within reach. “One milligram of ketamine being drawn.”
You felt his gaze before you saw it. It landed on you not as a distraction, but as a pause, brief, deliberate, as though he were recalibrating something he hadn’t realized was off.
“You always this prepared?” he asked, the question quieter than it should have been, edged with something that didn’t belong in the middle of a crashing airway.
You met his eyes only for a second, just long enough for the corner of your mouth to lift. “You know me, Dr. Abbot.”
A subtle energy pulsed between you, something that neither of you dared to acknowledge, yet neither could fully dismiss or overlook.
Mateo exhaled sharply from the other side of the bed, a grin showing his white teeth. “This is getting ridiculous.”
You disregarded his teasing comment, focusing on drawing up the dangerous paralytic. “One milligram of roc drawn.”
“Jealous?” Olive shot back at Mateo, her hands never faltering as she monitored the patient’s vitals.
Abbot didn’t respond. Not to them. His attention had returned to the patient, but you could feel it still, threaded between you, an awareness that hadn’t been there before, or perhaps had been and was only now refusing to stay buried.
“Let’s go,” he ordered with the flick of his head. You stepped into place beside him as if you had always been meant to stand there.
There was no need for instruction. You adjusted the patient’s head before he reached for it, your fingers guiding the angle of the jaw with quiet precision. The laryngoscope was in his hand the moment he needed it, the light catching just right as he moved. You tracked the motion of his shoulders, the shift of his weight, reading him the way you read a patient, anticipating, adapting, responding before the need could become a demand.
For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between your hands.
“Cords?” he murmured, head turning to face you.
“Visualized,” you confirmed softly, focusing briefly on the screen before aligning the tube for him.
Your fingers brushed his as you passed it, brief, fleeting, but enough to register, enough to linger. Neither of you reacted, but something in the rhythm changed. The tube slid into place with a smooth certainty, the kind that came from experience rather than luck. The monitor shifted, numbers climbing back from the edge, and the room exhaled in a way no one would acknowledge out loud.
“Good airway,” you complimented Dr. Abbot, almost absently, your focus still fixed on the patient as the immediate danger receded.
There was a beat of silence, and you feared for a moment you might have overstepped, might have ruined whatever playful banter was happening between the two of you.
“I’ll take the compliment.” His voice was softer now, threaded with fatigue and something dangerously close to amusement. When you glanced at him, there was a faint smile at the corner of his mouth, subtle but real.
You allowed yourself the smallest huff of breath, something that might have been a laugh if it had been given more space as your face became hot. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late,” Mateo muttered with a grin.
Abbot ignored him again. His gaze lingered on you for half a second longer than it should have, something unspoken settling there—recognition, perhaps. Or curiosity. Or something far more complicated. Then he turned back to the patient, and the moment dissolved into the steady rhythm of a stabilized airway.
During one shift, as the night finally paused for breath, you found Dr. Abbot at the nurses’ station, leaning into the counter’s edge. Up close, fatigue struck him harder—shadows under his eyes, stiffness in his stance, tiredness that ran deeper than a single shift. Concern tugged at you, sharp and sudden.
You had noticed the prosthetic early on, of course. It was impossible not to. But it was not something he acknowledged openly, not something he allowed to define him in the hospital. He moved with quiet determination that left little room for question, his gait stable despite the slight imbalance. Somehow, that only made it harder to ignore. There was something achingly human about the way he carried pain without asking anyone else to shoulder it for him.
And maybe that was the problem.
You had spent weeks trying to convince yourself that whatever existed between you was harmless. Admiration. Respect. A harmless little crush on an older attending who looked at you like he actually saw you instead of merely another body moving through the department. But every shift seemed to chip away at that explanation until it no longer held together.
Because admiration did not explain why your pulse stumbled every time his voice dropped low beside your ear during a trauma. It did not explain why you found yourself searching for him the second you walked onto the floor, subconsciously calmer once you spotted his broad frame moving through the chaos. It certainly did not explain why, seeing him exhausted like this, something protective, painfully, bloomed in your chest.
“You’re favoring it tonight,” you commented softly, nodding toward his leg.
His gaze flew to you, surprise showing for a second, eyebrows lifting before his face returned to neutral. “Long shift,” he said, a flatness to his tone that wasn’t quite dismissive, but edged with fatigue.
You knew immediately he was deflecting. Not because he was cold, but because he was practiced at it. Jack Abbot wore composure like armor, carefully layered over old grief and wounds. Most people accepted the surface he gave them and moved on. You couldn’t seem to.
“You’ve had longer,” you replied gently, looking over his sculpted body, his black scrub top clinging to muscle softened only slightly by exhaustion. Heat curled low in your stomach, then guilt followed immediately. God, pull yourself together. He’s your attending.
But then he looked at you with those tired light brown eyes, and the rest of the world became dangerously easy to forget.
“Can I get you something?”
He studied you for a moment, as though weighing what to say. “Weather’s changing,” he confessed finally. “It acts up.”
The honesty in it caught you off guard. Small as it was, it still felt strangely intimate, like being handed something fragile. Your chest tightened unexpectedly. You wondered, not for the first time, how much pain he carried silently before anyone noticed. How often he stood in trauma bays while his leg ached beneath him and still somehow managed to steady everyone else first.
You nodded, accepting the explanation without pressing further. “You should sit,” you offered. “At least for a minute.”
He exhaled softly, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes as he raised an eyebrow. “Is that an order?”
The corner of your mouth lifted before you could stop it. God, there it was again. That warmth he pulled out of you so effortlessly. “Recommendation,” you corrected, though your tone carried a quiet firmness. “From your nurse.”
That earned you a small, brief but genuine smile.
And there it was. That stupid, dangerous little feeling again.
It hit you every single time he smiled at you like that—small and real, like something reserved only for rare moments. It made your stomach tighten in a way that felt embarrassingly juvenile, considering the blood and chaos surrounding you nightly. You had seen this man crack ribs during CPR, calmly intubate coding patients, walk grieving families through impossible conversations, and somehow, your undoing was a barely-there smile at the nurses’ station. Pathetic.
“I’ll consider it.”
You tilted your head slightly to the side, your brow furrowing as you narrowed your eyes. “You always say that,” you remarked, a hint of amusement tinged with exasperation in your voice.
“And you always push anyway,” he quipped back, crow’s feet showing with his smirk.
Your heartbeat betrayed you instantly.
It was the crow’s feet that got you sometimes. The visible proof of age between you should have made this easier and reminded you why this was complicated, inappropriate, and unrealistic. Instead, it only made him feel more devastatingly real. Not polished or untouchable. Just a man who had lived through enough to carry grief in the lines of his face and kindness in the softness that remained afterward.
“Someone has to,” you replied, your gaze firm as you mirrored his posture, leaning over the desk.
You became acutely aware of how close he was. The clean scent of soap beneath antiseptic, the deep rasp in his voice. The way his attention settled completely onto you whenever you spoke, as though the rest of the emergency department dimmed around the edges. Most people looked at you while simultaneously thinking about ten other things, but Jack Abbot listened with his whole body.
There was a pause, the kind that lingered merely long enough to feel intentional, before he spoke again. “You make it difficult not to listen.”
The words landed somewhere deep enough to hurt. Your breath caught faintly, warmth blooming beneath your skin so quickly it almost embarrassed you. For one dangerous second, your mind betrayed you entirely. You wondered what it would feel like if he said things like that outside the hospital. If those words were softer, closer. The thought hit you with startling force, and worse still, the unrealistic part of you thought he wanted that too.
The words lingered in the air between you, heavy and unvoiced, their meaning weaving an unbreakable bond. In that fleeting moment, the chaos of The Pitt faded into oblivion, leaving just you and the intimacy of a rare shared silence.
Mateo cleared his throat loudly from across the station. “I swear, if either of you actually says what you’re thinking, I’m clocking out early.”
Olive laughed under her breath as she typed away on the keyboard in front of her. “You’d never survive the suspense.”
You shook your head, turning away to hide the warmth creeping into your expression. Still, your composure felt fragile now, stretched thin beneath the weight of everything you refused to say aloud because the terrifying part was not that you desired him. It was that somewhere along the way, without meaning to, you had started caring about him too. Deeply enough that his exhaustion bothered you, enough that you noticed every slight limp and every too-long shift, and enough that seeing him smile felt less like victory and more like relief. And that was infinitely more dangerous.
You felt his gaze linger just a moment longer before he looked away. Neither of you said anything. You didn’t need to, but the tension remained, woven into every shared glance, every near-simultaneous movement, every quiet moment between cases where words felt unnecessary. And in the space between life and loss, between certainty and doubt, it grew, unspoken, undeniable, and impossible to ignore.
You concentrated on spiking a fluid bag as Dr. Abbott entered your patient’s room. He glanced from the monitor to them, assessing the post-treatments, the outcomes. You noticed him shift his position, absently lifting the line.
“Fluids are ready,” you nodded efficiently. “Waiting on your orders.”
A brief pause, a recalibration, followed. He looked at you, attentive. “Consider it done,” he said, certain.
You did, and you resumed. He saw you in fragments, always ahead, existing between anticipation and action. Mistakes were avoided before orders. Labs appeared before requests, meds prepped before thought. Your awareness matched his, something learned by instinct.
“You’re reading my mind,” he confessed with a certain little tone to his voice that only he could do, eyes on the chart.
You smiled easily, trying not to preen. “Just trying to stay ahead.” The words were practiced. You recognized your role in his eyes. Just a nurse, a coworker, not a partner, nothing more.
His lingering attention drew your gaze. You wouldn’t have admitted watching him, but his competence earned respect, and his steady clarity anchored you. He assessed, decided, acted, never rushed, never faltered. Even when results slipped, his steadiness grounded you, making chaos navigable. You attuned to his cadence, sensing shifts in posture and expression.
The Night Crawlers, as Abbot called the third shift, were all crowded around the nurses’ station, each one of you trying to make an excuse not to chart. Olive’s laughter pierced the heaviness of the hour on a slow night at a joke you told. Lena looked up from her iPad to the board, a smirk on her face, as Mateo tapped his pen, feigning boredom, a grin tugging at his lips.
“You’re too cheerful for this hour,” Dr. Abbot remarked as he walked up, eyeing you with mild suspicion, but there was a grin.
“Someone has to be,” you replied, reflexive and warm. They relied on your steadiness. It was easier to meet expectations than question them. Giving was easier than considering the cost.
The change came quietly, eroding your energy. You blamed fatigue. You skipped coffee runs and conversation, choosing solitude. You still smiled, reassured, and performed with precision, but the effort deepened, adding quiet layers behind each interaction. Even simple expressions now require intention.
Dr. Abbot was the first to notice the subtle shift in your demeanor, long before anyone else caught on. It wasn’t as if you were visibly injured. Nothing was broken or bruised, but a certain spark seemed to have faded from your spirit. Your assessments remained as incisive and sharp as ever, yet your once vibrant energy dwindled, leaving you feeling quieter, almost mechanical in your movements.
One particular night, under the harsh glow of the examination room lights, while taking vitals on a sedated patient, he leaned slightly closer, concern etching deeper lines on his face. “You okay?” he asked, his voice hushed, as though he feared the truth of your struggle.
You averted your gaze, a lie forming on your lips as you nodded in response. “Just tired.”
He lingered for a moment, studying the shadows under your eyes and the tension in your shoulders, his expression a mix of worry and understanding. The weight of his unspoken question hung heavy in the air between you, a silent acknowledgment of the distance that had grown between who you were and who you had become.
You told yourself it would pass, just fatigue from too many hours and little rest. Still, with each shift, the symptoms of burnout crept in. A growing sense of detachment, an emotional numbness that dulled both satisfaction and loss. This wasn’t simply tiredness, but a slow, heavy exhaustion, the kind that comes with compassion fatigue, a depletion from giving too much for too long. The work did not lessen, nor did the growing distance inside you. It was not sadness, but a quieter absence dulling everything.
You stood at the sink after a case, watching water run over your hands, seeing your reflection without recognition. There was distance, observing, not inhabiting, as if you were a spectator to your own life.
The shift that broke you had no clear cause. It was another night, another patient, another precise routine. You did everything right, but it was not enough. You stood at the bedside as the room emptied, silence pressing in. Something gave way, not suddenly, but with the finality of a long-strained limit. The thought settled easily.
What is the point?
By shift’s end, you moved through final tasks by habit, not intention. The report was professional and error-free, with no sidetracking about your plans after your shift or for your upcoming days off, like you usually did. You didn’t take the time to stay behind or engage in conversation, ignoring the confused expressions on Olive’s, Lena’s, and Mateo’s faces. You clocked out and left, your path feeling inevitable.
This choice wasn’t something spur of the moment. You had given it plenty of time and thought alone in your apartment, feeling nothing but the weight of emptiness cementing your limbs to the couch.
You would do it on a rainy day so the blood would wash away more easily, and wear dark clothes so no one could see the stains. You would be high enough up that the death would be instantaneous. You didn’t want to add to the already insane workload your coworkers were dealing with.
The stairwell echoed with each step, producing a hollow and distant sound. Your body felt disconnected, moving without conscious direction, while your thoughts hung in stillness. The rooftop door opened easily, offering no resistance. Outside, the air was sharp, cutting through the hospital’s sterile atmosphere. The sun was just beginning to rise between the overcast, the smog of Pittsburgh creating a beautiful cascade of orange and pink. Below, the city lay stretched out, caught between night and day, its lights flickering. You approached the edge, your mind calm and free of panic or fear.
You searched for hesitation or doubt, but only exhaustion settled deeper. Not sleep’s tiredness, but something final. You thought of the constant need to give, to hold, to endure, the expectation to remain Sunshine. For a moment, you wished you could ask for help or name what you needed, but the words would not come. You knew of the resources to reach out to, but burnout was heavy among all of you, and you didn’t want help. You didn’t want to keep dealing with the pain and struggle with the slim possibility of finally being okay. It was too much. You were done working, done giving it your all.
The next thought was simple and logical.
They will manage without you.
Your hands gripped the metal railing separating you from the edge as you ducked under. The distance below did not intimidate you. More than anything, the absence of fear or resistance unsettled you, a quiet acceptance of something that should feel impossible.
“Enjoying the view?”
A voice broke the stillness, controlled and precise. You turned slowly, effortful. Dr. Abbot stood near, breath steady as if he were used to situations like these, eyes fixed on you. His expression remained focused without panic, the same steadiness you admired.
“Dana said you clocked out,” he began, his voice softer now, but no less certain. “You always say goodbye.”
You didn’t know how to respond. Guilt crept up your spine at the notion of hurting Dr. Abbot’s feelings. You hadn’t expected someone to be here as your fingers twitched reflexively.
“Sorry.” It was the only thing you could think to say as silence stretched. “You should head home. I don’t want to keep you here. It’s been a long night.”
Jack Abbot was quiet for a moment, no longer looking at you but at the sun rising before him on the city skyline.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he stated more than asked as you turned to see what he was focused on. You didn’t have the nerve to respond. “I come up here sometimes, almost every shift, actually,” he confessed.
You felt your heart skip a beat, taking just a small step forward to look down at the streets before you. Cars drove past one another, sporadic honking breaking through the intensity of the moment.
“I’m not surprised,” you felt yourself say. You weren’t sure why you decided to continue the conversation. Perhaps because you didn’t expect anyone else to come up here, let alone engage in casual small talk, that you felt obligated to continue. “You served in the army, lost your leg, and your wife is dead. I’m surprised you haven’t jumped yet.”
Jack was thankful that your back was to him as his face broke free of the clinical mask he wore. He had never heard you speak so bluntly, so negatively. You were Nurse Sunshine. You had glitter and rainbows shooting out of your ass everywhere you went, as Shen so eloquently put it. He felt his heart race.
“You’re right. I haven’t,” he conceded, taking noiseless steps towards you. “Do you want to know why?”
You scoffed, turning around as tears stung your eyes. You wanted to stop them, to shove them back into the glands they came from. “If you’re going to make some big speech about how you got help and have reasons to live, I don’t want to hear it. I’m tired.”
Jack chuckled, still reeling inside at how candid you were being. He knew you were struggling. He had seen the signs, the smiles that didn’t fully reach your eyes, arriving at work only minutes before your shift instead of the thirty minutes early you normally did. You weren’t necessarily rude to your coworkers and Jack; if anything, you were the average person asking how their weekend was, but you also didn’t engage in deep conversations like you normally would.
“Always knowing what’s on my mind,” Abbot muttered to himself, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
You attempted to hide how your teary eyes instinctively followed his movements, tracing the veins that traveled down to his strong, freckled hands. These thoughts were pointless. Jack Abbot was your senior, a man who had already lived his life and carried burdens that no one should have to, and you… You were just some pathetic nurse who couldn’t handle the pressure when life got tough. He would never care about you.
Silence followed. Distant city sounds filled the space between breaths before you spoke. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.”
The words hung between you, fragile in the open air, carried only slightly by the early morning wind. You expected him to deflect, to return to that clinical distance he wore so well, but he didn’t. Abbot stepped closer instead, slowly and deliberately, the way he approached a crashing patient, with no sudden movements, no urgency that might fracture what little balance you had left.
“I’m not,” he said simply with a tilt of his head, the sunrise catching on his freckled skin.
It caught you off guard. Your brows knitted faintly, confusion threading through the exhaustion. “You should be,” you murmured. “This isn’t exactly… a good look. I’m fucking pathetic. Can’t handle fucking anything.” You profusely wiped at your tears.
Jack’s gaze didn’t waver, lashes batting against his cheeks as he looked down at you. “No,” he repeated, quieter this time, like a conclusion he’d already reached long before stepping onto the roof. “It’s honest. Not many people will speak so openly about how they’re feeling.”
You scoffed, the irony of the sentence not lost on you, but still that word pressed into something raw inside your chest. Honest. As if this… this unraveling, this hollowed-out version of you, was more real than the girl who laughed too brightly at the nurses’ station, who anticipated orders before they were spoken, who filled every silence so no one would notice the emptiness behind it.
You looked away first.
“I don’t want help,” you spat, the words steadier now, practiced. “It’s not that I don’t know how to get it. I do. Therapy, meds, time off–whatever.” You shrugged weakly, the motion almost careless. “I just… don’t want to go through it. The whole process. Fighting to feel okay again just to end up right back here.” Your fingers tightened on the cold metal railing as you turned, and a fresh wave of tears rose. “It’s exhausting.”
Jack was quiet, but not distant. You could feel his presence behind you, solid, grounded, like he had no intention of leaving, no matter how long it took.
“That’s fair,” he said after a moment.
You blinked, surprised again. “What?”
“It’s exhausting,” he echoed, as if it were a clinical fact. “The process. The effort. The trial and error with meds.” A small breath left him, almost inaudible. He knew it all too well. “You’re not wrong.”
You turned your head slightly, just enough to see him from the corner of your eye. He wasn’t trying to argue with you or dismantle your logic piece by piece as you expected. He was… meeting you in it, and somehow, that made it harder to hold onto.
“So what,” you muttered, quieter now. “You’re just going to agree with me? There’s plenty of sidewalk down there.”
“No.” His voice shifted then, not sharper, but firmer, like a line being drawn with quiet certainty. “I’m going to ask you to stay anyway.”
You felt your breath catch in your throat.
“Just another day,” he added, almost casually, though there was nothing casual about the weight behind it. “You don’t have to fix anything or decide anything long-term.” He tilted his head slightly, watching you as he did with patients when he was gauging whether they’d stabilize. “Just stay one more day. See how it goes.”
The simplicity of it made your chest ache.
“One day isn’t going to change anything,” you argued, but the resistance lacked its earlier bite. Jack was wearing you down.
“Maybe not,” he agreed easily with a half shrug. “But it’s not about changing everything. It’s about not ending it today.”
Your throat tightened. You hated how reasonable that sounded, how manageable it was. Your mind was so consumed with thoughts of the future, of what agony and death the next shift would force you to endure, that you stopped thinking reasonably.
You stared out over the city again, the sunrise now fully cresting the horizon, spilling gold across glass and steel. One more day. It sounded so small. So insignificant, and yet, your shoulders sagged, the fight draining out of you in slow increments.
“You make it sound easy.” Your voice was thick as you tried to swallow your emotions.
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s just smaller. You just need to get through today.”
Silence settled again, but it felt different now, less suffocating, more… suspended. Death was final, an ending you could never rewrite. It was still what you wanted, but you were so tired— tired of fighting, tired of standing at the brink of falling and deciding to give up instead.
You let out a shaky breath. “Okay,” you conceded, the word barely above a whisper. “One day.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, his body still but his presence palpable. He didn’t rush towards you or invade your space, but you could sense a shift in his demeanor—a hint of relief that he managed to keep under wraps. It was as if the air between you had lightened slightly, making the tension palpable yet strangely inviting.
“That’s enough,” he said with a subdued grin.
“What happens after today?” you asked almost involuntarily. You couldn’t just live in the moment; that wasn’t how your brain had been trained to function after countless shifts at PTMC.
“We’ll figure it out,” he replied without hesitation. No overthinking as he flashed you a lopsided grin that made your heart flip. “You don’t have to carry the whole timeline right now, sunshibe.”
You huffed softly, something that almost resembled a humorless laugh, as your heart leaped into your throat, and you swallowed it back down. “Easier said than done. You always talk to your coworkers like that?”
“Only when it works.”
That pulled a faint, fleeting ghost of a smile from you, gone as quickly as it came.
Another pause stretched, and then he shifted again, this time more deliberately, as you ducked under the railing. “You shouldn’t go back to your apartment alone.”
Your brows furrowed, a knot forming in your stomach. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I can take care of myself.” You just wanted to be alone right now.
“I know you have the ability,” he said, his brow furrowed in thought. “But that’s not what I’m worried about.”
You turned fully this time, crossing your arms instinctively like a barrier. You sure as hell weren’t going to stay here in one of the on-call rooms. “What are you suggesting?”
“Come stay with me,” he offered, as if it were the most straightforward solution in the world.
The answer was immediate, with profuse head shaking. “Absolutely not,” you refused firmly. “I’m not, Jack, I’m not putting that on you. I’m not your responsibility.”
A glimmer sparked in his eyes at that moment, not the quick flashes of irritation or frustration that often danced there when trying to placate a noncompliant patient, but a deeper, more profound light, calm and resolute.
“You’re not a burden,” he argued, his brows furrowed as he mirrored your crossed arms.
“I didn’t say that.” You shook your head, wiping your wet eyes with the heels of your hands.
“You suggested it,” he shot back, a faint smirk playing on his lips as he shifted his weight onto his uninjured leg, a gleam of defiance in his eyes.
You opened your mouth to argue, but no words came out because you had already implied that. Dr. Jack Abbot was anything but an idiot. In fact, it was one of the countless reasons heat rushed to your cheeks whenever he was near.
He took a tentative step forward, drawing near enough for you to notice the subtle weariness that had become a permanent fixture on his face. It was a weariness that ran deeper than skin, etched into the very lines of his features. The same exhaustion that settled like heavy fog in your bones.
“I’ve handled worse than you needing a place to stay for a night,” he argued quietly. “Trust me.”
“That’s not the point,” you argued with a roll of your eyes, smoothing the stray strands of hair that came out from your updo.
“Then what is?” Jack argued with the raise of his light brows as he took more steps towards you, seeming almost to size you up.
You hesitated, your defenses faltering under the weight of his steady persistence. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me.”
A beat passed.
“I don’t,” he admitted softly, tilting his head toward you and raising his eyebrows. His forehead crinkled the way it always did when he was trying to convey the seriousness of a patient’s outcome. “I want to.”
Your breath hitched in your throat. In his voice lingered a moment of raw honesty—an unguarded vulnerability that sent a flutter through your chest, igniting a feeling that had nothing to do with fatigue.
“Jack…” you started, but the words felt thin, tears pricking your bloodshot eyes once more.
He held your gaze, steady as ever, but there was warmth there that you hadn’t seen before, unmistakable beneath the control. “Stay,” he said again, quieter this time as he reached out and placed his calloused palm on your arm. “Let me make sure you’re okay. Just for tonight.”
You studied his face, searching for any hint of hesitation, uncertainty, or even the faintest glimmer of obligation or pity. To your surprise, you found none. The revelation sent your heart racing. Jack Abbot genuinely cared for you, more deeply than the usual bond shared between a doctor and his favorite nurse.
“I don’t want to complicate things,” you murmured, your voice barely above a whisper. Your eyes remained fixated on the scuff marks adorning your leather sneakers, tracing the faded lines and scratches that had gathered after countless shifts and mandatory overtime.
A faint exhale left him, almost amused. “Sweetheart,” he said, tender, unintentional, as the word had slipped past whatever restraint he usually held. Your eyes snapped up. “Things have been complicated for a while now.”
The endearment washed over you like a gentle tide, its soothing warmth surprising in a moment that felt so heavy with tension. It wrapped around your heart, igniting a tender flicker. Your resistance wavered, cracking just enough.
“Just another day,” you agreed finally, voice quiet, uncertain as his arm wrapped around your torso.
Jack nodded once, like that was all he’d needed. “Just another day.”
And for the first time since stepping onto the rooftop, the edge no longer felt like the only direction forward. At least for now, the only thing you thought about was Jack Abbot’s strong arm wrapped around your waist, the faint smell of expensive cologne warming your stomach as you leaned your head on his shoulder, descending the stairs into The Pitt.
The drive to Jack’s townhouse passed in relative silence, though it never felt uncomfortable. Pittsburgh blurred past the passenger window in streaks of amber streetlights and rain-dark pavement, the city quieter now in the fragile hours before the morning fully settled into day. You rested your head against the cool glass, exhaustion pressing heavily behind your eyes, but your awareness of him never fully faded.
One hand remained steady on the steering wheel while the other rested near the console, close enough that your fingers brushed once when the car turned sharply. Neither of you acknowledged it. Still, the accidental touch lingered beneath your skin, like heat, long after.
You tried not to think too hard about the fact that you were going home with Jack Abbot. Not the hospital. Not some sterile on-call room with fluorescent lighting and scratchy blankets. His home. Somewhere private. It should have terrified you more than it did.
Instead, you found yourself staring at the quiet lines of his profile illuminated by passing headlights, noticing the exhaustion softening his features now that he no longer had to wear the rigid composure demanded by The Pitt. His jaw carried faint stubble. His freckles stood out more in the dim lighting. One hand flexed occasionally against the steering wheel, veins shifting beneath scarred skin, and your stomach twisted painfully with affection.
By the time he pulled into the narrow driveway of a brick townhouse tucked into one of Pittsburgh’s quieter neighborhoods, the sky had begun shifting pale blue behind the clouds. You blinked slowly, taking in the home before you.
It was beautiful in a way that immediately felt like him. Not extravagant. Not cold or overly modern, unlike many wealthy physicians’ homes. Warm brick softened by ivy climbing one side of the exterior. A small fenced yard sat beside the townhouse, impossibly charming despite its modest size, with string lights hanging along the back patio and flower beds just beginning to bloom from the rain. There was even a small wooden bench beneath the kitchen window, worn slightly with use.
Your brows lifted faintly despite your exhaustion.
“Jack,” you murmured as you stepped out of the car, looking around in disbelief. “You have a yard.”
A quiet huff of amusement left him as he came around the vehicle. “That sounds accusatory.”
“In Pittsburgh?” you countered, staring at the narrow strip of green like it was some luxury estate. “Do you know how expensive this probably looks to someone renting a shoebox apartment?”
That earned you a real laugh. Low and tired, but genuine. God, you loved the sound of it more than you should have.
“It’s not that impressive,” he shrugged.
“You own outdoor furniture,” you deadpanned, pointing weakly toward the small patio table near the back fence. “That’s commitment.”
The corner of his mouth lifted as he unlocked the front door. “Careful, Sunshine. You sound charmed.” He couldn’t put into words how relieved he was to have a peek at your personality again.
Your heart stumbled hard enough to make you grateful he wasn’t looking directly at you because he was right.
The inside of the townhouse only made it worse. Warm lighting illuminated dark hardwood floors and soft off-white walls. Bookshelves lined one side of the living room, crowded with worn novels, medical journals, and framed photographs you tried not to stare at too long. A deep charcoal couch sat beneath a knitted throw blanket, the kind clearly chosen for comfort rather than aesthetics. The kitchen beyond it looked lived-in without being messy, with neatly arranged mugs hanging beneath cabinets and an expensive coffee machine occupying the counter.
It smelled faintly like cedarwood and coffee. Like him. Your chest tightened unexpectedly.
There was something deeply intimate about seeing where Jack existed outside the hospital. The Pitt had always made him seem untouchable somehow, as if he belonged solely to trauma bays, harsh fluorescent lighting, and impossible decisions. But here… here he was simply a man. One who read books, watered plants, and apparently owned throw pillows.
The realization made your feelings for him deepen in a way that felt almost unfair.
“You can sit down, sweetheart,” Jack said gently, setting his keys onto the kitchen counter. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
The endearment hit you just as hard the first time. You lowered yourself carefully onto the couch, suddenly aware of how badly your body hurt now that adrenaline had worn off. Exhaustion dragged through every muscle. Your limbs felt heavy, your thoughts sluggish and distant. Strangely, you didn’t even feel cold anymore despite still wearing hospital scrubs dampened faintly by the morning chill. You were simply too tired to shiver.
Jack noticed immediately. His expression softened almost imperceptibly as he crouched slightly in front of you. “Hey.” His voice dropped lower, gentler. “Stay with me for a second.”
You blinked slowly toward him. “Mhm?”
“You’re exhausted.”
“No kidding,” you yawned, opening your mouth.
One side of his mouth twitched faintly. “I’m going to grab you something comfortable to sleep in, alright?”
You wanted to protest. Tell him he’d already done enough. But the words felt too heavy to force out, so you only nodded weakly instead. When he returned a few minutes later, he held a folded T-shirt and a pair of soft black sweatpants against his chest. You stared at them longer than necessary, irrationally affected by the idea of wearing his clothes.
“They’ll be too big,” he warned quietly.
Your throat tightened. “That’s okay.”
His fingers brushed yours as he handed them over, and the contact alone nearly unraveled you. God. This was unbearable.
You disappeared into the bathroom to change, gripping the edge of the sink for a long moment once the door shut behind you. His shirt hung off your frame, obscenely large, soft from years of washing, carrying the faint scent of cedar, laundry detergent, and something distinctly him beneath it all.
You looked exhausted, hollow-eyed, and emotionally wrecked. Yet somehow Jack Abbot still looked at you like you were something worth caring for. The thought nearly brought tears back again.
When you emerged, Jack had changed too, trading his scrubs for a gray long-sleeve shirt and loose sleep pants that sat low on his hips. Your pulse immediately betrayed you.
Absolutely not. Your exhausted brain was not surviving this.
“I’ll take the couch,” he said immediately, gesturing toward it before you could fully process the sight of him leaning casually against the kitchen counter, looking unfairly attractive in his own home. “You take the bed.”
You frowned instantly. “No. You’re not sleeping on your couch in your own house after everything you’ve already done for me.”
“It’s a very comfortable couch,” he halfheartedly argued, a grin pulling his lips.
“I don’t care.”
A tired sort of amusement crossed his face. “Sunshine…”
“No, absolutely not,” you argued, folding your arms tighter beneath the sleeves, swallowing your hands. “You’re already letting me stay here, and you dealt with me on the brink of suicide. I’m not stealing your bed, too.”
His eyes flicked briefly over your face, softer now. “You’re not stealing anything.”
Heat bloomed painfully in your chest. Still, neither of you backed down. The argument carried on longer than it should have, exhaustion making both of you stubborn in oddly domestic ways until eventually Jack dragged a tired hand over his face with a quiet laugh.
“You realize neither of us is going to win this, right?”
You narrowed your eyes faintly. “I could absolutely win this.”
“That confidence is concerning, considering you almost walked off a roof an hour ago.”
You stared at him. He stared back. And then, horrifyingly, you laughed. A real one. Breathless and startled and exhausted all at once. Jack’s expression softened immediately at the sound, something warm flickering visibly across his face.
Eventually, the compromise became obvious. You would share the bed. Entirely platonic. Probably.
Your heartbeat had already started racing before you even followed him upstairs. Jack moved more slowly now without the prosthetic fully supporting him, though pride clearly made him try to hide it. The bedroom itself mirrored the rest of the townhouse, with warm lighting, dark-wood dressers and nightstands, soft gray bedding slightly rumpled from previous nights, and books stacked carelessly on the nightstand beside reading glasses and a half-finished novel. Your chest tightened at the intimacy of it all.
Jack sat carefully on the edge of the bed, fingers moving toward the prosthetic straps before hesitating briefly. For the first time since knowing him, uncertainty crossed his features. Small and fleeting as you kneeled beside him.
“You don’t have to,” he protested weakly, though there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.
“I know,” you interrupted softly, stepping closer. “Can I help?”
His eyes lifted toward yours slowly as the silence stretched long enough to feel fragile before he finally nodded once. Your hands trembled slightly as you knelt in front of him. Not from fear. From the unbearable awareness of him. The warmth of his skin beneath your fingertips. The trust required for this moment.
You moved carefully, listening as he quietly explained each strap and clasp. Your fingers brushed scarred skin occasionally, and every single time, his breathing shifted almost imperceptibly. Not discomfort, but something else, something heavier.
The intimacy of it nearly overwhelmed you. This wasn’t polished, Dr. Abbot from the trauma bay. This was Jack. Tired and vulnerable, and allowing you close enough to see the parts of himself he normally kept guarded.
When the prosthetic finally came free, you looked up instinctively only to find him already watching you. The air shifted. His gaze lingered on your face with enough intensity to make your pulse throb painfully beneath your skin. You became hyperaware of your position between his knees, his large hands resting beside you on the mattress, the soft fabric of his shirt stretched across broad shoulders as his chest rose slowly beneath it. Your mouth suddenly felt dry.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. The words shouldn’t have sounded intimate. They did anyway.
You swallowed hard, standing a little too quickly afterward as though distance might help regulate your heartbeat. It didn’t. Nothing did. Not when he looked at you like that. Not when you climbed into bed beside him moments later, separated by only a few inches and entirely too much tension.
The room fell quiet except as you stared stubbornly toward the ceiling, acutely aware of every inch of space between your bodies. Your heart would not calm down. If anything, lying beside him only made it worse. The mattress dipped faintly beneath his weight. His heat surrounded you. Every small movement was registered instantly in your nervous system like a live wire.
The silence should have eventually soothed you. Instead, it sharpened every small thing. The rain whispered against the window in uneven patterns, soft and steady, collecting in the gutters outside before spilling in faint trickles somewhere beyond the glass. The room smelled like clean sheets and Jack, a warmth so unmistakably his that it seemed to settle into your lungs every time you breathed in. Beside you, he lay still on his back, one arm resting across his abdomen, his breathing slow in the careful way of someone trying not to disturb a frightened animal.
You hated that you were the frightened thing.
For a while, you only stared at the ceiling and tried to convince yourself that your heart was not still trying to climb out of your ribs. It was unbearable at first, lying so close to Jack Abbot with nothing but darkness and a mattress between you. Every shift of his body sent awareness skittering beneath your skin. Every brush of the blanket against your leg had made you wonder whether it was him.
Eventually, exhaustion did what reason could not. Your pulse began to settle. The frantic edge of your thoughts dulled. Your body, spent from terror and tears and too many hours spent pretending to be fine, sank deeper into the mattress until your limbs felt boneless beneath his borrowed clothes. Jack’s presence, instead of setting you alight, became something steadier—a quiet anchor in the dark.
He was still there. He did not leave when you’d been difficult or withdrawn when you’d been broken. He brought you into his home, gave you his clothes, offered you his bed, trusted you with one of the most vulnerable parts of himself, and then lay beside you without asking for anything in return.
That thought should have comforted you, and for a moment, it did, but as always, the sadness found its way back in. It was slow at first, slipping through the small cracks exhaustion left open—a hollow pressure behind your breastbone and a heaviness behind your eyes. The familiar, terrible ache of your mind turning inward and finding only dark corners. You closed your eyes and inhaled a deep breath as if that might stop it, but the darkness behind your lids only made everything worse.
Another day. That was what you promised him.
You had stood there with Jack’s steady hands and quiet voice and eyes looking at you like your life mattered, and you had promised him you would try. You had meant it when you said it. You had truly meant it. In that moment, with him there between you and the edge, the promise had felt possible. Maybe not easy or believable, but possible.
Now, in the aftermath, it felt like a lie. The future stretched out in your mind like a hallway with no lights. One day became two. Two became a week. A month. A year. More shifts. More loss. More mornings where your body kept moving even after your spirit had gone silent. More days of waking up and realizing, with a quiet devastation that made you sick, that you were still yourself.
You tried to imagine taking it one day at a time, but you could barely survive this hour. A tear slid hot and silent from the corner of your eye into your hairline. You held your breath, horrified by it, as if even crying was too much. Then another followed and another. Your throat tightened until swallowing hurt, and you turned your face slightly away from the sleeping form beside you, pressing your lips together to trap the sound before it could escape. You did not want Jack to hear or to know that the promise was already cracking in your hands.
The mattress shifted, and his voice came low through the dark. “Sunshine.”
The endearment broke something in you as you squeezed your eyes shut harder, but the tears kept slipping free, silent and relentless. How could Jack still call you that when all you felt was this ever-encompassing darkness inside? You felt him turn toward you, careful at first, giving you the chance to pretend if that was what you needed. When you did not answer, and your breath hitched despite your best effort to keep it buried, he moved closer.
“Hey,” he murmured, voice rumbling in your ear. “Come here.”
You shook your head once, small and miserable, pursing your lips. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t ask for an apology,” he teased quietly as his arm slid around you with a gentleness that made the ache inside your chest turn unbearable.
He gathered you against him slowly, giving you every chance to pull away. You didn’t. You couldn’t. The moment your face pressed against the warmth of his chest, your restraint shattered.
The first sob escaped you brokenly, muffled into the cool cotton of his shirt. Your fingers curled helplessly against him as if you could keep yourself from falling apart by holding on tightly enough. Jack’s hand came to the back of your head, broad palm cradling you there while the other arm secured around your waist.
He did not hush you or say it was okay. He only held you like he decided, with the full weight of his stubborn heart, that you were not going to come apart alone.
“I can’t,” you choked, the words tearing out of you before you could stop them. “Jack, I can’t do this.”
His hand moved slowly through your hair. “You don’t have to do all of it right now.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Your voice cracked around the confession. “I know I promised you I’d try, and I wanted to mean it. I did mean it, but I don’t know how to keep it. I don’t know how to wake up tomorrow and do this again.”
Jack’s breathing changed beneath your cheek, but his voice stayed steady. “Then we figure it out.”
“You make it sound so simple.” You shook your head at the notion.
“It’s not simple.” His fingers paused at the nape of your neck, warm and grounding. “It’s just smaller than forever.”
A fresh wave of tears overtook you. You pressed closer to him, ashamed of how badly you needed the contact, ashamed of how desperately your body responded to comfort after being starved of it for so long.
“I feel awful,” you whispered. “You shouldn’t have to do this. You shouldn’t have to take care of me. I don’t deserve this.”
His arm tightened around you. “Don’t do that.” You pulled back just enough to look at him, your vision blurred. “Don’t talk about yourself like you’re some burden I got stuck carrying.” His voice was tender, but something firm lived beneath it. “I brought you here because I wanted to. I’m holding you because I want to. None of this is something you tricked me into.”
Your mouth trembled. “But why?”
The question came out so small that it embarrassed you. You wished you could swallow it back down, wished you could be anyone else. Someone easier. Someone who could lie beside Jack Abbot in his bed and not drown in grief while he tried to keep her breathing.
His eyes moved over your face in the dark, searching you with an intensity that made your chest ache. “Because it’s you,” he said.
The words stole what little breath you had left. Something that sounded so simple yet meant everything to you.
You stared at him, tears clinging to your lashes, your cheek still damp against his shirt. “Jack…”
He answered nothing, but his face changed. The guardedness was still there, because of course it was. Jack did not know how to be anything but careful with the parts of himself that mattered. Yet beneath it, something opened, something tender and terrifying.
You laughed once, but it broke halfway through, turning into another sob with the shake of your head. “That’s the problem.”
His brows drew together. “What is?”
“You.” The confession trembled out of you before fear could stop it. “You’re the problem.”
Jack froze as his thoughts began to race. Maybe he had misread the situation? The soft glances that lingered just a moment longer than necessary, the warm smiles that seemed meant solely for him—was it possible that they were mere fabrications of his imagination, conjured up by his own hopeful heart? Each memory flashed vividly in his mind, but now they felt tainted by doubt.
You closed your eyes, unable to look at him while saying it. You suppose that if you were most likely going to die tomorrow, there would be no consequences in saying it. “I’ve had feelings for you for a while. Longer than I should have, and I hated myself for it because you were grieving and private and such a competent guy, and I’m just…” Your voice fractured. “I’m just me.”
His thumb brushed along your cheek, catching a tear before it reached your jaw. “Just you?”
You shook your head, ashamed. “I’m not good enough for something like this. For you. For love. I’m barely holding myself together, and I don’t want to drag you into that. I don’t want you to wake up one day and realize I’m so fucking messed up.”
Jack gazed at you for a long moment, his expression so grave and wounded that your stomach twisted. He moved closer, his hand cradling your face with a tenderness that made your breath catch.
“Listen to me,” he said softly. “You are not too much, and we’re both messed up. Anyone who does what we do is to some degree.”
You wanted to believe him. You wanted it so badly it hurt. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he argued, brows shooting to his hairline.
There was a quiet stubbornness in his voice now, the same obstinacy you saw in trauma bays when everyone else was falling apart. “I know what it looks like when pain convinces someone they’re only a problem. I know what it sounds like when someone talks like they’ve already decided the world would be easier without them.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “And I know that voice lies.”
Your tears slowed, not because the pain left, but because his words reached some bruised and hidden place inside you. Jack’s thumb moves along your warm cheek again.
“You are worthy of love,” he declared, each word careful, deliberate. “You are worthy of care. You are worthy of staying alive long enough to find out what your life can look like when this sadness isn’t the only thing you can see.”
Your face crumpled, and he pulled you back against him before you could hide. This time, you went willingly, sobbing into him while his hand pressed between your shoulder blades and his mouth brushed against your hair. The gesture was so gentle, so achingly human, that it made you cry harder.
“I’m so scared,” you admit, feeling an almost childish feeling of embarrassment.
“I know,” he coos into your crown, like a parent to their sniveling kid.
“I don’t want to be like this.” Your voice sounded so thick and pathetic that you didn’t recognize it.
He placed another kiss on your head. “I know.”
“I don’t know if I want to fix it. I don’t want to live,” you sobbed. The truth was fully out now, the words you danced around pried free from your soul once and for all.
Jack’s voice dropped lower, pulling you a fraction closer. “We don’t fix it tonight. Tonight, you relax,” he murmured. “Tonight, you stay in this bed, and tomorrow, we’ll call someone. We make a plan. We don’t pretend this didn’t happen, and we don’t leave you alone with it.”
Your fingers tightened in his shirt. There was no more fight left within you. “We?”
Jack’s silence lasted only a second, but it was heavy with things unsaid as he answered. “Yes. We.” His tone was as if this were the most obvious part of this whole ordeal.
Something inside you loosened. Like one locked door inside your chest opened just enough to let air through. You lifted your head slowly. Jack’s face was a lot closer than you expected. The darkness softened him at the edges, but you could still see the lines of exhaustion around his eyes, his forehead, the faint scar near his temple that you hadn’t noticed before, the careful restraint in his mouth as he looked down at you. He looked like a man holding himself back by honor alone, and your breath caught.
“You mean it?” you whispered, trying to hide the minuscule amount of hope in your voice.
His gaze flicked briefly to your lips before returning to your eyes. “Which part?”
“That you feel the same.” You felt like a schoolgirl waiting for the answer back from your crush with a note that read, ‘Do you like me? Check yes or no.’
Jack’s jaw tightened faintly. He looked away for half a second, as if the truth required courage despite the raw essence of everything that transpired. When he looked back, there was no distance left in him.
“Yes,” he finally said. “I mean it.”
The room seemed to go quiet around the world. Even the rain that had begun to pour felt farther away.
You stared at him, barely breathing. “How…” you swallowed the lump in your throat. “How long?”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but it was sadder at himself than to you. “Long enough that I should’ve been smarter about it.”
A weak, tearful laugh escaped you as your fingers tentatively traced along his grey stubble. “That sounds like you.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, a crooked smile gracing his features. “Unfortunately.”
The fragile humor faded almost as quickly as it came. In its place was something warmer, more dangerous, threaded with the intimacy of exposure and the ache of everything you both confessed. Jack’s hand remained on your face, your fingers now resting at the bottom of his throat. Neither of you moved away.
You could feel his heartbeat beneath your palm, steady and alive. Your eyes dropped to his mouth before you could stop yourself. Jack noticed. Of course, he noticed.
His thumb stilled against your cheek. “Sunshine…”
The warning in his voice was gentle, but strained, his use of the nickname creating a warmth between your thighs.
You swallowed. “I know.”
“We don’t have to–”
You answered him before he could finish. “I know.” The subject of the question was noiseless, yet you both knew what it was.
“You’ve had a hell of a night,” he argued halfheartedly.
“I know,” you whispered again, and your voice trembled with something that was not only sadness now. “I want to kiss you.”
Jack’s eyes closed briefly, like the words had hurt him in the sweetest possible way.
When he opened them again, his gaze was darker, tender, fixed entirely on you. “Only if you’re sure.” You nodded once, butterflies in your stomach. “I need to hear you say it.”
Your breath shook, toes curling with anticipation. “I’m sure.”
For a moment, neither of you moved. Jack leaned in slowly, giving you the chance to change your mind with every inch he closed, and when you didn’t, his lips brushed against yours so lightly that it almost didn’t feel like a kiss at all. It was a delicate gesture offered carefully between two people who understood all too well how easily tenderness could be lost.
Your eyes closed as you slid your hand from his shirt to the side of his neck. Jack exhaled against your mouth, as if restraint became painful. His fingers slipped into your hair, cradling the back of your head as he kissed you again—this time deeper, still careful but no longer distant. Heat spread through you gradually.
It startled you, how your body could still want something that didn’t stop your pulse, how sadness and desire could exist in the same exhausted chest. How Jack’s mouth against yours made the world narrow down until there was no hospital, no roof, no endless hallway of tomorrow. There was only the warmth of him, the rasp of his breath, the solid weight of his arm around your waist as he drew you closer.
You made a small sound into the kiss, and Jack went still for half a heartbeat. He kissed you like he was starving. Like every restrained glance in a trauma bay, every almost-touch, every unfinished sentence had gathered beneath his skin and finally found somewhere to go. His mouth moved over yours with a heat that made your thoughts scatter, his other hand sliding from your hair to your back, pressing you against him until there was no space left between you.
Your fingers tangled in the curly salt and pepper hair at the nape of his neck. His skin was warm beneath your touch, his pulse strong under your fingertips as you hooked your leg over his strong waist. His mouth left yours to trail along your jaw as your breath broke unevenly, your head tipping back without conscious thought.
“Jack,” you mewled.
The sound of his name seemed to undo him. He pulled back just enough to look at you, his breathing rough, his forehead nearly touching yours. His eyes searched your face again, not as a doctor or trying to assess damage, but as a man terrified of wanting too much from someone he already cared about beyond reason.
“You tell me to stop,” he said, voice low and unsteady, “and I stop.”
Your chest rose sharply beneath his borrowed shirt, nipples poking through with each inhale and exhale. You looked at him, at this man who saw you at your lowest and still held you like you were perfect. Like you were not ruined or a burden.
Your hand slid along the stubble of his jaw. “I don’t want you to stop.”
Jack’s eyes darkened. The next kiss was no longer tentative. It was heat and breath and trembling hands, Jack rolling carefully, drawing you with him until the blankets tangled around your legs and his palm found your skin beneath the oversized fabric of his shirt. His touch was firm but reverent, grounding and hungry all at once. Every place his fingers settled seemed to leave warmth behind.
You kissed him back with everything you were too afraid to say. All the longing, the grief, the desperate, aching need to feel wanted in a body you had spent so long treating like a nuisance. Jack responded as he understood. Like he wanted every broken piece you were trying to hide.
His mouth found yours again and again, each kiss deeper than the last, each breath between them more ragged. Your hand moved over his shoulder, feeling the strength there, the tension he held as if still fighting the urge to slow down, to be careful, to make sure you had every chance to pull away, but you did not. You moved closer.
A low sound left him, rough and helpless, and it sent warmth rushing through you so intensely that you forgot how to breathe for a second. His hand tightened at your plush waist as you slid yours to the hollow of his throat. The world outside narrowed to rain against glass, tangled sheets, and the taste of him on your tongue.
For the first time since 7:00 pm yesterday, the darkness didn’t feel like it was swallowing you. It felt like it was holding you both as Jack broke the kiss when breathing became impossible. His forehead rested against yours, his chest rising hard.
“You’re still here,” he whispered, voice hoarse.
Your eyes burned again, but this time the tears did not fall from hopelessness.
You nodded, brushing your thumb along his cheek. “I’m still here.”
Something almost like relief moved across his face as he kissed you again, slower this time but no less consuming, and you let yourself sink into him, into the warmth, into the fragile promise of one more hour, one more breath, one more reason to stay.
He moved to softly kiss your neck again, as if learning every part of you by heart. His lips paused on areas that caused your breath to hitch, his teeth brushing against your skin to create a sharp feeling before his tongue came to soothe. The difference in sensations made you moan against him, a sound that seemed to emerge directly from your core.
Without hesitation, your hands reached for the hem of his shirt, the borrowed shirt, as you pulled it over your head. You could hear Jack’s breath catch at the sight of you partly undressed, your breasts brushing against the fabric of his chest with every inhale.
Jack murmured something softly under his breath that you didn’t quite catch as he leaned in. His mouth explored with a patience that felt almost teasing as he began to kiss and suckle gently at your nipple, circling his tongue in slow, intentional patterns that made your back arch. You tilted your head, releasing a soft swear at the ceiling as his fingers moved, confident, practiced, untying the strings of your borrowed sweatpants. His hand slipped inside the waistband, warm and possessive, enough to make your breath stutter and your thoughts scatter completely.
Jack groaned, low and wrecked, forehead dropping briefly to your shoulder. “Jesus, sweetheart,” he murmured breathlessly. “I’ve barely touched you, and you’re already wet.”
His lips find yours once more immediately, muffling any noises you might have made. You respond to his kiss with sincere intensity, eager and impatient as your fingers clutched at his shoulders. He tugged at your sweatpants with deliberate intention, pulling them down your legs until they’re off and carelessly tossed near the edge of the bed.
Jack flashed a slight smile, a look on his face that screamed he was fully aware of his intentions and had no plans to stop. There’s a moment of silence that forces you to feel the intensity of his gaze, slow and admiring, creating a flutter in your stomach.
Lifting his hand, Jack briefly pressed two fingers inside his mouth to wet them before tracing them along your puffy folds. The sensation was light, teasing, and when one finger slipped inside without warning, your lungs stuttered. His other arm came down easily, pinning you in place with gentle authority. The contrast between restraint and maddeningly slow attention made your head spin.
Another finger joined the first, and any remaining pretense of coherent thought disappeared. Jack didn’t rush; his thumb moving in slow, lazy circles against your clit, unhurried, almost absentminded. Whatever fragile grasp you had on yourself finally snapped, a small, embarrassingly needy sound spilling out of you before you could stop it.
“There she is. My sunshine,” Jack crooned, voice warm and approving. “I knew you’d be like this.”
You attempted to reply, but it emerged as a whimper, a breathless sound lacking any identifiable form.
He chuckled softly, continuing his unhurried movements, thumb still moving over your clit with featherlight pressure, like he has all the time in the world. Your mind went completely blank, reduced to static and sensation—no thoughts of that perpetual sadness and hopelessness that loomed within the back of your head. Your head tilted back as another small, helpless sound escaped you. Jack leaned down, close enough that his breath ghosted over your thighs, and suddenly his tongue drags languidly along your folds, unhurried. He knows exactly what it’s going to do to you.
“Oh, fuck,” you blurted, sharp and unfiltered, the words tearing out of you before you could stop it.
Your back arched on instinct, every nerve ending lighting up at once. Jack chuckled, low and pleased, as if this were exactly the reaction he wanted. Repeating the action, but this time at a slower pace, his tongue glides over your entrance with exasperating patience before momentarily dipping inside. It’s neither hurried nor forceful, but rather, teasing in the most maddeningly delightful manner. He employs long, leisurely strokes, over and over again, followed by delicate, precise flicks right over your sensitive spot that leave you gasping for breath.
You couldn’t hold back, soft whimpers escaping your mouth. Your hands grasp at the sheets, at him, anywhere you can find something to ground yourself as the feeling escalates quicker than your mind can manage.
You squirmed underneath him, your hips rising and falling as if your body is attempting to convey what you cannot with words. His hands grasped your hips tightly, anchoring you as if he were both limiting and motivating you simultaneously.
He moved closer once more, desire clear, as his warm lips kissed and sucked at your clit with an intensity that made your vision fade. Every time his tongue traces over you, slowly and intentionally as you unravel, your back lifts involuntarily off the bed as if you’re pursuing the feeling.
A soft whine escaped you, voice thin and wrecked. “It feels so good.”
Jack laughed softly, a low, pleased sound that vibrated straight through you. “Yeah?” Your breath stuttered. “Taking it so well,” he continued, clearly enjoying how every word landed. “Just taking it so sweetly for me.”
The compliments struck deeper than expected. Your spine instinctively arched once more, and the sound that escapes you this time is muffled and fractured, hardly resembling coherent speech. Jack maintains his pace. Nothing shifts, there’s no sudden intensity, no sharp spike, just the same consistent, relentless focus, as if he understands precisely how your body will respond next and is willing to wait as long as it takes for it.
Your orgasm finally crashed over you, surrounding you in waves, a noise escaping you before you have a chance to hold it in as your entire body tenses. Your legs constrict and instinctively tighten as you squirm beneath him, every muscle straining as if trying to fold in on itself.
Your thoughts scattered entirely, diminished to mere sensation and the intense, overwhelming awareness of how good this feels. Your body kept moving even after your mind had surrendered. Your hips rose against Jack’s face, your back bent, hands grasping at the sheets as the final waves of ecstasy wash over you. You find yourself murmuring now, softly and nonsensically, offering praise, swearing, and repeating his name as if it’s the only word you can recall.
As it diminishes, breathless and boneless, you blink up at the ceiling, dazed, still catching your breath when you sense that he’s watching you. You were still trying to steady your breathing, your chest moving up and down irregularly, as Jack moved nearer and enveloped you in his embrace. It was tender and cautious, as though he suddenly realized just how unsteady you remain.
“Hey,” he soothed, voice low near your ear. “Easy, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
You allowed yourself to lean into him, resting your head on his shoulder, your cheek against his hot skin. One of his hands glided gently up and down your back in calming motions, the other holding you tightly, as if he wanted to make sure you didn’t slip away into that darkness once more.
“You did so well,” he complimented quietly with a kiss. “You always do such a good job for me.”
Your mind felt heavy and pleasantly hazy as you attempted to put together a reply, only making a half-hearted effort before completely surrendering. You gently hummed, more like a purr than anything understandable, and instinctively drew closer to Jack. You were still quivering slightly when your fingers began to move on their own, idly tracing patterns along his firm arm.
The atmosphere in the room had grown gentler, your focus limited to the calm cadence of his breath and the comforting embrace of his arms. The tremors from before finally subside, leaving you feeling at ease, weighted down, and satisfied in a manner that feels slightly questionable. You made a slight movement to settle in more comfortably, and he responded without hesitation, drawing you in even tighter.
You kissed him again, slow this time, exploratory, and you were suddenly, acutely aware of the taste of yourself lingering there. The realization should make you embarrassed. It should send you retreating beneath the blanket, hiding your flushed face in the pillow, pretending you have not just been reduced to a trembling, breathless cadaver in his arms. Instead, the awareness only makes your cheeks warm as you exhale shakily against his mouth, too spent to do anything except let the kiss soften into something lazy and lingering.
Jack didn’t pursue it any further. That, somehow, undoes you almost as much as everything before it.
He only held you. One hand remained spread along your back, steady and warm, while the other rested near your waist beneath the tangled edge of the blanket. His thumb moved in slow, unconscious strokes, as if he had no idea he was doing it, as if comforting you had already become instinct. His breathing is still uneven, but controlled, his restraint threaded through every careful touch.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. In the dim light, he appeared wrecked in a quieter way than you felt. His hair was mussed from your fingers, his mouth softened, his face open with an expression you had never seen on him at the hospital. There, Jack is all command and composure, sharp edges and clinical focus. Here, in his bed with the rain still whispering against the window, he looks almost disarmed.
Not weak, just unguarded. The sight made something tender ache beneath your ribs. Your fingers drifted along his forearm again, slow and uncertain, as if you were still relearning that touch can be gentle.
“You’re shaking less,” he commented.
You blinked, the corner of your mouth lifting faintly despite the heaviness still caught somewhere inside you. “That’s your medical opinion?”
His eyes warmed. “Professional assessment.”
“You’re off duty,” you quipped, though the tiredness in your voice had no bite.
“Never stopped me before.”
A quiet laugh slips out of you, barely more than breath, but Jack’s expression changes at the sound. It softens. Like, even that small proof of life matters to him. He had spent the entire night collecting evidence that you are still here and intends to keep every piece of it.
The laughter fades, leaving a more fragile silence in its wake. Your gaze dropped to his chest, unable to hold the intensity of his eyes for long. You trace the seam of his shirt with one fingertip, then the line of his collarbone where the fabric had shifted slightly. The urge rises before you can think better of it, born partly from affection, partly from guilt, partly from the need to give something back after he has spent the whole night giving you so much.
You swallow, voice still hoarse. “Jack?”
“Mm?” He seemed so content, his freckled face relaxed in a way you had never seen before.
“I can…” You hesitate, cheeks heating immediately. “I can make you feel good, too. If you want…”
His hand stills against your back. For a second, the room feels too quiet. You wonder if you have said the wrong thing, if you have broken the tenderness by making it transactional, by letting your old people-pleaser instincts twist affection into a debt. You start to pull away just slightly, embarrassment tightening through your chest. Jack catches the movement. Not forcefully, as his arm simply firms around you, keeping you close with a gentleness that feels like an answer.
“No,” he answered quietly.
Your face burned, bottom lip tucking in between your teeth in anxiety. “I didn’t mean–”
“I know what you meant.” His voice remains low, even, almost unbearably kind. “And no.”
You lift your eyes to his, an open expression on your face. “Because you don’t want me to?”
Something flickers in his light brown eyes, dark and fond and strained enough to make your pulse stumble again.
“That’s not the reason,” he answered with the slight shake of his head.
Despite yourself, heat rushes through you. “Then why?”
Jack exhaled slowly, his gaze moving over your face as though choosing his words carefully. His thumb resumed its soft motion at your waist.
“Because you don’t owe me anything,” he stated. “Not for tonight. Not for bringing you here. Not for holding you. Not for anything.”
The words settle heavily within you. You instinctively turn your gaze, but Jack’s hand rises, gently caressing your cheek with a tenderness that feels almost surreal.
“I mean it,” he mumbled. “I’m not keeping score.”
Your throat tightened. Of course, that was what you had been doing mentally even now. Measuring what he had given and what you could offer in return. Trying to balance the scales before he realized you were too much trouble, too much sadness, too much need.
Jack could see your internal struggle before you could hide it as his mouth softened. “Sweetheart.”
The word broke through your defenses with embarrassing ease. “I just…” Your voice thins. “You’ve done so much for me tonight.”
“Because I wanted to,” he answered instantly.
“But–”
“No.” There was no sharpness in it as he cut you off, only quiet certainty. “No buts.” You stare at him, breathing shallowly as Jack shifts closer until his forehead nearly touches yours. “Don’t you worry about me, sweetheart. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
The simplicity of it makes your eyes sting, but the little smirk crinkling at the corner of his eyes suggests something else that makes your skin heat up once more.
“You don’t have to make me feel better,” you reason, unable to keep his suggestive expression for long.
“I’m not. I’m telling you the truth.” His gaze held yours, steady and tired and honest.
For a moment, you cannot speak. The sadness was still there. You could feel it waiting in the background, heavy and patient. It didn’t vanish because Jack kissed you or disappeared because his arms are around you or because your body, for a few brief minutes, remembered pleasure instead of pain. You knew better than to mistake comfort for a cure. But something had changed.
The future still felt enormous. Tomorrow still frightened you. The thought of waking up and continuing to exist still carried a weight you didn’t know how to lift, but Jack’s hand pressed against your back, his heart beating steadily beneath your palm. His breath touched your face in the dark, and for the first time all night, the next hour felt survivable. Maybe that was all you could manage. Maybe that was enough for now.
You nod faintly, though you were not sure what you were agreeing to. Jack seemed to understand anyway. He pressed a kiss to your forehead, slow and lingering, then to the bridge of your nose, then finally to your mouth. This kiss was different from the others. Softer and sleepier. A noiseless sealing of the fragile thing between you.
When he pulled back, you tucked yourself closer against him. He adjusted immediately, helping you settle with a carefulness that made your chest ache. Jack drew the comforter over both of you, the sheet cool at first before the warmth of your bodies began to seep into it. Your head found the space beneath his chin, your cheek resting against his chest. One of your legs tangled lightly with his beneath the covers, and for a second, you worried about making him uncomfortable. Jack only draws you nearer.
“You okay?” he asked lowly, his voice vibrating in your ear.
The answer was complicated. No, not entirely, not even close. But you were warm, held. You were not alone on the roof with the cold air biting at your skin and the city yawning beneath you. You are in Jack’s bed, wearing his clothes, wrapped in his arms, while rain taps softly against the glass. So you gave him the truest answer you could.
“Right now?” you whispered as you closed your eyes. “Right now, I think I am.”
His breath leaves him in a quiet exhale, almost like a sigh of relief. He pressed his mouth to your hair and kept it there. “Good,” he hums. “Stay with me there.”
You want to tell him you’ll try. The words rise automatically, but you stop them before they can leave your mouth. You have made enough promises tonight that frighten you. Instead, you slipped your hand beneath his, threading your fingers together. Jack looked down at the gesture with a look that makes your stomach tingle as his digits closed around yours. That was promise enough.
The room grew quieter after that. The kind of silence that comes when the body finally realizes it is safe enough to surrender. Rain hushed the world as the house settled around you in small, wooden sighs. Somewhere downstairs, the refrigerator hums faintly—the sound of living.
Your breathing begins to match his without you meaning for it to. Slow in. Slow out. Again and again.
Jack’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles, then stilled. His body grew heavier beneath you, exhaustion finally dragging at him too. You listen to the rhythm of his heart, counting the beats until the numbers blur together and your thoughts begin to loosen. Before sleep takes you fully, you feel him shift just enough to tuck the blanket higher around your shoulder. Still taking care of you.
Your chest tightened, but not painfully this time. “Jack?” you mumbled, half-asleep already.
“Yeah?” he answered back, barely a breath in his lungs.
Your eyes remain closed. “Thank you.”
His arm tightens around you. For a moment, he said nothing. Then his voice came low in the dark, rough with exhaustion and something deeper than either of you is ready to name.
“You don’t have to thank me for loving you.”
Your breath caught faintly. Maybe he realized what he had said only after it’s out. Maybe he had known all along. Either way, he does not take it back. You were too tired to answer—too overwhelmed and afraid that if you tried, you would cry again. So you only press your face closer to his chest and hold his hand a little tighter.
Jack understood. He always seems to, even when you wish he didn’t.
His lips brushed your hair one final time. “Sleep, sweetheart.”
And somehow, impossibly, you do. Not because everything is fixed, not because the sadness has disappeared, but because Jack’s arms remain around you. Because his breathing stays steady beneath your ear. Because for one fragile night, in one warm room while the rain falls over Pittsburgh, you are not asked to survive forever. Only to sleep. Only to stay.
The Gods We Can Touch Chapter Twenty-Two: The Price of Pride
|Aemond Tagrayren x Niece!Reader| ft. yandere Aegon & Alicent
Masterlist of Series
Summary: The older twin of Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, you were a picture of the maiden, untouched and untainted by man's sins. At least, that was what Alicent Hightower believed when she held you in her arms moments after her old friend's labors. You were her shining light, her dream. Though you were never hers, she believed you were meant to be.
What will become of you as time passes and the Queen's shining light grows within the blackened darkness? Will her eldest son's morbid fascination with the light burn the realm? Or will her second son's obsession with the only daughter of Rhaenyra Targaryen change the course of the Seven Kingdoms as we know it?
Author’s Note: Hi everyone! Please enjoy another chapter of "let's see how much I can torture these characters until they kill someone." I never really liked angst but I can see now why authors like to use it so much. I hope you enjoy reading! (~‾▿‾)~
Warnings: thoughts of the reader SAing someone, toxic Aemond, domestic violence, reader has had ENOUGH of this bullshit.
Aegon’s chamber stank of boiled wine, old blood, and the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy. It clung to the tapestries and the bedclothes, to the carved posts of the king’s bed, to the copper basins abandoned along the wall where maesters had come and gone like moths.
You stood beside Aegon’s bed with your sleeves rolled to the elbow and his blood drying beneath your nails. The sight of it pleased you.
You dreamed of him ruined. You imagined him dragged low, stripped of crown and laughter and the careless cruelty that lived in him like a second heart. You imagined him broken enough to understand, if only for a breath, what it meant to have one’s body become a prison under another’s hand.
Yet there he lay before you now, burnt and bandaged, his skin an ugly map of war and dragonfire, and there was no triumph in it. Only the dreadful, hollow knowledge that you helped bring him here, not by your own hand, but by Aemond’s. Your stomach tightened.
You could still remember the way he looked at you when you spoke of Aegon’s possible demise. The silver fall of his hair, the cold violet flame of his remaining eye. The slight tilt of his head, as if he were weighing not merely your words, but the hidden shape of your soul beneath them. You had not needed to beg. You need not command him plainly. You only needed to plant the thought where his pride and resentment might water it. He did the rest.
Now the false king shivered beneath your hands, feverish and maimed, and you found yourself wondering whether Aemond already knew that he was testing your conscience the other night to see if you would come forward.
Aegon gave a low, broken sound, half groan and half sob. His hand twitched atop the coverlet, swollen fingers searching blindly for something to hold. You looked down at him without emotion.
Even ruined, he was still Aegon. His pale hair clung damply to his temples with cracked lips. His lashes, fair and wet with fever, trembled against his cheeks. Pain had stripped him of mockery and made a child of him, but you knew better than to mistake weakness for innocence.
“Water,” he rasped.
You did not move at once.
He opened his eyes, though one was red-rimmed and unfocused from the poppy. “Please.” The word scraped out of him like it cost blood.
You hated that you felt a pang of pity. You took the cup from the table and slid one arm beneath his shoulders. He hissed when you lifted him. The sound was thin and helpless, but his hand clamped around your wrist with surprising force.
“Don’t,” he gasped.
You rolled your eyes with an apathetic curve of your lip. “I’ve hardly touched you.”
“Do not leave me,” he pleaded, a tear leaking onto his marred skin.
Your mouth tightened with a look akin to disgust. “Drink.”
He obeyed, though half the water spilled down his chin. You wiped it with a cloth, careful not to press against the burns along his neck. He watched you all the while, fever-bright and desperate, his gaze moving over your face as though searching for some softness you had not meant to reveal.
“You came,” he whispered, as if suddenly realizing your presence,
“I was summoned,” you snarked, rolling your eyes to avoid his gaze.
His grip tightened on your wrist. You pulled it free, and Aegon flinched as if the gesture struck him. You turned away to rinse the cloth in a basin gone pink with old blood.
Maester Orwyle had left a tray of salves steeped in honey and crushed herbs, poultices wrapped in linen, and a small knife for cutting away soiled bandages. He trusted you with the work because your uncle quieted for you. Because the king thrashed less when you spoke. Because everyone in the damned Red Keep had learned to make use of women’s hands when men made their messes too large to mend.
You wrung the cloth until your fingers ached. Behind you, Aegon breathed shallowly.
“Did he send you?” he asked, voice wet.
You stilled. You did not need to ask who he meant. “No.”
Aegon laughed once, a brittle thing that turned into a cough. His whole body seized with it as the sound tore through him, wet and painful, until he sank back against the pillows with tears at the corners of his eyes.
“He would,” Aegon wept. “He would send you to see if I still breathe.”
You sighed, wiping at the blood on your fingers. “Perhaps he does not care.”
“He cares.” Aegon’s voice lowered.
You came back to the bedside and began unwinding the linen from his shoulder. The bandage clung in places where serous fluid and salve dried together. He clenched his teeth, jaw jumping, but did not cry out. Not until you peeled the last of it free. He whimpered, the sound crawling beneath your skin.
“He stood over me,” Aegon whispered, voice cutting through the silence
Your hand paused. His eyes were fixed not on you, but on something beyond the chamber, beyond the stone ceiling and shuttered windows, somewhere high above Rook’s Rest where smoke blotted out the sun.
“He could have turned away,” Aegon said, lips curling. “He saw me. I know he saw me.”
You dipped fresh linen into the salve, visage impassive. “War makes monsters of men. Mayhaps you remember wrong.” Your voice was light, with an uncharacteristic, emotionless tone.
“He was a monster before the war,” your eldest uncle spat, jaw clenched in either pain or memory.
The words should have pleased you. Someone else also saw the dark side of Aemond before all this death, but instead, they landed with the weight of a stone. Aegon did not know what a real monster was, not truly. There were worse things than being burned. You pressed the poultice to Aegon’s shoulder, and he gasped, back arching weakly from the bed as his hand found the sheet and twisted it.
“You should be careful speaking that way,” you said calmly, ignoring his discomfort.
“Why?” His laugh was faint and ugly. “Will you tell him?”
You looked at him, gaze dark and piercing. The fever loosened his tongue, but fear had sharpened it. Beneath the agony, beneath the poppy, and all his ruin, a frightened boy was wearing a dead man’s crown. He was afraid of pain, yes. Afraid of death, certainly, but most of all, he was afraid of the brother who wore obedience like armor and ambition like a blade.
You leaned closer, lowering your voice until it became part of the fire’s subtle crackles. “I have no reason to protect the Prince Regent from your suspicions.”
Aegon blinked as the silence changed. It was slight, almost nothing, yet you felt it settle between you like a drawn curtain.
“He did this to you,” you said, yet kept the entire truth hidden. Aegon stared at you, chapped lips parted with bated breath. You should have stopped, though something inside you did not. “Not Rhaenys or Meleys like they have told the smallfolk. Aemond had the sky. If he wished to spare you, he could have.”
Yet he did not, at your behest.
Aegon’s breathing quickened as you watched the words take root. It was a cruel thing, perhaps. Crueler because it was not wholly a lie. The best poisons were mixed with truth. You had learned that in the Red Keep, where men sweetened treason with duty and called murder necessity if the corpse wore the right name.
Aegon swallowed, his pupils flicking to the curve of your neck where sweat beaded. “You know?”
“I know enough.” Your voice held no emotion.
His eyes moved over your face again, pleading now, hungry for certainty. “Tell me.”
You scowled in response, continuing your task. Your eldest uncle did not deserve closure.
“Tell me.” Aegon needed to know that the nightmares of his brother’s dragon devouring him whole were not dreams but of his own subconscious.
You sighed deeply, wiping your hands on a spare cloth as you leveled him with a deadly stare. “You already know.”
Aegon squeezed his eyes shut. A tear slipped free and vanished into the golden hair at his temple. For one breath, you saw not the false king, not the man who had hurt you, but a wounded creature cornered in its own den, trembling at the sound of claws outside the door.
Pity rose in you like bile. You loathed it most of all, but you understood you could use this emotion to your advantage. Aemond had explained the consequences of what would happen should Aegon make a full recovery, and now that you understood that he remembered everything…
You must endure. The flames crackled softly, their glow flickering as a gentle draft danced among the ashes. You were not forged for glory or triumph, it spoke, you were born to remain steadfast in the face of chaos, a beacon when everything else descends into darkness—the Gods’ Light.
“You must live,” you said, harsher than you intended. The words tasted like spoiled meat on your tongue.
His eyes opened.
“If you die, he becomes everything you fear. The sword of the realm. The grieving brother. The king.” Your mouth curled faintly, the idea of Aemond wearing the conquer’s crown sending a tingle to your lower stomach. “Would you give him that?”
Aegon stared. Slowly, some dim ember stirred behind the fever, life, a will to live, finally making its way out of the depths of his self-pity.
“No,” he breathed.
“Then live,” you commanded with a conviction you didn’t know you possessed.
His throat worked, damp tongue coming to wet his chapped lips. You turned away, busying yourself with gathering more salve as you swallowed guilt.
“For you?” your uncle asked, the question sounding small, nearly noiseless with the sound of your beating heart.
Your fingers paused, tension hanging in the air. Aegon’s words, innocent yet laced with a disturbing childishness, echoed with an unsettling hope. You took a deep breath, steadying yourself as you applied the cool paste over the angry red burns that marred his skin, the balm contrasting sharply with his tender wounds.
“For yourself,” you corrected pointedly.
Aegon appeared not to hear that part. Or perhaps he heard only what he wished to, as he often did. His gaze held onto you with a frightening devotion, as if you had pulled him back from death itself. You felt the shadowy claws of guilt looming behind you as his uninjured hand covered yours.
“You want me to live,” he whispered, the thought seeming to be more for himself.
You couldn’t hide your visceral reaction of indignation. “I wish to see the realm unscathed.” You noiselessly scoffed to yourself at the thought.
For the first time since you were tasked with looking after your rapist uncle, a smile flickered across his face. Despite the bandages wrapped around his body and the blisters marring his limbs, his lips curled upward in a way that showed genuine joy. The pain he endured kept him from fully stretching his mouth, but even so, his mirth radiated through the room, forcing a strange and unsettling wave of emotion within you.
“You want me to live,” he sighed, the sound almost dreamy.
You turned away to bind the fresh linen before he could see the disgust that crossed your face. Whether it was for him or yourself, you could not say as the hours dragged by, finishing the rest of his body.
Candles burned low in their sockets, their flames guttering blue whenever the wind slipped through the cracks. The painted eyes of dead Targaryens watched from the walls. Men with silver hair and women with solemn mouths, dragons curled around their shoulders in threads of gold. Why Aegon hadn’t removed them, you did not know. They looked down upon you as if they knew every rotten thing that you had ever done within these walls.
Aegon wept in his sleep. You sat rigid at his bedside, grinding poultices with a pestle to pass the time until the guards came to get you. Guilt gnawed quietly at your ribs. Near the evening, the fever dreams worsened, and he began to beg. At first, it was only nonsense. Broken words, scattered names, and fragments of noises that sounded like fear. His hand found yours, causing you to drop the pestle.
“Stay,” he said, voice hoarse.
You sighed, looking toward the large wooden doors that separated you from freedom. “I haven’t left.”
“Please, stay. You’re the only one who cares. My–” Aegon choked, and you begrudgingly stood from the comfortable armchair you were sitting in to be next to him.
“You are fevered. Go back to sleep, uncle,” you sighed. You wished Maester Orwyle would return sooner so that you would be allowed leave. The longer you stayed here, the more Aemond would grow mindful of your absence.
“Please.” His voice cracked. “Please.” The sound of it made your skin prickle. You tried to pull away, but his fingers clung with the pathetic strength of the dying. “Do not leave me with him.”
There it was. Aegon’s true fear. Not death or pain, but Aemond. His own brother. You glanced toward the door again.
For a moment, you imagined it opening. Aemond standing there in black leather and moon-pale hair, his sapphire hidden beneath the patch, his one eye taking in the scene with terrible stillness. Your hand in Aegon’s, his tears. You could almost hear his voice.
This is where you go when I give you freedom.
Your pulse kicked hard, and you loosened Aegon’s grip finger by finger. “You are safe.”
“No one is safe from him. Not even you,” he sobbed, tears soaking into your freshly made bandages.
The truth lay between you, a truth you did not believe. You felt safe with Aemond in the way you would feel safe with a lion that had the choice between you and a wounded deer. He killed for you, showing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities that no proud man ever would. You trusted his instability.
Aegon’s face twisted, and suddenly the pretender king was not commanding you, not mocking, or demanding. He was begging with all dignity stripped from him.
“Stay with me,” he wept. “Just until I sleep. I will not touch you. I swear it. I swear it on–” His breath hitched. “On my life. On whatever gods are left listening. Please.”
You said nothing, returning to your chair next to the bed as if nothing had happened. You wished so desperately that Maester Orwyle would return.
His eyes shone fever-bright. “I know you hate me.”
Your silence answered, jaw clenched. You had said so yourself many times before.
“I know.” His lips trembled. “But you came.”
“I have no choice,” you bit out, picking up your mortar and pestle again.
“Yet you do,” he whispered, and your glare flicked up to his injured form.
You realized that Aegon did not refer to the obvious illusion of choice associated with being here. Instead, he meant the decision you made day after day, alone, to heal him rather than kill him. While mending his wounds would edge your mother closer to her rightful claim to the throne, an unsettling truth lingered in the back of your mind.
A dangerous softness entered his face then, born of pain and poppy and the deep selfishness that was always his truest nature. He looked at you and saw not the woman he had wounded, not the enemy sitting beside his bed with murder folded carefully beneath your skin. In his feverish state, he saw affection.
“You care,” he whispered, purple eyes glassy.
Your stomach turned, expression contorting into revulsion. “Not of my own will, Aegon. ‘Tis not the same,” you answered, voice rising in anger.
Aegon blinked slowly, a singular tear shining as it fell down his marred cheek. “To me, it is.”
You rose so quickly that the chair scraped against the stone, causing him to flinch. For a moment, the room seemed to thin around you. The candlelight sharpened, and the shadows cast by it and the incense deepened. The smell of blood and milk of the poppy thickened until you could taste it at the back of your throat.
Aegon lay helpless before you, utterly powerless. A terrible thought opened inside you like a trapdoor.
You could make him afraid—truly afraid. You could press upon him some fraction of what he pressed upon you. You could show him what it meant to have no power over one’s own body, no crown, no guards, no childish games to hide behind. You could bend close and whisper his own sins back into his ear until they became a cage around him as he did to you.
Your hands curled at your sides as you stepped closer.
For one heartbeat, you wanted it. Not justice or vengeance in the eyes of the law. It was something uglier, something raw and black and starving to hurt another.
Aegon watched you through the haze, unaware of how near he stood to the edge of your mercy as he whispered your name. There was hope in his voice, and that killed the thought more surely than virtue could have. He would take even cruelty from you and call it desire, twist punishment into proof. He would make a shrine of your hatred if it meant you knelt close enough for him to feel your breath.
You stepped back.
No.
You would not become him. You would not let his evil teach you its shape.
Your voice, when it came, was low and cold. “You are fortunate I am not what you did to me.”
Aegon did not understand, his brow furrowing. Perhaps he never would. He began to shake again. Whether from fever or fear, you could not tell.
“Please,” he whispered. “Don’t go.”
You closed your eyes and thought of Aemond, his hands both precise and possessive in the dark. He was honest about the danger that lingered beside him like a loyal hound. You saw yourself standing between monsters, finding fragments of your own reflection in both.
When you opened your eyes again, you reached for a book left on the table. It was an old volume bound in cracked red leather, some history of Valyria before the Doom, its corners worn soft by hands long turned to dust. Aegon watched you with naked relief as you settled back into the chair beside his bed.
“I will read,” you said flatly, “and you will sleep.”
His mouth trembled. It was enough. He sank back as if your words had unstrung him. His eyes remained fixed on you while you opened the book and found the first page beneath the wavering candlelight.
Your voice was quiet at first, roughened by exhaustion. You read of dragonlords and black stone roads, of towers that glittered beneath a cruel sun, of blood magic and empire and the pride of men who believed the world existed only to be conquered. The words slowly filled the chamber, weaving through the stink of medicine and burnt flesh. Somewhere, night began bleeding obsidian over the city.
You read until your throat ached, and at some point, Aegon began to weep again, silently this time. Tears slipped down into his hair, but he made no sound as you pretended not to see. He looked like a boy then. The one you had looked up to before he destroyed whatever admiration you had for him in a single night.
You were tired beyond cruelty and mercy as you leaned forward and cupped his unmarred cheek. It was brief. No more than a touch. A benediction, perhaps. Or the smallest kindness one ruined soul might offer another without forgiveness.
Aegon’s eyes fluttered open. In them, fever turned the gesture into something golden. You saw the mistake form, saw the devotion deepen, saw him gather that single touch into the hollow places inside himself and name it love. You almost took it back, but there was no taking back anything in the Red Keep. Not words or wounds nor blood once spilled.
“Sleep,” you commanded.
Aegon smiled faintly, brokenly, and for a while, he did.
You kept reading long after his eyes closed. You read until the words blurred and the candles melted down to their bases. The book grew heavier with every turn of the page, its weight a comforting burden in your grasp. The sturdy chair beneath you began to sag and mold to your form. Your head drooped forward, a wave of fatigue sweeping over you, only to lift again as you fought to stay awake.
The last thing you heard was the faint, uneven sound of Aegon’s breathing. Yet, the last thing you thought of was Aemond as the night bled away.
How would he look at you if he ever learned what you had done?
Then sleep took you, unwilling and thin, in the king’s chamber where enemies dreamed beside one another. The dragons on the walls watched with painted eyes as the hours before midnight crept in cold and grey.
You were not sure of the time when the chamber door exploded inward, causing you to jump so violently that water sloshed from the basin on the table next to you. Heavy footsteps thundered across the floor as your heart lurched.
Aemond.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. His silver hair was disheveled, chest rising and falling rapidly, dirt upon his boots. The sapphire in his eye socket glimmered beneath the candlelight, patch removed. He looked as though he had ridden into battle as he stared at you sitting in a plush armchair next to his injured brother. Shock flashed in his good eye briefly before it quickly curdled into fury.
“There you are,” he said, words emerging through clenched teeth.
You blinked, mouth going dry as you felt your heart drop. “Aemond…”
“I have searched the entire bloody castle.” His voice echoed against the stone walls as you looked toward the doors. Servants likely heard him three corridors away. He took several steps closer, his voice cracked just slightly as you felt your stomach go cold. “I thought the worst.” Silence followed as you stared back at him with wide eyes.
Your chest tightened with fear. Any exhaustion you had vanished as Aemond blocked the only exit.
For one long moment, the only sound in the chamber was Aegon’s broken breathing. He lay half-buried in linens, pale as melted tallow, his face slick with the faint sheen of sweat. The bandages beneath the sheets showed in uneven ridges where you had wrapped his ruined flesh. A cup of cooled milk of the poppy rested near his bed, untouched now, its bitter sweetness thickening at the bottom like old sin.
Aemond’s gaze flicked from you to his mangled brother. It was not the look of a man who had feared for you, not anymore. That lived only a heartbeat in him before pride strangled it. In its place came something colder, sharper, a blade drawn slowly from a sheath.
“You were with him,” Aemond declared, fists clenching at his sides. The words were simple, soft, almost, and that frightened you more than his shouting would.
You rose from the chair too quickly, and the book slipped from your lap and struck the floor with a dull thud, its pages bending beneath it like a wounded bird’s wing. “I was ordered here.”
“By whom?” Aemond’s voice went flat, a snarl curling his pink lips as he came closer.
You swallowed, the hair on your arms starting to prickle uncomfortably underneath your dress sleeves. “Does it truly matter?”
Aemond’s mouth twitched, but there was no humor in it. “You obeyed.”
“I had no choice!” you exclaimed, hands gesturing as you scratched at your arms.
“No choice?” He repeated it as though it were a foreign tongue, something filthy spoken by smallfolk in the gutter. “You had no choice but to sit beside my brother’s bed in the hour before midnight, reading to him like some devoted wife?”
The accusation struck you so hard that, for a moment, you forgot how to breathe as Aegon slept on. Aemond took another step into the room. Candlelight shivered over the planes of his face, catching on the sapphire set in the hollow where his eye was. He had not bothered with the patch, unguarded in that small way, stripped of courtly polish and princely restraint. Somehow that made him seem more dangerous—all pale hair, hard mouth, and old injury. A boy’s wound that grew into a man’s cruelty.
“I did not come here willingly,” you declared. Your voice sounded too small in the chamber, swallowed by stone and silk and the sleeping man between you. “They ordered me to help him.”
“And did you resist?” he interrogated, knuckles blanched, and shoulders squared.
You stared at him, mouth agape, shaking your head in exasperation. “What would resisting have won me?”
“Dignity, perhaps,” he snarked, a sneer pulling his scar.
Something inside you went blank, the stillness before a scream, a breath before a sob, as you felt yourself crack.
“Dignity?” you whispered pointedly. You knew this was how your uncle behaved when wronged. Aemond has been this way since he was a boy, but with everything that happened between you, you thought he was past this immaturity.
Aemond heard the change in you, his eye slightly narrowing, the faint lift of his chin. Yet he did not step back. He had never known when to. His life taught him to press forward until something yielded beneath him.
“You think yourself wronged at every turn,” he spat. “Yet here you sit in warmth with books, gowns, and servants to bring you food. I have given you more freedom than any prisoner taken in war could hope for.”
A laugh escaped you. It was not a sane sound as it crawled from your throat, thin and sharp, and died in the air between you. “Freedom?”
His face hardened. You should have stopped, you knew in the back of your mind you should have. A wiser woman would have lowered her eyes and let him spend his rage until only ash remained. A prisoner survived by bending, and a woman trapped among enemies survived by becoming whatever shape they demanded of her.
You had bent until you could not tell where your spine had gone. You looked at the bed, at Aegon’s slack face and cracked lips. The sight of him filled you with such loathing that your hands began to tremble. You healed those who had hurt you, pressed cloth to burns while every part of you wanted to drive your nails into his ruined skin and make him feel even a fraction of what he took.
And yet you had not. You were merciful, and it tasted like poison.
“They came with guards,” you began. “Lord Larys and Maester Orwyle. They told me that my skills were needed, that I would come because I had no choice.”
“You could have refused,” Aemond argued, with an infuriatingly impassive look on his face. You understood what he really meant, that he was hurt that you had not called for him as soon as they asked you to betray him.
You laughed again, the sound devoid of any warmth as your head lifted to the ceiling. “You truly believe that?”
Aemond answered nothing. You stepped away from the chair, the hem of your gown dragging over the rushes. “Say it, then. Say he would have allowed me to refuse, say the guards would have opened the door and let me go to you.”
His nostrils flared. “You should have sent for me,” he declared, a crack forming on his impassive mask.
“I’m watched, Aemond. Every hallway belongs to spies! You know this.” Your voice cracked against the walls. “Every servant listens. Every shadow has one of his little rats tucked inside it, waiting to carry my breath back to him. What would you have me do? Whisper your name to the gods and pray they feared you more than the Master of Whispers?” Tears were beginning to burn in your eyes.
Aemond glared, bright and furious. “You had no right to be here.”
“No right?” you echoed. “I have no rights at all!”
The words landed between you like a stone as Aemond went still. You knew then that you had struck something he did not want named.
He could call it protection if he wished, dress a cage in velvet, place books, flowers, warm fires, sweetmeats, a sister with haunted eyes, and a child who did not understand why everyone spoke softly when you came near. But a cage was a cage, even if it smelled of rosewater. Even if the man who locked it stood outside and called it mercy.
“You forget yourself,” he said, seething, the points of his teeth showing with every syllable.
“No. I’m remembering who I am and who I am forced to keep company,” you spat in anger, wanting the words to hurt. “I know where I am.” You took another step toward him, fire in your veins. “I am in the Red Keep, in the house that stole me. I am in the room of the man who raped me, and was forced to help keep him alive. I am before the man who killed my brother and still dares to speak to me of dignity.”
Aemond flinched. It was almost nothing. A twitch near his eye, a slight tightening around his mouth. But you saw it. You had spent too long studying him not to see the cracks beneath his steel.
“Do not,” he warned.
“Do not what?” you demanded. “Speak his name? Luke’s? Does it trouble you to hear of him? Does it trouble you to remember the boy you chased until your dragon tore him from the sky?”
His expression hardened, the flicker of anger extinguished as uncertainty settled in his eyes. “This is war,” he stated firmly, the weight of his words hanging in the air like a heavy fog.
“There was no war! Not until you killed him,” you declared, tears now flowing freely down your cheeks.
“He took my eye,” Aemond said, as if you needed reminding of the injustice that befell him. “And he faced no consequences for it.”
“And you took his life!” Your shout rang so loudly that Aegon stirred in his sleep. His brow furrowed, a faint groan slipping past his lips before the poppy dragged him under again.
Neither of you looked away from the other. Aemond’s face was pale, but his voice was colder than the floor beneath your bare feet. “You speak of things you do not understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” you sneered, wiping at your tears. “You call it war when it is convenient and justice when it feeds the hungry little wound inside you.”
He moved then, quick as a striking serpent, closing the space between you until you could smell air on his clothes and leather damp from the night. “Enough.”
You lifted your chin, your heart beating so hard it hurt, as a frightened part of you begged for silence, for surrender, for survival. Another part, older and rawer, screamed from the dark.
“No,” you repeated, and this time it came out stronger. “You wanted me found, and now that I am here, alive, and all you can see is that I have betrayed you.”
“You touched him. You cared for him after…” Aemond couldn’t finish his sentence.
Your mouth parted. There was no outrage over your captivity. Not horror that Larys used you or fury that Orwyle placed you at the bedside of the man who haunted your sleep—only that final word, sharpened by jealousy until it glittered.
You stared at Aemond and saw him not as a prince, not as a rider of Vhagar, or as the man before whom lesser men bowed. You saw the boy beneath it all. The one who lost an eye and made a crown of the wound. The one who wanted every pain repaid twice over and would rather burn than beg to be loved. A weary, terrible pity almost took you.
“If this is how you use the freedom I grant you,” Aemond began, words carrying a darkness you had only heard once before, “then perhaps I’ve been too generous with it.”
Your blood chilled, breath stalling in your lungs. “What?”
His gaze did not soften. “Perhaps you have forgotten what a true prisoner is.”
You could not move. Aemond’s voice was smooth now, each word measured with cruel care.
“I could send you below again, if I chose. I could have kept you in stone and dark with bread enough to keep breath in you and nothing more.” This was the side of Aemond you knew, the furious man filled with rage and pride that overrode any sense.
The chamber seemed to tilt. For an instant, you were there again. In the dark, the stink of old piss and blood soaked into stone. Your skin bruised, voice gone hoarse from calling for those who could not come.
Aemond watched you remember as a flicker crossed his face. Regret, perhaps, or satisfaction, possibly both tangled together so tightly that even he could not tell which was which.
“Do you see?” he asked quietly. “Do you see how much I have spared you?”
There was a glint in his violet eye, one that you had never seen before. You fought to suppress the wave of sympathy his vulnerability evoked within you, pushing it deep down as you stormed over to the cluttered table strewn with medical supplies. A fierce wave of anger surged through you, building with intensity until it erupted, demanding to be released.
The water basin left your hand before you knew you had seized it, water exploding across the floor at his feet, silver in the candlelight. The basin itself struck the stones with a shriek of metal and spun wildly before clattering to a stop near the hearth as you seethed.
Aemond did not flinch, and that only served to enrage you more.
“You spared me?” you cried, grabbing the book from the floor and hurling it at him. He turned just enough that it struck his shoulder instead of his face. It fell open at his boots, pages bent and broken. “You call this mercy?”
You swept a cup from the table, and it shattered against the wall, wine-dark liquid streaking down the stone like blood. You were unable to keep all the injustices you suffered buried. You thought Aemond knew the torture that you lived every day since you stormed the Red Keep, that somewhere deep down inside, he understood you were miserable. No number of material possessions or nights spent with him could erase that.
“I’ve been kept from my home and locked in darkness. Threatened, beaten, ordered about like a dog taught to heel,” your words came out in pants, chest rising and falling faster than you had felt it before. Your head was light. “I’ve been made to smile at the woman who helped build this cage because she looks at me like I am some daughter she misplaced in her prayers.”
Aemond’s face twitched at that, but still he said nothing. You wanted him to shout, to rage, to show you something with heat in it. Anything but that cold, princely mask, that proud silence, that hateful refusal to bleed where you could see.
“You think a few gowns make me free?” you demanded. “You think because I sleep above ground now, that you warm my bed, I should thank you?”
Your hand closed around a candlestick, and hot wax spilled over your fingers. Pain flashed white, but you barely felt it as you threw it, too. It struck the bedpost near Aegon’s head, and the flame guttered out, smoke curling upward in a black ribbon.
He groaned but did not wake. You would not care if he did.
Aemond glanced at him, then back at you. “You are hysterical.”
The word cut through you, as a stillness fell. You smiled, wiping at the snot from your nose. It felt wrong.
“Hysterical,” you repeated softly. “Yes. I suppose that is what men call women when grief finally finds its teeth.”
His eye narrowed as you walked toward him, your skirts whispering over spilled water and broken pottery. Your burned fingers throbbed as your throat ached, your whole body trembling with a rage so deep it felt almost holy.
“I’ve swallowed it all,” you said. “Every insult. Every command. Every hand that led me where I did not wish to go. Every hour I spent wondering if my mother thinks I’m dead or worse. Every time I had to look upon your face and remember that I love the man who killed my brother.”
Aemond’s breath hitched. At last, a crack in his stone mask. You drove your words into it.
“I despise myself for it. Do you know that? I hate myself for wanting you to come for me, for listening to your steps. I loathe myself for dreaming of your hands when those same ones belonged to a kinslayer.” You could not stop yourself, words coming out like vomit. “I hate myself because even after all of it, some weak, ruined part of me still looks at you and wants to find the boy I once thought I knew.”
Aemond looked away, only for a heartbeat, but it was enough. You could see his brokenness, the same kind that you felt within you, screaming to be let free.
“You do not love me,” you whispered, a profound sadness washing over you. His gaze snapped back to yours. “You do not,” you insisted, voice shaking now, not from fear but from the force of holding yourself together. “You want me near, to have my gratitude and obedience, my body in your reach and my heart in your hand, but you do not love me.”
Aemond’s mouth tightened, boot crushing pottery underfoot as he came closer. “You know nothing of what I feel.”
“Then tell me,” you screamed, feeling the veins within your neck strain against emotion.
Silence was your answer as the challenge hung between you. Such a simple task to most, yet so impossible. Aemond Targaryen, rider of the oldest dragon in the world, prince regent, terror of envoys and lords and trembling council members, could not speak.
You laughed again, but this time broken defeat choked it back down as you sniffled.
“Look at you,” you whispered, voice holding a particular weight of hopelessness. “A sword in every word. You can command armies, burn keeps, and threaten to bury me beneath the castle because I don’t obey your grief properly, yet you do not have the stones to say it.”
His expression turned cruel at your words because cruelty was easier, as you stepped close enough to feel the heat of him.
“You love me,” you declared, tears glistening in your eyes.
His face was marble. “Love is a song for fools in war,” he declared, the words sounding entirely too rehearsed and stiff. Still, the words struck harder than any blow.
For a heartbeat, the rage in you faltered. Beneath it was a wound, soft and mortal, almost girlish in its feeling. You felt it open, felt all the essence of you pour inward where no one could see.
“No,” you said. “Love is what you fear. Possession is what you understand.”
Aemond’s eye glittered. “You mistake protection for possession.”
“Open the door, then,” you challenged, jaw set in a line.
He did not move as you pointed toward the chamber doors from where he had burst through. Beyond lay a corridor filled with shadows and listening servants pretending not to breathe.
“Open it,” you ordered. “If I am not your possession, let me leave.”
Aemond said nothing. The silence answered for him.
Your tears spilled then, hot and hateful as you dashed them away with the back of your hand. “There,” you whispered. “There is your love.”
For the first time, uncertainty moved across his face. It was brief, quickly buried, though you saw it. He expected begging or repentance. Some soft apology he could accept and use to rebuild the lie between you. He had not expected you to hold the cage up to his face and make him look at it.
“You belong here,” he said. With me, his countenance screamed. The words were low, dangerous, and desperate. Aemond’s voice lowered, head dipping to you, a certain desperation trying to claw free from the confines of his pride. “Where I can keep you safe.”
“Safe?” You nearly choked on it. “I was forced to help heal my rapist.”
Aemond went rigid. The truth sat in the air, vile and naked. Even the candles seemed to shrink from it. Aemond looked toward the bed. At Aegon. Something murderous flashed across his face. For one wild second, you thought he might draw steel and finish what Rook’s Rest had begun at the reminder. Yet his fury turned, as it always did, back toward the thing nearest his grasp. You.
“And yet you kissed his brow,” he sneered. You recoiled as though he had struck you. His eye burned now. “Do not look so shocked. You think I cannot guess? You pity him. You pity everyone but me.”
“Pity you?” Your voice broke. “I have loved you more than any sane woman should.”
“Then why were you here?” he sneered, his temper finally fully breaking through.
You growled in exasperation, eyes shutting in anger. “Because I was made to be!”
“Because you chose to stay!”
Finally, emotion broke through, a singular tear of what could only be a mix of rage and hurt leaking from Aemond’s sapphire eye before he hastily turned away. You were momentarily stunned to see the emotion leaking from his damaged socket, feeling your angry heart soften at the sight.
“You said yourself, my future was not certain, should he survive. This is how I make it so.” The admission tore from you before you could stop it.
Aemond’s face changed. There was the reaction you feared and wanted both. His expression emptied, then sharpened into something so cold it might have been carved from winter.
“He begged for you,” Aemond said. “He cried for me to bring you to him, yet I didn’t for your sake.”
You went too far, you knew it at once, but you were past caring.
“Yes,” you answered. “He was afraid.”
“Of pain?” he asked, voice a touch softer as you saw him clench and unclench his fists. You looked at him, silent. Aemond understood, his mouth curling in something that was almost a smile. “Of me.”
You said nothing.
Aemond’s shoulders lifted with a slow breath. “Good.”
The simplicity of it undid you. To him, it was good that the ruined man in the bed feared his own brother, that fear lived everywhere in this house. It was good that you feared him too, though he pretended not to see it. Good that love itself had become another knife.
“You are cruel,” you whispered, lips trembling.“You are cruel because you think it proves you cannot be wounded.” Something flickered in him again as you stepped closer, reckless now, your whole body trembling. “But you can be. That is why you came here half-mad, is it not? Not because you thought me dead, because you thought I had chosen him over you.”
Aemond’s face went still.
“Say it,” you pressed. His hand flexed at his side. “Say it. Say you were jealous, that you love me,” you demanded again.
His jaw was set hard, his body seeming to quiver in all his concealed emotions screaming to be released.
A scoff vibrated in your chest as you spoke. “Coward.”
Aemond moved before thought could catch him. His hand closed around your arm, not hard enough to bruise, but enough to remind you that he could. He dragged you a half-step nearer as his face hovered above yours, pale and terrible, a pink tint to his cheeks you had not noticed before.
“You test me too far,” he said through gritted teeth.
You peered up at him through tears and despised that even now, even like this, some cursed part of you loved the line of his mouth, the scent of his skin, the rhythm of his breathing when anger took him by the throat. You hated that love did not die, no matter what terrible act Aemond committed. It lingered, starved and spiteful, gnawing on memory.
“Then do it. Send me back,” you whispered. His grip loosened slightly. “Chain me. Starve me. Lock me in the dark until I forget the sun. Prove yourself. Prove that all the softness you fucked yourself into every night was only another leash.”
Aemond’s eye searched yours. For what, you did not know. Perhaps some last sign of the girl who once looked at him with tenderness instead of fury. You gave him none.
“You would loathe me,” he finally said slowly, the syllables curling on his tongue. You understood what he meant.
“I already hate you.” The lie tasted of bile.
His countenance did not change, but his hand fell from your arm as though burned. He stepped back, the absence of his touch cold.
You wanted him to shout, to accuse you again, to confess. He only looked at you. That calm, awful, locked-away emotion was coming over him once more. The prince regent in place of a man, his sapphire shining like a star. Whatever moved in him moments before was gone again behind walls too high for you to scale.
A sob clawed up your throat, but you strangled it into a laugh. “Do not make me small because you’re afraid to be seen,” you seethed, hot tears dampening your cheeks as his jaw tightened. You glanced away, focusing on the oak bedpost. “Be silent, obey, be still. Be mine, but do not ask what that means. I know you will not love me where I can see it.” You felt yourself becoming sick, rage blinding any sense as your stomach churned.
The chamber was silent as Aemond remained still, his refusal to speak felt like a door being slammed in your face, and something within you shattered. It was not a loud breaking—there was no scream from your soul. It was a subtle, final severing inside your chest, like a thread that was pulled too tight, finally snapping.
You stared at him, and suddenly all you wanted was to hurt him, to have your uncle feel even an ounce of the torture you felt every day for several moons.
You glanced at the bed where Aegon lay sleeping beneath his covers, completely unaware of the war being fought near his broken body. His mouth was slightly open, and his hair lay dull and tangled across his forehead. Aemond noticed your gaze, and you turned back to him, your eyes dark with emotion. Your tears had stopped, leaving your face feeling cold as they dried, while something vile and wicked seized your thoughts.
“If you will not give me your love,” you said, each word steady as a blade laid flat against skin, “then I will have your rage.”
You moved to the bed before he could stop you. The linens rustled beneath your hands as you leaned over the sleeping man. For a brief moment, revulsion overwhelmed you so intensely that you could taste the wine you drank earlier.
You did not see the man in the bed, only every nightmare he had left inside you. This was not an act of desire; it was a battle.
You leaned down to kiss Aegon despite the disgust churning in your bones. The kiss was brief, cold, and as lifeless as a coin resting on a corpse. Aegon stirred, releasing a soft groan as his eyes fluttered open. Aemond held his breath as the room seemed to darken around him in silence. The painted dragons on the walls looked down with their crimson mouths and gilded claws, witnesses to yet another act of treason committed in the name of love.
You rose slowly, swallowing your bile and regret as Aegon’s violet eyes met yours in surprise.
Aemond stood where you had left him, pale as bone. His good eye widened, not just in shock, but with something deeper—a wound that went beyond pride and fury, piercing through all his calculated cruelty. For the first time since he had entered, he no longer looked like a prince or a blade. Instead, he appeared to be a boy who had been hurt so deeply it was carved into his being.
You should have felt triumph, yet only grief answered. Aemond’s hand drifted toward the hilt at his hip, then stilled as your chest heaved. You lifted your chin, daring him, begging him, loving him.
“You could never love me as he does.”
Before you could take a breath, Aemond charged forward, his stride wide as he roughly grabbed you and threw you over the table decorated with poultices and salves.
You could not contain the unbridled glee at his hands on you, quickly wrapping your legs around his waist as he tore the bust open on your dress. This was the only love he would give you.
“Yes, yes,” you felt yourself breathe as he lifted your skirt. “Take me, take me”
Aemond opened his tunic and ripped his belt in rough, jerky movements, jaw set in a hard line as he shoved open his trousers. There were no pretense or yearning touches as there normally were when you coupled. This was pure animalistic desire, rage turned into lust. You could feel yourself swell with every harsh movement he made, heart hammering beneath your ribs.
“Show him. Show him our love,” you panted, heat rushing to your cheeks as your small clothes were removed in a swift movement.
“Whore,” he hissed as you parted your lips and mewled, feeling your walls throb around nothing, fingers clenching helplessly on Aemond’s shirt.
The insult was half-hearted at best, and it only served to spur you on as one of Aemond’s hands grabbed your neck and forced you to stay flat. The other, with an impatient, rough movement, completely lifted the material of your gown at the front, slipping his hard cock immediately between your thighs. You both groaned low with pleasure when he felt how wet you were, despite the suddenness of everything.
He breathed out helpless grunts between your sweet moans, his fingers spreading your wetness all over your womanhood, digging deeply into the skin around your pearl. Involuntarily, your hips began to buck against his hard cock thrusting in and out of your squelching cunny, pleasure surely mounting inside of you.
“Oh… oh gods, yes,” you mumbled, dulled by how pleasurable it was. You heard Aemond chuckle lowly above you, his fingers clasping tighter around your neck.
“Look at him while I fuck you,” he growled, and you obeyed his command, shifting your gaze to your disabled eldest uncle, who only a moment ago was fast asleep.
Aegon still lay flat on the bed, chest rising and falling in a faster rhythm, his lips slightly parted. You moaned, noticing the tears glistening in his eyes, and responded with your hips to Aemond’s thrusts.
“Do I fuck you too rarely? Do I not stretch you well with his cock?” he snarled, sliding it in and out, deeper and deeper, rubbing the wonderful spot hidden between your fleshy walls.
You mumbled something incoherent, feeling a sudden rush of pleasure that shot you closer to your peak. He rooted into you with sharp thrusts, slamming so brutally into you that your hips began to hurt. His hand tightened around your neck again as you felt his hot breath against your ear. Your eyes rolled back at the pleasurable feeling of lightheadedness that washed over you.
“Look at him. He’s fucking himself with his hand,” he growled sinisterly, infuriated, rooting into you quickly and brutally as you felt his thighs tremble.
Each thrust of his hips forced your sore, fleshy muscles that swallowed his thick cock, rubbed you so wonderfully that a cry broke from your lips. Even if you wanted to see the source of the rustling of sheets, you couldn’t anymore, your gaze and mind clouded from pleasure.
“You know he’s already dead, don’t you? There’s no reason to heal him.” A moan broke off the rest of Aemond’s thought, dropping his forehead into the crook of your neck as you tightened your legs around him. “Would you want him to touch you before he died? For him to fuck his cock deep inside you?” he hissed between aggressive, deep thrusts, pounding into you with a loud slapping of flesh against flesh. Both of you panted desperately, your body responding to his every move as you grabbed his face with your trembling hands.
“No. Only you, Aemond. Only your seed, only your love I want inside of me,” you babbled with difficulty. His thrusts, from which your whole body trembled, sent you closer and closer to your peak as you heard his low groan of surprise and delight.
You brought Aemond’s lips to yours in a tangle of wet tongues and teeth, ensuring Aegon saw every ounce of love you both held for each other pour from your hearts.
“Beg. Fucking beg for it,” your uncle growled, pounding into you so hard that your pleasure was on the verge of pain. It only served to edge you further.
You cried out loudly, sensing that with a few more of his movements, you would feel that wonderful sensation in your lower abdomen come to a head every time the thick tip of his cock rubbed against your walls.
“Please, Aemond, fill me with your love,” you mewled pleadingly, pathetically, thinking only of the fact that you wanted him to come inside you, that you wanted to feel his seed trickling down your thighs when you looked again at Aegon.
Aemond’s thighs slapped against you lewdly with every loud click of your wetness as your nails dug into his leather tunic. Somehow managing to pry your eyelids open, your lust-filled gaze traveled over to Aegon, who indeed was pathetically touching himself, the blanket slowly rising and falling at his waist. Disgust did not wash over you despite reason. The only things you felt were Aemond’s ruthless thrusts and the crescendo of your release.
You clenched your eyes shut, moaning shamelessly as you heard Aemond gasp lowly, pounding into you faster, panting heavily, cock twitching inside you.
“You fucking have it. Take it, take it, take it,” Aemond groaned, thrusting into you so hard that the table beneath you began to slide.
At last, Aemond filled you with himself, a sigh of relief that was beyond purely carnal escaping his lungs. He moved inside you for a while longer, savoring how your cunny spasmed in overstimulation around his manhood.
You squirmed with discomfort when you felt him slide out, tying his trousers quickly and lowering your gown with an impatient flick of his hand. You could feel the lukewarm sensation of his spent leaking out of your womanhood as you caught your breath. This had been one of the few times you had seen him so disheveled. His typically pristine white locks were now a frizzy crown at his hairline, sweat making the small strands stick to his forehead. You were certain you fared no better, seeing as your chest glistened.
Although you were not completely emotionally fulfilled by Aemond’s actions, there was a primal, carnal part of you that felt satisfied. You were certain that your uncle’s desire for you would push him to the brink of madness. That idea brought you a level of satisfaction you had never experienced before, especially as you watched Aemond rest his palms on his brother’s footboard.
“Your health is on the mend, brother. Our dear niece has made sure of that,” Aemond finally spoke, breaking the silence only filled with breaths. “I see no reason for her to be in your services any longer. Our Maesters trained at the Citadel should be able to care for you thanks to her… benevolence.”
Aegon flinched as if he was struck, tears streaming freely from his weary eyes. Aemond’s anger was still palpable as he turned to you, his head tilted expectantly. You straightened immediately, trying to adjust the lightly torn bodice of your gown in a bid for modesty.
“Go on,” he said, a sharp edge to his voice that indicated something deeper, “tell your king goodnight.”
You knew Aemond would not take your actions lightly. He was deeply hurt, and the only way he knew to express his pain was by making others feel the same. Taking a deep breath to steady yourself, you understood that you had no choice in the matter. Slowly, you walked towards Aegon, who was still lying in bed and not saying a word. You accepted your fate, and a part of you believed that this was one of the milder punishments Aemond could impose for what you did as you leaned over your eldest uncle’s trembling body.
This kiss was as lifeless as the last. Aegon, no doubt fearful of what his brother might do if he had any impulses, did not return it. You could smell the salve you had applied to his burns just hours earlier, the scent rising in your throat and making you feel queasy as you pulled away to look at Aemond.
“Well,” he began, a sinister smile pulling his pink lips as he watched his brother slightly chase your lips, “aren’t you going to thank her?”
Aegon inhaled sharply as his chapped lips parted. His mouth was cotton, purple eyes flicking from you and back to Aemond. He did not want to test his younger brother’s cruelty further as he attempted to get the words out, yet nothing came.
With a sigh, you poured poppy milk for your eldest uncle, a drink that was consumed more than water itself. Once you brought it to his mouth, Aegon finally managed to swallow some, and his thanks came out mumbled and embarrassed as you quickly stepped away from him.
Aemond’s thoughts were clearly visible on his face, his smirk wrinkling his scar. He felt powerful, a sensation he craved more and more now that he had experienced it. He signaled for you to come beside him.
Like an obedient pup devoid of shame, you came, gaze downcast as you felt his strong fingers rest at the hollow of your throat. “You are never to set foot in here again,” he commanded, moist breath ghosting over your plump lips.
He understood your silent agreement, his mouth fitting perfectly with yours as you kissed him with sincerity. You wanted to make it clear to Aegon just how devoted you were to each other, even though Aemond had never spoken the words aloud. You realized there might never be a day when he would express his feelings verbally, a troubling thought lingering in your mind as his hand slid to your lower back, drawing you closer to him.
“Whatever freedom I gave you is no longer,” he began, voice barely a whisper as he brought your head to rest on his broad shoulder, his actions a hard contrast to the darkness in his words. You felt your breathing stop. “You are to remain in my mother’s presence with her guards. This will not happen again.”
You shut your eyes at the possession in his tone, trying to ignore the sinking feeling of dread that crept up to squeeze your heart as his fingers ran through your hair. A part of you understood that this was all for show, meant to ensure that his older brother knew where your true loyalties lay—that you belonged to Aemond and Aemond alone. It should have filled you with fear, but a starved, desperate, and raw part of you embraced it without shame, glad to finally be Aemond’s as he led you from Aegon’s chambers and into the hall.
Masterlist of Series
Nothing like having half a chapter of smut and then having a good hate quickie the next. Aemond is definitely going to crack down on the reader's freedom after this. I wonder if he's done with getting all his pent up emotions out for what she did...
i think one of the most important messages of the pitt is that everyone deserves help. we see this in a very literal way, especially with the patients this season. over and over, these doctors fight with everything they have to save patients who "put themselves" in that situation. patients who pool meds as a family and take random pills, who make themselves sick at hot dog eating competitions, who overdose on turmeric because an influencer told them to, who refuse medical care during pregnancy to have a "wild birth," who drink themselves to death, who jump off ladders with the hope of dying. on a selfish level, it would be easy for someone to look at those people without empathy. to work to save people like roxie, the "innocent" patients who did everything the right way. but, no, everyone deserves help. everyone deserves empathy. everyone deserves to be saved.
But first! We must thoroughly understand this man's fractured and devastated sense of self. Only then can we truly appreciate how connected he feels to her while finger-banging the soul from her body.
Everything is still going good. My two classes for the summer actually got cancelled due to low enrollment so now I have plenty of free time to write! Chapters are coming for The Gods We Can Touch and a new novella (I guess that's what it would be) for The Pitt with Robby and a resident reader. I am having a semi difficult time writing this one scene in TGWCT, but I know I'll get through it. You'll definitely love the it too if you know what I mean.
I'm also hoping to get back into finally finishing His Love because I've had the ending for that beech planned out for years at this point. (≧▽≦)
I'm excited to get back to writing for the few months of summer break, so stay tuned for updates besties!
Going into Season 3 of House of the Dragon, everyone is either team green or team black and I just want to say that I don’t care which team wins as long as both teams have fun :)
"ugh who tf wants to watch a five season mental health journey about Robby 🤢" MEEE MEEEE I DOOO I WANNA WATCH IT I WANNA SEE HIM HEAL ‼️‼️🗣️‼️🗣️‼️🗣️‼️🗣️‼️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
I just wanted to give y'all an update regarding The Gods We Can Touch. We're getting close to the point where season 2 ends and 3 begins in the fanfic. There are probably about three more chapters until it's the end of season 2. With that being said, I'll probably have to put the story on hold until season 3 is completely out because I want to stick to show cannon. It's my story and I can do what I want and I want to stick with show cannon. I'll also probably have to change some aspects of the story I've plotted out too.
I'll say I'm definitely worried for this upcoming season because aemond looks like he's never heard of hair oil and Rhaenyra seems like she's going to lose it.
not now sweetie, mommy is watching how the massive girlbossification of female characters has led to the belief that weak and vulnerable female characters are badly written characters because apparently every woman needs to be outspoken and witty and snarky and brave in order to be considered “complex” and have any value in a piece of media!!
The Gods We Can Touch Chapter Twenty-One: Changing Tides
Aemond Targaryen x Niece!Reader ft. Yandere Aegon & Alicent
Masterlist of Series
Summary: The older twin of Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, you were a picture of the maiden, untouched and untainted by man’s sins. At least, that was what Alicent Hightower believed when she held you in her arms moments after her old friend’s labors. You were her shining light, her dream. Though you were never hers, she believed you were meant to be.
What will become of you as time passes and the Queen’s shining light grows within the blackened darkness? Will her eldest son’s morbid fascination with the light burn the realm? Or will her second son’s obsession with the only daughter of Rhaenyra Targaryen change the course of the Seven Kingdoms as we know it?
Author’s Note: Hi everyone! Long time no chapter! This semester of nursing school was insane. Time to myself was non-existent, but it’s finally over until August. Thank you for your patience, and I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! (◍•ᴗ•◍)✧*。
Warnings: angst
The hall of Maegor’s Holdfast was lit only by half a dozen braziers, whose coals burned low enough that the fire gave more shadow than warmth. Stone walls drank the light greedily. Outside, King’s Landing muttered in its sleep, a city never entirely at rest, even when its rulers pretended otherwise.
You felt him before you heard him.
Aemond did not bother with a knock. You were past that. The heavy door creaked open and then shut softly behind him, as if the very fabric of sound were an adversary. He stood in the threshold for a heartbeat, tall and unyielding, his silhouette stark against the fading flicker of the corridor’s dim torchlight. His single eye gleamed with an almost unsettling intensity, a feral brightness that seemed to track your every move with a precision that unsettled. The awareness that coursed through you felt primal, as if you were a creature marked by a predator. Your skin tingled under his gaze.
“The gods are far from finished,” he finally declared cryptically, his voice carrying a weight that echoed with ancient power.
He gave no explanation, just the heavy silence that hung between you, like a stone splashing into tranquil waters, sending ripples outward, disrupting the calm.
You rose slowly from your settee, placed before the hearth, as you closed the tome you were reading. You did not raise in alarm, not in frustration either. You studied your uncle as one does an unfamiliar weapon, measuring its balance, its edge, the way it might turn in the hand as you decided to play his game.
“How generous of them,” you said softly, a single brow raised.
The corner of Aemond’s mouth twitched, a hint of something like a smile flickering just beneath the surface. As he closed the distance, his intense gaze bore into the sling that cradled your injured arm, an unspoken fire igniting in his eye.
The warmth radiating from him pushed back the chill of the surrounding air, wrapping you in a cocoon of heat infused with the rich, intoxicating scent of leather, smoke, and dragon, a sensory confession of power and danger that sent a tickle to your lower stomach. He halted just within arm’s reach, close enough for you to observe the fine tension etched into his jawline, the way his fingers flexed and unfurled at his side, as if each movement was a silent struggle against the tempest of his thoughts.
“If Aegon recovers,” Aemond began, carefully, “things will change.”
You did not flinch, recognition flickering in your eyes. You tilted your head, considering him as you breathed deeply. “They always do,” you replied with a shrug. “Survival has a way of rearranging the board.”
That was not the answer he expected.
His gaze tightened, narrowing into a piercing glare. “You should be afraid of what that implies,” he warned, his voice low and laced with an unsettling intensity.
You moved in closer, your intent not to offer solace or a soothing touch, but to observe with unwavering focus. Every detail of Aemond’s rigid form captured your attention—the way his tunic and trousers clung like a second skin to his sculpted physique, accentuating the defined muscles beneath. Your gaze swept over the patch that obscured his eye, a stark contrast to the smooth, milky complexion of his skin.
“Should I?” you asked. “Or should I be relieved that the world insists on reminding us how fragile your certainties are?”
Aemond’s breath hitched in his throat, a barely perceptible gasp that resonated in the charged silence. He had steeled himself for a wave of anger, an eruption of revulsion, or perhaps the sorrowful retreat of acceptance that came with his failures. Yet, nothing could have braced him for the glimmer of curiosity that danced in your eyes, a flicker so unexpected it sent a shiver down his spine.
“I was ready,” he stated, and the words escaped him as blood from a wound pressed too hard. They hung between you, bare and unadorned. Ready to rule. Ready to kill for the throne. The words went unsaid.
You did not step back as you extended your hand, fingers poised just shy of contact, creating an invisible bridge of intent that lingered between you and your uncle. He could sense the unspoken promise woven into that delicate space, a palpable thread of connection.
With a tender smile dancing on your lips, you replied. “I know,” your voice was soft and reassuring, mirroring the warmth of your gaze.
At that moment, something within him stirred, a subtle but profound shift that transcended mere relief. It was a deeper, more menacing recognition, a truth that sank its claws into his very essence. This awareness took hold, wrapping around his thoughts like a vine, ensnaring him in a grip that felt unyielding and relentless, refusing to be pried loose.
“You don’t look at me as though I’m ruined,” he said quietly.
You thought of the light slanting through narrow corridors, of chains whispering as Grand Maester Orwyle bowed too deeply, of Larys Strong’s soft, careful voice curling around its request like smoke. Help him, they had said. Stabilize him. Do what you can as if you were merely a tool to be fetched from a shelf, not a fault line running straight through this already-ruined house. The memory scraped against you now, raw and unwelcome, a splinter beneath the skin.
You could tell him. The truth hovered at the back of your tongue, heavy and metallic, that they came to you and asked you to save him. That you tried to mend what you helped break. The words would cut cleanly through this moment, would shift something in his gaze that you were not ready to lose. You had no proof that your hands had made any difference. Aegon’s survival might have belonged to the gods alone, or to Orwyle’s poultices and prayers. To claim it now felt like stealing credit for a miracle you did not believe in.
And more than that, there was fear. Not of Aemond’s anger, not truly. You had seen his fury, had felt its heat, and known its shape. What you feared was the fracture it would carve between you. That this fragile, feral understanding you were building would collapse beneath the weight of one more truth too heavy to carry. He had chosen you over his brother. Over the board as it had been laid. You would not give him reason to doubt that choice, not yet. Perhaps not ever.
“No,” you replied. “I look at you as though you told me the truth.”
His hand rose slowly, each movement deliberate, as it came to rest gently on your cheek. His restraint felt like a razor-sharp blade poised against his own throat, a dangerous tension humming between desire and control.
“You unsettle me,” he confessed, not accusingly, almost reverently.
You smiled, a fleeting expression that danced across your lips, neither warm nor harsh, but a cool, enigmatic gesture as if you had already seen this coming. Perhaps you had, deep within your bones, when Grand Maester Orwyle and Larys Strong came searching for you.
“Good,” you whispered with an inhale. “If you were at ease, I’d worry you were lying.”
As you keep the truth from him now.
The fire crackled softly, a coal collapsing in on itself. Shadows climbed the walls, stretching, tangling. Aemond leaned in, his forehead nearly brushing yours, his voice dropping low enough that it felt like it was meant only for the dark.
“There is no clean end to this,” he said, almost a warning.
“I know. There never was,” you answered. The truth was heavy between you.
For a heartbeat, he closed his eyes, basking in the air you shared. When he opened it again, the distance between you vanished, not in haste, not in hunger alone, but in a shared understanding that whatever came next would not soften him. It would bind him, and neither of you pretended not to know the cost.
Your hand rose to his wrist, your fingers curling lightly over the pulse there, feeling the proof of him, the rhythm of a man who had crossed lines and would cross more. You leaned into his touch, a silent answer that offered him presence rather than confession. If there was guilt coiled in your chest, it did not show on your face. You let him believe, for this moment, that you were untouched by any other loyalty but his.
Whatever you had done for Aegon, if anything at all, would remain unspoken. A shadow folded neatly into the many others you carried. And as Aemond’s gaze darkened, as his thumb traced your jaw with a reverence that bordered on possession, you allowed yourself to drift entirely into the intimacy he was offering. Not innocence, not absolution, but alignment. The kind that made secrets feel like necessary sins.
There would be time for truth later, you told yourself.
He seemed to possess an extreme exhaustion that weighed heavily on him, pushing him down to his knees as your uncle rested his forehead against your stomach. Your uninjured arm slowly stroked the back of his fine, silver hair, feeling the contrasting sensation of his leather eye patch strapped to his head.
You had only seen the sapphire of Aemond’s scarred socket a few fleeting times, never able to truly admire the beauty of it in silence, without violence clouding your gaze. The urge to see it overcame your sense, and you slowly stopped the soothing motions of your palm, quietly resting it on the strap. Aemond knew without a word what you wanted. A part of you worried that he would end this moment with you, that your comfort level made you too bold, and now you had ruined everything, but your uncle stayed put in his kneeling position, fingers digging into the plushness of your hips.
Slowly, carefully, you curled your digits under the delicate leather, removing it from its place. You felt Aemond’s breathing catch, matching the hammering of your heart as he gradually inclined his head. He stared up at you, pink lips parted.
You felt your stomach flip, a wave of arousal warming your womanhood as it swelled at the sight of him staring up at you. The vibrant blue sapphire of his eye shone back in the candlelight. It still held its usual sharp features, yet, as Aemond stared up at you and saw your eyes dilate, those harsh lines seemed blunted. His slightly curved nose and sculpted jaw seemed so gentle from this angle, as he gazed wordlessly into your heart. This view of him, of his visage, was so soft, it almost made you forgive him.
Fingers delicately traced the outline of Aemond’s face in admiration, and it sent shivers down his spine and into his loins. You caught glimpses of the boy you knew—the same boy you had shared your first kiss with as you leaned, pressing your lips against his. It was the same, tender caress of the night you shared, your cheeks filling with warmth as Aemond’s fingers dug into the skin of your backside.
“My Mors Martell,” you whispered against him, words swallowed with the lick of his moist tongue against yours. “My protector.”
Aemond felt himself harden as you spoke into his mouth, his breeches becoming impossibly tight. You slightly grinned in response, tasting the arousal on one another’s teeth. Your digits traveled down to his chin, and you parted from your uncle’s lips with a click of salvia.
Pulling at the laces of your gown with your abled arm, you felt Aemond’s seeing and unseeing eye trained on you like a predator to its prey, observing your movements as your bodice loosened. You lowered the collar of your dress as exhilaration flipped your stomach, trembling in your arousal. The idea of your uncle watching you eventually becoming exposed was exhilarating. A body only for him to touch, only for him to hold, not Jace, not the Lord of the North that your mother tried to betroth you to, and not Aegon.
He recalled how Aegon cried out for you in one of the many short bouts of lucidness the Prince Regent attended, asking if you could come to his bedside. Aemond relished in the notion that it would be he who tortured his elder brother, not the other way around, as it had been since his boyhood, denying Aegon of a small comfort in his agony.
You shrugged your shoulders, briefly forgetting about your injured one as you winced at the white-hot ache that shot through your torso and into your neck. Your uncle immediately jumped to your aid, cupping your cheek in his hand as you squinted in pain. You steadied your breath as you opened your eyes, noiselessly conveying that you were alright.
The tips of Aemond’s fingers traced the folded silk tied around your neck as you loosened it. He supported your injured shoulder with his strong hands, ensuring you did not experience discomfort as he stared.
A scowl pulled his features. “Twas foolish for you to venture into the city,” he said. You came to understand the hidden meaning in your uncle’s sentences, and you gave him a half smile as your pulse quickened.
You almost got killed, and I wasn’t there to protect you, he meant.
You inhaled deeply through your nose, resuming the soothing strokes of his hair. “I cannot refuse the Queen Dowager,” you reasoned half-heartedly, “and I have not had the sun warm my skin in so long.”
Aemond hummed, blonde lashes fluttering as your palm rested at the small of his back, want still clinging to your actions.
“I would burn all of them, all of King’s Landing, if it meant keeping you warm,” he promised. He truly meant it.
You looked at him, eyes wide, and sighed, heart leaping as you felt a new rush of wetness dampen your small clothes. The simple look cut him deep, down to his marrow. A sane woman would cower at his confession. They would run and never look back, but you… You craved it—desired his violence. The violence he committed with the same hands that touched you tenderly.
“I don’t need anything other than you.” The words were a purr against his flesh, and Aemond kissed you with a surge of hunger.
This newly found devotion… someone who wanted Aemond as much as they needed air, would be the death of him. To the Prince Regent, it would be the most worthy end. His cock pulsed uncomfortably between his legs as your bodies rubbed against one another.
“I would bring the whole of the realm to its knees, for you, if it meant I could feel only your breath on my skin.” He took your face in his hand, thumb stroking your moist lower lip.
Your eyes, round and sweet, had a hint of fire and steel underneath at his vow. They saw too many lies and rot and rage that lived beneath your uncle’s ribs. Yet, in the same way, you had eyes that lied to themselves for him, and looked at him like he was not the black-hearted kinslayer everyone thought him to be.
“If he were king, you would be queen,” a voice said. You knew who it was. It was the same voice that revealed the truth to you.
“I love you, Aemond.” Your voice was barely above a whisper, raw and trembling as if you tore it from a dark and secret place.
The words hung, fragile as smoke. Your uncle stared at you, his face stone except for the faint twitch of his seeing eye, but still, he did not speak. The words struck him like a blade, as if you were speaking Dothraki. Aemond felt his heart nearly beat outside his chest, swallowing as his words turned to ash in his throat. Perhaps it was another one of your tricks, loving him into a false sense of security like you did when you were in the dungeons, yet how you said it… as if it was written as prophecy and spoken as fact.
Aemond exhaled a breath, ragged, sharp as if he was stabbed. He let go of you, seeming to realize the truth behind your words, finally. You were serious. In the small candlelight, you looked ghostly beautiful, unreal. How could something so beautiful say that to something so vile?
“Say it again,” he commanded, demanded, begged.
“I love you. I have always loved you,” you confessed, knees weak with desire and truth.
Aemond pressed his lips to yours with an urgent, almost primal intensity, as though he were craving something he hadn’t tasted in far too long. Affection.. How long had it been since someone whispered those words into his ear?
His kisses were fervent, enveloping your mouth in a wave of longing that ignited every nerve in your body. His hands shook, as if he were desperately trying to hold on to a feeling that eluded him—an emotion that felt impossibly foreign yet achingly familiar all at once.
“Swear it,” he breathed. “Swear that you mean it.”
“On the Seven I swear to you, uncle. I love you.” Your voice was turning sore from your ragged breaths. He kissed you deeply again, consuming. “Let me love you, Aemond, till death,” you rasped.
He kissed you again and again, and again, as the entire world burnt away. Aemond wanted to taste your fire, that sweet, delicate nectar that rested between your thighs, leading you to your wrinkled bedsheets. He was mindful as he lay you on your back, legs dangling over the edge, toes dusting the cold floor.
Your uncle kneeled before you, slowly lifting your skirt and pulling your stockings down. You wished that tonight could last forever as he worked his lips up your inner thigh, sucking small kisses into the plump skin as your stomach rolled in anticipation. Each tender caress lifted the fabric of your dress, bunching it under your chin.
Aemond’s hands were as calloused and warm as you remembered them to be, his thumbs coming up and gliding over your nipples until they hardened into stiff peaks for him. His mouth wrapped around one, swirling his tongue as your fingers dug into his hair in pleasure, body trembling. It felt so good, temporarily distracted from the world around you as his hand pinched the other, rolling it between his fingers as he listened to you whimper.
Aemond’s other arm traveled down your body, cupping your wet cunt as you gasped, arching your hips to grind against his palm. He allowed you to take your pleasure, working yourself against the calluses of his trained hand before he pinned your hips down with his other. Your uncle smoothed the pad of his thumb over the seam of your cunt, creating a knot of pleasure as he found your pearl and began to swirl. You mewled, body quivering as he repeatedly circled your nub, your release beginning to fester.
“Yes, yes, yes,” you moaned into the chamber, basking in your uncle’s attention.
You do not question his actions, allowing Aemond to do as he pleased to your cunny, especially when you felt how good it was when he used his thumbs to spread your folds open for him. He groaned at the sticky strings of slick that displayed your genuine desire and love for him.
He thought he had never seen such a pretty little hole, clenching around nothing, dribbling more creamy arousal that made his tongue feel like lead in his mouth. You throbbed under his scrutinizing gaze, yet you made no move to cover yourself. Your body began to lose its sense of control as your back arched with the quick swipe of Aemond’s tongue up your folds, heart pulsing in time with your cunt. Your cheeks burned when you heard him chuckle softly at your reaction.
“Sensitive,” he huffed, a crooked smirk on his face as he brushed his thumb over your pearl again, garnering the same reaction as before from you. “Fuck. So wet. So puffy.”
He replaced his thumb with his finger, prodding at your entrance. You thought he was going to press inside you, to feel that delicious filling, but he did not. Instead, he gathered your slick, dragging it up to your swollen bud. He seemed fascinated with the responses of your body, as if he did not know the effect he had on you.
Your head felt full, fuzzy with your overwhelming love. The type of love that blinds one’s senses to things.
Aemond’s cock kicked against his thigh as you sighed and crooned so sweetly for him. He knew his touches weren’t enough to completely push you to the edge, much too slow and fleeting, but he couldn’t help himself. Your uncle wanted to see what limits he could push, if there was a line to your love that he would one day cross. He waited for you to relax against the bed before an inquiring digit pressed into your moist walls, lashes fluttering as you whimpered for him.
“Aemond,” you cooed, reaching down to card your fingers through his hair.
He grunted in acknowledgment, unwilling to part his gaze from the sight of the creamy mess you made on his fingers. Your pretty pearl was so swollen, glistening from your juices, and he suddenly had the inescapable desire to wrap his mouth around it. He could not stop himself.
All you felt was something wet and hot wrapped around the little bud, practically wailing at the feeling of his tongue sliding against it. You sobbed his name, yanking harshly on his roots as pleasure as thick as honey coursed through your veins. Aemond groaned into you in response, his tongue flicking and suckling your pulsating flesh. He did not want your precious cunny to be ripped away from him, the taste of your juices making his manhood ache as he rutted into the side of the mattress.
That familiar heat began to grow in your core, one you experienced many times before. You sobbed his name, gripping his hair in ecstasy.
“Uncle, don’t stop. Please, please, please.” You choked on your own cries, dropping your head into the mattress as your back arched, the pain in your shoulder becoming faint.
He grunted lowly, blonde lashes fluttering as he watched your body’s pure, unfiltered reactions to this pleasure. He knew you were getting close—could feel you clenching around him, and your bud pulsing on his tongue in time with your heartbeat.
Then everything stopped.
His tongue was gone from your cunny as he watched your face flicker through a range of emotions before your eyes filled with tears, utterly pitiful and confused. Your cunt pulsed around nothing, the heat of your release quickly dissipating, leaving a horribly empty and unsatisfying feeling in its wake.
Aemond’s cock drooled down his thigh. He could feel how wet his small clothes became. He ached in his breeches, unable to pretend he didn’t want this as badly as you did.
He attempted to act like his hands weren’t trembling when he yanked his belt off. He felt like a fumbling boy again, the way he clumsily pulled it out of the loops and shoved his trousers down his thighs. His cock, pink and heavy, hung under its own weight. Wrapping his digits around himself, he gave it a few, firm tugs. He sensed your eyes on him, watching the way he touched himself, sending heat through him. He lines himself close to you, pulling back his foreskin to show the leaky head that he glides against your tender bud.
You yelped in response, and Aemond cooed, leaning on one forearm above your head, draping his sinewy body over yours. He easily forced you into position with one free hand, caging your knees against your chest and wrapping himself over you, careful with your shoulder.
Cupping his jaw, you brought him down for a searing kiss. He sighed into your lips, using his free hand to grip the base of his cock and prod against your hole. Your cunt drips down between your cheeks and onto the blankets, so slippery that his cock slides upwards and slips across your bud. You whimper at the feeling, a sound mixed with equal parts pleasure and need.
He grips himself again and pins you impossibly against him, leaving you with nowhere to squirm as he presses into you with shared groans. He finally starts fucking you, sliding his cock out just a bit before rolling his hips forward again. It was slow and soft, pressing against the spot that sent your heart racing and your toes curling.
It felt so fucking good.
“Aemond,” you sighed softly, blinking as you struggled not to float off and become drunk with pleasure.
“I know,” he cooed, kissing your cheek before leaning back on his feet, hastening the thrusts of his hips.
You cannot keep quiet, mouth falling open to let out the most precious sounds of pure pleasure. You stared at your uncle with wide eyes, like he hung the moon and stars in the sky just for you. Aemond’s cock throbs at the expression of ecstasy that crosses your face. He knew you were close, could feel how tight you were clamping around him, could see how much you creamed as he rooted into you.
You whimpered. You were so wet, feeling yourself hanging on a cliff’s edge, dangling by a thread. You tossed your head back into the mattress as a sob ripped from your chest. Aemond knew what to do—what would make you topple over that presipe as he brought his thumb down to rub against your bud. You clenched down around him like a vice, milking his cock with your warm, wet walls until you feel his seed inside. It only takes a couple of little swipes of his thumb for you to tumble over the edge.
Pleasure soars through you, your hearing cuts out, losing control of your body, unable to do anything but thrash and twitch as Aemond fucks you through it. You gushed around him, drenching his cock in sticky juices that dripped in thick strings down his stones. You were unsure if you would prefer him to stop or continue because it is all so much that it hurts so good. You twitched, your entire body shivering until he finally slowed his thrusts to soft little rolls of his hips.
Swallowing, despite how dry your mouth is, you focus your eyes on him. His brows furrowed, and his bottom lip was tucked into his mouth. You were panting, you realized, and tired after everything that had transpired today. Aemond’s thrusts grew sloppy as he milked the release out of himself, voice breaking as he whimpered from how fucking good your cunt feels.
Aemond’s hands cup under your knees and pin them to the bed beside you, bending you as he sees fit. You were limp, so completely drunk on the pleasure you just experienced that you offered no resistance. He was even deeper like this, pressing against your womb. You were so sensitive that you could feel every twitch of his cock as he still languidly dragged his manhood in and out of you.
Your cum sticks between the two of you in little strings that break and reform every time his hips meet and leave yours as you flush in embarrassment. Aemond shushed you, his thrusts beginning to speed up as his release mounts. It’s almost cruel, how instinctively your uncle’s thumb comes back to your nub, rubbing agonizing circles that make tears leak from your eyes. Your body was in shock as you felt another peak forming, much to your disbelief.
“Oh–” you stutter, feeling your sensitive flesh swell once more under Aemond’s consistent movements. “I can’t.”
Whether or not your uncle heard you, he gave you no indication, gradually accelerating his thrusts until you could only hear his soft grunts and slaps of flesh on flesh. He concentrated, intent on feeling your walls pulsate around him one more time, that he paid no mind to the tears streaming down your temples in a mixture of ecstasy and discomfort.
“I’m going to fill you up with my fucking seed,” he grunted, cheeks pink. “Fill your tight little cunny until I leak out of you.”
Your peak came as suddenly as the changing tide, pulling you under with a wet shout that was surely heard throughout all of Maegor’s Holdfast. Aemond followed moments behind with a long groan. You felt him twitching as you clenched sporadically, still coming down as his seed leaked around his light pink shaft. Your juices and his, mixed, made Aemond’s mouth water, and his composure slowly returned to him. He wanted to taste the concoction of your shared passion, stuff his tongue into your tight little hole, and swallow it all down, though he is not so cruel as to overstimulate you further.
Your skin glowed with a warm flush, beads of perspiration decorating your brow and glistening in the soft, flickering orange candlelight. As your breathing begins to steady, a deep wave of longing washes over you, momentarily distracting you from the ache in your shoulder. You stretched out your hand toward Aemond, but a sharp twinge of discomfort made you wince. Although your uncle attempts to mask the flicker of concern that crosses his sharp features, you catch the subtle shift in his expression—an unguarded glimpse of empathy that he would otherwise hide.
“Stay with me,” you spoke into the silence, breathlessly, “if only for a few hours. I do not want to be alone with my pain.”
Aemond studies you with an expression of offense. Did you really think he would abandon you after your intimate moment? Did you believe you were simply an object for his desires, rather than someone for whom he would risk everything, even harming his own kin? He was not Aegon.
Your uncle stifled his thoughts of irritation as he settled down next to you on the plush bed, the fabric of the blankets inviting you to nestle deeper within. As you crawled beneath the warm covers, he methodically peeled off his tunic, revealing an undershirt that hugged his contours, accentuating his build. With a gentle demeanor, he assisted you in shedding your layers, carefully guiding them off.
As you gently traced the porcelain-like skin of his arm, your fingers glided over the delicate, almost ethereal texture, drawing you deeper into tranquility. Time seemed to stretch as you lost yourself in the soothing rhythm of your movements, feeling the steady rise and fall of Aemond’s breath next to you. There was something disarming and mind-numbing about being so close to him, a stark contrast to his often guarded demeanor. Gradually, the heaviness of sleep began to envelop you, the world of war around you dimming as you surrendered to comfort and warmth.
The storm came in from the east without herald or mercy. By the time the first thunder rolled across the roofs of the Red Keep, the sky had already been bruised purple and black, clouds stacking upon one another like siege drawn up against the sun. Rain lashed the towers in sudden sheets, rattling against shutters and flagstones, finding every crack and crevice with the patience of an invading army.
In your chambers, a single candle fought the dark. It guttered on the table beside your bed, its flame bowing low each time the wind worried at the narrow window. Shadows climbed the walls and slipped back again, restless as ghosts. The air smelled faintly of damp stone and hot wax and something older, fear, perhaps, or memory.
You sat upon the edge of the mattress with your hands folded in your lap, listening to the storm. It sounded too much like dragons.
Once, Aemond Targaryen had been nothing more to you than thunder. The dark, forbidding uncle. A tall, cold shape that loomed in doorways and corridors, whose single bright eye had measured you not as kin but as a flaw. You could still hear his voice as clearly as if he stood behind you now.
Bastard.
The word was not shouted. Aemond never needed to shout. He had spoken it calmly, almost lazily, with the faintest curl of disdain at the corner of his mouth, as though naming something spoiled.
I despise you.
You had believed him then with the blind faith of youth. You learned to avoid the sound of his boots as a child, the whisper of his clothes. Learned to make yourself small in halls where he walked, to keep your eyes lowered, your tongue still. You had told yourself that monsters were simple things, that they came dressed in cruelty and left nothing but fear behind.
You had been wrong. Now Aemond came to your bed.
The memory of it made heat crawl unbidden up your throat and into your cheeks, a treacherous warmth that had no right to exist in a time like this. Your uncle’s hands, scarred and steady. His mouth, urgent and reverent by turns. The way his voice softened when he said your name, as though it were a prayer he did not trust the gods to keep.
You had coupled several times now. The thought sat heavy and unreal in your chest. And more than that, he asked you things. Not trifles, not idle pleasantries, but matters of war and council and rule. What the city might endure. How would your mother answer? Whether mercy would weaken him, or fear alone could hold a crown. Once, he had despised you. Now he sought your counsel.
Lightning split the sky beyond the window, sudden and white, and for an instant the chamber stood naked in its clarity. You saw your own reflection in the dark glass, pale, drawn, eyes too old for the face that bore them.
What would become of you?
The question haunted you for moons, but never had it felt so sharp if Aegon died. No, when you corrected yourself grimly. If their whispers became knives, if the plot you had helped shape finally closed around the king’s ruined throat, what then? Aemond would be regent no longer. He would be king. And you… You pressed your hands together more tightly. There was Floris Baratheon. The name lay between your thoughts like a stone.
A maid of storms and antlers and black hair, promised to him—a pact inked in blood and banners, severing Dragonstone’s fire to Storm’s End’s thunder. House Baratheon was not a house that forgave insult lightly. They remembered slights as long as they remembered oaths if Aemond cast her aside.
The idea bloomed in your chest, fragile and dangerous. A part of you, small, foolish, aching, hoped that Aemond would. Hoped that when the crown was won, and the war quieted, he would choose you. That he would break the betrothal, risk the fury of Borros Baratheon, risk rebellion and fractured alliances, for something as frail and treacherous as love.
The thought made your breath hitch. And then came the darker question, creeping close behind it. If you stood beside him on the throne… would he ever stop? Would the war truly end? You thought of your mother, with her golden crown of sorrow and stubborn fire, who had lost a son and kingdoms and still rose each morning to fight again. You thought of Jace, trying so hard to be a man before the world devoured him. Of Joffrey, still soft with childhood. Of little Aegon and Viserys, with their fruit-strained fingers and half-formed dreams.
Your family—your blood. Your heart whispered treason. Perhaps, if he loved you enough, he would stay his hand. Perhaps he would spare them. Perhaps…
Thunder boomed so close it made the walls tremble. The candle guttered violently, nearly dying before flaring back to life.
You closed your eyes. No. You knew him too well now. Aemond Targaryen did not forget. He did not forgive. His grudges were not fleeting tempests but deep-rooted things, older than reason, older than mercy. They sank into him and took hold, winding themselves around bone and sinew and soul. More steadfast and deeply rooted than a heart tree.
He lost an eye and gained a war. He had lost a brother’s love and gained a crown’s hunger. He would not stop until the last threat was ash, even if that threat wore your mother’s face, even if it bore the names Jace, Joffrey, Viserys, and Aegon, even if it broke you.
The storm outside raged harder, rain slashing against the shutters like thrown gravel. Water crept in beneath the sill, darkening the stone.
You rose and crossed the chamber, pressing your palm to the cold window as lightning flared again across the bay. The city writhed below, slick and shining and miserable, a thousand tiny lives caught in a war they did not understand.
Could you live with yourself?
The question finally found its voice. What would happen if you loved the man who destroyed your house? Suppose you warmed the bed of the man who hunted your brothers. If you helped place the crown upon the head that would order their deaths.
Your reflection stared back at you, blurred by rain and glass and tears you had not noticed falling. You did not know the answer. You only knew that your heart wished for an ending that the world would never allow. The man you gave yourself to was not built for mercy.
Somewhere in the thunder, you thought you heard wings. And you understood, with a clarity as cold as the rain, that loving Aemond Targaryen did not mean choosing him. It meant choosing the fire that would one day consume everything you had ever been.
The storm did not lessen. If anything, it seemed to gather itself with new purpose, thunder rolling closer and closer to the Red Keep, rain striking the stone like thrown gravel, as if the sky itself meant to batter the castle into confession.
You did not light another candle. The darkness suited your thoughts too well. The chamber was lit only by lightning now, brief, violent flashes that tore the world open and shut again in heartbeats. In those stolen instants, you saw fragments of yourself scattered about the room. The curve of your hands, the silk of the coverlet twisted by restless sleep, the chair where Aemond had sat not two nights past, unlacing his gloves while he asked you what should be done about the blockade and the Small Council.
The memory hollowed you. You had told him the truth. That calculation would be seen as a weakness. That the Councilors saw him not as Prince Regent, but a boy whose anger needed to be tamed, that he, too, was one so easily steered like Aegon. That fear, once planted, was easier to control than loyalty ever was.
He had listened. Not merely nodded, listened, with that frightening stillness he wore when weighing lives, because of you. The thought slid through you like a blade.
How many fires had begun in this chamber, in this bed, in the space between your mouth and his ear? You wrapped your arms around yourself and paced, barefoot upon cold stone, while the wind worried at the shutters like an impatient guest.
You had told yourself, at first, that it was only survival. That binding yourself to power was the only shield left to you in a court that devoured the weak. That if you did not stand near the flames, you would surely freeze.
Then you had told yourself it was love, but really it was something more profound. It was an ache, a longing to be close to Aemond. To finally fulfill the dreams of youth that you and your uncle shared. It was something dangerously close to hope, but now, in the darkness of your room and thoughts, you were forced to name it for what it was.
Complicity.
Lightning flared again, close enough that you saw the window rattle in its frame.
Your mind went, traitorously, to the last time you had seen your mother. She seemed to age years in days. Not merely tired, carved thinner by grief, sharpened by loss. Her hands had trembled when she held yours.
Your throat tightened. If she knew now, if she knew whose mouth had traced your skin, whose counsel you whispered in the dark… You could not finish the thought.
The door to your chamber creaked suddenly. You startled, heart, leaping violently into your throat, spinning toward the sound, but it was only the wind, forcing its way through the warped frame. Still, you did not close it. Part of you, treacherous, aching, wondered if it might be him. If he would come through the storm as he had so often come through your defenses, tall and silent and terrible, shedding rain and armor alike, looking at you as though the world had narrowed to this room alone.
And if he did… What would you do?
The question settled, heavy and unavoidable. Until now, you had been allowed the luxury of delay. The war had given you fog to hide in, time to pretend that this thing between you and Aemond existed outside consequence, outside choice. You had not yet been asked to betray anyone openly, but the fog was thinning. Soon, very soon, Aegon would die or recover. Soon Aemond would either fall or rise higher than any man alive. And when that moment came… He would ask something of you. Not counsel or comfort. Loyalty.
You saw it with sudden, terrible clarity. Aemond would come to you one night, after spilling blood and crowns weighed in his hands, and he would not ask what he should do. He would tell you, and then he would look at you with that searching, wounded intensity and say,
“Stand with me. Against them. Against her.”
Your breath hitched. Could you? Could you watch your mother fall and still warm his bed? Could you hear Jace name a traitor and still trace the scar on Aemond’s cheek with tender fingers? Could you be queen beside a man who forged a crown from your kin’s bones?
The storm answered with thunder so loud it shook dust from the rafters. You sank onto the bed, suddenly weak, clutching at the coverlet as if it might steady you. Your heart rebelled because when you imagined choosing your family, your chest did not fill with relief.
It was filled with grief.
You saw Aemond’s face in your mind, not cruel, not crowned, but bare and unguarded as it had been in the moments after, when he lay beside you in the dark, breath still uneven, one hand resting possessively at your waist. You had seen the boy in him then. The lonely, furious child who was mocked and maimed and taught that love was a weapon or a lie. You were the first thing in years that had not demanded he become harder, and that was the most dangerous truth of all. Because part of you believed, foolishly, desperately, that if you chose him, you might yet change him. That you might soften the blade. That love might do what counsel and crowns never could.
Lightning cut the sky again. For an instant, in the glass, you saw not yourself but another image, a woman crowned. A dragon coiled behind her, and a city was burning. And at your feet, scattered like broken toys… The ghosts of boys you once rocked to sleep.
You cried out softly, clapping a hand over your mouth. No, you knew this. This was not a choice between love and duty. This was a choice between love and blood. Between the man who held your heart and the family who had given it to you.
Outside, the storm began to move away at last, thunder retreating toward the sea, rain softening into a steady whisper. It had been hours. You spent nearly the entire day in the tumult of your head and heart. Inside you, nothing quieted. You understood, with the sick certainty of prophecy, that the moment was coming. That one day, very soon, Aemond would ask you to stand at his side while the world you loved burned, and when that day came… Whatever you choose, you will lose half of your soul forever.
Masterlist of Series
I love me some good old fashioned smut. I'm quite proud of this scene. Thank you for your patience with these chapters!
Stay Another Day |Jack Abbot x FemNurse!Reader| One Shot
Summary: At PTMC, you’re the beloved night-shift nurse known as “Nurse Sunshine,” admired for your joy, humor, and ability to bring light to even the hardest shifts. Dr. Jack Abbot begins to notice that your kindness runs deeper than simple optimism, and your connection slowly grows through each case, quiet conversations, and moments of unspoken tension. You both navigate grief, exhaustion, and complicated feelings that neither of you fully knows how to name until it all comes to a breaking point.
Author’s Note: Hello everyone! This is my first-ever fic for The Pitt, though I’m definitely a veteran writer. This fic isn’t what I normally write and is very angsty, but there will still be smut... eventually. After like 15k words... I hope some of you can find some comfort in this and know that whatever struggles you may face, you aren’t alone. Your life will get better.
Warnings: major depressive disorder, suicidal ideations, and suicide attempt. If you or someone else you know is experiencing suicidal ideations or has a plan, please talk to a trusted safe person or contact 988 Lifeline. You are not alone. You are loved. Please, stay another day.
At night, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center revealed itself. The night shift sharpened edges and changed rhythms. Silences thickened; fluorescent lights erased all softness. Corridors stretched; urgency sliced through stillness. Machines hummed—a measured, steady symphony. You moved with purpose, made for both chaos and calm.
They called you Nurse Sunshine, an upgrade from Shen’s first mocking name, which implied you shot rainbows and glitter from a southern orifice. It wasn’t your fault caffeine fueled the night shifts. The thrill of seeing a parent’s relief after helping their child was more intoxicating than any drug.
You were the steady force in The Pitt’s storm during late nights and early mornings, just as you’d been the peacemaker at home growing up. Instinct drove you to bring calm to chaos, even as your pulse thundered. Comfort became second nature.
You never fought the nickname, especially when the handsome, competent, old enough-to-be-your-dad attending said it. The moniker stuck—sweet but occasionally stinging. At first, you wore it like a badge, basking in smiles and gratitude. But over time, lightness faded; what felt fresh grew heavy, obligation replacing happiness until the emptiness made you unsettled.
For a time, your energy outpaced exhaustion and doubt. Times were good.
During your first few months, Dr. Jack Abbot noticed you for your positive efficiency. Not just your lack of spectacles attracted his attention. You greeted coworkers as if you’d known them for years and brought extra coffee and energy drinks on shift. Your high fives and ‘good jobs’ were constant, your aura contagious. When he saw you in action, he knew the night shift would never be the same.
At first, Jack told himself it was simply relief. Relief that someone new on nights possessed the ability to soften the sharp edges of the emergency department without compromising competence. He had worked alongside enough eager nurses to know the difference between performative optimism and genuine steadiness. Yours was the latter. You were not careless with your kindness. You wielded it deliberately, instinctively, like another piece of medical equipment strapped to your body.
He noticed it most during the difficult hours—between three and five in the morning—when exhaustion hollowed everyone out, and tempers became fragile. Somehow, you remained warm without becoming naive. You laughed with housekeeping as you helped strip a bed. You remembered the names of anxious family members in hallways. You praised uneasy interns with enough sincerity that their tight shoulders visibly loosened. It unsettled him how naturally you breathed life back into rooms he had learned to survive by emotionally distancing himself from.
And God, he tried not to look at you too long.
Jack was not a foolish man. He understood attraction well enough to recognize its early symptoms. His unconscious search for your voice over the steady monitors. He felt subtle disappointment when your assignment kept you across the department most of the night. His body seemed to ease whenever you entered during a difficult case. He knew what it was. That was precisely the problem.
For a while, guilt settled beneath his ribs like a chronic, quiet ache. Some nights, he would catch himself smiling at something you said. Grief and guilt would arrive immediately—sharp enough to make him feel disloyal and dirty. His wife had once occupied every corner of his life. Loving her had not been temporary or fragile. That love was rooted so deeply that, even now, years later, traces of her still existed in his smallest habits: the coffee he drank was too black, half-read books by the couch, the absent reach for the passenger seat before remembering no one was there.
He believed surviving loss meant sealing the door. But over time, Jack faced the truth in therapy, sleepless days, and quiet drives home: loving his wife and wanting you weren’t mutually exclusive. Grief was not devotion’s final form. His heart didn’t stop belonging to the dead simply because it responded to the living again. Recognizing this frightened him; new fear mixed with emerging hope.
You were younger, luminous in ways he no longer felt. Hope lived on your face, not hidden behind sarcasm and fatigue. Sometimes, he watched you glide through the chaos, smiling, and wondered if proximity to him would ultimately dim that spark. He knew what years in emergency medicine could scrawl across a soul. He bore all the proof: permanent fatigue set in his face, the stiffness of his prosthetic after long shifts, the protective distance he once mistook for resilience.
Despite every reason to stay distant, he came closer anyway. Not because you were young or beautiful—though you were. It was your ability to stay soft, not naive; to comfort a patient and command the trauma room, never losing yourself in either. Each moment broke his defenses, reminding him compassion didn’t have to sacrifice survival. Jack forgot that once; feeling it, he awoke to a longing he hadn’t expected.
Sometimes, after especially brutal nights, he would catch you sitting at the nurses’ station: tired eyes, messy hair, still offering someone the last energy drink from your bag with an exhausted little grin. In those moments, the pull toward you stopped feeling reckless. Instead, it started feeling inevitable.
The trauma bay pulsed with electric energy—a place where life and death danced in an eternal struggle. One moment, fragile stillness hovered; rhythmic beeping of monitors pierced the space, a quiet heartbeat. Then, in an instant, calm was shattered. Chaos erupted as bodies rushed in, desperate for help. Each night hummed with tension so thick it felt as if the very walls held their breath, anticipating the next wave of emergencies. Doors swung wide, unleashing torrents of urgency. Instincts kicked in before your mind caught up. Into the fray, you plunged.
“Twenty-eight-year-old male, GSW to the abdomen, hypotensive en route,” the EMT rattled, locking the stretcher into place. Blood-soaked gauze at his hip, silent proof of what the monitors would soon confirm. You moved before the briefing ended: scrub, glove, assess, your gaze cutting.
“Pressure’s eighty systolic,” you announced, your voice splitting cleanly through the noise without rising above it. “We’re losing him.”
Dr. Abbot stepped in alongside the new intern, Toomarian. Jack’s presence was immediate and grounding, his focus narrowing with a kind of gentle intensity that seemed to steady the room itself.
“Large bore access,” he ordered, though you were already there, threading the IV with fluid efficiency, your hands unwavering despite the urgency pressing in around you.
“Second line in. Blood’s coming,” you said, not glancing up as you anchored the catheter, your hands precise and assured. You caught his glance for a heartbeat—a silent affirmation needing no words.
“Let’s not wait,” he said with a tilt of his head, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Start O-negative.”
Mateo sprinted over, dark curls bouncing, arms loaded with two bags of blood. You’d already directed him, one step ahead of Abbot’s order.
“Hanging O-neg,” you returned, glancing up just long enough for your eyes to meet. There was something there, brief, fleeting, but unmistakable. A spark of recognition. A shared understanding that existed just beneath the surface of the work. You pushed it aside before anyone noticed, hopefully.
Mateo puffed, shaking his head as he set the telemetry leads. “You two know the rest of us exist, right?”
“Barely,” Olive muttered, though there was a shade of amusement beneath her breath as she handed you a pressure bag.
Dr. Abbot didn’t show any visible reaction, but you noticed a slight shift at the corner of his stubbled mouth. His lips pressed together a bit tighter, suggesting the beginnings of a smile that the tense atmosphere wouldn’t allow to surface.
“Let’s focus,” he said, though his tone was softer than usual, lacking its typical bravado.
“Focused,” you replied lightly, a sing-song lilt to your voice, your hands already moving to assist as he assessed the wound. “Just keeping you on track, doctor.”
“Is that what you call it?” he murmured, looking down at you from his lashes, just quiet enough that it belonged only to you.
Your heart stumbled at the sound of his voice, smooth and deep, still tinged with mint from his discarded gum. Warmth flared in your stomach, tightening your insides, but you stamped it out. You reminded yourself: whatever Jack Abbot awakened in you would never see the light of day, nor would it ever be returned. He was a colleague, shaped by years you could only guess at and stories you had yet to hear. There was simply no space for a novice nurse who stared at him as if he arranged the stars.
The patient stabilized, barely enough to be sent upstairs after a maddening wait that the admin would never pay to fix. The ED exhaled, tension loosening its grip as the night went on. Even after a save, the nearness of loss lingered. You peeled off bloodied gloves, flexing your fingers as adrenaline faded and emptiness rushed in. You banished the unwelcome feelings. That was not who you were allowed to be.
Dr. Abbot remained in the trauma room a moment longer, his gaze lingering on the space where the patient had been, pristine white sheets now wrinkled and stained with crimson. His shoulders tensed, a stiffness in his posture that you recognized as something deeper than the case. You noticed a slight shift in his weight onto his good leg and the tightening of his jaw, the quiet signals he rarely let others see.
You stepped closer, your voice softer now. “You called that early,” you said, nodding toward the area where the bleeding had been worst. “It could’ve gone south quickly.”
He glanced at you, the tension in his expression easing just slightly. “You had the blood ready before I finished the thought.”
You shrugged lightly, a playful glimmer in your eyes as you fought to contain the smile that threatened to break free from his flattering words. “I’ve learned to anticipate your worst-case scenarios.”
“That so?” There was a quiet note of something in his voice, something almost curious, almost amused. “And what does that say about me?”
You pretended to contemplate a moment, pulling at the ends of your stethoscope. “That you’re predictable,” you said, the hint of a smile tugging at your lips. Without thinking any better of it, you added, “in the best way.”
He let out a soft, bemused chuckle, the sound escaping from his lips like a gentle breeze, while a wry smile curled at the corners of his mouth. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Relieved, hopefully,” you replied, your voice slightly trembling as you turned away to gather supplies. The lingering excitement of being so close to Dr. Abbot made your heart race. You busied yourself with the equipment, trying to focus on the task at hand. “After all, it’s what keeps your patients alive,” you added, feeling a mix of anxiety and admiration.
There was a pause, brief but noticeable, before he spoke again. You dared not look at his face for fear he might see just how deeply you admired him. “It’s not just me.”
You avoided his gaze, yet the weight of his words lingered between you. You could feel his eyes on you, the warmth of his half-lidded stare igniting a flush in your cheeks that spread like wildfire.
“I know,” you admitted quietly, trying to conceal a smile. You hoped it didn’t reveal how his compliment left you feeling both vulnerable and thrilled beneath your professional composure.
On a night when everything seemed to be unraveling, a middle-aged woman staggered through the doors, gasping for breath. Her face was a mask of desperation as her oxygen levels plunged, even in the midst of high-flow support. Each inhale was a painful battle, her body visibly trembling with the effort. Breathing, a simple act often taken for granted, had become an insurmountable challenge, a heavy weight she struggled to bear.
The woman came apart at the threshold, as though the night itself had pressed its weight against her ribs and found them wanting. Each breath she drew in was shallow and fractured, a stuttering rhythm that faltered beneath the monitors’ scream. The high-flow oxygen hissed uselessly at her face, an artificial wind that could not fill the hollow her lungs had become. Her skin bore that unmistakable gray, too pale to be called alive, too flushed to be mistaken for calm, and the tremor in her hands spoke of a body already beginning to surrender.
You were moving before the room had fully understood the gravity of it, your steps quick but measured, the practiced cadence of someone who had long since learned how to carry urgency without letting it spill. Then her hand caught you.
It was not strong, not truly, but there was intention in it, fingers curling with a desperate insistence that rooted you in place. For a fraction of a second, instinct clawed up your spine, a memory of flinching away from hands that grabbed too tightly, too unpredictably. But this was different. You felt it in the tremble of her grip, in the fragile way her thumb pressed against your pulse as though she could borrow it, steady herself against it.
Her eyes found yours, wide and glass-bright, and something in your chest gave way. You covered her hand with your own, your touch deliberate, grounding. Your thumb traced the sharp ridge of her knuckles, slow and certain, an anchor in a body that was slipping loose from itself.
“I’ve got you,” you murmured, low enough that it belonged only to her, though you did not know if she could hear you through the roar of her failing breaths.
“BiPAP’s not cutting it,” Toomarian announced, already shifting settings, her voice clipped with the kind of focus that bordered on urgency.
You didn’t glance at the monitor. It wasn’t necessary. The sounds told you everything you needed to know. You could hear the subtle shift in the rhythm, each breath becoming a drawn-out struggle. Inhales elongated, as if the air was a burden, while each exhale seemed to release so much more than just breath.
Dr. Abbot stepped in beside you, and the atmosphere changed. It was subtle, almost imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know him, but you had begun to recognize it, the way his presence narrowed a room, how chaos seemed to bend around him rather than through him. His gaze swept over the patient once, precise and calculating, and then settled into something sharper, something edged with decision.
“She’s tiring out,” he said, his voice even, though there was no mistaking the weight beneath it. “We’re going to have to intubate.”
You were already moving. The woman’s hand slipped from yours, not because she let go, but because you had to. It lingered at your wrist for a moment longer, fingertips brushing your skin like a question you couldn’t answer, before gravity claimed it. You forced yourself not to look back.
Your hands were steady as you gathered the intubation equipment, each motion clean, efficient, almost instinctive. You had run this sequence a thousand times, but tonight it felt sharper, more immediate, as if you were not just anticipating the steps, but anticipating Jack Abbot.
“Tube’s ready,” you called, holding it up just long enough for confirmation before placing it within reach. “One milligram of ketamine being drawn.”
You felt his gaze before you saw it. It landed on you not as a distraction, but as a pause, brief, deliberate, as though he were recalibrating something he hadn’t realized was off.
“You always this prepared?” he asked, the question quieter than it should have been, edged with something that didn’t belong in the middle of a crashing airway.
You met his eyes only for a second, just long enough for the corner of your mouth to lift. “You know me, Dr. Abbot.”
A subtle energy pulsed between you, something that neither of you dared to acknowledge, yet neither could fully dismiss or overlook.
Mateo exhaled sharply from the other side of the bed, a grin showing his white teeth. “This is getting ridiculous.”
You disregarded his teasing comment, focusing on drawing up the dangerous paralytic. “One milligram of roc drawn.”
“Jealous?” Olive shot back at Mateo, her hands never faltering as she monitored the patient’s vitals.
Abbot didn’t respond. Not to them. His attention had returned to the patient, but you could feel it still, threaded between you, an awareness that hadn’t been there before, or perhaps had been and was only now refusing to stay buried.
“Let’s go,” he ordered with the flick of his head. You stepped into place beside him as if you had always been meant to stand there.
There was no need for instruction. You adjusted the patient’s head before he reached for it, your fingers guiding the angle of the jaw with quiet precision. The laryngoscope was in his hand the moment he needed it, the light catching just right as he moved. You tracked the motion of his shoulders, the shift of his weight, reading him the way you read a patient, anticipating, adapting, responding before the need could become a demand.
For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between your hands.
“Cords?” he murmured, head turning to face you.
“Visualized,” you confirmed softly, focusing briefly on the screen before aligning the tube for him.
Your fingers brushed his as you passed it, brief, fleeting, but enough to register, enough to linger. Neither of you reacted, but something in the rhythm changed. The tube slid into place with a smooth certainty, the kind that came from experience rather than luck. The monitor shifted, numbers climbing back from the edge, and the room exhaled in a way no one would acknowledge out loud.
“Good airway,” you complimented Dr. Abbot, almost absently, your focus still fixed on the patient as the immediate danger receded.
There was a beat of silence, and you feared for a moment you might have overstepped, might have ruined whatever playful banter was happening between the two of you.
“I’ll take the compliment.” His voice was softer now, threaded with fatigue and something dangerously close to amusement. When you glanced at him, there was a faint smile at the corner of his mouth, subtle but real.
You allowed yourself the smallest huff of breath, something that might have been a laugh if it had been given more space as your face became hot. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late,” Mateo muttered with a grin.
Abbot ignored him again. His gaze lingered on you for half a second longer than it should have, something unspoken settling there—recognition, perhaps. Or curiosity. Or something far more complicated. Then he turned back to the patient, and the moment dissolved into the steady rhythm of a stabilized airway.
During one shift, as the night finally paused for breath, you found Dr. Abbot at the nurses’ station, leaning into the counter’s edge. Up close, fatigue struck him harder—shadows under his eyes, stiffness in his stance, tiredness that ran deeper than a single shift. Concern tugged at you, sharp and sudden.
You had noticed the prosthetic early on, of course. It was impossible not to. But it was not something he acknowledged openly, not something he allowed to define him in the hospital. He moved with quiet determination that left little room for question, his gait stable despite the slight imbalance. Somehow, that only made it harder to ignore. There was something achingly human about the way he carried pain without asking anyone else to shoulder it for him.
And maybe that was the problem.
You had spent weeks trying to convince yourself that whatever existed between you was harmless. Admiration. Respect. A harmless little crush on an older attending who looked at you like he actually saw you instead of merely another body moving through the department. But every shift seemed to chip away at that explanation until it no longer held together.
Because admiration did not explain why your pulse stumbled every time his voice dropped low beside your ear during a trauma. It did not explain why you found yourself searching for him the second you walked onto the floor, subconsciously calmer once you spotted his broad frame moving through the chaos. It certainly did not explain why, seeing him exhausted like this, something protective, painfully, bloomed in your chest.
“You’re favoring it tonight,” you commented softly, nodding toward his leg.
His gaze flew to you, surprise showing for a second, eyebrows lifting before his face returned to neutral. “Long shift,” he said, a flatness to his tone that wasn’t quite dismissive, but edged with fatigue.
You knew immediately he was deflecting. Not because he was cold, but because he was practiced at it. Jack Abbot wore composure like armor, carefully layered over old grief and wounds. Most people accepted the surface he gave them and moved on. You couldn’t seem to.
“You’ve had longer,” you replied gently, looking over his sculpted body, his black scrub top clinging to muscle softened only slightly by exhaustion. Heat curled low in your stomach, then guilt followed immediately. God, pull yourself together. He’s your attending.
But then he looked at you with those tired light brown eyes, and the rest of the world became dangerously easy to forget.
“Can I get you something?”
He studied you for a moment, as though weighing what to say. “Weather’s changing,” he confessed finally. “It acts up.”
The honesty in it caught you off guard. Small as it was, it still felt strangely intimate, like being handed something fragile. Your chest tightened unexpectedly. You wondered, not for the first time, how much pain he carried silently before anyone noticed. How often he stood in trauma bays while his leg ached beneath him and still somehow managed to steady everyone else first.
You nodded, accepting the explanation without pressing further. “You should sit,” you offered. “At least for a minute.”
He exhaled softly, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes as he raised an eyebrow. “Is that an order?”
The corner of your mouth lifted before you could stop it. God, there it was again. That warmth he pulled out of you so effortlessly. “Recommendation,” you corrected, though your tone carried a quiet firmness. “From your nurse.”
That earned you a small, brief but genuine smile.
And there it was. That stupid, dangerous little feeling again.
It hit you every single time he smiled at you like that—small and real, like something reserved only for rare moments. It made your stomach tighten in a way that felt embarrassingly juvenile, considering the blood and chaos surrounding you nightly. You had seen this man crack ribs during CPR, calmly intubate coding patients, walk grieving families through impossible conversations, and somehow, your undoing was a barely-there smile at the nurses’ station. Pathetic.
“I’ll consider it.”
You tilted your head slightly to the side, your brow furrowing as you narrowed your eyes. “You always say that,” you remarked, a hint of amusement tinged with exasperation in your voice.
“And you always push anyway,” he quipped back, crow’s feet showing with his smirk.
Your heartbeat betrayed you instantly.
It was the crow’s feet that got you sometimes. The visible proof of age between you should have made this easier and reminded you why this was complicated, inappropriate, and unrealistic. Instead, it only made him feel more devastatingly real. Not polished or untouchable. Just a man who had lived through enough to carry grief in the lines of his face and kindness in the softness that remained afterward.
“Someone has to,” you replied, your gaze firm as you mirrored his posture, leaning over the desk.
You became acutely aware of how close he was. The clean scent of soap beneath antiseptic, the deep rasp in his voice. The way his attention settled completely onto you whenever you spoke, as though the rest of the emergency department dimmed around the edges. Most people looked at you while simultaneously thinking about ten other things, but Jack Abbot listened with his whole body.
There was a pause, the kind that lingered merely long enough to feel intentional, before he spoke again. “You make it difficult not to listen.”
The words landed somewhere deep enough to hurt. Your breath caught faintly, warmth blooming beneath your skin so quickly it almost embarrassed you. For one dangerous second, your mind betrayed you entirely. You wondered what it would feel like if he said things like that outside the hospital. If those words were softer, closer. The thought hit you with startling force, and worse still, the unrealistic part of you thought he wanted that too.
The words lingered in the air between you, heavy and unvoiced, their meaning weaving an unbreakable bond. In that fleeting moment, the chaos of The Pitt faded into oblivion, leaving just you and the intimacy of a rare shared silence.
Mateo cleared his throat loudly from across the station. “I swear, if either of you actually says what you’re thinking, I’m clocking out early.”
Olive laughed under her breath as she typed away on the keyboard in front of her. “You’d never survive the suspense.”
You shook your head, turning away to hide the warmth creeping into your expression. Still, your composure felt fragile now, stretched thin beneath the weight of everything you refused to say aloud because the terrifying part was not that you desired him. It was that somewhere along the way, without meaning to, you had started caring about him too. Deeply enough that his exhaustion bothered you, enough that you noticed every slight limp and every too-long shift, and enough that seeing him smile felt less like victory and more like relief. And that was infinitely more dangerous.
You felt his gaze linger just a moment longer before he looked away. Neither of you said anything. You didn’t need to, but the tension remained, woven into every shared glance, every near-simultaneous movement, every quiet moment between cases where words felt unnecessary. And in the space between life and loss, between certainty and doubt, it grew, unspoken, undeniable, and impossible to ignore.
You concentrated on spiking a fluid bag as Dr. Abbott entered your patient’s room. He glanced from the monitor to them, assessing the post-treatments, the outcomes. You noticed him shift his position, absently lifting the line.
“Fluids are ready,” you nodded efficiently. “Waiting on your orders.”
A brief pause, a recalibration, followed. He looked at you, attentive. “Consider it done,” he said, certain.
You did, and you resumed. He saw you in fragments, always ahead, existing between anticipation and action. Mistakes were avoided before orders. Labs appeared before requests, meds prepped before thought. Your awareness matched his, something learned by instinct.
“You’re reading my mind,” he confessed with a certain little tone to his voice that only he could do, eyes on the chart.
You smiled easily, trying not to preen. “Just trying to stay ahead.” The words were practiced. You recognized your role in his eyes. Just a nurse, a coworker, not a partner, nothing more.
His lingering attention drew your gaze. You wouldn’t have admitted watching him, but his competence earned respect, and his steady clarity anchored you. He assessed, decided, acted, never rushed, never faltered. Even when results slipped, his steadiness grounded you, making chaos navigable. You attuned to his cadence, sensing shifts in posture and expression.
The Night Crawlers, as Abbot called the third shift, were all crowded around the nurses’ station, each one of you trying to make an excuse not to chart. Olive’s laughter pierced the heaviness of the hour on a slow night at a joke you told. Lena looked up from her iPad to the board, a smirk on her face, as Mateo tapped his pen, feigning boredom, a grin tugging at his lips.
“You’re too cheerful for this hour,” Dr. Abbot remarked as he walked up, eyeing you with mild suspicion, but there was a grin.
“Someone has to be,” you replied, reflexive and warm. They relied on your steadiness. It was easier to meet expectations than question them. Giving was easier than considering the cost.
The change came quietly, eroding your energy. You blamed fatigue. You skipped coffee runs and conversation, choosing solitude. You still smiled, reassured, and performed with precision, but the effort deepened, adding quiet layers behind each interaction. Even simple expressions now require intention.
Dr. Abbot was the first to notice the subtle shift in your demeanor, long before anyone else caught on. It wasn’t as if you were visibly injured. Nothing was broken or bruised, but a certain spark seemed to have faded from your spirit. Your assessments remained as incisive and sharp as ever, yet your once vibrant energy dwindled, leaving you feeling quieter, almost mechanical in your movements.
One particular night, under the harsh glow of the examination room lights, while taking vitals on a sedated patient, he leaned slightly closer, concern etching deeper lines on his face. “You okay?” he asked, his voice hushed, as though he feared the truth of your struggle.
You averted your gaze, a lie forming on your lips as you nodded in response. “Just tired.”
He lingered for a moment, studying the shadows under your eyes and the tension in your shoulders, his expression a mix of worry and understanding. The weight of his unspoken question hung heavy in the air between you, a silent acknowledgment of the distance that had grown between who you were and who you had become.
You told yourself it would pass, just fatigue from too many hours and little rest. Still, with each shift, the symptoms of burnout crept in. A growing sense of detachment, an emotional numbness that dulled both satisfaction and loss. This wasn’t simply tiredness, but a slow, heavy exhaustion, the kind that comes with compassion fatigue, a depletion from giving too much for too long. The work did not lessen, nor did the growing distance inside you. It was not sadness, but a quieter absence dulling everything.
You stood at the sink after a case, watching water run over your hands, seeing your reflection without recognition. There was distance, observing, not inhabiting, as if you were a spectator to your own life.
The shift that broke you had no clear cause. It was another night, another patient, another precise routine. You did everything right, but it was not enough. You stood at the bedside as the room emptied, silence pressing in. Something gave way, not suddenly, but with the finality of a long-strained limit. The thought settled easily.
What is the point?
By shift’s end, you moved through final tasks by habit, not intention. The report was professional and error-free, with no sidetracking about your plans after your shift or for your upcoming days off, like you usually did. You didn’t take the time to stay behind or engage in conversation, ignoring the confused expressions on Olive’s, Lena’s, and Mateo’s faces. You clocked out and left, your path feeling inevitable.
This choice wasn’t something spur of the moment. You had given it plenty of time and thought alone in your apartment, feeling nothing but the weight of emptiness cementing your limbs to the couch.
You would do it on a rainy day so the blood would wash away more easily, and wear dark clothes so no one could see the stains. You would be high enough up that the death would be instantaneous. You didn’t want to add to the already insane workload your coworkers were dealing with.
The stairwell echoed with each step, producing a hollow and distant sound. Your body felt disconnected, moving without conscious direction, while your thoughts hung in stillness. The rooftop door opened easily, offering no resistance. Outside, the air was sharp, cutting through the hospital’s sterile atmosphere. The sun was just beginning to rise between the overcast, the smog of Pittsburgh creating a beautiful cascade of orange and pink. Below, the city lay stretched out, caught between night and day, its lights flickering. You approached the edge, your mind calm and free of panic or fear.
You searched for hesitation or doubt, but only exhaustion settled deeper. Not sleep’s tiredness, but something final. You thought of the constant need to give, to hold, to endure, the expectation to remain Sunshine. For a moment, you wished you could ask for help or name what you needed, but the words would not come. You knew of the resources to reach out to, but burnout was heavy among all of you, and you didn’t want help. You didn’t want to keep dealing with the pain and struggle with the slim possibility of finally being okay. It was too much. You were done working, done giving it your all.
The next thought was simple and logical.
They will manage without you.
Your hands gripped the metal railing separating you from the edge as you ducked under. The distance below did not intimidate you. More than anything, the absence of fear or resistance unsettled you, a quiet acceptance of something that should feel impossible.
“Enjoying the view?”
A voice broke the stillness, controlled and precise. You turned slowly, effortful. Dr. Abbot stood near, breath steady as if he were used to situations like these, eyes fixed on you. His expression remained focused without panic, the same steadiness you admired.
“Dana said you clocked out,” he began, his voice softer now, but no less certain. “You always say goodbye.”
You didn’t know how to respond. Guilt crept up your spine at the notion of hurting Dr. Abbot’s feelings. You hadn’t expected someone to be here as your fingers twitched reflexively.
“Sorry.” It was the only thing you could think to say as silence stretched. “You should head home. I don’t want to keep you here. It’s been a long night.”
Jack Abbot was quiet for a moment, no longer looking at you but at the sun rising before him on the city skyline.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he stated more than asked as you turned to see what he was focused on. You didn’t have the nerve to respond. “I come up here sometimes, almost every shift, actually,” he confessed.
You felt your heart skip a beat, taking just a small step forward to look down at the streets before you. Cars drove past one another, sporadic honking breaking through the intensity of the moment.
“I’m not surprised,” you felt yourself say. You weren’t sure why you decided to continue the conversation. Perhaps because you didn’t expect anyone else to come up here, let alone engage in casual small talk, that you felt obligated to continue. “You served in the army, lost your leg, and your wife is dead. I’m surprised you haven’t jumped yet.”
Jack was thankful that your back was to him as his face broke free of the clinical mask he wore. He had never heard you speak so bluntly, so negatively. You were Nurse Sunshine. You had glitter and rainbows shooting out of your ass everywhere you went, as Shen so eloquently put it. He felt his heart race.
“You’re right. I haven’t,” he conceded, taking noiseless steps towards you. “Do you want to know why?”
You scoffed, turning around as tears stung your eyes. You wanted to stop them, to shove them back into the glands they came from. “If you’re going to make some big speech about how you got help and have reasons to live, I don’t want to hear it. I’m tired.”
Jack chuckled, still reeling inside at how candid you were being. He knew you were struggling. He had seen the signs, the smiles that didn’t fully reach your eyes, arriving at work only minutes before your shift instead of the thirty minutes early you normally did. You weren’t necessarily rude to your coworkers and Jack; if anything, you were the average person asking how their weekend was, but you also didn’t engage in deep conversations like you normally would.
“Always knowing what’s on my mind,” Abbot muttered to himself, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
You attempted to hide how your teary eyes instinctively followed his movements, tracing the veins that traveled down to his strong, freckled hands. These thoughts were pointless. Jack Abbot was your senior, a man who had already lived his life and carried burdens that no one should have to, and you… You were just some pathetic nurse who couldn’t handle the pressure when life got tough. He would never care about you.
Silence followed. Distant city sounds filled the space between breaths before you spoke. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.”
The words hung between you, fragile in the open air, carried only slightly by the early morning wind. You expected him to deflect, to return to that clinical distance he wore so well, but he didn’t. Abbot stepped closer instead, slowly and deliberately, the way he approached a crashing patient, with no sudden movements, no urgency that might fracture what little balance you had left.
“I’m not,” he said simply with a tilt of his head, the sunrise catching on his freckled skin.
It caught you off guard. Your brows knitted faintly, confusion threading through the exhaustion. “You should be,” you murmured. “This isn’t exactly… a good look. I’m fucking pathetic. Can’t handle fucking anything.” You profusely wiped at your tears.
Jack’s gaze didn’t waver, lashes batting against his cheeks as he looked down at you. “No,” he repeated, quieter this time, like a conclusion he’d already reached long before stepping onto the roof. “It’s honest. Not many people will speak so openly about how they’re feeling.”
You scoffed, the irony of the sentence not lost on you, but still that word pressed into something raw inside your chest. Honest. As if this… this unraveling, this hollowed-out version of you, was more real than the girl who laughed too brightly at the nurses’ station, who anticipated orders before they were spoken, who filled every silence so no one would notice the emptiness behind it.
You looked away first.
“I don’t want help,” you spat, the words steadier now, practiced. “It’s not that I don’t know how to get it. I do. Therapy, meds, time off–whatever.” You shrugged weakly, the motion almost careless. “I just… don’t want to go through it. The whole process. Fighting to feel okay again just to end up right back here.” Your fingers tightened on the cold metal railing as you turned, and a fresh wave of tears rose. “It’s exhausting.”
Jack was quiet, but not distant. You could feel his presence behind you, solid, grounded, like he had no intention of leaving, no matter how long it took.
“That’s fair,” he said after a moment.
You blinked, surprised again. “What?”
“It’s exhausting,” he echoed, as if it were a clinical fact. “The process. The effort. The trial and error with meds.” A small breath left him, almost inaudible. He knew it all too well. “You’re not wrong.”
You turned your head slightly, just enough to see him from the corner of your eye. He wasn’t trying to argue with you or dismantle your logic piece by piece as you expected. He was… meeting you in it, and somehow, that made it harder to hold onto.
“So what,” you muttered, quieter now. “You’re just going to agree with me? There’s plenty of sidewalk down there.”
“No.” His voice shifted then, not sharper, but firmer, like a line being drawn with quiet certainty. “I’m going to ask you to stay anyway.”
You felt your breath catch in your throat.
“Just another day,” he added, almost casually, though there was nothing casual about the weight behind it. “You don’t have to fix anything or decide anything long-term.” He tilted his head slightly, watching you as he did with patients when he was gauging whether they’d stabilize. “Just stay one more day. See how it goes.”
The simplicity of it made your chest ache.
“One day isn’t going to change anything,” you argued, but the resistance lacked its earlier bite. Jack was wearing you down.
“Maybe not,” he agreed easily with a half shrug. “But it’s not about changing everything. It’s about not ending it today.”
Your throat tightened. You hated how reasonable that sounded, how manageable it was. Your mind was so consumed with thoughts of the future, of what agony and death the next shift would force you to endure, that you stopped thinking reasonably.
You stared out over the city again, the sunrise now fully cresting the horizon, spilling gold across glass and steel. One more day. It sounded so small. So insignificant, and yet, your shoulders sagged, the fight draining out of you in slow increments.
“You make it sound easy.” Your voice was thick as you tried to swallow your emotions.
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s just smaller. You just need to get through today.”
Silence settled again, but it felt different now, less suffocating, more… suspended. Death was final, an ending you could never rewrite. It was still what you wanted, but you were so tired— tired of fighting, tired of standing at the brink of falling and deciding to give up instead.
You let out a shaky breath. “Okay,” you conceded, the word barely above a whisper. “One day.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, his body still but his presence palpable. He didn’t rush towards you or invade your space, but you could sense a shift in his demeanor—a hint of relief that he managed to keep under wraps. It was as if the air between you had lightened slightly, making the tension palpable yet strangely inviting.
“That’s enough,” he said with a subdued grin.
“What happens after today?” you asked almost involuntarily. You couldn’t just live in the moment; that wasn’t how your brain had been trained to function after countless shifts at PTMC.
“We’ll figure it out,” he replied without hesitation. No overthinking as he flashed you a lopsided grin that made your heart flip. “You don’t have to carry the whole timeline right now, sunshibe.”
You huffed softly, something that almost resembled a humorless laugh, as your heart leaped into your throat, and you swallowed it back down. “Easier said than done. You always talk to your coworkers like that?”
“Only when it works.”
That pulled a faint, fleeting ghost of a smile from you, gone as quickly as it came.
Another pause stretched, and then he shifted again, this time more deliberately, as you ducked under the railing. “You shouldn’t go back to your apartment alone.”
Your brows furrowed, a knot forming in your stomach. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I can take care of myself.” You just wanted to be alone right now.
“I know you have the ability,” he said, his brow furrowed in thought. “But that’s not what I’m worried about.”
You turned fully this time, crossing your arms instinctively like a barrier. You sure as hell weren’t going to stay here in one of the on-call rooms. “What are you suggesting?”
“Come stay with me,” he offered, as if it were the most straightforward solution in the world.
The answer was immediate, with profuse head shaking. “Absolutely not,” you refused firmly. “I’m not, Jack, I’m not putting that on you. I’m not your responsibility.”
A glimmer sparked in his eyes at that moment, not the quick flashes of irritation or frustration that often danced there when trying to placate a noncompliant patient, but a deeper, more profound light, calm and resolute.
“You’re not a burden,” he argued, his brows furrowed as he mirrored your crossed arms.
“I didn’t say that.” You shook your head, wiping your wet eyes with the heels of your hands.
“You suggested it,” he shot back, a faint smirk playing on his lips as he shifted his weight onto his uninjured leg, a gleam of defiance in his eyes.
You opened your mouth to argue, but no words came out because you had already implied that. Dr. Jack Abbot was anything but an idiot. In fact, it was one of the countless reasons heat rushed to your cheeks whenever he was near.
He took a tentative step forward, drawing near enough for you to notice the subtle weariness that had become a permanent fixture on his face. It was a weariness that ran deeper than skin, etched into the very lines of his features. The same exhaustion that settled like heavy fog in your bones.
“I’ve handled worse than you needing a place to stay for a night,” he argued quietly. “Trust me.”
“That’s not the point,” you argued with a roll of your eyes, smoothing the stray strands of hair that came out from your updo.
“Then what is?” Jack argued with the raise of his light brows as he took more steps towards you, seeming almost to size you up.
You hesitated, your defenses faltering under the weight of his steady persistence. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me.”
A beat passed.
“I don’t,” he admitted softly, tilting his head toward you and raising his eyebrows. His forehead crinkled the way it always did when he was trying to convey the seriousness of a patient’s outcome. “I want to.”
Your breath hitched in your throat. In his voice lingered a moment of raw honesty—an unguarded vulnerability that sent a flutter through your chest, igniting a feeling that had nothing to do with fatigue.
“Jack…” you started, but the words felt thin, tears pricking your bloodshot eyes once more.
He held your gaze, steady as ever, but there was warmth there that you hadn’t seen before, unmistakable beneath the control. “Stay,” he said again, quieter this time as he reached out and placed his calloused palm on your arm. “Let me make sure you’re okay. Just for tonight.”
You studied his face, searching for any hint of hesitation, uncertainty, or even the faintest glimmer of obligation or pity. To your surprise, you found none. The revelation sent your heart racing. Jack Abbot genuinely cared for you, more deeply than the usual bond shared between a doctor and his favorite nurse.
“I don’t want to complicate things,” you murmured, your voice barely above a whisper. Your eyes remained fixated on the scuff marks adorning your leather sneakers, tracing the faded lines and scratches that had gathered after countless shifts and mandatory overtime.
A faint exhale left him, almost amused. “Sweetheart,” he said, tender, unintentional, as the word had slipped past whatever restraint he usually held. Your eyes snapped up. “Things have been complicated for a while now.”
The endearment washed over you like a gentle tide, its soothing warmth surprising in a moment that felt so heavy with tension. It wrapped around your heart, igniting a tender flicker. Your resistance wavered, cracking just enough.
“Just another day,” you agreed finally, voice quiet, uncertain as his arm wrapped around your torso.
Jack nodded once, like that was all he’d needed. “Just another day.”
And for the first time since stepping onto the rooftop, the edge no longer felt like the only direction forward. At least for now, the only thing you thought about was Jack Abbot’s strong arm wrapped around your waist, the faint smell of expensive cologne warming your stomach as you leaned your head on his shoulder, descending the stairs into The Pitt.
The drive to Jack’s townhouse passed in relative silence, though it never felt uncomfortable. Pittsburgh blurred past the passenger window in streaks of amber streetlights and rain-dark pavement, the city quieter now in the fragile hours before the morning fully settled into day. You rested your head against the cool glass, exhaustion pressing heavily behind your eyes, but your awareness of him never fully faded.
One hand remained steady on the steering wheel while the other rested near the console, close enough that your fingers brushed once when the car turned sharply. Neither of you acknowledged it. Still, the accidental touch lingered beneath your skin, like heat, long after.
You tried not to think too hard about the fact that you were going home with Jack Abbot. Not the hospital. Not some sterile on-call room with fluorescent lighting and scratchy blankets. His home. Somewhere private. It should have terrified you more than it did.
Instead, you found yourself staring at the quiet lines of his profile illuminated by passing headlights, noticing the exhaustion softening his features now that he no longer had to wear the rigid composure demanded by The Pitt. His jaw carried faint stubble. His freckles stood out more in the dim lighting. One hand flexed occasionally against the steering wheel, veins shifting beneath scarred skin, and your stomach twisted painfully with affection.
By the time he pulled into the narrow driveway of a brick townhouse tucked into one of Pittsburgh’s quieter neighborhoods, the sky had begun shifting pale blue behind the clouds. You blinked slowly, taking in the home before you.
It was beautiful in a way that immediately felt like him. Not extravagant. Not cold or overly modern, unlike many wealthy physicians’ homes. Warm brick softened by ivy climbing one side of the exterior. A small fenced yard sat beside the townhouse, impossibly charming despite its modest size, with string lights hanging along the back patio and flower beds just beginning to bloom from the rain. There was even a small wooden bench beneath the kitchen window, worn slightly with use.
Your brows lifted faintly despite your exhaustion.
“Jack,” you murmured as you stepped out of the car, looking around in disbelief. “You have a yard.”
A quiet huff of amusement left him as he came around the vehicle. “That sounds accusatory.”
“In Pittsburgh?” you countered, staring at the narrow strip of green like it was some luxury estate. “Do you know how expensive this probably looks to someone renting a shoebox apartment?”
That earned you a real laugh. Low and tired, but genuine. God, you loved the sound of it more than you should have.
“It’s not that impressive,” he shrugged.
“You own outdoor furniture,” you deadpanned, pointing weakly toward the small patio table near the back fence. “That’s commitment.”
The corner of his mouth lifted as he unlocked the front door. “Careful, Sunshine. You sound charmed.” He couldn’t put into words how relieved he was to have a peek at your personality again.
Your heart stumbled hard enough to make you grateful he wasn’t looking directly at you because he was right.
The inside of the townhouse only made it worse. Warm lighting illuminated dark hardwood floors and soft off-white walls. Bookshelves lined one side of the living room, crowded with worn novels, medical journals, and framed photographs you tried not to stare at too long. A deep charcoal couch sat beneath a knitted throw blanket, the kind clearly chosen for comfort rather than aesthetics. The kitchen beyond it looked lived-in without being messy, with neatly arranged mugs hanging beneath cabinets and an expensive coffee machine occupying the counter.
It smelled faintly like cedarwood and coffee. Like him. Your chest tightened unexpectedly.
There was something deeply intimate about seeing where Jack existed outside the hospital. The Pitt had always made him seem untouchable somehow, as if he belonged solely to trauma bays, harsh fluorescent lighting, and impossible decisions. But here… here he was simply a man. One who read books, watered plants, and apparently owned throw pillows.
The realization made your feelings for him deepen in a way that felt almost unfair.
“You can sit down, sweetheart,” Jack said gently, setting his keys onto the kitchen counter. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
The endearment hit you just as hard the first time. You lowered yourself carefully onto the couch, suddenly aware of how badly your body hurt now that adrenaline had worn off. Exhaustion dragged through every muscle. Your limbs felt heavy, your thoughts sluggish and distant. Strangely, you didn’t even feel cold anymore despite still wearing hospital scrubs dampened faintly by the morning chill. You were simply too tired to shiver.
Jack noticed immediately. His expression softened almost imperceptibly as he crouched slightly in front of you. “Hey.” His voice dropped lower, gentler. “Stay with me for a second.”
You blinked slowly toward him. “Mhm?”
“You’re exhausted.”
“No kidding,” you yawned, opening your mouth.
One side of his mouth twitched faintly. “I’m going to grab you something comfortable to sleep in, alright?”
You wanted to protest. Tell him he’d already done enough. But the words felt too heavy to force out, so you only nodded weakly instead. When he returned a few minutes later, he held a folded T-shirt and a pair of soft black sweatpants against his chest. You stared at them longer than necessary, irrationally affected by the idea of wearing his clothes.
“They’ll be too big,” he warned quietly.
Your throat tightened. “That’s okay.”
His fingers brushed yours as he handed them over, and the contact alone nearly unraveled you. God. This was unbearable.
You disappeared into the bathroom to change, gripping the edge of the sink for a long moment once the door shut behind you. His shirt hung off your frame, obscenely large, soft from years of washing, carrying the faint scent of cedar, laundry detergent, and something distinctly him beneath it all.
You looked exhausted, hollow-eyed, and emotionally wrecked. Yet somehow Jack Abbot still looked at you like you were something worth caring for. The thought nearly brought tears back again.
When you emerged, Jack had changed too, trading his scrubs for a gray long-sleeve shirt and loose sleep pants that sat low on his hips. Your pulse immediately betrayed you.
Absolutely not. Your exhausted brain was not surviving this.
“I’ll take the couch,” he said immediately, gesturing toward it before you could fully process the sight of him leaning casually against the kitchen counter, looking unfairly attractive in his own home. “You take the bed.”
You frowned instantly. “No. You’re not sleeping on your couch in your own house after everything you’ve already done for me.”
“It’s a very comfortable couch,” he halfheartedly argued, a grin pulling his lips.
“I don’t care.”
A tired sort of amusement crossed his face. “Sunshine…”
“No, absolutely not,” you argued, folding your arms tighter beneath the sleeves, swallowing your hands. “You’re already letting me stay here, and you dealt with me on the brink of suicide. I’m not stealing your bed, too.”
His eyes flicked briefly over your face, softer now. “You’re not stealing anything.”
Heat bloomed painfully in your chest. Still, neither of you backed down. The argument carried on longer than it should have, exhaustion making both of you stubborn in oddly domestic ways until eventually Jack dragged a tired hand over his face with a quiet laugh.
“You realize neither of us is going to win this, right?”
You narrowed your eyes faintly. “I could absolutely win this.”
“That confidence is concerning, considering you almost walked off a roof an hour ago.”
You stared at him. He stared back. And then, horrifyingly, you laughed. A real one. Breathless and startled and exhausted all at once. Jack’s expression softened immediately at the sound, something warm flickering visibly across his face.
Eventually, the compromise became obvious. You would share the bed. Entirely platonic. Probably.
Your heartbeat had already started racing before you even followed him upstairs. Jack moved more slowly now without the prosthetic fully supporting him, though pride clearly made him try to hide it. The bedroom itself mirrored the rest of the townhouse, with warm lighting, dark-wood dressers and nightstands, soft gray bedding slightly rumpled from previous nights, and books stacked carelessly on the nightstand beside reading glasses and a half-finished novel. Your chest tightened at the intimacy of it all.
Jack sat carefully on the edge of the bed, fingers moving toward the prosthetic straps before hesitating briefly. For the first time since knowing him, uncertainty crossed his features. Small and fleeting as you kneeled beside him.
“You don’t have to,” he protested weakly, though there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.
“I know,” you interrupted softly, stepping closer. “Can I help?”
His eyes lifted toward yours slowly as the silence stretched long enough to feel fragile before he finally nodded once. Your hands trembled slightly as you knelt in front of him. Not from fear. From the unbearable awareness of him. The warmth of his skin beneath your fingertips. The trust required for this moment.
You moved carefully, listening as he quietly explained each strap and clasp. Your fingers brushed scarred skin occasionally, and every single time, his breathing shifted almost imperceptibly. Not discomfort, but something else, something heavier.
The intimacy of it nearly overwhelmed you. This wasn’t polished, Dr. Abbot from the trauma bay. This was Jack. Tired and vulnerable, and allowing you close enough to see the parts of himself he normally kept guarded.
When the prosthetic finally came free, you looked up instinctively only to find him already watching you. The air shifted. His gaze lingered on your face with enough intensity to make your pulse throb painfully beneath your skin. You became hyperaware of your position between his knees, his large hands resting beside you on the mattress, the soft fabric of his shirt stretched across broad shoulders as his chest rose slowly beneath it. Your mouth suddenly felt dry.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. The words shouldn’t have sounded intimate. They did anyway.
You swallowed hard, standing a little too quickly afterward as though distance might help regulate your heartbeat. It didn’t. Nothing did. Not when he looked at you like that. Not when you climbed into bed beside him moments later, separated by only a few inches and entirely too much tension.
The room fell quiet except as you stared stubbornly toward the ceiling, acutely aware of every inch of space between your bodies. Your heart would not calm down. If anything, lying beside him only made it worse. The mattress dipped faintly beneath his weight. His heat surrounded you. Every small movement was registered instantly in your nervous system like a live wire.
The silence should have eventually soothed you. Instead, it sharpened every small thing. The rain whispered against the window in uneven patterns, soft and steady, collecting in the gutters outside before spilling in faint trickles somewhere beyond the glass. The room smelled like clean sheets and Jack, a warmth so unmistakably his that it seemed to settle into your lungs every time you breathed in. Beside you, he lay still on his back, one arm resting across his abdomen, his breathing slow in the careful way of someone trying not to disturb a frightened animal.
You hated that you were the frightened thing.
For a while, you only stared at the ceiling and tried to convince yourself that your heart was not still trying to climb out of your ribs. It was unbearable at first, lying so close to Jack Abbot with nothing but darkness and a mattress between you. Every shift of his body sent awareness skittering beneath your skin. Every brush of the blanket against your leg had made you wonder whether it was him.
Eventually, exhaustion did what reason could not. Your pulse began to settle. The frantic edge of your thoughts dulled. Your body, spent from terror and tears and too many hours spent pretending to be fine, sank deeper into the mattress until your limbs felt boneless beneath his borrowed clothes. Jack’s presence, instead of setting you alight, became something steadier—a quiet anchor in the dark.
He was still there. He did not leave when you’d been difficult or withdrawn when you’d been broken. He brought you into his home, gave you his clothes, offered you his bed, trusted you with one of the most vulnerable parts of himself, and then lay beside you without asking for anything in return.
That thought should have comforted you, and for a moment, it did, but as always, the sadness found its way back in. It was slow at first, slipping through the small cracks exhaustion left open—a hollow pressure behind your breastbone and a heaviness behind your eyes. The familiar, terrible ache of your mind turning inward and finding only dark corners. You closed your eyes and inhaled a deep breath as if that might stop it, but the darkness behind your lids only made everything worse.
Another day. That was what you promised him.
You had stood there with Jack’s steady hands and quiet voice and eyes looking at you like your life mattered, and you had promised him you would try. You had meant it when you said it. You had truly meant it. In that moment, with him there between you and the edge, the promise had felt possible. Maybe not easy or believable, but possible.
Now, in the aftermath, it felt like a lie. The future stretched out in your mind like a hallway with no lights. One day became two. Two became a week. A month. A year. More shifts. More loss. More mornings where your body kept moving even after your spirit had gone silent. More days of waking up and realizing, with a quiet devastation that made you sick, that you were still yourself.
You tried to imagine taking it one day at a time, but you could barely survive this hour. A tear slid hot and silent from the corner of your eye into your hairline. You held your breath, horrified by it, as if even crying was too much. Then another followed and another. Your throat tightened until swallowing hurt, and you turned your face slightly away from the sleeping form beside you, pressing your lips together to trap the sound before it could escape. You did not want Jack to hear or to know that the promise was already cracking in your hands.
The mattress shifted, and his voice came low through the dark. “Sunshine.”
The endearment broke something in you as you squeezed your eyes shut harder, but the tears kept slipping free, silent and relentless. How could Jack still call you that when all you felt was this ever-encompassing darkness inside? You felt him turn toward you, careful at first, giving you the chance to pretend if that was what you needed. When you did not answer, and your breath hitched despite your best effort to keep it buried, he moved closer.
“Hey,” he murmured, voice rumbling in your ear. “Come here.”
You shook your head once, small and miserable, pursing your lips. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t ask for an apology,” he teased quietly as his arm slid around you with a gentleness that made the ache inside your chest turn unbearable.
He gathered you against him slowly, giving you every chance to pull away. You didn’t. You couldn’t. The moment your face pressed against the warmth of his chest, your restraint shattered.
The first sob escaped you brokenly, muffled into the cool cotton of his shirt. Your fingers curled helplessly against him as if you could keep yourself from falling apart by holding on tightly enough. Jack’s hand came to the back of your head, broad palm cradling you there while the other arm secured around your waist.
He did not hush you or say it was okay. He only held you like he decided, with the full weight of his stubborn heart, that you were not going to come apart alone.
“I can’t,” you choked, the words tearing out of you before you could stop them. “Jack, I can’t do this.”
His hand moved slowly through your hair. “You don’t have to do all of it right now.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Your voice cracked around the confession. “I know I promised you I’d try, and I wanted to mean it. I did mean it, but I don’t know how to keep it. I don’t know how to wake up tomorrow and do this again.”
Jack’s breathing changed beneath your cheek, but his voice stayed steady. “Then we figure it out.”
“You make it sound so simple.” You shook your head at the notion.
“It’s not simple.” His fingers paused at the nape of your neck, warm and grounding. “It’s just smaller than forever.”
A fresh wave of tears overtook you. You pressed closer to him, ashamed of how badly you needed the contact, ashamed of how desperately your body responded to comfort after being starved of it for so long.
“I feel awful,” you whispered. “You shouldn’t have to do this. You shouldn’t have to take care of me. I don’t deserve this.”
His arm tightened around you. “Don’t do that.” You pulled back just enough to look at him, your vision blurred. “Don’t talk about yourself like you’re some burden I got stuck carrying.” His voice was tender, but something firm lived beneath it. “I brought you here because I wanted to. I’m holding you because I want to. None of this is something you tricked me into.”
Your mouth trembled. “But why?”
The question came out so small that it embarrassed you. You wished you could swallow it back down, wished you could be anyone else. Someone easier. Someone who could lie beside Jack Abbot in his bed and not drown in grief while he tried to keep her breathing.
His eyes moved over your face in the dark, searching you with an intensity that made your chest ache. “Because it’s you,” he said.
The words stole what little breath you had left. Something that sounded so simple yet meant everything to you.
You stared at him, tears clinging to your lashes, your cheek still damp against his shirt. “Jack…”
He answered nothing, but his face changed. The guardedness was still there, because of course it was. Jack did not know how to be anything but careful with the parts of himself that mattered. Yet beneath it, something opened, something tender and terrifying.
You laughed once, but it broke halfway through, turning into another sob with the shake of your head. “That’s the problem.”
His brows drew together. “What is?”
“You.” The confession trembled out of you before fear could stop it. “You’re the problem.”
Jack froze as his thoughts began to race. Maybe he had misread the situation? The soft glances that lingered just a moment longer than necessary, the warm smiles that seemed meant solely for him—was it possible that they were mere fabrications of his imagination, conjured up by his own hopeful heart? Each memory flashed vividly in his mind, but now they felt tainted by doubt.
You closed your eyes, unable to look at him while saying it. You suppose that if you were most likely going to die tomorrow, there would be no consequences in saying it. “I’ve had feelings for you for a while. Longer than I should have, and I hated myself for it because you were grieving and private and such a competent guy, and I’m just…” Your voice fractured. “I’m just me.”
His thumb brushed along your cheek, catching a tear before it reached your jaw. “Just you?”
You shook your head, ashamed. “I’m not good enough for something like this. For you. For love. I’m barely holding myself together, and I don’t want to drag you into that. I don’t want you to wake up one day and realize I’m so fucking messed up.”
Jack gazed at you for a long moment, his expression so grave and wounded that your stomach twisted. He moved closer, his hand cradling your face with a tenderness that made your breath catch.
“Listen to me,” he said softly. “You are not too much, and we’re both messed up. Anyone who does what we do is to some degree.”
You wanted to believe him. You wanted it so badly it hurt. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he argued, brows shooting to his hairline.
There was a quiet stubbornness in his voice now, the same obstinacy you saw in trauma bays when everyone else was falling apart. “I know what it looks like when pain convinces someone they’re only a problem. I know what it sounds like when someone talks like they’ve already decided the world would be easier without them.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “And I know that voice lies.”
Your tears slowed, not because the pain left, but because his words reached some bruised and hidden place inside you. Jack’s thumb moves along your warm cheek again.
“You are worthy of love,” he declared, each word careful, deliberate. “You are worthy of care. You are worthy of staying alive long enough to find out what your life can look like when this sadness isn’t the only thing you can see.”
Your face crumpled, and he pulled you back against him before you could hide. This time, you went willingly, sobbing into him while his hand pressed between your shoulder blades and his mouth brushed against your hair. The gesture was so gentle, so achingly human, that it made you cry harder.
“I’m so scared,” you admit, feeling an almost childish feeling of embarrassment.
“I know,” he coos into your crown, like a parent to their sniveling kid.
“I don’t want to be like this.” Your voice sounded so thick and pathetic that you didn’t recognize it.
He placed another kiss on your head. “I know.”
“I don’t know if I want to fix it. I don’t want to live,” you sobbed. The truth was fully out now, the words you danced around pried free from your soul once and for all.
Jack’s voice dropped lower, pulling you a fraction closer. “We don’t fix it tonight. Tonight, you relax,” he murmured. “Tonight, you stay in this bed, and tomorrow, we’ll call someone. We make a plan. We don’t pretend this didn’t happen, and we don’t leave you alone with it.”
Your fingers tightened in his shirt. There was no more fight left within you. “We?”
Jack’s silence lasted only a second, but it was heavy with things unsaid as he answered. “Yes. We.” His tone was as if this were the most obvious part of this whole ordeal.
Something inside you loosened. Like one locked door inside your chest opened just enough to let air through. You lifted your head slowly. Jack’s face was a lot closer than you expected. The darkness softened him at the edges, but you could still see the lines of exhaustion around his eyes, his forehead, the faint scar near his temple that you hadn’t noticed before, the careful restraint in his mouth as he looked down at you. He looked like a man holding himself back by honor alone, and your breath caught.
“You mean it?” you whispered, trying to hide the minuscule amount of hope in your voice.
His gaze flicked briefly to your lips before returning to your eyes. “Which part?”
“That you feel the same.” You felt like a schoolgirl waiting for the answer back from your crush with a note that read, ‘Do you like me? Check yes or no.’
Jack’s jaw tightened faintly. He looked away for half a second, as if the truth required courage despite the raw essence of everything that transpired. When he looked back, there was no distance left in him.
“Yes,” he finally said. “I mean it.”
The room seemed to go quiet around the world. Even the rain that had begun to pour felt farther away.
You stared at him, barely breathing. “How…” you swallowed the lump in your throat. “How long?”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but it was sadder at himself than to you. “Long enough that I should’ve been smarter about it.”
A weak, tearful laugh escaped you as your fingers tentatively traced along his grey stubble. “That sounds like you.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, a crooked smile gracing his features. “Unfortunately.”
The fragile humor faded almost as quickly as it came. In its place was something warmer, more dangerous, threaded with the intimacy of exposure and the ache of everything you both confessed. Jack’s hand remained on your face, your fingers now resting at the bottom of his throat. Neither of you moved away.
You could feel his heartbeat beneath your palm, steady and alive. Your eyes dropped to his mouth before you could stop yourself. Jack noticed. Of course, he noticed.
His thumb stilled against your cheek. “Sunshine…”
The warning in his voice was gentle, but strained, his use of the nickname creating a warmth between your thighs.
You swallowed. “I know.”
“We don’t have to–”
You answered him before he could finish. “I know.” The subject of the question was noiseless, yet you both knew what it was.
“You’ve had a hell of a night,” he argued halfheartedly.
“I know,” you whispered again, and your voice trembled with something that was not only sadness now. “I want to kiss you.”
Jack’s eyes closed briefly, like the words had hurt him in the sweetest possible way.
When he opened them again, his gaze was darker, tender, fixed entirely on you. “Only if you’re sure.” You nodded once, butterflies in your stomach. “I need to hear you say it.”
Your breath shook, toes curling with anticipation. “I’m sure.”
For a moment, neither of you moved. Jack leaned in slowly, giving you the chance to change your mind with every inch he closed, and when you didn’t, his lips brushed against yours so lightly that it almost didn’t feel like a kiss at all. It was a delicate gesture offered carefully between two people who understood all too well how easily tenderness could be lost.
Your eyes closed as you slid your hand from his shirt to the side of his neck. Jack exhaled against your mouth, as if restraint became painful. His fingers slipped into your hair, cradling the back of your head as he kissed you again—this time deeper, still careful but no longer distant. Heat spread through you gradually.
It startled you, how your body could still want something that didn’t stop your pulse, how sadness and desire could exist in the same exhausted chest. How Jack’s mouth against yours made the world narrow down until there was no hospital, no roof, no endless hallway of tomorrow. There was only the warmth of him, the rasp of his breath, the solid weight of his arm around your waist as he drew you closer.
You made a small sound into the kiss, and Jack went still for half a heartbeat. He kissed you like he was starving. Like every restrained glance in a trauma bay, every almost-touch, every unfinished sentence had gathered beneath his skin and finally found somewhere to go. His mouth moved over yours with a heat that made your thoughts scatter, his other hand sliding from your hair to your back, pressing you against him until there was no space left between you.
Your fingers tangled in the curly salt and pepper hair at the nape of his neck. His skin was warm beneath your touch, his pulse strong under your fingertips as you hooked your leg over his strong waist. His mouth left yours to trail along your jaw as your breath broke unevenly, your head tipping back without conscious thought.
“Jack,” you mewled.
The sound of his name seemed to undo him. He pulled back just enough to look at you, his breathing rough, his forehead nearly touching yours. His eyes searched your face again, not as a doctor or trying to assess damage, but as a man terrified of wanting too much from someone he already cared about beyond reason.
“You tell me to stop,” he said, voice low and unsteady, “and I stop.”
Your chest rose sharply beneath his borrowed shirt, nipples poking through with each inhale and exhale. You looked at him, at this man who saw you at your lowest and still held you like you were perfect. Like you were not ruined or a burden.
Your hand slid along the stubble of his jaw. “I don’t want you to stop.”
Jack’s eyes darkened. The next kiss was no longer tentative. It was heat and breath and trembling hands, Jack rolling carefully, drawing you with him until the blankets tangled around your legs and his palm found your skin beneath the oversized fabric of his shirt. His touch was firm but reverent, grounding and hungry all at once. Every place his fingers settled seemed to leave warmth behind.
You kissed him back with everything you were too afraid to say. All the longing, the grief, the desperate, aching need to feel wanted in a body you had spent so long treating like a nuisance. Jack responded as he understood. Like he wanted every broken piece you were trying to hide.
His mouth found yours again and again, each kiss deeper than the last, each breath between them more ragged. Your hand moved over his shoulder, feeling the strength there, the tension he held as if still fighting the urge to slow down, to be careful, to make sure you had every chance to pull away, but you did not. You moved closer.
A low sound left him, rough and helpless, and it sent warmth rushing through you so intensely that you forgot how to breathe for a second. His hand tightened at your plush waist as you slid yours to the hollow of his throat. The world outside narrowed to rain against glass, tangled sheets, and the taste of him on your tongue.
For the first time since 7:00 pm yesterday, the darkness didn’t feel like it was swallowing you. It felt like it was holding you both as Jack broke the kiss when breathing became impossible. His forehead rested against yours, his chest rising hard.
“You’re still here,” he whispered, voice hoarse.
Your eyes burned again, but this time the tears did not fall from hopelessness.
You nodded, brushing your thumb along his cheek. “I’m still here.”
Something almost like relief moved across his face as he kissed you again, slower this time but no less consuming, and you let yourself sink into him, into the warmth, into the fragile promise of one more hour, one more breath, one more reason to stay.
He moved to softly kiss your neck again, as if learning every part of you by heart. His lips paused on areas that caused your breath to hitch, his teeth brushing against your skin to create a sharp feeling before his tongue came to soothe. The difference in sensations made you moan against him, a sound that seemed to emerge directly from your core.
Without hesitation, your hands reached for the hem of his shirt, the borrowed shirt, as you pulled it over your head. You could hear Jack’s breath catch at the sight of you partly undressed, your breasts brushing against the fabric of his chest with every inhale.
Jack murmured something softly under his breath that you didn’t quite catch as he leaned in. His mouth explored with a patience that felt almost teasing as he began to kiss and suckle gently at your nipple, circling his tongue in slow, intentional patterns that made your back arch. You tilted your head, releasing a soft swear at the ceiling as his fingers moved, confident, practiced, untying the strings of your borrowed sweatpants. His hand slipped inside the waistband, warm and possessive, enough to make your breath stutter and your thoughts scatter completely.
Jack groaned, low and wrecked, forehead dropping briefly to your shoulder. “Jesus, sweetheart,” he murmured breathlessly. “I’ve barely touched you, and you’re already wet.”
His lips find yours once more immediately, muffling any noises you might have made. You respond to his kiss with sincere intensity, eager and impatient as your fingers clutched at his shoulders. He tugged at your sweatpants with deliberate intention, pulling them down your legs until they’re off and carelessly tossed near the edge of the bed.
Jack flashed a slight smile, a look on his face that screamed he was fully aware of his intentions and had no plans to stop. There’s a moment of silence that forces you to feel the intensity of his gaze, slow and admiring, creating a flutter in your stomach.
Lifting his hand, Jack briefly pressed two fingers inside his mouth to wet them before tracing them along your puffy folds. The sensation was light, teasing, and when one finger slipped inside without warning, your lungs stuttered. His other arm came down easily, pinning you in place with gentle authority. The contrast between restraint and maddeningly slow attention made your head spin.
Another finger joined the first, and any remaining pretense of coherent thought disappeared. Jack didn’t rush; his thumb moving in slow, lazy circles against your clit, unhurried, almost absentminded. Whatever fragile grasp you had on yourself finally snapped, a small, embarrassingly needy sound spilling out of you before you could stop it.
“There she is. My sunshine,” Jack crooned, voice warm and approving. “I knew you’d be like this.”
You attempted to reply, but it emerged as a whimper, a breathless sound lacking any identifiable form.
He chuckled softly, continuing his unhurried movements, thumb still moving over your clit with featherlight pressure, like he has all the time in the world. Your mind went completely blank, reduced to static and sensation—no thoughts of that perpetual sadness and hopelessness that loomed within the back of your head. Your head tilted back as another small, helpless sound escaped you. Jack leaned down, close enough that his breath ghosted over your thighs, and suddenly his tongue drags languidly along your folds, unhurried. He knows exactly what it’s going to do to you.
“Oh, fuck,” you blurted, sharp and unfiltered, the words tearing out of you before you could stop it.
Your back arched on instinct, every nerve ending lighting up at once. Jack chuckled, low and pleased, as if this were exactly the reaction he wanted. Repeating the action, but this time at a slower pace, his tongue glides over your entrance with exasperating patience before momentarily dipping inside. It’s neither hurried nor forceful, but rather, teasing in the most maddeningly delightful manner. He employs long, leisurely strokes, over and over again, followed by delicate, precise flicks right over your sensitive spot that leave you gasping for breath.
You couldn’t hold back, soft whimpers escaping your mouth. Your hands grasp at the sheets, at him, anywhere you can find something to ground yourself as the feeling escalates quicker than your mind can manage.
You squirmed underneath him, your hips rising and falling as if your body is attempting to convey what you cannot with words. His hands grasped your hips tightly, anchoring you as if he were both limiting and motivating you simultaneously.
He moved closer once more, desire clear, as his warm lips kissed and sucked at your clit with an intensity that made your vision fade. Every time his tongue traces over you, slowly and intentionally as you unravel, your back lifts involuntarily off the bed as if you’re pursuing the feeling.
A soft whine escaped you, voice thin and wrecked. “It feels so good.”
Jack laughed softly, a low, pleased sound that vibrated straight through you. “Yeah?” Your breath stuttered. “Taking it so well,” he continued, clearly enjoying how every word landed. “Just taking it so sweetly for me.”
The compliments struck deeper than expected. Your spine instinctively arched once more, and the sound that escapes you this time is muffled and fractured, hardly resembling coherent speech. Jack maintains his pace. Nothing shifts, there’s no sudden intensity, no sharp spike, just the same consistent, relentless focus, as if he understands precisely how your body will respond next and is willing to wait as long as it takes for it.
Your orgasm finally crashed over you, surrounding you in waves, a noise escaping you before you have a chance to hold it in as your entire body tenses. Your legs constrict and instinctively tighten as you squirm beneath him, every muscle straining as if trying to fold in on itself.
Your thoughts scattered entirely, diminished to mere sensation and the intense, overwhelming awareness of how good this feels. Your body kept moving even after your mind had surrendered. Your hips rose against Jack’s face, your back bent, hands grasping at the sheets as the final waves of ecstasy wash over you. You find yourself murmuring now, softly and nonsensically, offering praise, swearing, and repeating his name as if it’s the only word you can recall.
As it diminishes, breathless and boneless, you blink up at the ceiling, dazed, still catching your breath when you sense that he’s watching you. You were still trying to steady your breathing, your chest moving up and down irregularly, as Jack moved nearer and enveloped you in his embrace. It was tender and cautious, as though he suddenly realized just how unsteady you remain.
“Hey,” he soothed, voice low near your ear. “Easy, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
You allowed yourself to lean into him, resting your head on his shoulder, your cheek against his hot skin. One of his hands glided gently up and down your back in calming motions, the other holding you tightly, as if he wanted to make sure you didn’t slip away into that darkness once more.
“You did so well,” he complimented quietly with a kiss. “You always do such a good job for me.”
Your mind felt heavy and pleasantly hazy as you attempted to put together a reply, only making a half-hearted effort before completely surrendering. You gently hummed, more like a purr than anything understandable, and instinctively drew closer to Jack. You were still quivering slightly when your fingers began to move on their own, idly tracing patterns along his firm arm.
The atmosphere in the room had grown gentler, your focus limited to the calm cadence of his breath and the comforting embrace of his arms. The tremors from before finally subside, leaving you feeling at ease, weighted down, and satisfied in a manner that feels slightly questionable. You made a slight movement to settle in more comfortably, and he responded without hesitation, drawing you in even tighter.
You kissed him again, slow this time, exploratory, and you were suddenly, acutely aware of the taste of yourself lingering there. The realization should make you embarrassed. It should send you retreating beneath the blanket, hiding your flushed face in the pillow, pretending you have not just been reduced to a trembling, breathless cadaver in his arms. Instead, the awareness only makes your cheeks warm as you exhale shakily against his mouth, too spent to do anything except let the kiss soften into something lazy and lingering.
Jack didn’t pursue it any further. That, somehow, undoes you almost as much as everything before it.
He only held you. One hand remained spread along your back, steady and warm, while the other rested near your waist beneath the tangled edge of the blanket. His thumb moved in slow, unconscious strokes, as if he had no idea he was doing it, as if comforting you had already become instinct. His breathing is still uneven, but controlled, his restraint threaded through every careful touch.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. In the dim light, he appeared wrecked in a quieter way than you felt. His hair was mussed from your fingers, his mouth softened, his face open with an expression you had never seen on him at the hospital. There, Jack is all command and composure, sharp edges and clinical focus. Here, in his bed with the rain still whispering against the window, he looks almost disarmed.
Not weak, just unguarded. The sight made something tender ache beneath your ribs. Your fingers drifted along his forearm again, slow and uncertain, as if you were still relearning that touch can be gentle.
“You’re shaking less,” he commented.
You blinked, the corner of your mouth lifting faintly despite the heaviness still caught somewhere inside you. “That’s your medical opinion?”
His eyes warmed. “Professional assessment.”
“You’re off duty,” you quipped, though the tiredness in your voice had no bite.
“Never stopped me before.”
A quiet laugh slips out of you, barely more than breath, but Jack’s expression changes at the sound. It softens. Like, even that small proof of life matters to him. He had spent the entire night collecting evidence that you are still here and intends to keep every piece of it.
The laughter fades, leaving a more fragile silence in its wake. Your gaze dropped to his chest, unable to hold the intensity of his eyes for long. You trace the seam of his shirt with one fingertip, then the line of his collarbone where the fabric had shifted slightly. The urge rises before you can think better of it, born partly from affection, partly from guilt, partly from the need to give something back after he has spent the whole night giving you so much.
You swallow, voice still hoarse. “Jack?”
“Mm?” He seemed so content, his freckled face relaxed in a way you had never seen before.
“I can…” You hesitate, cheeks heating immediately. “I can make you feel good, too. If you want…”
His hand stills against your back. For a second, the room feels too quiet. You wonder if you have said the wrong thing, if you have broken the tenderness by making it transactional, by letting your old people-pleaser instincts twist affection into a debt. You start to pull away just slightly, embarrassment tightening through your chest. Jack catches the movement. Not forcefully, as his arm simply firms around you, keeping you close with a gentleness that feels like an answer.
“No,” he answered quietly.
Your face burned, bottom lip tucking in between your teeth in anxiety. “I didn’t mean–”
“I know what you meant.” His voice remains low, even, almost unbearably kind. “And no.”
You lift your eyes to his, an open expression on your face. “Because you don’t want me to?”
Something flickers in his light brown eyes, dark and fond and strained enough to make your pulse stumble again.
“That’s not the reason,” he answered with the slight shake of his head.
Despite yourself, heat rushes through you. “Then why?”
Jack exhaled slowly, his gaze moving over your face as though choosing his words carefully. His thumb resumed its soft motion at your waist.
“Because you don’t owe me anything,” he stated. “Not for tonight. Not for bringing you here. Not for holding you. Not for anything.”
The words settle heavily within you. You instinctively turn your gaze, but Jack’s hand rises, gently caressing your cheek with a tenderness that feels almost surreal.
“I mean it,” he mumbled. “I’m not keeping score.”
Your throat tightened. Of course, that was what you had been doing mentally even now. Measuring what he had given and what you could offer in return. Trying to balance the scales before he realized you were too much trouble, too much sadness, too much need.
Jack could see your internal struggle before you could hide it as his mouth softened. “Sweetheart.”
The word broke through your defenses with embarrassing ease. “I just…” Your voice thins. “You’ve done so much for me tonight.”
“Because I wanted to,” he answered instantly.
“But–”
“No.” There was no sharpness in it as he cut you off, only quiet certainty. “No buts.” You stare at him, breathing shallowly as Jack shifts closer until his forehead nearly touches yours. “Don’t you worry about me, sweetheart. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
The simplicity of it makes your eyes sting, but the little smirk crinkling at the corner of his eyes suggests something else that makes your skin heat up once more.
“You don’t have to make me feel better,” you reason, unable to keep his suggestive expression for long.
“I’m not. I’m telling you the truth.” His gaze held yours, steady and tired and honest.
For a moment, you cannot speak. The sadness was still there. You could feel it waiting in the background, heavy and patient. It didn’t vanish because Jack kissed you or disappeared because his arms are around you or because your body, for a few brief minutes, remembered pleasure instead of pain. You knew better than to mistake comfort for a cure. But something had changed.
The future still felt enormous. Tomorrow still frightened you. The thought of waking up and continuing to exist still carried a weight you didn’t know how to lift, but Jack’s hand pressed against your back, his heart beating steadily beneath your palm. His breath touched your face in the dark, and for the first time all night, the next hour felt survivable. Maybe that was all you could manage. Maybe that was enough for now.
You nod faintly, though you were not sure what you were agreeing to. Jack seemed to understand anyway. He pressed a kiss to your forehead, slow and lingering, then to the bridge of your nose, then finally to your mouth. This kiss was different from the others. Softer and sleepier. A noiseless sealing of the fragile thing between you.
When he pulled back, you tucked yourself closer against him. He adjusted immediately, helping you settle with a carefulness that made your chest ache. Jack drew the comforter over both of you, the sheet cool at first before the warmth of your bodies began to seep into it. Your head found the space beneath his chin, your cheek resting against his chest. One of your legs tangled lightly with his beneath the covers, and for a second, you worried about making him uncomfortable. Jack only draws you nearer.
“You okay?” he asked lowly, his voice vibrating in your ear.
The answer was complicated. No, not entirely, not even close. But you were warm, held. You were not alone on the roof with the cold air biting at your skin and the city yawning beneath you. You are in Jack’s bed, wearing his clothes, wrapped in his arms, while rain taps softly against the glass. So you gave him the truest answer you could.
“Right now?” you whispered as you closed your eyes. “Right now, I think I am.”
His breath leaves him in a quiet exhale, almost like a sigh of relief. He pressed his mouth to your hair and kept it there. “Good,” he hums. “Stay with me there.”
You want to tell him you’ll try. The words rise automatically, but you stop them before they can leave your mouth. You have made enough promises tonight that frighten you. Instead, you slipped your hand beneath his, threading your fingers together. Jack looked down at the gesture with a look that makes your stomach tingle as his digits closed around yours. That was promise enough.
The room grew quieter after that. The kind of silence that comes when the body finally realizes it is safe enough to surrender. Rain hushed the world as the house settled around you in small, wooden sighs. Somewhere downstairs, the refrigerator hums faintly—the sound of living.
Your breathing begins to match his without you meaning for it to. Slow in. Slow out. Again and again.
Jack’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles, then stilled. His body grew heavier beneath you, exhaustion finally dragging at him too. You listen to the rhythm of his heart, counting the beats until the numbers blur together and your thoughts begin to loosen. Before sleep takes you fully, you feel him shift just enough to tuck the blanket higher around your shoulder. Still taking care of you.
Your chest tightened, but not painfully this time. “Jack?” you mumbled, half-asleep already.
“Yeah?” he answered back, barely a breath in his lungs.
Your eyes remain closed. “Thank you.”
His arm tightens around you. For a moment, he said nothing. Then his voice came low in the dark, rough with exhaustion and something deeper than either of you is ready to name.
“You don’t have to thank me for loving you.”
Your breath caught faintly. Maybe he realized what he had said only after it’s out. Maybe he had known all along. Either way, he does not take it back. You were too tired to answer—too overwhelmed and afraid that if you tried, you would cry again. So you only press your face closer to his chest and hold his hand a little tighter.
Jack understood. He always seems to, even when you wish he didn’t.
His lips brushed your hair one final time. “Sleep, sweetheart.”
And somehow, impossibly, you do. Not because everything is fixed, not because the sadness has disappeared, but because Jack’s arms remain around you. Because his breathing stays steady beneath your ear. Because for one fragile night, in one warm room while the rain falls over Pittsburgh, you are not asked to survive forever. Only to sleep. Only to stay.
My first year of nursing school is officially over and my summer break has started. Though it's not much of a break because I'm taking classes over the summer. Either way, expect some chapters of TGWCT, His Love, and some new oneshots from different fandoms coming out over the next few months!
Thank you again for your patience and check ins with me during the school year. I'm back baby! <(￣︶￣)↗
