summary: you assume jack likes you until the pitt starts betting on how long it'll take him and samira to get together; jack assumes you like him until you get called into work while on a date with your coworker. turns out, all it takes is a bad bet and an even worse date for you and jack to realize how in love the two of you are. (7k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!loser!reader, trinity santos, samira mohan, nick barker, mcvadi crumbs
contents: friends to lovers, idiots in love, implied age gap, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, jealousy, humor, so much flirting, cw for medical procedures, medical inaccuracies, and probably several hr violations
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
You make it halfway through your shift with a lighter wallet and a heavier heart than when you started it.
You can hear Princess shuffling through her stack of cash from the other side of the workstation, flaunting her winnings from a well-placed bet. You try and fail not to let it distract you as you scribble at the clipboard before you, with your heavy head propped on your clenched fist.
Charting was hard enough back when the computers were still running, back when it was easy — let alone when you have to make every single note by hand, and flit physically through a hundred different files just to cross-reference all the information.
“Is this what it was like back when you were a resident?” you’d asked Jack, when he dropped off an order slip by the filing cabinet, beside the bulky fax machine you were standing in front of and trying to tame.
He slid in beside you with a wide hand on your lower back, smelling like a dizzying mixture of sweat and musky cologne. He adjusted your labs in the tray without another word, turning it around and flipping it right-side up for you.
“Yeah, actually,” he’d nodded, dialing the proper number on the machine with his pointer finger, including the area code that you had forgotten to add. The corner of his lip flickered upward in a faint half-smirk as he joked with squinted eyes, “Back in the 1900s— when charting was done by candlelight.”
You felt your own mouth curling into a quiet smile despite yourself. “So this must feel really nostalgic for you then, huh?”
“Extremely,” he deadpanned.
“Well…” you sighed. “Got any tips for me then, old man?”
Jack exhaled a heavy breath and turned to face you while the heavy machine beeped and buzzed beside you. He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his camo pants and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Well, look at it this way— Today is gonna suck, but… That means every shift from now can’t possibly get worse than this one, right?”
“Yeah,” you scoffed. “That, or we just… keep descending into another circle of hell every day.”
Jack smiled wider at your cynicism, patting you softly on the shoulder before sauntering off the way he came. “That’s the spirit, kid.”
You still feel his hand on you even now, wide and warm over your thick black scrubs, while you trudge through the rest of your charting. You hate the effect he has on you; you hate how often he plagues your every thought. It takes a great amount of muscle memory, you find, not to accidentally jot his name down as your hand moves the pen on autopilot.
You don’t think it’d feel quite as pathetic if you thought that there might be an inkling he felt the same way about you. But now, all you are is an R4 with a stupid schoolgirl crush on her boss, and half a mental breakdown away from scribbling little hearts in her notes with his initials scrawled inside.
“You plan on getting in on this?” Santos asks in place of a greeting as she slides her swivel chair next to yours. She wears a faint smirk on her lips and a mischievous glint in her light eyes that gives you great pause.
Ink smudges on the inside of your wrist as you halt your scribbling to flash her a dubious look. “…On what?”
“Ahmad got bored after Princess won the last bet,” she tells you, reaching behind her to tighten the half-ponytail at the crown of her head. “Said the grid was too good to take down so soon, so… He started a new one.”
You scoff a dry laugh and turn away again.
“Yeah? What is it this time— Which one of us is gonna be the first to have a breakdown and quit? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’d win that one…”
“Close…” Trinity croons, leaning in like she’s about to tell you some sort of secret. Her eyes flit somewhere over your shoulder, in the vague direction of where Mohan stands with Jack across the room, before she confesses. “It’s about Abbot and Samira. I have it on good authority that they were getting pret-ty close in Central 4 together…”
“C-Close?” you echo on bated breath.
Your head whips over your shoulder to the other side of the workstation, where Jack and Samira exchange information about one of her patients. You hadn’t given their closeness a second thought before now. It’s like you blinked, and now the sight of them together makes you feel sick.
You hope Santos doesn’t see the hurt weighing down your features when you turn back to her. “What— What do you mean close?”
“I mean, Dr. Abbot was half naked while Samira was tending to his shoulder,” Trinity explains with a scoff and turns back to her own clipboard. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought anything about it until I heard her say, ‘It’s our little secret—’”
She mocks in a high-pitched voice, which sounds nothing like Samira’s, before laughing to herself.
“—Like, c’mon. You guys could at least try to be subtle about it.”
You know she expects you to start laughing with her, but you struggle to find the energy to do so now.
“Yeah…” you sigh instead, hardly audible as you struggle to speak through the sudden tightening in your chest. “Right…”
“You should go place a bet,” she tells you, half-distracted by the files before her. “You could win back the money you lost and then some.”
“With what?” you joke with a sad scoff. “The three dollars I have left to my name?”
She flashes you a deadpanned look. “If that’s all you have to lose, I think I’d take those odds.”
You figure Trinity’s right. You have nothing more to lose, in truth — not after the shit day you’ve already had, and the money you’ve already lost, and the teenage heart inside of you that’s already broken.
You finish up your charting, return the clipboard to the patient rack, and retrieve your wallet from the locker room. Because, as you see it, you’ll either leave this shift about a hundred dollars richer or with nothing at all; either totally vindicated or with a bank account just as empty as you feel on the inside.
You find Ahmad in the security room, and he flashes you a toothy grin as you slink through the doorway like a shy little storm cloud. He motions with the notepad he holds in a sun-kissed hand. “I knew you’d wanna get on the books, kid— What’d it take to convince you this time?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug with a mournful sigh. “I just… realized that I have nothing else to lose, I guess…”
Dr. Barker laughs from beside you.
“Well, that’s always the best reason to make a bet, in my experience,” he jokes with a pearly white smile, pushing the sleeves of his navy button-down up to his elbows to reveal the expanse of his tanned, scruffy forearms.
Nick Barker stands quite a few inches taller than you — which you hadn’t expected before now, since he’d spent most of his time in the E.R. sitting behind the portable radiology machine. He has to look down at you from the bridge of his broad nose from this angle, with eyes so dark they’re almost black.
He’s almost effortlessly handsome. Like, Disney prince sort of handsome. The kind of handsome that makes it impossible to look into his eyes without blushing like a schoolgirl.
“I’m normally a lot more responsible than this, but… I figured all things considered…” you trail off with a sheepish shrug.
“Yeah, you’re talkin’ to the girl who hasn’t taken a day off since I started here— Two years ago,” Ahmad scoffs. “I think you deserve to let loose every once in a while, Doc, all things considered.”
He taps you gently on the head with his notepad. You roll your eyes and reach into the pocket of your scrubs, cheeks burning under the weight of the sudden attention you’re getting.
“Just put me down for $10—” you say, but cut yourself off when Ahmad hisses through his teeth. “…What is it?”
“Minimum this time twenty,” he grimaces.
Your shoulders deflate with a sigh. “Seriously?”
“We had to up the ante this time, kid— Rules of the game.”
“Then I guess put me down for twenty…” you huff and pluck your wallet from your scrub pockets. “For… unrequited…”
“Unrequited by who?” Ahmad presses with his brows raised to his hairline.
“I don’t know. Samira, I guess,” you shrug, half-timid, ‘cause it’s not like you totally believe it either. You’re just trying to take a page out of Trinity’s book, really, and manifest something good for yourself for a change — pretending that Abbot isn’t into her in the hopes that it’ll make it somehow real.
“What?” Ahmad laughs like it’s funny. “You’re telling me you don’t believe in love?”
You flash him a solemn look in return. “I’ll start believing in something again when the systems come back up,” you answer in a monotone.
“Touche…” he nods slowly while Dr. Barker exhales a quiet laugh through his nose.
A familiar voice comes suddenly from the entrance:
“I think that is the single sanest answer I’ve heard all day,” Jack Abbot himself hums in a gritty deadpan.
You nearly break your neck with how fast your head whips over your shoulder, finding the man leaning against the doorway with his toned arms crossed over his chest and a smug smirk dancing on his lips.
Your skin prickles with a red-hot heat while your pounding heart drops to your stomach. If he wasn’t into you before, he certainly won’t be now — not with you making bets on his love life like a crazy person with nothing better to do. (Though, in many ways, that is exactly what you are.)
“Dr. Abbot…” Ahmad croons, trying to play casual despite knowing his secretive betting ring’s finally been found out. “That’s funny— We were just talking about you.”
“Robby may or may not have told me,” Jack confesses as he saunters slowly into the security room, boots heavy on the white linoleum. “Wanted me to tell him if there was something going on with Mohan and me, so he could recoup the money he lost in the last bet.”
“…Well, is there?” Nick wonders lowly.
“C’mon, Barker. Where’s the fun in that?” Jack scoffs a dry laugh, then goes strangely solemn again in a flicker. “Even though, as an attending, I think I have to say that I am very against this— I feel like this has H.R. violation written all over it.”
“Well, what Gloria doesn’t know, won’t hurt us, right?” Ahmad quips.
“I’ve been livin’ by those exact words for years, brother.”
Your hands are clammy and trembling for a reason you can’t name as you pull two crumpled bills from your wallet — a dingy, pastel Polly Pocket billfold you’ve had since you were twelve — as if you needed another reason to look any less cool in front of Jack. The pale pink interior is left glaringly empty, save for a few folded receipts and miscellaneous fortune-cookie slips.
“Wow…” you huff as you pass Ahmad the twenty. “That is all the cash I have to my name. I’m officially more broke than I was in med school— I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“I can take you out to dinner with my winnings, if you want,” Nick offers suddenly.
Your head snaps in his direction, and his eyes widen, as though surprised by his own forwardness. He swallows hard, pronounced adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, scruffy with a five o’clock shadow.
“You know, if you— if you wanna… let loose or whatever.”
Your lip flickers upward in a shy smile when Dr. Barker sighs and shakes his head to himself. A few rogue strands of dark hair fall from their gelled quaff and hang over his forehead until he pushes them back in place again.
“Sorry, that, uh…” He chuckles awkwardly at himself. “That came out weird.”
“I might be stuck in charting jail for the rest of the night, actually,” you say with an apologetic grimace, wringing your clammy fingers into knots. “Can I get back to you on that?”
“Yeah!” he blurts, a little quicker than he means to. He clears his throat and, in an octave lower, repeats himself. “Yeah. Totally. No worries.”
You dismiss yourself with a quiet smile and lack the courage to look Jack in the eye when you pass him on the way to the door. He watches you leave and waits for you to glance back at him with his heart in his throat. You never do.
Still, though, he can’t help but feel a little proud of himself; after watching you turn down the handsome radiologist every woman on this floor has been fawning over all day. He turns back around and hisses through his teeth, trying not to look as smug as he feels.
“Damn,” Jack deadpans. “That was cold, man…”
Nick’s dark eyes widen and flit wildly between the two men on either side of him. “Wait— Really?”
“Ice cold…” Ahmad affirms with a slow nod. “Girl said she’s broke, and you think she’s gonna say ‘no thanks’ to some free food? In this economy? Yeah… She’s not into you, man.”
Jack claps the solemn boy hard on the shoulder. “You win some, you lose some, kid… Don’t take it too hard.”
You forget all about the stupid bet and Nick’s offer some hours later, when Robby sticks you with Ogilvie and tells you to walk the MS4 through your canthotomy patient.
You talk aloud as you slice your scalpel through the young girl’s eye, where the socket is raging red and bulging from the pressure behind it. The boy doesn’t say a word the whole time, just holds the plastic cup where the bright crimson blood drains from the eye, and doesn’t move a muscle until it stops.
“I think that’s the closest I’ve come to puking since I started med school,” the boy confesses when it’s done, standing just over your shoulder while you fill out the patient’s med slip. “I didn’t even get that close during cadaver lab, when all of us started craving meat from the formaldehyde— I’m pretty sure five people dropped out that day alone…”
His voice trails off when Samira catches your eye, rushing by the desk with her wild curls falling from her claw clip. She wears the hard shift all over as she makes a beeline directly for Jack, planting herself ahead of the older man; so close she has to tilt her chin to meet his gaze.
Your hand freezes around the pen as you keep your eyes on the two of them, staring harder than you probably realize as you struggle to make out their conversation. Their words are drowned out by Ogilvie’s rambling, and the surrounding beep and chatter of the crowded E.R.
Mohan talks wildly with her hands and says something about “a letter,” while Jack nods along sympathetically and says something along the lines of “give me your number.”
Your chest flares with a white-hot feeling when you watch the man pass Samira his phone to plug her number into. It’s like the world has fallen out from under you and swallowed you whole, like you’re drowning in the fire of your own envy.
You’re barely seven hours on the job, and you’ve already lost all your cash — you’ll be doomed to the three-day-old leftovers in the fridge, if the newfound heartache hasn’t already snatched your appetite for the evening. That means you’ll be running on fumes tomorrow morning — still broke, still hungry, still heartbroken.
Then you remember Dr. Barker — Disney prince Dr. Barker — and his offer of dinner from earlier in the security room.
You make the terribly impulsive decision to take fate into your own hands and forget to properly dismiss yourself before dropping the finished order slip off across the room. Ogilivie is quick to follow close behind, lacking any real sense of personal space. He nearly trips over himself to keep from running into you when you freeze suddenly in place.
“You don’t have to follow me anymore,” you tell him.
“Oh… Well, then… What am I supposed to do?” the blonde boy shrugs.
“I don’t know. Do whatever you want…” you trail off and glance around the bustling work station. You spot Trinity standing at the chart rack and motion over to her. “Go help Dr. Santos with her next patient.”
The dark-haired girl turns at the sound of her name.
“Oh, please don’t—” She cuts herself off with a sigh when Ogilvie makes his way towards her anyway. “Fuck. Fine…”
You continue your trek to the other side of the crowded work station, where the portable radiology machine takes up the majority of the room. You can smell the man’s expensive, musky cologne before he ever comes into view.
“Hey, Nick…” you greet, then wince at how weird it sounds a second later. “I mean, Dr. Barker— Sorry—”
He glances up from his work at the sound of your voice. “Nick is fine,” he assures with a kind grin and a pair of chocolate-colored eyes.
You try to smile back, but your nervousness makes it look more like a grimace. “It’s not, like, totally too late for me to take you up on that offer for dinner, is it?”
“No!” he blurts with a shake of his head. “Of course not!”
“Great…” you say with a relieved sigh.
“Yeah, I’ll— I’ll text you the details later.”
“Oh. Well, you don’t…” You scrunch the bridge of your nose in a sheepish look. “You don’t have my number…”
His mouth falls softly agape with the realization. “Oh. Right. Duh.”
You smile wider despite yourself, ‘cause he’s almost as awkward as you are, which you didn’t think was possible before now — especially not for someone as pretty as he is.
You turn away and grab the nearest pen, clicking it on with your thumb before reaching for his arm. You scribble your number over the dark blue veins on his wrist with a newfound confidence — one that you never had before now, one spurred on by the man’s obvious shyness.
You feel Nick’s eyes on you when you look away, flitting wildly across your profile.
“This isn’t… This isn’t just because of the bet, is it?” he wonders with a waver in his voice.
Your brows furrow in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“You know, the whole thing you said about… losing all your money or whatever,” Dr. Barker explains with a sheepish laugh. “You’re not just going out with me for a free meal, are you?”
“Well, isn’t that kinda the point of going on dates? The free food?” you joke with a dry laugh, which fades instantly at the confused look Nick gives you in response. Your face floods with horror a second later. “I’m kidding! I’m totally kidding— Of course not.”
“Okay,…” Dr. Barker says with an awkward chuckle. “Good.”
“Good,” you echo with a sigh and rise to full height again.
“I’ll, uh— I’ll text you.”
“I’ll be waiting,” you chirp with a polite nod and a giddy grin, which ebbs the second you turn away from him. You shake your head as you slink back through the bustling emergency department, squeezing your eyes shut and murmuring under your breath in disgust, “I’ll be waiting—?”
You nearly trip over yourself when you ram suddenly into a firm body. Two calloused hands grasp gently at your elbows as you stumble backwards. You almost lose your breath when you find Jack Abbot towering over you.
“Shit… you huff. “Sorry, I— I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Where’ve you been hiding?” Jack squints. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Your shy smile fades into a disbelieving squint almost instantly; at the bitter reminder of Jack and Samira — of the seemingly intimate conversation they’d shared just minutes ago, and of the bet you know you’re bound to lose now.
“No, you weren’t,” you deadpan.
“I was,” he insists. “I feel like I always am, some way or another.”
Your chest warms at his words. You choke on the funny feeling when you force yourself to swallow it down. “I was just— walking one of the interns through a lateral canthotomy,” you stammer as you step back out of his hold.
“Gnarly,” Jack hums with a slow nod.
“Did you, uh… Did you need me for something?”
“Yeah, I have a patient over in Trauma 2— Sliced through his left hand with a circular saw,” Jack explains, staring down at you from the bridge of his nose as he crosses his strong arms over his chest. “But the crazy part is, he used his right hand to take the nail gun and—”
“Oh, my god,” you blurt before you mean to. “He tried to put his hand back on with the nail gun, didn’t he?”
“Close…” he hums with a knowing glint in his eyes. “He used the gun to fire two nails into his temple— Said he thought it would distract him from the pain in his hand. And the weird thing is, he’s walking and talking just fine.”
“Holy shit…” you mumble, wide-eyed. “Why do you always get the cool cases?”
“You can have it,” he assures you, with something soft swimming in his eyes. “That’s why I wanted to find you— so you could do it with me.”
Something about it feels way more intimate than being asked out for dinner.
You finish the rest of your shift as normal — feeling like a shell of your former self after hours of running on fumes; both excruciatingly tired and buzzing with white-hot adrenaline all at once.
The only real difference between today and every other day before this one is that, for the first time in a long, long time, you actually have plans outside of work — almost like a real human person with a social life would.
You return home after the long day, only for an hour or so, to shower and change out of your scrubs. You wash away the scent of blood, sweat, and antiseptic from your skin, and only cut your knee once when you shave your legs for the first time in weeks. You pull out a nice top, a short skirt, and a real bra from the depths of your closet. You go as far as to break out the expensive perfume that you’ve had for years, ‘cause you only use it on extra special occasions, which tend to be few and far between for you.
You feel like an entirely different person when you meet Dr. Barker at the address he’d sent you a few hours ago — a nice bar, just a few blocks down from your apartment building, that you’d been meaning to visit for years but found every excuse in the book to stay home instead. You find the man sitting alone in a far booth in the dimly lit room, sipping slowly at the beer he nurses in his hand, and feel a little like a fraud when you slide into the vinyl seat across from him.
Nick has only known you for the better part of a work shift, to be fair, not counting the handful of times you’d smiled politely in passing when you clocked out for the day. You know he’s got some version of you in his head already, like all men do — someone much cooler than you really are, someone much better at separating their work life from their personal life than you are.
You prove him wrong in record time, sharing a plate of loaded nachos between you and forgetting to eat any of it as you get too easily lost in your ramblings. You tell him of the long shift, and of the man you met with two nails in his skull, and fail to remember that not everyone can talk of blood and gore over a meal as easily as you can.
“—Honestly, I’m still surprised it didn’t hemorrhage! The X-Ray showed one of the nails was, like, half an inch away from nicking an artery,” you ramble with a giddy grin. “I pulled them out with some local anesthetic, and he was totally fine— Well, except for the hand, obviously. ‘Cause he did lose a few fingers, but… Dr. Abbot took care of that, so…”
“Did he?” Nick hums, hiding his smile behind the pint he brings to his mouth.
He thinks this must be the fifth or so time you’ve brought up the man’s name tonight alone — not that you seem to notice. He doesn’t know whether that’s supposed to make him feel better or worse.
“Yeah— I always tell him he would’ve been an amazing surgeon if he didn’t have the hand-eye coordination of, like… A half-blind sloth,” you say, then swallow hard at the playful look Nick gives you in response. “‘Cause, you know, sloths are really clumsy, and they… Sometimes mistake their own limbs for branches, so… They fall a lot…”
You trail off and reach for the glass of water at your side, becoming very suddenly self-aware of your inability to stop rambling.
“You talk about him a lot,” Nick observes with a kind smile, licking the sheen of alcohol from his lips.
“…Who?” you wonder with furrowed brows.
“Dr. Abbot.”
Your features flood with terror. “Do I?”
His broad nose scrunches with a breathy laugh. “A little bit, yeah.”
“Oh, god…” you groan and hide your face behind your hand. Nick’s laugh gets lost in the rock music playing overhead. “That’s so annoying. I’m sorry—”
Your phone glows to life as it buzzes against the wooden table it sits on. You reach over to flip it face down before you can read the message on the screen.
“I didn’t… I didn’t even notice… I’m so sorry.”
It vibrates again, twice more in quick succession.
Your stomach twists with the anticipation of what it might say.
“It’s whatever,” Dr. Barker shrugs, pushing the sleeves of his button-up to his elbows. “I get it. He’s your boss and everything, so…”
Your phone buzzes on the table once more, for longer this time, now with a phone call.
You tense, but make no move to answer it, for fear of making this more awkward than you already have — though your pretending not to hear it doesn’t make it any better.
The corner of Nick’s lip twitches into a sympathetic smile, ‘cause he can tell that you’re trying to be polite, even though you’re fidgeting at the thought of answering it. Because your friends usually only ever text you, so if someone’s calling, it’s bound to be important.
“You can get that if you need to—”
“Thank you,” you sigh before he’s properly gotten the words out, scrambling for your phone with anxious hands. “I’m so sorry. It’ll be quick, I swear. I’m sure it’s just… Fuck.”
The call ends before you can answer it.
Nick’s eyes widen at your reaction. “Everything okay?”
“It’s Parker…” you answer with your eyes trained on the blue-white screen. Your chest deflates with a heavy sigh beneath your skin-tight top. “And I know it’s serious because she despises double-texting and she just sent me four back to back, so…”
Your eyes are wet and preemptively apologetic when they dart to the man across the table, who meets the disaster of you with a tender grin.
“You gotta go back in, huh?” he squints.
“I do…” you sigh. “I’m so sorry—”
“Just make it up to me next time,” Nick shrugs, watching with kind eyes as you scramble for your phone and purse. “When I win that bet, I mean. I’ll take you out somewhere nice— We can do this for real. If you want.”
You slide out of the cracking vinyl booth with a grimace — equal parts unnerved at the idea of doing this a second time and half-surprised that Nick would even want to, after you did nothing but anxiously ramble before bailing on him out of nowhere.
“Yeah…” you waver anyway as you stand to full height again. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe.”
“Thank you again— I’d kiss you right now if I could,” Dr. Ellis tells you when you pass her in the ambulance bay, where she hurries out of the E.D. on long limbs. She calls over her shoulder, moments before she’s out of earshot. “You look hot, by the way!”
The passing reminder of what you’re showing up to work in hits you like a punch to the stomach.
The double doors of the PTMC part for you, and the air-conditioned emergency room wraps its cold fingers around every inch of your exposed skin — your shaven legs, arms, and collarbones; all of which are normally concealed by your dark scrubs and undershirts.
You can’t help but feel a bit like you’re doing the walk of shame as you race past the work station with your head bowed, barely noticing that the systems are up and running again as you go. You’re too busy trying to make yourself as small as possible on your way to the scrub dispenser down the hall.
Jack smells you before he sees you.
He gets a sudden whiff of something sweet and creamy, like whipped vanilla and fresh raspberries, something candied enough to eat. Then he looks over his shoulder, from where he’s stood at the front desk, and finds you rushing past him in a hurry. His neck nearly cracks with the strength of the double take he gives at the back of you — short skirt swishing around your thighs, tight shirt showing a sliver of your lower back. He feels a little like he’s in middle school again, going wild at the mere sight of a girl’s bare shoulder.
By the time his brain starts working again to greet you, you’ve already turned the corner.
“Whoa, gotta hot date tonight?” he hears Shen ask as you walk by.
“Just left one, more like,” you scoff.
“Damn. Poor guy,” the man quips, then laughs when you flip him off.
“…What the hell?” Jack mutters under his breath, with his eyes still trained on the empty hall you’d just disappeared down.
“What? You didn’t hear?” McKay wonders aloud, from where she’s hunched over the monitor across from him, still closing down for the day now that the ED isn’t in analog hell anymore. She peers up at him with tired blue eyes, half-hidden beneath her wild fringe. “Don’t tell Princess, but apparently, she went out with that Dr. Barker guy from radiology.”
“Oh, really?” Jack hums, nodding slowly to feign interest. He hopes the hurt flaring in his chest doesn’t show all over his face as he turns back to his computer. “Sounds fun…”
Javadi eyes him from behind McKay’s shoulder. Her dark, observant stare traces the edges of his face as she twirls the string of her lavender jacket with her pointer finger.
“Well, don’t look so upset about it, Dr. Abbot,” she jokes with a quiet laugh, half-dazed from the long day. “I have a lot riding on this bet about you and Mohan, you know—?”
Cassie flashes the younger girl a wordless look.
Victoria’s eyes go wide when they flit back to Jack’s.
“—Which I wasn’t supposed to mention in front of you…” she blurts and fakes an awkward laugh. “There is no bet, actually. I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
Jack doesn’t ease the tension by telling her that he already knows; that he has known all day. He just flashes her a half-smile and a pair of squinted eyes as he steps back from the monitor.
“Real smooth, kid…” he jokes before he walks away.
He leaves the work station and turns the corner to find you cradling a pair of black scrubs to your chest and making a beeline for the restroom nearest to the break room. He rushes on long legs to catch up with you, limping slightly from his prosthetic. You freeze at the sound of your name from his lips, echoing from down the long hall. Your skirt swishes around your thighs as you spin in place to face him.
“Hey…” Jack greets, only slightly out of breath when he towers finally over you.
Your brows lower in confusion at the sight of his flustered state, but you smile nonetheless. “Hey…?”
“How was the, uh… The date?”
“Date?” you scoff. “What date?”
“The one you had with Dr. Barker.”
His biceps strain against his scrubs when he crosses his arms over his chest, peering down at you from the bridge of his nose. Your cheeks flare instantly. You can’t help but feel like you’ve been caught, like he’s just found out you’ve been cheating on him or something — even though the two of you aren’t even together, even though it’s abundantly clear that he wants someone else.
“Well, it wasn’t— it wasn’t really a— a date,” you stammer and turn away. “It was just… dinner.”
“Right,” Jack scoffs and follows behind you the short distance to the bathroom. “Because the two of you weren’t flirting in the security room or anything.”
You huff an emotionless laugh and roll your eyes at him, even though you know he cannot see you. “Yeah, because you and Samira weren’t flirting in Central 4 this morning or anything…” you echo in a gritty monotone.
Jack catches the bathroom door before it can shut behind you. You glance over your shoulder when you hear it hit his palm. You find the man looming in the doorway with something mischievous glittering in his narrowed eyes.
“I’m trying to get changed,” you deadpan, despite the distant fluttering in your chest.
Jack passes through the threshold and lets the door shut behind him, leaving the two of you alone in the empty bathroom, where the white-blue fluorescent lights buzz overhead.
“Am I hearing things, or do you sound a little jealous?” the older man quips, glittering eyes trained on the back of you as you duck into the singular stall across the room.
It clicks shut behind you.
“Aren’t you the one who came chasing after me, Dr. Abbot?”
“Aren’t you the one who ran off from your date just to come back in?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” you laugh.
“C’mon,” Jack scoffs. “You know what.”
Your short skirt pools around your feet with a quiet thud. You step out of it and toe off your right shoe, sliding on the adjoining pant leg before slipping the sneaker back on again. You do the same for the left side, and Jack has to shake the visual of your half-naked body from his head.
“I thought we had… You know, I thought we had a thing going on…”
“A thing?” you repeat, half-muffled, as you slide your shirt over your head. You hang it over the stall before reaching for your scrub top. “I wouldn’t exactly consider flirty comments and lingering eye contact a thing.”
Jack catches a glimpse of your bare spine through the sliver in the door frame. He swallows hard and forces himself to look down at his feet.
“You say that like I don’t wish I could do more,” he tells you. “I’m an attending— I can’t just go around making moves on my residents. It’s not a good look.”
The stall door squeaks open again. You come into view, now dressed in your scrubs, and wearing a hardened scowl on your dolled-up face. “Well, that didn’t stop you from getting Samira’s number, did it?” you argue. “Or letting her patch you up this morning?”
“I gave her my number because she asked for a recommendation letter, and I told her I’d give her one,” Jack confesses, watching you with a glittering gaze as you storm past him with your clothes cradled to your chest. He makes room for you by the sink and fights back a grin while you scrub angrily at your hands. “And I was patching myself up, actually, until she walked in looking for her patient.”
“Well, how convenient…” you grumble.
Jack smiles wider. “You are jealous,” he croons.
“I am, actually,” you deadpan, with your eyes trained on the soap you suds between your fingers. Even still, you can see the man in your peripheral vision, standing in the mirror just behind you. You can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, and smell the cologne lingering on his clothes.
“So that’s why you went out with the Barker guy, huh?” Jack lilts. “You just wanted to make me jealous…”
“No, actually,” you tell him. “I went out with Nick because I figured I should probably stop chasing after a guy that obviously doesn’t want me.”
You turn off the faucet with your fist and reach for the paper towel dispenser at your side.
Jack follows your every move.
“Yeah?” he hums lowly. “And who said I didn’t want you?”
You turn around to glare at him despite the newfound heat swimming in the pit of your stomach.
“Well, I think you’ve made it pretty clear, Dr. Abbot,” you deadpan. “I don’t think the entire floor would be betting on you and Samira otherwise.”
Jack takes a daring step closer, until you have to tilt your chin to keep his gaze when he towers suddenly over you. With his hands crossed over his chest, he bows his head and tells you, “Well, I don’t want Mohan. And I don’t care about that stupid bet. Is that clear enough for you?”
Your chest warms with a familiar feeling. Your features crumple under the weight of it as you murmur sheepishly, “Okay. I’m not even trying to be funny right now, but if you’re trying to tell me that you do like me, you’re going to have to say that outright, or else my brain won’t—”
You feel his hands on you, wide and warm around the outsides of your elbows. You feel your feet stumbling on the tile, and your chest colliding with his, and then his mouth pressing against yours. You feel his chapped lips, his coarse scruff, and his exhaled breath from his nose as it fans warm over your skin.
You freeze against him, too stunned that he’s kissing you at all to remember to kiss him back.
Jack pulls away from you a dizzying second or more later. He peers down at you with a heavy gaze and smiles when he realizes you haven’t yet taken your eyes off him.
“I like you…” he tells you slowly, as though to make sure you’re really hearing him. “Are we clear now?”
You swallow hard and nod your head, licking at your kissed lips in a feeble attempt to taste him again.
“Crystal,” you quip drily.
You rise to the tips of your toes and wrench your free hand in his scrub top, with every intention of kissing him again — for real this time. You flinch in a fleeting panic when the bathroom door squeaks open a second later.
Samira slips inside, too distracted by the phone in her hand to see what she’s walking in on. You and Jack freeze against one another accordingly, as if being so still will somehow make you invisible.
The door closes behind her and muffles the never-ending chaos outside. Only when it clicks shut again does Samira look up from her phone, dark eyes wide as they flit wildly between the two of you.
“Holy shit…” she mumbles under her breath, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say it out loud at all.
You push the man away from you on instinct.
“We weren’t doing anything!” you blurt, hardly convincing in the matter.
Jack’s soft eyes cut over to you. “Real smooth,” he mumbles.
Samira’s look of shock ebbs into a giddy smile.
“I knew it!” she exclaims, voice ringing through the tiled restroom. “Ahmad looked at me like I was crazy when I put forty dollars on the two of you, but I knew I was right!”
Your brows furrow in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“The bet,” she shrugs with a smile. “I put mine on the two of you. Which means I just got a couple hundred dollars richer, at least.”
The realization hits you like a punch to the stomach.
“Which means I just lost all of my money…”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I can spare some of my winnings. I mean, it’s only right, right?” Samira says with a pretty laugh. “You guys can go out for drinks or something special. My treat.”
It becomes suddenly very difficult to imagine yourself from five minutes ago — back when you were overcome with jealousy just by the sight of her alone — knowing now that she had been rooting for you this whole time. Jack seems to know this, too, based on the smug smile he gives you.
“This real nice of you, Mohan,” he says. “But if I’m taking my girl out for drinks on a first date, I’m gonna be the one payin’ for ‘em— No offense.”
“None taken,” she shakes her head. “Means more money for me.”
You’re still catching your breath in the meanwhile, ‘cause the newfound title has all but punched the breath from your lungs. My girl, he’d said, and god, you wanted nothing more than to be his girl.
“We should, uh—” You clear your throat when the words get stuck there. “We should probably get out of here before the others think something weird is going on…”
“Something weird is happening— The entire E.D. is betting on my love life,” Jack scoffs as he follows you out of the bathroom, where the chaos of the E.R. finds you almost instantly. “Sorry you lost, by the way. The bet, I mean…”
He catches himself nearly reaching out for your hand. He balls his own into a fist instead to fight the urge. You can see the longing to glittering in his eyes, anyway, when you turn to flash him a sheepish look in response.
“Well, I didn’t lose completely,” you lilt with a lazy shrug.
“No?” Jack hums.
“No…” you grin. “I think I won where it mattered.”
Summary: it’s embarrassing enough being seen for food poisoning in your place of work before the attending on shift decides to make you his priority for the night.
Warnings: food poisoning mentions and all that involves, lightly researched medical things, mentions of alcohol, he wears his camo pants in this bc I say he does
Author’s note: Ahh this is my first fic in forever and my first fic for the Pitt at alllll 🥹 inspired by my own unfortunate bout last weekend and my undying love for Jack (it wouldn’t have been so miserable if I had him to take care of me, I’m sure of it). Happy night shift to my fellow Hatosy hoes <3
——
As a doctor, you really should’ve known better.
That’s the thought repeating in your head as you slouch, back pressed against the wall in front of your toilet, contemplating dragging a pillow and a quilt into your bathroom for the night.
Your watch tells you it’s just past 1am now, meaning you’d only had a few hours of blissful, much-needed sleep before you’d woken with nausea, half of your stomach in your throat and the other tied up in knots.
Only as you sit on your flowered bath mat, squinting in the fluorescent light of your bathroom, contemplating another round of your head in the toilet, do you realize that your meal prep had maybe been a bit too far gone.
You’re no stranger to food poisoning — having and treating — and you know you could knock this out with Pepto, fluids and a BRAT diet in 36 hours flat.
But you don’t have 36 hours. You’re back at the Pitt in — you check your watch — five and a half hours.
You dig your phone out of your bedsheets once you’ve decided it’s safe to stand up and stagger back to your bedroom, pulling up your text thread with Mateo while you brush your teeth.
If I come in rn can someone see me for food poisoning
You weren’t holding your breath for an immediate reply, knowing how it can get on night shift, especially after the mess you left them all with at handoff. You had almost felt guilty as you left.
Almost.
But you’re pleasantly surprised when he responds immediately.
NOOOO!!!
Ya come on in, we’re super dead
(✊🪵)
—
You’d texted Mateo like he’d told you to after you checked in at Chairs, the night shift receptionist letting you know he’d tell them there was a VIP out here waiting. But you’d waved him off, albeit queasily, taking comfort in the relative emptiness of the waiting room at this time of night, hoping it won’t be too long without the fast pass.
“Now why am I seeing one of our R2s out here in Chairs?”
You open your eyes, realizing they’d closed as you tipped your head back against the wall for a moment.
Dr. Jack Abbot came through the ED’s main entrance at one point, back from a phone call or a break if you had to guess.
He looks at the receptionist like ‘what gives?’ but it’s all in jest, his smile far too sunny for the darkness of the hour as he turns his attention to you.
That the hottest doctor on either shift at the Pitt might be seeing you in the worst state of your life had never occurred to you on your way over here tonight, but you realize that might’ve been hard to do in between the deep breathing out of the open window and several almost pull-overs you had to do.
Because as Dr. Abbot, in all of his camo-panted glory, makes his way over to you, you’re struck by the fact that even in your weakened state, he’s still absolutely undeniable.
Maybe even more so.
“Dr. Abbot,” you greet.
“What’s going on?” he says, slowing his pace as he nears. You sit up straighter as he immediately begins assessing, feeling a bit exposed under his gaze in your haphazard outfit. You must look as bad as you feel, because you clock the moment his face falls.
You wince, hating every second of this, but realizing you want this over with so quickly that you can no longer care. “Food poisoning. Pretty sure.”
“Yikes, doc,” he says softly, crossing his arms. “Did you tell anyone you were coming in?”
“I texted Mateo.”
“I’m sure he just got pulled into something. Come on,” he nods toward the doors, then looks you over. “You good to come back?”
You mull it over, glancing at the bathroom in Chairs. Abbot follows your gaze, then nods again. He pats your shoulder as he makes his own way to the doors.
“Take your time and then come on back. I’ll order some Zofran.”
—
“So stupid. I didn’t even think how old it was,” you sigh to Mateo, finally seated on an examination bed while he does your vitals.
Mateo nods toward your crossed legs, which you unwind so he can get an accurate blood pressure reading.
He slips the cuff off your arm with a sympathetic smile, and you pull your sleeve back down. “Hey, at least you got the day off now. Can start that zombie show I was telling you about.”
You shake your head. “Not likely. You’ll see me at handoff.”
Mateo scoffs, looking at the clock on the wall. “In four hours? You gonna sleep here?”
You just give him a look, but you thought about it on your way here.
“Alright,” he says, finishing up your chart. “You good? Barf bag? I’ll be back with your Tylenol.”
You shake your head, lying back with your feet propped up on the bed. “Nothing left. I hope.”
“Noted. Someone will be by soonish,” he says. Then a knock on the wall beside your bed comes, and Mateo smirks at you as he opens the curtain. “Or right now.”
Dr. Abbot’s back, nodding his head at Mateo to make way in front of the monitor so he can swipe in.
“How’re we doing in here, Dr. Y/l/n? Zofran kicked in?”
You give a meager thumbs up. “Hoping it will soon.”
“Vitals are good,” Mateo says to him. “She is running a fever, though — I was about to run for some acetaminophen.”
“I brought some just in case. I’ve got her from here,” Jack says, his voice softer, directed to Mateo. “You can go check on your other patients, yeah?”
“For sure. Feel better, Y/n,” Mateo says, and you hear the curtain close again.
You lift your arm off of your eyes, blinking under more fluorescent lighting, squinting slightly as Jack makes his way over, a cup of water and a portion of Tylenol in either hand. “Think you’ll keep it down?”
You push up slightly, taking the cup of tablets, throwing them back and trading it for the cup of water, deciding the risk is worth the mitigation of the chills and aches that have begun to set in.
He takes both cups from you, and you lie back again immediately while he throws them out. “We’re gonna find out.”
“That’s the spirit,” he laughs, and you feel your own lips quirk. “I like it. Alright, I know you just wanted your Zofran, but can I bother you for an abdominal exam?”
You look down at the thick sweatshirt you fell asleep in, realizing you’re wearing absolutely nothing beneath it. “Um.”
Jack’s paused near the gloves. “Walsh is wrapped up, but I’ll ask Ellis to come in.”
“No, no,” you say. You’re a doctor, one who’s on shift in a few hours, and you can handle an attending seeing your midsection. And touching it. “You’re fine.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
He nods, satisfied only after your outright consent, and snaps a pair of gloves on — size large, you hate that you can’t help but notice.
You lift your sweatshirt up once he’s at your bedside before you can think too much about it, and he clears his throat.
“Let me know if anything’s tender.”
You feel the warmth of Jack’s hands through his gloves as he works his way through the quadrants with precision, pressing gently into your stomach.
With his focus trained on the exam and your own mind needing a distraction, you notice things — how his freckled arms flex periodically against the sleeves of his scrub top, the collar of the heather gray crewneck he’s wearing today preventing any good look at his chest, the way he has his badge reel clipped to his pants instead of his breast pocket.
The band you know to be graphite that he still wears on his left hand, the imprint visible through the glove.
It’s such an easy exam. Just to rule anything out. You’ve done them hundreds of times — he’s probably in the thousands.
“A med student could’ve done this,” you say, casting your eyes away from where they’d been fixated on the pale underside of his further arm, the muscle jumping as he pressed down. “You don’t have to be here.”
“We’re mid-rotation. They aren’t exactly fighting over food poisoning on the board at this point, even if it’s their favorite resident,” he says, like it means nothing. “We’re slow. Why wouldn’t I take care of one of our own?”
He holds your gaze in case you have an answer, and you don’t.
But Jack bails you out. “Do you know what it was?”
“Dinner,” you answer. “Meal prep from Monday.”
“C’mon, Monday? You know better,” he says, his tone teasing. “What time did you eat?”
“Right after shift, like eight?” you try to remember. But it’s hard to once his hands move to the lower quadrants of your abdomen, and his gloved fingertips skim the waistline of your sleep shorts. “I can’t even remember.”
“Yeah, you kinda sleepwalked out of here,” he comments, with no fanfare.
You watch his side profile, wondering at what point Jack Abbot started noticing you at handoff the way you’ve always noticed him.
He looks up. “Nothing’s tender? No pain?”
“No,” you breathe, realizing that the warmth of his hands, however brief, pressing into your stomach over and over again has created about the most relief you’ve had since you woke up.
“Good,” he says, his thumbs tucking under the bottom of your sweatshirt and pulling it back down for you. He tugs it snugly over the waistband of your shorts, covering you more than you were even when you initially laid back, his thumbs brushing your sides. “Any other symptoms?”
You shake your head, then pause. “Not gonna run me through the list?”
He smiles, and it occurs to you that it’s slightly weird to see him in the in-between, the throes of night shift.
Not bright-eyed, a breath of fresh air greeting you after a hard day at 7pm. Or on the flip side, a more somber sight to see first thing in the morning, his shadow grown in and his hair tousled. He’s settled, but not exhausted. It’s comforting.
“We could get real comfortable if you’d like, Dr. Y/l/n. But I trust that you know the symptoms I’d be worried about and would tell me if you had them.”
Your eyes meet, your heart stuttering slightly at his praise. You’d worked hard and earned everything you’d achieved, but it was no secret that the ED could feel thankless, and receiving affirmation from a doctor you admire was always a lift.
“I’ll let it slide, Dr. Abbot,” you say. “Diagnosis and treatment plan?”
“Well your fever’s definitely higher than I’d like for food poisoning,” he says, snapping his gloves into the trash. He puts his hands on his hips, cocking his head to the side. He looks thoughtful, “But I’m guessing everything is mostly out of your system at this point. Or hopefully… nearly there.”
You don’t swing your shifts very often, and you’ve only picked up a handful of swaps to night shift since coming to the Pitt as an intern last year.
Which means you really only cross paths with Jack at handoffs, Robby’s barbecues and street team. You detest that one of your few, extended, non-patient-related (yourself excluded) conversations with the man is about your vomiting schedule.
But you’ve watched and learned quality patient care from Dr. Abbot countless times, as he stayed over, showed up early, came in on his off days or during his SWAT shifts — to be the receiver of it is another feeling entirely.
“You know the drill. Rest, lots of fluids. The blandest food possible once you think you can stomach it. Rice, bananas, toast — nothing fun on it. Do you have any of that on hand?”
“Uh,” you wonder aloud, squinting at the mental image of your pantry. Neglected and bare, conditions conducive to the reason you landed in here tonight.
He takes your silence for what it is.
“DoorDash it then, will ya?” he asks, exasperated. “Some electrolytes, too. And Sprite. I don’t think we’re supposed to recommend that, but that’s my old favorite.”
“Alright moneybags,” you laugh, finally sitting up. “I’ll just pay some insanely high delivery fee on Sprite, then, since you say so.”
“I’ll pay for it,” he murmurs, not even looking up over the monitor while he taps your notes in. “Bill me at our next handoff. And I didn’t hear you telling Mateo you think you’re working today, right?”
Your brain has fallen a step behind in this conversation, your feet ceasing their dangling over the side of the bed as you sit frozen.
“Dr. Y/l/n?” he asks, still at the monitor.
“Well, I was — with the Zofran and everything I figured I’d be okay. That’s why I came in tonight instead of just riding it out, so I’d be good for work today,” you explain, rubbing your forehead. Your argument feels weak even to your own ears, but you feel a commitment to the Pitt, especially presently being here.
“You’re no good to anyone who comes in here while you’re sleep-deprived, dehydrated and running a fever,” Jack says, his eyes scanning your face. “You’re actually the opposite. You know that.”
The warmth you felt at his praise only moments ago evaporates at his chastisement, even if you know he’s right.
“Hey. You know that,” he says again. “Yeah?”
You nod. “Yeah.”
“Take a day. Two if you need it. I’ll stay over and help Robby and the day shift get settled,” he says. “You leave him to me.”
It’s a joke if there ever was one, and he seems pleased when you laugh at the idea of Robby giving you a hard time over a few sick days.
You concede. “At least it’s quieter in here now. Which — I’m shocked, by the way.”
“Why? ‘Cause you guys left us such a mess?” Jack quips, logging out of the computer, sliding the curtain open and waiting for you.
“Honestly, yeah. We did,” you say, grabbing your belt bag off of the chair by the bed.
“Well, that’s what we do on nights. Clean up the mess you all leave behind,” he says, reaching for the strap of your bag, draping it over your head and letting you slip an arm through it and letting it rest on your shoulder. “You should try it sometime.”
In another world, where your Zofran and Tylenol had done their jobs already, and you weren’t completely disarmed by the comfort you felt from having the night shift attending put his hands all over you and then offer to pay for your remedies like it would be foolish of him not to, you might find the wherewithal to engage — to flirt back.
Because even your exhausted brain can put together the fact that Jack Abbot is flirting with you. In your sleep shorts, and your problematic sweatshirt. With your four hours of sleep. While you talked about your vomiting habits.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” you say. “I like my normal sleep schedule too much.”
His head cocks in that way you’ve noticed it does, his grin twitching.
“And yet here you are.”
—
“She lives.”
Two days later, you grace the Pitt with your presence once again, feeling your cheeks warm as Mateo tucks his tablet under his arm to slowly applaud your entrance.
“You say that like you didn’t text me for an update a million times,” you answer, rolling your eyes as he falls into step beside you on your walk to the board.
“My attending was all over me about it,” he says quietly.
You’re feeling good to be back at work, done wasting away in bed and ready to jump back in, but your brain is groggy — slow to catch up to what he’s implying.
When you do, you turn to him, and he’s grinning, looking like he’s bursting at the seams.
“Oh?” you try.
“Did you know that man had never used DoorDash in his life until a few days ago? I had to help him,” Mateo says, leaning closer, his voice dropping a few decibels. “It was… adorable.”
You knew when leaving the ED the other night you’d never be taking Jack up on his offer.
You didn’t realize he knew it too, however, until the delivery driver had shown up at your door later that morning holding three grocery bags bursting with food and drinks, shaking your hand and thanking you profusely for the generous tip you gave on the app.
You briefly thought you might need to walk back into the Pitt and tell them your food poisoning was definitely an infection that was presenting as hallucinations as you stood in your doorway, arms suddenly full of groceries.
You wondered for only a minute who your angel was, but the six-pack of Sprite had been a dead giveaway.
“I was wondering how he’d gotten my address,” you said. “Doesn’t seem like the type to skim it off my file.”
Mateo cocks his head, and his grin is becoming a bit too much for you at 6:45 in the morning.
“He was this close,” he says, pinching two fingers together. “Seriously.”
You shake your head, tossing your braid over your shoulder as you make your way to the locker rooms. “I should go drop my stuff.”
“Mhm,” he says. “You do that. You’re so busy. Here 15 minutes early and everything.”
“Bye Teo,” you say with finality, beelining it to the lockers before anyone else who’d witnessed you a few nights ago stopped you to chat.
A few night shift nurses ask you how you’ve been feeling near the lockers while you put your stuff away and slip your fleece jacket on, affixing your badge reel and checking the whisps falling out of your braid are doing so in just the way you want, but you’re lucky you don’t cross paths with anyone else that had witnessed your plight.
Until you emerge moments later to find Jack Abbot, arms crossed and waiting against the wall across the lockers, a respectable distance away, but no doubt with his eyes trained on the door.
He smiles, post-shift tired. “Thought I saw my favorite patient.”
Feeling well enough to play ball, finally, and frankly having milled over the next time you’d see Jack in your head through two straight days of rom-coms, you take the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.
“I thought I saw my favorite attending, too, but Robby must not be in yet.”
Thoroughly pleased when his mouth drops open slightly, you aren’t surprised when he trails behind you while you walk to your preferred charting station.
“I was gonna ask how you’re feeling, but it seems there might be a cognitive exam in order,” he says in reply, leaning comfortably over the desk as you sit down, sliding your badge through the scanner. You watch the line of his shoulders as he stretches tiredly.
“Better,” you say sincerely, unable to shake the mental picture. Jack asking Mateo for help with DoorDash in the lulls of night shift, using whatever extra time he could find to schedule something thoughtful for you to wake up to. “You didn’t have to send all of that.”
He shrugs. “Wanted to. Figured you were gonna crash as soon as you got home, and going to the store when you’re sick is the worst.”
You shake your head, your smile stubborn. “Way too much Sprite.”
His lips pull up to one side. “But it helped, didn’t it?”
You roll your eyes, asking him how night shift was and enjoying the way he prattles on while you settle back in.
“Did you wanna do your handoff now?” you ask, standing up again, grabbing the tablet off the charger by on your station.
“Oh, I already handed over to Santos,” he says, still making no move to leave your station, when you figured that had been the entire reason he was here. Or at least part of it.
Some of it.
“Oh,” you say. Sweeping your eyes around the ED — it’s still relatively early and things seem, for now, to be on the rarer, quieter side.
You lean against your desk, looking at him expectantly.
“How have you been though?” he asks. “Really. That wasn’t a tiny fever.”
“Good,” you say, sensing his worry. “I promise. It broke later that day. Everything… else subsided by yesterday morning, thank god. All the stuff you sent really, really helped. So thank you.”
“I’m glad. You gotta be more careful,” he says, tapping his fingers on the desk. “You know. Brush up on your food safety education.”
You sigh, wincing. “I know, it was stupid. Just exhausted and wasn’t thinking.”
He nods, considering. “Next time you’re too tired, let me know.”
You come around, leaning against the desk next to him. You think you see Mateo paused at the front door out of the corner of your eye, but you can’t be sure, because you’re too focused on the furrow in Jack’s brow as he looks down at you.
“What are you gonna do, send me dinner this time?”
“No. I’m gonna make you dinner,” he suggests, like it’s casual. But his eyes flit across your face quickly, assessing. “At my place.”
Your lips quirk up.
“Again,” he adds, nodding, but not fast enough to hide that his cheeks are tinged pink. Christ, he’s nervous. Your stomach kicks, in the best way this time, realizing that you are making Jack Abbot nervous. “Educational purposes.”
You hum, nodding your head, too. “And this is a teaching hospital.”
“It is,” he nods. “So, what do you say?”
For all of his confidence, the way he commands a trauma bay in a crisis, runs a new pool of med students like a combat unit, wrangles an unruly pod of frat boys here to watch a buddy’s stomach get pumped, you feel another thrill zip down your spine at his sought reassurances.
He wants to hear you say it. Just like with your exam.
Jack needs a yes.
“That sounds great,” you finally say.
“Yeah?” he asks, his grin growing.
You can’t help it, yours matching, “Yeah.”
He smiles wider, hiking his backpack up higher on his shoulders, and you swear it’s like his chest puffs out just a touch.
“Alright. You gonna give me your number now, or do I have to beg Mateo for that, too?”
—
A week later — only exactly as long as it took for schedules to align and your stomach to settle (Jack’s insistence, not yours) — you’re sat at his kitchen island, watching him chop vegetables with a tea towel thrown over his shoulder.
His home is cozy, a German shepherd named Ruby curled up underneath your feet.
He hasn’t told you what’s he’s making yet, but you can piece together it doesn’t contain anything that had triggered you last week, which you find sweet.
Jack watches you get up, glancing at your water glass to see if it needs refilled, whatever story he’d been telling about Shen and an ortho consult from Park gone awry dying on his lips, his knife pausing, but his lips quirking up as you circle the island nearer to him.
“What do you need, sweetheart? Wanna open a bottle?”
“No. Well — yes,” you say, your hand closing softly over his, the knife resting on the cutting board immediately, his body making space for you between himself and the island while he wipes off his hands. “Just not yet.”
“No?” Jack says, eyes glinting.
This close, you look up at him, your hand flattening to his chest, right over his heart. He’d put on a blue button-down for you, the material soft beneath your touch. He’s still so warm.
“Hi,” you say lamely, your confidence run out.
“You feelin’ me up, doc?”
Your hand slides from his chest down to his stomach, pressing lightly with the pads of your fingers. “You had your turn.”
Jack’s smile is knowing, like he could tell you were squirming on that exam table for more reasons than one but didn’t know for sure until now. Any embarrassment you might feel is assuaged by the fact that you can tell the exchange had had a similar effect on him, confirmed by his next statement.
“I’m gonna need a few more.”
“We’ll see,” you answer, tilting your head with mischief.
“Here I thought I was being a gentleman, waiting until after dinner,” he all but whispers.
“For wine?” you tease.
“You…” he laughs. His hands find your face, and as he leans in, you know you’ll look back one day and think that it was all worth it.
Maybe it’s nerves, your heart stuttering at how strongly you already feel — but you don’t know why you say it, practically whispering against his lips, he’s so close at this point. “I can’t believe the first time you hit on me was when I was literally in the middle of food poisoning.”
But he shakes his head.
“First time you noticed,” he corrects.
His lips meet yours briefly, and he pulls back, his eyes searching for your reaction to that, and he smiles.
Then he kisses your cheek, your nose, your forehead, the top of your head.
It’s like you’re frozen — but so, so warm in his arms.
Jack leans back, his thumbs stroking your cheeks, eyes locked to yours so there’s no mistake, and murmurs, “I’m gonna take such good care of you.”
summary: you have a perfectly casual, no-strings-attached night out with a charming stranger you met at a bar; only for jack to find out that he's slept with his resident the next morning, and that you’ve made a very memorable first impression on your new attending. (7k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, michael robinavitch, louie cloverfield, rogue sightings from the pittlings
contents: strangers to lovers, one night stand, implied age gap, humor, so much sexual tension, so much flirting, jack abbot being a d1 yearner, heavily inspired by s1ep1 of grey's anatomy cw for medical procedures and inaccuracies, brief mentions of death, r has hair that can be put into a hair tie, smut 18+ (MDNI), slightly dubcon bc of alcohol
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Jack Abbot finds the rest of his whole life in the middle of Sonny’s Tavern, sitting on the third bar stool to the left.
There’s a strange sort of glow about you — one that makes the dingy amber light swaying above your head look almost golden when it touches your skin; one that begs to be immediately noticed because, admittedly, there was nothing more overtly special about you.
You’ve come in wearing a simple baggy sweater and a pair of loose-fitting jeans, as if you’d just thrown something on from your bedroom floor before stopping in for a drink or two. You sit slouched at the bar with your head on your fist, talking to the bartender in hushed tones that go unheard beneath the yacht rock playing overhead.
It is more than apparent that you did not come here to be noticed; but even still, Jack struggles to take his eyes off you all the same.
“Alright, who’s in trouble tonight?” the man announces in place of a greeting, as he steps through the threshold into a cloud of sweet beer, charred hamburgers, and skunk weed.
He’s far too familiar with the faces here for anything else. Sonny’s had been standing for longer than he has, to be fair — he had his first drink here, back when no one cared how old you really were, so long as you weren’t totally stupid about it; he had his first kiss here, too, by the dumpster in an alley from a woman much older than he was, who he revered as some sort of god until he got to med school.
Sonny’s had given him a lot over the years, so Jack figured it was only right that he give back in return.
He’d gotten several of its patrons out of a number of sticky situations over the years. Everyone knew to call him if someone had gotten themselves into trouble — whether that be bathroom overdoses, bar fight aftermaths, or kids with fake IDs who’d drunk their weight in whiskey. They knew Jack Abbot would fix them right up. No questions asked, no money needed, no judgment at all.
Except for today, he hadn’t gotten a single call, nor had he heard a murmur of anything medical-related on the police scanner all afternoon. His day off had been exceptionally quiet, which he thinks is why he struggles to sleep tonight, without the adrenaline crash from a long day forcing him into slumber.
That’s why he comes into Sonny’s for an actual drink, for the first time in a long time — to escape the loneliness of his home for a while, and to down a few beers that’ll hopefully put him to sleep when he inevitably has to return to its emptiness. That’s why he welcomes the racing heart he gets, too, when you glance at him over your shoulder at the sound of his voice.
“Didn’t ya hear?” a familiar voice calls from the booth nearest to the door. “We’re celebrating!”
Jack turns his head to find Louie sitting in the cracked vinyl booth, ahead of two men who seem to be around his age. He nurses a sweaty pint in his sun-kissed hand, with two more empty ones sitting at his side.
If Jack knows anything about Mr. Cloverfield, it’s that he’s already had much, much more than that tonight alone. ‘Cause the last time he saw Louie, he had a BAC of .420, and was walking and talking just fine — aside from the shakes he couldn’t quite get rid of.
“Weren’t you supposed to be taking it easy, Louie?” Jack squints.
“I was,” the older man assures with a lopsided smile that says otherwise. “But now we’re celebrating.”
“Oh, yeah?” he scoffs and walks further inside, ignoring the way his shoes threaten to stick to his hardwood with every step. “And what’s that?”
Louie motions to you with his half-gone beer. “That one’s starting a new job tomorrow.”
Jack’s eyes cut back to you.
You duck away on instinct when his gaze locks with yours, only then realizing how long you’d been staring. You keep your head bowed like a shy child when he slides into the bar stool next to yours, replacing the scent of an ancient bar with the warmer scent of expensive cologne.
“Oh, really?” the stranger hums. “Where at?”
“Nowhere special. Just retail,” you say with a lazy shrug, struggling to find the courage to meet his unwavering stare. “But I just moved into town, so… I figured I’d buy a round for the house.”
You reach for the shot rack ahead of you, where three narrow glasses filled with clear liquid sit in a row. You go to pass one over to the strange man beside you, but he dismisses you with a shake of his head — made of greying curls that match the silver scruff on his jaw.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t have a pretty girl buyin’ my drinks.”
A laugh sputters from your mouth, rolling off your half-numb tongue. “Pretty girl? What— Are you flirting with me, or is this just… your usual level of arrogance?”
“Neither. I’m just… stating the obvious,” Jack says with a cheeky half-smile, shifting on the squeaking leather stool to reach for the wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. He turns to the bartender and wonders aloud, “What’s her tab, Johnny?”
You burn red-hot almost instantly. “Don’t tell him—”
“$94.57—” the older man answers before you can get the words out, then cuts himself off with a weathered look of apology. “—Oh. Sorry.”
You grimace and hide your burning face behind your hands. “God, that’s so embarrassing…” you whine, muffled into your palms.
“Hey. You’re celebrating,” Jack shrugs. “I get it.”
You hear the man’s leather wallet flip open. You peek through your fingers to find him pulling out a heavy credit card. Your features flood with horror when he hands it off to the bartender.
“Oh, no— I can’t let you do that.”
“You’re not letting me do anything,” the older man scoffs, folding his freckled arms along the counter’s edge. “I want to. ‘Cause we’re celebrating, remember?”
You meet his smug smile with an unsure wince.
Jack caves with a sigh. “Okay, you can make it up to me by drinking with me tonight. How about that?”
Your chest warms with a funny feeling that you’d rather blame on the alcohol. You purse your lips to the side of your mouth before he catches you smiling too wide and nod slowly in response.
“Sure…” you shrug, feigning an air of nonchalance you lost the moment the pretty stranger caught you staring. “I guess I can handle that…”
The stranger — he hasn’t yet given you his name, nor do you bother to ask for it — buys you two more drinks after the fact.
You sip slowly at the first one, then forget to taste the second, too busy catching his gaze every time he looks your way. Lingering eye contact had always perturbed you, but not his. You liked it when he held your stare whenever you turned to face him; you liked it even more when you could feel his eyes on you whenever you looked away again.
You give him this smile from time to time, a barely-there sort of smirk that glittered mostly in your eyes, whenever you tilted your chin to peer at him through your lashes. It was as sweet as it was heavy, honeyed and full of gravity, like you knew something about him that he didn’t — like you were searching somewhere deep in his soul.
Really, though, you were just wildly skeptical of him — eyeing him in silence and trying to figure out if he was real, if this was real. How many times have you played this game, old man? you’d ask him if you had the courage. How many hearts have you already broken? Am I gonna regret it when mine breaks next?
You’re not sure, but you let him walk you to your place anyway, and talk him into letting you buy him a donut from the shop across from your apartment building on the way. He tells you it’ll sober you up, even though you aren’t all that drunk anymore; you tell him that he’ll never want anything else once he’s tasted this one, and he fights the urge to make a sex joke.
“Thanks for walking me home,” you tell him through the wad of donut still stuck in your cheek, standing a step above him on the stony stairs to your building. “And for turning out not to be a serial killer.”
Jack balls his napkin of crumbs into his fist. “Well, there’s still time— You know, if you’re disappointed.”
“Eh,” you hum playfully, swallowing through the mouthful. “Maybe just a little.”
“Then I’ll see myself out, I guess…” the man huffs, feigning a morose disposition, and distantly praying you’ll stop him. “It’s getting pretty late.”
Your eyes narrow into thin slits, and it feels like his heart has stopped — like you’re using some sort of secret superpower to steal his breath.
You shake your head and tell him, “It’s not that late.”
So Jack follows you up to your apartment despite his better judgment, drawn to a siren song that he knows is bound to kill him sooner or later.
Your apartment is mostly empty, he finds, considering you had only just moved into it.
There’s a couch, an air mattress, and a small television on a plastic bin shoved into the quaint living room. There’s one chair at the kitchen island, and a sea of boxes on the counter. You apologize profusely for the mess as you weave through the maze of cardboard for the refrigerator. You bring him a chilled bottle of white wine on the way back.
“I’d pour it into a fancy glass or something, but… I don’t have any,” you confess as you plop down onto the couch beside him, which still smells like the house you just bought it from. “I don’t even have cups. Or silverware. I barely even have a kitchen.”
Jack laughs. “You just moved here, and the first thing you thought to buy was wine?”
“Well, yeah,” you shrug like it’s obvious. “I had to get the essentials, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he echoes with a scoff.
The wine is bad. Almost comically bad. He nearly chokes on it when he takes his first sip, like he’s a teenager again, taking his very first ever drink of alcohol. It’s bitter with an extremely sweet aftertaste that coats his tongue long after he’s swallowed it down. But you don’t seem to mind it, though — you drink it like it’s some sort of delicacy, which he knows it must be for you, ‘cause he was young and broke once, too.
He takes slow sips every time you pass the sweaty bottle his way, if only because doing so means putting his lips where yours once kissed.
“So…” Jack starts after you’ve run out of things to say, sitting with his thighs spread and his heavy head tilted against the couch. He licks the sheen of alcohol from his mouth, passes you the wine, and wonders aloud, “What’s your story, huh?”
“My story?” you laugh into the lip of the bottle, curling your legs beneath you to face him better as you take a short sip. “Why do I have to have a story?”
“Everyone has a story,” Jack scoffs. “Think about it— There was something that led you to that bar tonight, right?”
“Most people would call that fate.”
“What about you?” he asks, then follows at the look you give him. “Would you call it fate?”
You think for a moment, then nod your head against your fist. “Yeah… I guess so.”
Jack nods slowly, scruffy cheek brushing the cushion beneath him. “So if I… I don’t know… If I kissed you right now… Would you call that fate, too?”
Your laugh washes over him like drops of summer rain.
“Real smooth…” you croon drily.
“It’s just a hypothetical.”
“Then, no. I wouldn’t call that fate.” You huff and lean forward to set the bottle onto the box you’re using as a makeshift table. “I think I’d call that taking what I want.”
Despite his own forwardness, Jack is still slightly surprised when you close the distance between you, rather than sit back into place across from him. You rest your knees on the sunken cushions instead, and rest your fist on the space between his spread thighs as you lean in closer.
Jack gets a whiff of the perfume on your skin, then the bittersweet alcohol on your tongue, right before your wine-slick mouth catches his own.
He tenses on instinct at the feeling of you, then relaxes with a heavy breath through his nose a second later, when you lick into his parted mouth. It takes him a moment to kiss you back, because he doesn’t realize until that very second that he hasn’t made out with someone in years.
He reaches for you with trembling hands, curling one around your arm and the other around the back of your neck to cradle you closer to him.
You kiss him lazy and slow. You touch him lazy and slow, too, trailing your palms from his scruffy jaw to his broad chest as you straddle his lap. He wonders if you can feel his heart pounding beneath the thin t-shirt he wears — or his cock growing slowly stiff in the confines of his jeans.
He tries to touch you with a similar confidence, with his wide hands resting on your hips, but he can’t seem to stop shaking.
You kiss and lick the thoughts from his brain. He thinks of nothing but the way you feel against him — feels nothing but your warm weight on top of him. He doesn’t realize he’s grinding you over his lap until he feels you moan into his mouth. Then he pulls away with a quiet smack, wearing your spit down to his chin and something honeyed in his eyes.
“We really doin’ this?” he wonders through panted breaths.
You smile with kiss-bitten lips, twirling your fingers in the silver curls at the nape of his neck. “Depends… Do you wanna do this?”
“Depends,” he echoes. “Are you too drunk for this?”
“I’m not drunk,” you scoff. “I’m a big girl— I can hold my liquor.”
Something dark flickers in his heavy eyes.
Your smile widens.
“What about you, huh? Do you think you got drunk off a few sips of wine? Or can you handle your alcohol… big boy?”
Jack feels his chest flare with a white-hot feeling. He forces himself to breathe through it as he jokes back, “Big boy, huh? Are you flirting with me or is this just— what was it you said— your usual level of arrogance?”
“Neither,” you hum with a cheeky grin. “This is me very humbly, and only slightly embarrassingly, asking if you wanna fuck me on that air mattress over there?”
He’s fleetingly stunned by your forwardness but recovers even quicker. He thinks he’d do just about anything you asked of him in this moment, without question or second thought. It frightens him almost as much as it excites him.
“Yeah…” Jack sighs, half-breathless. “Want me to prove it to you?”
You nod until the words catch up to you.
“Yes, please.”
You’re a pair of anxious limbs on the cheap air mattress across the room. Jack can’t seem to stop apologizing — first when his pants are off and you see his prosthetic for the first time — “Sorry,” he’d said, only because it felt like he should, “For what?” you shrugged back, with your bra strap slipping off your shoulder.
He apologized a second time when the flimsy mattress shifted under his weight and sent him toppling gracelessly on top of you; and then a third when he pierced you for the first time, a little rougher than he intended to.
“Sorry. Are you okay?” he wonders, half-strangled, ‘cause you’re gripping his cock like a vice. “Is this too much— Do you need me to—?”
“No, no. It’s okay,” you assured through labored breaths. He had prepped you with his fingers beforehand, to be fair. The orgasm he’d given you with them had you slicker than honey, but hadn’t totally prepared you for the girth of his cock. “It feels good, I promise.”
“You don’t want me to stop?” he presses, just to be sure.
“I’m already close, and you haven’t even moved yet,” you confess through a breathless chuckle. “So, no… I don’t want you to stop…”
The only way he can fuck you properly is on your side. The air mattress gives less under your weight in that position, with you wrapped in his arms and with your leg thrown over his hip. He curls one hand under and over your back while his other digs bruises onto the plush skin of your ass, pulling you into him every time he thrusts inside of you.
Your strangled whines and his grunted moans echo through the expanse of your empty apartment.
“Tell me it feels good,” he pants against you — warm breath fanning over your jaw, nose bumping against your own. “Tell me you want me.”
You obey without thinking, babbling brainlessly.
“Feels so good…” you whine through gritted teeth, digging crescent shapes into the skin of his freckled shoulders. “Want you so bad— Want you to make me cum— Fuck, I want you—”
Want you, want you, want you.
You repeat it like a mantra.
You cum on his cock a second later, and it feels like praying.
The pretty stranger is not next to you when you wake up on the half-deflated air mattress the next morning.
Golden sunlight peeks through the blinds in flaxen streams from where you’d forgotten to close them the night before. You squint your eyes and blink rapidly to clear the haze of sleep, trying to place when the stranger must’ve left. You hadn’t felt him get up, so you figure it must’ve been pretty early — right after he fucked you so good it put you to sleep, maybe.
His clothes are gone. The only trace of him ever being there is the imprint of his body in the tousled sheets beside you, and in the soreness in the very pit of your stomach where you can still feel him inside of you.
A distant part of you misses the stranger, but a bigger part of you is thankful — because the only thing worse than a one-night stand with a stranger you just met, is having to share awkward goodbyes the morning after with a stranger you just met.
“Thank god…” you grumble as you stretch your tired limbs, plucking your phone from its charger on the floor before trudging down the hall for the bathroom. You only vaguely notice that the door is shut, and that there’s a thin strip of light peeking out from underneath it before you swing it open.
“Morning,” a familiar voice greets, gruff and half-muffled.
Your head snaps up from your phone. Your tired eyes go wide when you’re faced suddenly with the pretty stranger from last night — already dressed for the day and brushing his teeth by the sink. Your feet stumble backward on instinct. Your back hits the doorframe as your free hand flies to your pounding chest.
“Oh, my god—”
“Shit. Sorry,” the older man laughs. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He bends at the waist to spit into the sink.
You try to catch your breath.
“I… I didn’t know you were still here… Sorry…”
He scoffs like he’s half-offended by the notion. “I wasn’t just gonna leave. I’m not that big of an asshole…”
Your brows furrow as you tilt your head to the side in a confused sort of look. Because that was sort of the point of one-night stands, after all — the leaving.
“Oh, and I, uh— I found a pack of toothbrushes under the sink,” he tells you. “I hope that’s okay.”
“No, yeah, that’s… That’s fine,” you shrug and cross your arms over your chest. You slouch slightly in place, trying to keep the hem of your sweatshirt from rising and revealing that you’re naked underneath it — ‘cause it still feels a bit weird, even though he got pretty well acquainted with your naked body barely six hours ago. “But, um… I do have to leave for work. Like, super soon, so…”
“You wanna ride?” the man wonders through the orange toothbrush in his mouth. “I can walk back down to Sonny’s. Bring my truck back around.”
“No, that’s— that’s okay.” You shake your head and laugh before you mean to, because so much kindness from a one-night stand feels nothing short of alien to you. “You know, we don’t… We don’t have to do… all this…”
Jack plucks the toothbrush from his mouth. The look of confusion that contorts his scruffy face matches your own as he echoes, “…All what?”
“You know…” you trail off with an awkward laugh. “The whole… song and dance of it all… The pretending we care…”
“I do care.”
“Right. Yeah. But… We’re never gonna see each other after this, right? So… Does it really even matter?”
Jack only then seems to remember that he had only just met you, not even twelve hours ago, and that the night before would very likely be the last time he ever got to touch you. He forgot that very important fact somewhere along the line, and tricked himself into thinking you really wanted this, wanted him. The realization hits him like a fist to the stomach.
“Oh… Right…”
He turns away again, half-mournful, and runs the toothbrush under the faucet. Your bleary eyes dart wildly over the weathered edges of his profile, right before you face twists with mortification.
“Oh, god…” you murmur to yourself. “I didn’t take your one-night stand virginity, did I?”
Jack manages a quiet laugh as he wipes his hands on a nearby towel.
“No. Not— Not really,” he tells you. “I think I’m just a little out of practice, you know? I haven’t been with anyone since I got married.”
“Oh, my god— You’re married?!”
“No!” he shouts, laughing louder at the horrified look on your face. “I mean, I haven’t had a one-night stand since before I was married. And definitely not since my wife died, so…”
“Oh, jeez…” you wince, shifting awkwardly on your bare feet. “Sorry…”
The sorrowful look you give him is the same look he’d been trying to avoid this whole time. It finds him very suddenly wanting to get out of here as quickly as he can.
“I’ll, uh… I’ll see myself out, I guess,” he tells you.
“Okay,” you nod with a wavering smile. “Thanks…”
He pauses mid-stride in the doorway, towering over you as he flashes you an amused look — all furrow-browed and smiling. “For what?” the man scoffs.
“I don’t know, actually…” you laugh. “I don’t know what I said that, I just… I felt like I should, you know? I had a pretty good time last night…”
You trail off, and only then realize that you hadn’t yet gotten his name.
“…Jack,” he finishes for you.
“Jack,” you repeat with a firm nod and a shy smile.
And he’s heard his own name a million times, but something about the way you say it sounds different — like everyone else has been saying his name wrong his whole life; like he’s spent years hearing it in a foreign language, and yours is the only one he really understands.
When he leaves your apartment, it’s with the knowledge that he’ll probably never hear his name the right way ever again.
You make it three hours on your first shift at the PTMC before all hell breaks loose — or, rather, a rollercoaster.
Several carts derail from the tracks at a nearby theme park, injuring everyone on board and many more on the ground below. It sends a sudden influx of patients straight to your emergency department. You do more in an hour than you did in weeks at your small-town hospital back home, where you interned and did the bulk of your residency, which now feels rather lackluster in comparison.
You’re still wearing the bright crimson blood from the emergency thoracotomy you did in the ambulance bay, when the heart of a young boy with a steel rebar through his chest gave out before he could be wheeled inside. You were forced to work quickly to cut through his chest cavity and reach through his ribs for his heart. You knelt on the gurney and pumped manually at the artery while the EMTs wheeled you to the nearest trauma room.
You’re only just finishing the transfusion on the patient when another trauma is called in.
You can still feel the boy’s heart in your hand when you peel off the bloodied PPE, replacing it with a fresher set of gown and gloves, as you follow Dr. Robby to the ambulance bay. You struggle to keep up with the man’s longer strides as he passes through the automatic doors, where the fresh air outside smacks you in the face with its sudden reminder to breathe.
“Holy shit…” you hear yourself huff, still half-dazed from the previous operation. “Is it always this bad? Please tell me it’s not always this bad.”
“It’s not always this bad,” the older man affirms without looking back at you. “But I have seen a whole lot worse than this, R3, trust me— Alright, what do we got?”
Robby peers through the back of an open ambulance parked crooked in the bay. He grits his teeth to help lower the gurney to the ground, and an older man comes into view. He’s bloodied and unconscious, and his camo uniform has been cut down the middle to accommodate intubation.
As you rush to Robby’s side, a familiar voice fills your ears: “My buddy, Officer Hiro, high-velocity GSW— He’s getting harder to bag.”
Another camo-wearing officer steps out when the gurney hits the ground. He stands at the head of the narrow bed, squeezing rhythmically at the intubation bag in his fist. His hand is stained with dark red blood. He’s immediately familiar to you, though in your daze, it’s hard to place from where.
You blink once and realize it’s the stranger from the night before — the one you all but kicked out of your apartment this morning. The man from Sonny’s who cleared your tab, who you shared a bottle of cheap wine with on your secondhand couch, who fucked you dizzy in the center of your flimsy air mattress barely twelve hours ago.
You’re filled with an immediate horror at the sight of him. You think death would be a kinder fate when his gaze locks suddenly with yours.
Jack’s eyes squint the same way yours did, like he’s not sure if it’s really you he’s seeing. They widen with realization a second later, but he turns away without a word, continuing to brief Robby on the man’s sustained injuries while you rush him to the nearest trauma room.
“Help me cut down a 6-0 ET tube,” he tells you without glancing your way.
You’re grateful for his apathy, feeling like you’ve been spared from the awkwardness of being faced with a stranger you were never supposed to see again. You wouldn’t have let him into your empty apartment at all if you knew, much less fucked him on an air mattress. And you maybe would’ve practiced a little more humility before kicking him out this morning if you realized he was gonna be your goddamn attending.
You’re only able to breathe again when you leave his side to cut the tube. The exhale gets knocked out of your legs all over again when you turn to face him once more, finding him wearing a smile that you already know means trouble.
“Fancy meeting you here, by the way,” he squints behind his safety glasses.
“Likewise,” you nod once, gaze averted, as you pass him the clear tube in your gloved fingers.
Jack works with deft hands, utterly concentrated, even despite his nonstop teasing. “That retail gig didn’t work out for you, I take it?”
“Retail?” you hear Robby murmur from somewhere behind you.
Your face burns hot.
“I was let go this morning, actually,” you try to joke, though your wavering voice gives your timidity away. “And I realized I always wanted to be a doctor anyway, so I just… Snuck in here, threw on a coat, and nobody was the wiser.”
You flash him a playful grin, which fades when you get a weird look from the nurses standing just behind him.
“I’m kidding!” you blurt with an awkward chuckle. “I-I’m totally kidding. I’m in R3— I just moved here from—”
“Hey,” Jack blurts, peering up at you from the glasses sitting low on his nose, and saving you from yourself. “Help me out with this ET tube, please?”
“Yes, sir…” you nod and don’t miss the smug grin he gives you in response.
You somehow manage to make it through the rest of the endotracheal intubation without making a total fool of yourself — until Robby catches you on the way out, that is, once Hiro is finally stabilized. He chucks his gown and gloves into the biohazard bin beside the door and asks how you and Dr. Abbot know each other.
Jack answers honestly before you can think to make up a lie.
“We met last night, actually,” he’d said. “At Sonny’s.”
“The bar, huh?” Robby nodded slowly. “Hope you didn’t come in hungover, R3.”
Your mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, until you were finally able to stammer out a measly, “O-Of course not, sir!”
Robby only laughed. “I’m joking, kid. I watched you keep a boy’s heart going with your hand shoved in his chest cavity… If you’re hungover, I can’t wait to see what you can do sober.”
He claps you on the shoulder before he walks away. You feel an overwhelming sense of relief at his words. Jack’s praise, on the other hand, makes you feel a little like dying.
“Good work back there,” he says, pulling off his gloves with a dull pop.
“Thanks…” you say with a wavering smile that you hardly mean. “But I, uh— I should probably get going, Dr. Abbot. Dr. Al said she needed me for—”
“Dr. Abbot, huh?” the older man scoffs. “This morning I was Jack.”
“Yeah, well, this morning you were a stranger and notmy attending, so…”
Your gaze is stern but glittering still. You tilt your chin to keep his stare when he towers over you — feet spread shoulder length apart, hands crossed behind his back, light eyes peering at you from the bridge of his nose.
Even despite his strong stature, something playful swims in his squinted stare as he jokes, “Would you have taken advantage of me, then? You know, if you knew I was gonna be your boss?”
You shove him hard by the shoulder, arguing in a sharp whisper. “I did not take advantage of you, Dr. Abbot.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack shrugs. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
You meet his smug smile with a pair of narrowed eyes that dart back and forth between his softer ones — all squishy around the edges with a look that makes your chest feel warm.
“Don’t look at me like that…” you deadpan.
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve seen me naked,” you scold under your breath, brushing his shoulder with yours as you storm past him down the hallway. “It’s not appropriate, Dr. Abbot.”
Jack watches you with a smile, anyway, while you walk away from him with something swift in your step. He can’t help but eye the way your scrubs cradle your body, which he had held in his hands only last night. He can still remember how your ass felt in his palms; how the sweat on your neck tasted on his tongue; how your features crumpled together right before you came for him.
He goes half-dizzy at the memory.
Not appropriate, indeed.
You’re about an hour away from finishing your shift when you nearly lose your first patient.
Everything that came before ceases to exist in that moment.
You had seen death. A lot of it. You had scrubbed in on numerous surgeries where patients flat-lined on the operating table. You’d seen illnesses eat a person from the inside out. You’d seen children try and fail to fight off infections that their tiny bodies just couldn’t handle.
But this time was different — because this time felt like your fault.
Amara was a six-year-old girl who was rushed in, barely conscious, with a fever of 105. By all accounts, she should’ve been your easiest patient of the day — considering the shitshow that preceded her arrival. And you did everything right. Everything that med school taught you.
You wrapped her in ice packs along her major arteries, gave her a cold IV to cool her internally, and did every test in the book to determine the cause of her raging fever.
“I just don’t understand why her fever isn’t slowing down,” you’d rambled to Jack in the break room, where he’d insisted you take a breather, when he saw the moment getting to you. “I’ve done everything right. It should be going down by now, right?”
He’d stopped your pacing with a firm but gentle hand along the outside of your elbow.
“Fevers can be stubborn. You know that,” Jack had told you, ducking down to catch your gaze when you tried to look away. “This isn’t about you missing something, alright? It’s just her body taking time. We can reassess when the tests come back. We’re not out of options yet.”
But then she started seizing, and it triggered an arrhythmia in her heart, and the organ started to fail altogether. She’s flat-lining before you can blink.
You quickly lose count of the minutes you spend doing compressions. You vaguely hear Jack from behind you, telling you to switch positions like you’re supposed to, but you keep on going.
“I got it,” you’d spat through gritted teeth. “I’m fine.”
Your arms grow slowly numb from the strong, never-ending rhythm. Beads of sweat begin to pearl along your forehead, rolling slowly down your temples. You can feel your hair tie slipping from its place, already loose from the long day, before it hits the ground somewhere by your feet. The wild strands fall around your face, billowing with every punched breath from your mouth.
When you feel Jack standing behind you, gathering your hair into his gentle fist, you don’t think about how he was a stranger to you barely a day ago.
You don’t think about what he did to you with the hand he uses to pull your hair back. You don’t think about the awkward exchange from that morning, or the constant teasing all afternoon, or the way you haven’t been able to think without running into thoughts of him.
You think only of saving this girl.
It takes three rounds of epi to get her heart back into a shockable rhythm, and 40 joules to reset it to its natural beat.
Jack helps you off the bed with two firm hands around your arms — because your legs had all but locked into position from the lengthy compressions — and tells Langdon to take over the remainder of the young girl’s care.
“You alright?” you hear the man ask, while you blink the haze of adrenaline from your eyes. He pats you gently on the back, in a silent reminder to breathe. You nod slowly through a wavering inhale, and he smiles at the wordless affirmation. “You ever thought about going into cardiology?”
“That’s not funny,” you deadpan.
“I’m not joking,” Jack scoffs. “I think you might be the heart whisperer, Doc.”
The nickname catches on by nightfall.
Robby tells you to clock out early, that you deserve it, and you don’t push him on the matter.
You don’t say a word, actually, as you trudge to the locker room for your bag and leave through the waiting room doors. The cool night air rushes over your burning skin like silk. Your tired body migrates on autopilot to the park across the street, where two benches sit facing each other, lit only by a single amber streetlamp.
You don’t know how long you sit there by yourself — only that you’ve counted nearly a hundred bricks in the pavement by the time Jack Abbot finds you.
“You’re not thinking about quitting, are you?” he wonders aloud, shattering your train of not-quite thought.
“Hm?” you perk on instinct as your head whips to face him. “Oh. No. Of course not… No one else would take me.”
Jack exhales a quiet laugh at your quip and slides his camo bag from his shoulder. He huffs as he plops down onto the creaking bench beside you, leaving an aching inch or more of space between your bodies.
Though he’s out of the tactical gear he’d arrived in — left now in his baggy pants and a form-fitting undershirt — the scent of blood still lingers on his skin. It’s only partially drowned out by his cologne; the smell of musky leather reminds you instantly of Sonny’s Tavern.
“Well, I’m sure Common Thread around the corner is probably hiring,” he jokes.
You feel yourself laugh for the first time all day.
“I don’t think Common Thread has been around since the 90s.”
“Really?” the older man huffs, crossing his strong arms over his chest and exhaling a punched-out breath. “Jesus… I need to get out more.”
Your eyes dart over the edges of his profile when he turns away. Your gaze grows soft and wet with the apology you’ve been thinking about all day, which rises to the tip of your tongue just now.
“I’m sorry, by the way,” you blurt. “For lying to you last night.”
Jack shrugs. “Who cares? We didn’t even know each other.”
“Yeah, but now we do— And now the rest of our relationship is gonna be built on the foundation of a stupid lie.”
Jack arches a greying brow in your direction. “Our relationship, huh?”
“Our working relationship,” you squint. “I’m not going out with you again, Dr. Abbot.”
“I didn’t even ask if you wanted to go out with me!”
“Well, no, but—”
“So do you wanna go out with me?” he blurts with a smug grin.
“No!” you shout, giggling despite yourself. “It’s not appropriate. We have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah?” he hums. “Where?”
“Here!”
“Right here?”
Jack glances down at where you motion to the space between your bodies. You nod with a poorly held back laugh, and he slides to close the distance between you. You feel almost suffocated by the warmth of his body heat. Your head spins when his thigh brushes the outside of yours.
“So, by your assessment, would you say that I am now crossing that imaginary line?” the older man jokes drily.
“I’d say you’re crossing several lines, Dr. Abbot.”
He meets your smiling eyes with something more serious glimmering in his.
“Do you want me to stop?”
You know that you could say yes and that all of this would be over with. All the teasing, all the lingering touches, all of the everything that came before. You could start over. Clean state. You’d be the R3, and he’d be the attending, and that’d be that. Only now that sounds like a total fucking nightmare. The thought of having any less of him now feels like ripping your own heart out through your chest.
You swallow hard and shake your head. “No… I don’t want you to stop.”
“Good,” he nods.
“Good,” you echo with a firm nod and stupid smile.
“We are clocked out now, you know?” Jack tells you, feigning an air of nonchalance. “I technically wasn’t even working in the first place, so… You know, if we kissed right now, I don’t think it’d violate that many HR policies.”
He catches your eyes flitting somewhere over his shoulder before you quip, “No, but your friends might look at us a little funny…”
Jack glances behind him and finds the rest of the day shift crossing the street together. Their distant chatter draws nearer, and you fight back a laugh when the older man slides slowly away from you — before any of them could catch how close the two of you had been. Donnie arrives first, and places his square cooler in the space between you.
“Dr. Abbot and The Heart Whisperer…” the man croons in place of a greeting. “Here. Take the first beer. You deserve it.”
“Thanks…” you murmur shyly and take the chilled can he motions to you. It opens with a heavy click and a faint hiss. You take a slow sip from it, and nearly forget how to swallow when you feel Jack’s eyes still on you. “Do you… Do you guys do this after every shift?”
“Not always,” Robby answers from the bench across from yours, popping open his own beer with an expert hand. “Usually it’s a lot more lively than this, but…”
“So it’s not always that crazy in there?”
“No, it’s always a little crazy,” Santos quips from where she stands between Mohan and Whitaker. “But today, Heart Whisperer, is what we call baptism by fire.”
“Yeah,” Samira scoffs. “Our first shift was the Pittfest shooting.”
“Oh, shit…” you grimace.
“But the good thing is, I can pretty much guarantee that the next shift will be easier.”
You meet Mohan’s kind smile with a wavering one. “Yeah… I hope so.”
“So, what do ya say, R3?” Robby asks with a smile that’s mostly concealed behind his greying beard. “Think you’ll stick around after today’s shitshow?”
You ponder for a long moment, glancing down at the can you nurse in your lap. You trace the circular edge of the aluminum with your free hand as a smile curls slowly at your mouth.
“Yeah, I think I will…” you hum with a slow nod. “If only because I live right across the street from this really nice donut shop— like the best you’ll ever have, so...”
“So now you have to like it here, huh?” Jack finishes for you, with a knowing squint in his light eyes — because he can still taste your mouth the same way he can still taste the late-night pastry he’d shared with you the night before.
“Yeah,” you smile back. “And it’s crazy because I really wasn’t planning on liking it here…”
“Well, donuts tend to have that effect on people, I’ve found,” he squints behind the beer he brings up to his mouth
“Oh, do they?” you wonder sarcastically.
Jack nods slowly, licking the sheen of alcohol from his mouth. “Yeah, actually.”
“Oh, please, tell me more, Dr. Abbot,” you say, giggling despite yourself.
While you watch Jack talk out of his ass about a statistic he totally made up, you vaguely hear Santos turn to Whitaker and mumble, “Okay, so is ‘donuts,’ like, a euphemism for something, or did this shift make us all ten times dumber?”
synopsis: three times you almost kiss river cartwright... and one time you do.
author’s note: giggled and kicked my feet the whole entire way through writing this — you'll understand once you've read it! do i have four other river fics currently in my drafts? yeah, maybe! i had so much fun writing this.
wordcount: 3,402
River Cartwright x Reader
The lock on the door you’re currently trying to pick is old enough to be stubborn, but not old enough to be easy. The only light you have to work from is the dim yellow street lamp above you, casting long shadows on the ground, and your knees are beginning to scream from where the rough concrete of the narrow alley digs into them through your jeans.
River crowds over you, shielding you from the busy street beyond as he watches you work. It’s beginning to get on your fucking nerves, to be honest, his sharp blue eyes honed in on the movement of your fingers as you work at the lock.
“Why don’t you try–”
“For fuck’s sake.” You sigh heavily, not even sparing him a look as he starts to backseat lockpick.
“I’m just suggesting–”
“Did I ask for suggestions?”
“No, but this doesn’t seem to be your strong suit–”
You scoff. “Oh, like it’s yours? You could barely–”
“At least I was getting somewhere, you’re taking ages–”
“You rushed into it and nearly snapped the pick in the fucking lock!”
“Big talk for someone losing a fight with a door.” He mutters under his breath.
You fix him with your coldest, darkest scowl, opening your mouth to retort when the pick slips and embeds itself into one of your fingers, a hiss escaping your lips before you can stop it.
“What did you do?” His tone flips, immediately alert and concerned.
“Nothing.” You mutter, tucking your hand behind your back like a scolded child when he crouches beside you, too close for you to ignore.
“Which means something.”
“I’m fine–”
“Show me.” River’s voice is firm, inarguable, and you roll your eyes but hold out your hand anyways, muttering something about his dramatics.
Blood beads against your skin, and his jaw ticks. “Think I’ll live?” You snark, but he’s too busy digging around in his pocket to reply, and when his hand emerges, he’s producing a crumpled takeaway napkin.
“That’s disgusting.” Your nose wrinkles and you instinctively pull your hand away, even as he takes your wrist, firm and careful, wrapping the napkin tight around your finger.
“Yeah, well, it’s better than dripping DNA all over the door, isn’t it?” He mutters, fingers brushing yours as he knots the makeshift bandage, his head dipping close enough that his breath ghosts your hand. “There. That’ll do for now. But clean it off and change it as soon as you can.”
You shove down the warmth that floods you at the care, unable to think of a proper retort to throw at him as you go back to working at the lock, and finally, finally, there’s a dull clicking sound– and the door eases open.
You let out the breath you didn’t realize you were holding, looking up to smirk at River, who just rolls his eyes and ushers you into the building. Once inside, you both click on your torches, scanning the darkened security office before you in sync.
“Shit.” River hisses beside you, and you can’t help but agree with him – the office is deserted. Not just empty, but emptied – drawers hanging open, desks cleared, pieces of torn paper littering the ground. Your heart sinks at the realization that the two of you are too late.
“Fuck’s sake.” You groan, fully aware that Lamb is going to flay you alive for fucking this up. Before you can delve too far into your pity party, though, there’s the distant sound of a door closing, and you and River lock eyes.
Footsteps echo in the hall, and you look around the room frantically. The desks and cabinets are too thin to hide behind, the door to the exterior leads to a dead-end alleyway–
River grabs you by the hand, tugging you towards the wall to the left, and before you know it, he’s tugged the two of you into a supply closet, easing the door closed behind him and boxing you in.
Your back hits a metal shelf and you jerk forwards to avoid knocking anything over, instead stepping directly into River’s space, and his hand darts forward and settles on your waist to steady you. Your breath hitches in your throat from panic (among other things), your eyes adjusting ever-so-slowly to the darkness of the closet as the footsteps get closer and closer.
“I heard something, I’m telling you.” Someone barks, their voice gruff, and you glance over at River. His head is turned towards the door, angling his ear to hear better, and you really really need to keep your mind on the danger at present instead of how good his side profile looks.
“No one here, idiot.” Another voice, and then–
“Wait, is that–?” A third person. You lock wide eyes with River, knowing that he’s thinking the same thing you are – you’re officially outnumbered should it come to a fight. He raises a finger to his lips, only barely visible from the sliver of light coming through the door, and you nod, holding your breath as footsteps get nearer.
You’re so close you can feel his breathing get heavier, the rise and fall of his chest grazing your own as you swallow your fear. If they open that door you’re both so fucked.
He leans closer to you, one hand moving to slip past you as the hand on your waist digs in slightly, and your brain all but short circuits. You give him a bewildered look as his face gets closer to you, both delighted and yet utterly baffled at his idea that now is a good time for a first kiss, when he pulls back suddenly and you catch a glimpse of the can of bug spray in his hand – that he just got off the shelf behind you.
He cocks his head, an apologetic expression on his face, and you push down the disappointment that swells in your chest. He holds the spray in front of him, obviously intent on blinding whoever opens the door, just in time to hear voice number two speak.
“Fucking hell, a chocolate bar?”
“It’s just sitting there, and I’m hungry.” The third voice retorts, and then the footsteps retreat down the hall, their bickering fading into silence. The two of you stay frozen for much longer than necessary, the warmth of his hand on your waist searing into your skin and spreading through you rapidly.
In the thin spill of light under the door, his eyes catch yours – bright, sharp, something dangerous simmering there. For a second, it feels inevitable. His eyes slide down your face in a way that makes your breath hitch in your throat, and–
“Bug spray? Really?” The quip leaves your lips before you can stop it, effectively shattering the tension in the closet as he rolls his eyes and steps away from you, opening the door and peeking out.
“What were you gonna use, your torch?” He bites back, holding the door open for you once he’s deemed it safe, and you stifle the grin that threatens to spread across your face.
That smile is wiped entirely off your face moments later when you call Lamb to let him know the office was cleared out when you got there. “MI-fucking-useless, the lot of you.” He says as he hangs up, before you can even describe the men that were in there, and you squeeze your eyes shut and fight the urge to smash your phone on the pavement.
“Told you he was proud of you, did he? Great work and all that?” River meets your gaze from across the alleyway, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and you nod, sucking in a deep breath.
“Come on, let’s see if Roddy can track their movements – maybe we can unfuck this by finding out where they went.” You jerk your head towards the main road where he’d parked the car.
“I’m not calling him.” River calls, and your jaw drops.
“I called Lamb!” You retort.
“Roddy doesn’t do favours for me.” He shrugs as he climbs into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, he only does them for me ‘cause he wants to get in my pants.” You groan, sliding into the passenger seat, and River simply shrugs again, though you can see the corners of his mouth curling in the passing light from the streetlamps.
Roddy is, unfortunately, helpful – he follows the men on CCTV into a gray van, tracking the license plate of the van to a house not too far away. You give River the address and chew on your lip the whole drive there, worried you’ll be too late again, but when you ease the car into a quiet stop on the side of the road, the van is parked in the driveway.
By the time you’ve pulled in, the skies have opened and sheets of British rain lash down at the car, effectively striking out any notion you might’ve had about getting out of the car and trying to do surveillance on foot. You shoot Lamb a text to update him, rolling your eyes as the text registers as ‘seen’ without an actual reply.
River’s car is small enough that you keep bumping arms with him every time you shift in your seat, the suspense and tiredness of the night making you restless, and by the end of the first hour of the stakeout, you swear he’s starting to lean his elbow on your side of the center console deliberately.
“Keep to your side.” You grumble, knocking his arm back.
“Stop fucking wriggling.” Is his reply, not even looking at you as he scrubs a hand over his stubble and glares out of the window.
The house is quiet, the windows dark, and you’re beginning to wonder if you’ve been sent on a wild goose chase. By the second hour, your eyes are beginning to feel heavy, the rain battering the car only serving to add to your tiredness.
“First to fall asleep has to write the report.” River comments from beside you, and when you groan and look over at him he’s already watching you out of the corner of his eye.
“This is a dead fucking end.” You complain, readjusting in your seat, and he shrugs.
“Maybe. But if we ditch now Lamb’ll never let us hear the end of it.”
You heave out a sigh, knowing he’s right, folding your arms over your chest and squinting out into the darkness beyond. The silence after hums heavier than it should, his arm brushing yours when he shifts, pressing firmer into yours and staying there. You don’t shove it away this time.
“You still have that napkin on?” His voice breaks the comfortable silence, and you frown, glancing down at where your hand rests next to the gear stick, the napkin spotted with dried blood still firmly wrapped around your finger.
“It’s fine.” You tuck it into your fist, hiding it from his gaze, ignoring the fact that he’s looking at you.
“Just– Don’t let it get infected.” His voice is lower now, softer. Almost like he cares.
You don’t answer, and neither does he – not for a while. It feels like the two of you are holding your breath without even knowing why, the only sound in the car the dull patter of rain on the roof.
“Wait, what’s– Look, there.” River’s voice is barely above a whisper as he points towards the second floor window, and you have to squint and lean forward to make out the window through the rain.
“I don’t see–” You frown, scanning the house.
“No, look, that one.” He gestures again, and you narrow your eyes, having to lean into his side of the car to try and get a better look. There is, in fact, a light on in one of the windows now.
“Okay, so someone’s in there, it doesn’t mean–” You turn to tell him off but freeze when you realize you’ve placed your face inches from his own, too focused on the outside of the car to notice.
River seems to do the same, blue eyes darkened in the dim light from the streetlamp, and neither of you move. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and you watch his eyes dart down to your lips and then back up again, as if debating himself internally.
Fuck it, you think, heart pounding in your chest as months of these moments together build up in your mind, and you lean in, his breath ghosting over your face, mere centimetres from–
Your phone rings, lighting up the darkness inside the car and shattering the silence, and you swear to god your eye twitches at the interruption.
You and River jolt backwards from each other, as if caught in the act, and you scramble for your phone with shaky fingers and answer the call. You can just make out the pink flush on his cheeks as you hold the phone up to your ear, but are immediately distracted as the voice of Lamb on the other end begins to speak.
You miss the way River bites back his smile at your annoyance, watching your face scrunch with increasing irritation the longer the phone call goes on, barely managing to get in any responses besides ‘yes’, ‘wait’, and ‘no sir’, eventually hanging up and dropping the phone into your lap with a huff.
“Lamb’s calling off the surveillance,” You meet River’s eyes, your previous shared moment disintegrated entirely by the irritation you both feel. “Apparently he sent Louisa to gather other intel, and they found enough that they don’t need us to watch them anymore.”
River tugs his bottom lip in between his teeth, obviously frustrated. “Right, so we just–”
“Return to Slough House and make a report, yeah. Three hours of surveillance for fuck all.” You dig the heels of your palms into your eye sockets, shoving back the fury and waking yourself up.
“Fucking dickhead.” River curses as he puts the car into drive, and you’d have to agree with him.
Slough House in the wee hours of the morning is deadly silent and starkly lit by fluorescents, and you really don’t think you want to find yourself here at four in the fucking morning ever again. You’re never usually the first one in, that’s always Catherine and Lamb (mostly because you’re fairly certain he sleeps here) but you and River had wanted to get the report filed so you could actually go home and rest.
The two of you collapse into your desks in your shared office, River bagsying the report on the surveillance (i.e. a couple sentences that summarize all the nothing you saw), and you’re left to type up the office break-in; detailing the interior, descriptions of the men, and your intel from Roddy.
You make a cup of tea and then get to work, fingers pounding the keys like they’ve personally offended you, but you’re tired and more than a little distracted from certain situations you’d found yourself in earlier, so you end up writing a few sentences over and over before they actually make any sense.
Across the office, River pretends to focus on his work and fails spectacularly.
“If you stare any harder my desk might just burst into flames.” You speak without looking up, watching River duck his head back down in your peripheral.
“Just wondering why it’s taking you so long to write up the report.”
“Quality takes time, which is not something I’d expect you to understand.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is.” You can hear the smile in his voice, but there’s something else there, something you don’t dare read into while you’re trying to describe the unique vocal inflections of the men in the warehouse.
“That’s how it is.” You smirk.
The words settle into a strange silence between you, and you press the delete key a little harder than necessary just to shatter it.
“You’re still wearing that bloody napkin, aren’t you?”
You open your mouth to call him a mother hen and tell him to back off, but the words die on your tongue when he suddenly appears beside your desk.
“Let me see.” He crouches beside your chair, and your cheeks flush involuntarily.
“River–”
He rolls his eyes, holding his hand out expectantly, and you place your hand in his faster than you’d care to admit, watching him unwind the napkin gently. When it falls away and reveals the cut from earlier, red and slightly swollen, he fixes you with a pointed look.
“I told you to clean it hours ago.”
“I was kind of busy, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Do you always have to get the last word in?” He sighs, standing back up, and you scoff.
“What, did you have more medical knowledge to tell me off with?” You blink up at him, eyebrows raised, and he runs a hand through his hair, looking away from you as if searching for the strength to deal with you, and you turn back to your monitor.
“You’re insufferable.” He counters, finally, and you scoff, finishing up a sentence.
“Oh, I’m–”
Your breath hitches when you go to look at him and realize he’s bent at the waist, his face mere inches from your own. The world beyond fades away when he leans in slowly, his hand cupping the edge of your jaw, fingers warm against your skin as he meets your eyes, searching for your reaction, blue eyes fierce but soft, and you lean–
The door bangs open.
You jerk back so hard your chair makes a metal squealing noise. River straightens like a soldier caught, both your eyes snapping over to the doorway.
“Well, well, well,” Lamb’s voice drips like oil. “If it isn’t MI5’s answer to Romeo and bloody Juliet.”
This cannot be happening right now, you think, begging to any deity that will listen that this is some kind of twisted nightmare and not your living reality.
“Christ,” Lamb mutters, grin splitting his face open as he looks between the two of you. “What’s all this, then? Dry-humping over duty logs? Filing reports as foreplay?”
“Fuck off.” River snaps, ears pink.
Lamb’s wolfish grin grows wider. “Oh, don’t mind me, just pretend I’m not here! Same way I’m going to pretend you’re not turning this place into a knocking shop.”
He turns and disappears down the stairs, muttering about HR complaints and disinfectant until you hear the creaky metal front door swing shut behind him.
The silence after is a live wire. Your pulse hammers in your ears, but slowly, the blazing heat in your cheeks starts to dissipate, the mortification burning under your skin lessening ever so slightly as you look back up at River, who’s staring at the empty doorframe like he can set it on fire with his mind.
You can feel the moment you cast caution to the wind, the various almosts of the night driving any rational course of action out of your mind. Fuck it. You clear your throat, feeling fiendish.
“Where were we?”
His eyes cut to you, wide at first, then narrow and dark and full of things that do not belong in this room. His mouth curves, wicked and quiet, bending back down until he’s hovering right above your face, dimples forming on his cheeks that betray his attempt to hide a growing smile as he places a hand on the back of your chair, boxing you in.
“Nowhere good.” River says like it’s a promise, and finally (finally) seals his lips against yours. The kiss is sweet but full of fervour, both of you feeling the frustrations of the evening come to a head, his hand sliding up the back of your skull and tangling into your hair.
You wrap your fingers in the front of his coat, pulling him down to you, and he nearly stumbles at the action but at the last second rests his knee on your chair, between your thighs, to steady himself. The action makes goosebumps erupt across your skin, and you make up your mind then and there.
“My place is closer than yours.” You utter when you break away for air, not even waiting for him to ask the question, and he huffs out a laugh against your neck, the sound causing warmth to flood your body.
“Lead the way.” He mutters against your skin, and you beam.
Summary: Desperate to outrun a secret that could cost you your life, you seek refuge in a small mountain town. Its deep forests and small cabins make it the perfect place to hide, but the travel website hadn’t mentioned anything about the quiet, burly lumberjack that wouldn’t leave your thoughts. No one had warned Bucky about you either.
Warnings: Beefy!bucky, angst, references to death/crime, injury, toxicity, eventual smut (minors dni, marked **), a bit of slow burn!!
Summary: The gossip that buzzes around in the teacher’s lounge is that sweet, sensitive, divorcé Steve Rogers is hot-for-teacher. His daughter’s first-grade teacher, to be exact.
Steve Rogers x Petite Reader
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