BJ. 40. She/Her. Fangirl, Whovian, Trekkie, Fannibal, Mythical Beast, Nerdfighter, etc. Current Hyperfixations include Criminal Minds, Top Gun Maverick, and Lewis Pullman. Not Particularly Super.
dandelion!Clark getting desperate and face-fucking his lovely gf <3 lovely gf being a little shit as usual
pairing: clark kent x fem!reader
part of the dandelion series (click here), but can be read as a standalone drabble. k bye
——————————
“Baby, check it out,” you say, stepping into his bedroom, half dressed in your bra and underwear in preparation for a shower. “We have matching panties.”
He glanced down, eyes locked on the red panties for a moment before looking back up at you, partially amused. Definitely aroused. But he wouldn’t tell you that. He crossed his arms, raising a brow.
“Ha ha,” he deadpanned.
You laughed. “Oh, come on. Your fault for having your panties on the outside of the suit.”
“They aren’t panties.”
“They totally are, baby,” you argue back, walking back into the bathroom.
“They’re briefs,” he asserted.
“Bloomers, maybe.”
He frowned, walking in after you. He opened his mouth to argue, but it fell flat the second he saw you standing there nude, testing the temperature of the shower.
“Gosh,” he huffed under his breath.
You glanced at him, a smirk playing on your lips. “Thought you said you were getting dinner started?”
“I can think of something else I want to eat.”
You snorted once. “Go on, kitchen. I’m hungry.”
He pouted. “But—”
“You can have me for dessert.”
Clark’s eyes went wide, then he nodded frantically. “O-okay. Yeah.”
Clark tried. He really, really tried to focus on dinner. Pasta. Easy. It came out a little overdone, though. Garlic bread. Easy. He still burnt the edges a bit.
He couldn’t get his mind out of the gutter, and couldn’t stop thinking about taking you in every way possible. He was wound up, to say the least. It had only been three or four days since you’d last had sex due to an influx of work, inside and out of the office. But it felt to Clark like it was ages. He was desperate for his girl. Seeing you naked sealed his fate: he needed you bad.
You walked into the kitchen, breathing in deep at the smell of the food. You were in one of his sweaters, a pair of his boxers, and your hair was tied up. He swore he could cum untouched right there.
“You okay, honey?” you asked with a raised brow when he just stared, cheeks pink.
“Y-you’re gorgeous.”
You smiled a little, still a tad concerned. “You’re flushed.”
“I’m horny.”
“Oh.”
He sighs, almost embarrassed. “I just missed you. A lot.”
You murmur a few soft words to him, promising you’ll make it all better between kisses. He didn’t expect you to do it immediately. He gasped as you tugged down his pants, stroking his aching cock. His hands gripped the kitchen counter behind him, eyes fluttering shut.
“B-baby, dinner—”
“We’ll eat after this. Let me take care of you.”
“Oh, gosh,” he moaned, peeking his eyes open just in time to see you take his soft head into your mouth. Warm and wet and perfect as always. “You’re so pretty. So good to me, my baby. My baby. I—”
You glanced up through your lashes, sucking harder as you took more of him in, inch by inch. Your tongue swirled around the tip of his dick, tracing the two prominent veins underneath it. He tried really hard not to buck into your mouth, but he couldn’t help it.
“Mm…” you hummed, pulling off for a second, stroking him fast. He whimpered, you grinned. “You can take control. Fuck my face.”
“H-huh?” He blinked fast, looking absolutely fucked out. “No. No, I don’t wanna hurt’ya, sweetheart. S’too big.”
“I’ll hit your leg if it’s too much. Just… please? It’s so hot, Clark. Don’t say no.”
He whined, the idea alone causing his length to jump in your grip. “You sure? Positive?”
You just nodded, drawing one of his hands off the counter and to your head. He swallowed, moaning deeply as you sucked his head again, then let your mouth go a little more lax to prepare for him. He tried a few experimental thrusts first, slow and deep.
Soon, you were drooling. Both ends.
His hands were in your hair, guiding your head as he fucked into your mouth. Your eyes rolled back, his cock hitting the back of your throat over and over. It’d probably hurt a little in the morning, but you didn’t mind. If you got to hear his voice and see him like this, anything was worth it.
He whined, praises spilling from his lips. “You’re so… s’good. So good, baby. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
You hummed softly around him, the vibration making him whine again. He committed this to memory. Your face covered in tears, but not unhappy ones. The smell of your shampoo, his body wash on your skin, and your arousal swirling around him in waves. The way you gurgled around his thick length stuffing your mouth full.
“Golly,” he whispered, cumming hard with a loud grunt of your name after only a few minutes.
You swallowed up everything he had to give.
It was officially official. You’d tried rationalizing that it was too soon. But he’d already slipped up once and nearly told you.
You were in love.
He looked down at you, stars in your eyes looking back at him. He gave a shaky smirk, still breathing heavy as he pulled out of your mouth. He wiped a drop of his cum off of your lip, pressing his thumb back into your mouth for you to suck.
“I adore you,” he said softly, too gentle for having just finished down your throat. “We should… ya know, probably eat dinner now. I still want—uh, dessert.”
You just smiled from on your knees, looking up at him in equal adoration. “Guess my dessert came first.”
Description: Dirty, filthy, messy… the suit and the sex. Clark just can’t say no.
Pairing: Clark Kent x fem!Reader
Warnings: shameless smut (porn with hardly any plot, oral (fem receiving), dirty talk, praise kink, scent kink but not just clark this time, clark breaks a table, gross dirty icky sex, p in v unprotected)
Word Count: 2k
a/n: it’s still mr. corenswet’s birthday where i live so happy birthday to our baby. also another entry into the original drabble series, now entitled ‘dandelion’. wow. feeling inspired clearly. can be read as a stand alone tho :)
dandelion masterlist here
It was getting harder every day not to jump him at any given chance. You’d had him once, and now you felt entitled to your big, beefcake of a boyfriend any time you felt like you needed to be bent in half. Luckily, he was very accommodating.
After that first time, he was near-obsessive. He always wanted a hand on you, always wanted a kiss or twelve, always wanted his girl attached to his hip.
You sat very impatiently on your couch, watching him on the news take down some freaky alien beast in midtown. It always had your heart racing.
One, because you really cared about him and wanted him safe.
Two, because you knew the second you saw him again you’d be all over him like cat hair on a black tshirt.
You perked up the second he appeared at your apartment, tapping gently on the glass before letting himself in.
“Hi, honey,” he greeted with a soft smile.
You grinned a little, but your mind was elsewhere.
Holy hell.
He was in the suit still: already sexy. But he was covered head to toe in ash and dust and dirt and… fuck. Nobody should look that good being so dirty. His hair was a little messy, but that one perfect curl was still in place against his forehead. His face was dirty, but even all that dirt couldn’t hide his dazzling smile and cutie pie dimples.
“God, you’re hot,” you stated plainly, looking him up and down from your place on the couch.
He blushed. “Quit it.”
“Come here.” You reached out for him, and he took a few steps closer. “Come on. On the couch, we’re gonna make out.”
“Honey, I’m filthy,” he stated, hands on his hips, looking all Superman-ly.
You smirked. “Oh yeah? Are you my dirty boy?”
He frowned, muttering your name as if scolding you. You merely smiled again, dropping off the couch and onto your knees.
“Baby. Come on,” he sighed, knowing what the inevitable always was: complete and utter submission to your will. “At least let me take a shower first.”
“But you’re so pretty like this. My hero,” you practically purred, crawling towards him, hands skimming up his thighs.
He let out a short, shaking breath. “You’re mean.”
“Mhm.” You nuzzled the growing bulge in his little red briefs, cheek against his dick. “I missed you.”
He reached down, palm against the top of your head. He chewed on his lip, just watching you for a moment. He would say he hated how you could make him give in like this, but he liked the result far too much to be too worried about the process in getting there.
“You’re so handsome.”
Clark let out a sharp breath, reaching down to haul you up to your feet. “Come here.”
You giggled, letting him kiss you hard, tongue instantly flicking over your lip. You opened for him, letting him take charge a little. It made him feel special. He picked you up, walking you to the kitchen table and plopping you down right on the surface. He tilted your head up to his as he kissed you, breaking away to move down your neck.
“You’re no fair,” he muttered into your skin, hands tracing over your body.
“Okay, big guy. Let it out.”
“You’re mean.”
“You’re sexy.”
He groaned, nipping your skin. You let out a sharp gasp, devolving into a pleased little laugh. His hands slipped up your thighs, tugging at the band of your sweatpants until he wrestled them down and off your legs.
“You’re gross. I’m covered in dust and soot.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Baby.” He frowned at the language.
“Fine. I don’t give a shit,” you corrected.
He shook his head, dropping to his knees. “Guess that’s a little better.”
You watched with bated breath as he pulled your legs over his shoulders, the bright blue material of his suit slightly rough under your thighs. He ripped your panties clean in two, tossing the scrapped fabric over his shoulder before pressing his lips directly to your aching cunt.
“O-oh fuck. That’s it,” you moaned with a smile on your face. He looked so cute.
He groaned against you, tongue flicking out to trace between your folds, circling around your puffy, eager clit. He breathed in deep, the scent of you so close and so ready for him feeding his need. He closed his lips around your clit, sucking hard. You whined, his name a mumbled mess on your lips, your hand gripping his hair after tossing a small piece of rubble out of the strands. He grinned against you, pleased to get such a reaction.
“Yeah?” He glanced up at you, licking through your folds again.
“Shut up.”
“You don’t want that.”
You groaned, his tongue diving into your soaking hole, thrusting in and out a few times.
“N-no. Never stop ta—talking t’me,” you breathed out, back arching off the table. “Love your voice.”
He just smiled, flicking his tongue against your clit quickly. He pulled back for a moment, much to your dismay. You watched as he spit on two of his fingers, wiping them somewhat-clean on the edge of your shirt.
“Don’t wanna hurt ya, baby,” he drawled, kissing your thigh once before plunging one fingers directly into you. “Mm… there you go. Nice and clean for my girl. How’s that feel?”
You whined, Clark’s finger moving quick. “You’re a dick.”
“I know, honey,” he replied casually, adding his second finger.
You whined again, his name spilling from your lips as he closed around your sensitive clit again. He sucked you hard, licking every now and then to soothe the pressure. His hand didn’t slow down, hitting that spongy, delicate spot inside of you again and again like it was nothing. Clark nipped at the nerve bundle, drawing a sharp breath from you, your body jolting hard. He chuckled into your skin, kissing your cunt gently.
“There’s my girl. You’re close, huh? I can feel you squeezing me like you’re about to finish.”
You nodded, hardly able to keep your eyes open. “Y-yeah.”
He sucked again, eyes trained on you as he watched you writhed under his touch until you were finally hitting that peak. He didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. He just stared as you cried out his name, his cock jumping beneath the suit at seeing his girl come apart on his fingers. He kissed your sensitive skin a few more times, each touch making your body jump like you’d been electrocuted.
“All better?” He pulled his fingers from you, kissing your thigh until he reached your knee. “Hm?”
You swallowed, then nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. You want more?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, standing up. “Can I take the suit off?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” you replied with a short laugh.
“You don’t want me to be inside you?”
You paused for a moment, lifting yourself up into a half-seated position. “Okay… In that case…”
He laughed, starting to pull it all off. You tugged off your tshirt, his old Mighty Crabjoys band tee that didn’t quite fit him anymore. His eyes were glued to you as he tried to quickly, and very uncoordinatedly, shed himself of the dirty suit, kicking it away the second it was down his legs. He shoved off his boxers, pulling you closer in an instant.
“I missed you today. By the way,” he mumbled, giving you a short, sweet kiss.
You grinned. “Missed you too-oh, holy shit.”
He plunged into you, leaning his body over yours with your legs around his waist. He started a pace that had your eyes rolling back and body going limp on the table underneath him. His kissed down your shoulder, his hair tickling your jaw, smelling a little bit burnt.
“Clark,” you breathed out with a soft moan.
He pushed your hip down with one hand, picking up his pace. “Oh, thank you. You take it so well every time, baby.”
“Baby…”
“I know. I know.”
Your hands travelled over his still-damp skin. He smelled extra like himself like this. So very Clark. You finally understood his obsession with scent for once. Definitely appealing. You moaned, your face buried in his neck, breathing in.
“What’re ya doing, honey?” he grunted out, holding you closer.
“You smell good.”
He smirked. “Thought you said it was— ah— weird when I did that.”
“Mm… maybe. A little. But you… fuck. You’re all sweaty and… and you.”
He hummed, a little bit self satisfied. “Told ya.”
“Shush.”
He laughed, leaning further into you, his free hand gripping the edge of the table above your head. Your hands were everywhere: his back, chest, stomach, arms. Luckily, you had a strong grip on his back.
You heard something creak, and suddenly you were moving fast.
“Ah, sh-shoot,” he moaned, still inside of you as he caught you.
He broke your table.
“Clark!”
“Shh. Shh, it’s fine. I’ll get you a new one, or—or fix it, I don’t know. Don’t worry,” he huffed, readjusting you on the ground, pushing into you even harder. “Shit, don’t worry about it.”
“Bad boy,” you chuckled breathlessly.
“Quiet.”
You stopped, his tone a little more gruff than you were used to. God, that was sexy. You let him fuck you on the ground, his movements quickly getting jerky and erratic.
“Need’ya to cum.”
You whined. “I’m close. Close, baby.”
“Not enough,” he mumbled against your neck. He quickly flipped you around, your cheek on the cold ground as he re-entered you from behind. His hand snaked around your hips, rubbing fast at your clit. “Come on, baby. You can do it.”
You moaned again. “Fuck, baby. Don’t stop.”
“I won’t.”
You gasped, hands flat against the hard floor as you pushed back into him with each thrust until he groaned loudly, filling you. You whimpered, his cock throbbing against your walls, triggering your own release. You squeezed around him tight, your pussy fluttering on his cock, causing him to whine with your name on his lips.
“You’re too good to me,” he breathed out, palm against your lower back as he slowly stopped all movement.
He pulled out after a moment, groaning at the sight of him spilling out of your hole. He reached down, two fingers scooping up his cum to press it back into you.
“Where it belongs,” he muttered under his breath.
“And to think you were against hitting it raw at first.”
“Don’t call it that.”
“Hitting it raw?”
He sighed. “I had sex with my beautiful girlfriend.”
“Yeah, and nutted in her.”
“I’m trying to be romantic.”
You snorted a laugh, glancing over your shoulder at him. “Romance is shoving your cum back in me?”
“Well…” His cheeks went pink. “Yeah. Kinda.”
You grinned, sitting back on your knees, much to his dismay. “How about we take that shower now?”
“Yeah?” He smiled a little.
“Uh huh. Then we can maybe make a snack, have some wine, cuddle?”
“You’re perfect. I lo—l-like you. A lot.”
You blinked a few times. Uh oh. He just smiled, a little embarrassed at the slip up.
“I like you, too,” you answered after a moment, brushing a thumb against his cheek.
Clark leaned into it for a second, and kissed you softly. He took your hand, helping you up when he felt safe that you weren’t going to flip out.
Love.
Yeah.
He’d figure out when to say it the right way. Just not yet. Soon.
Description: Clark always wants to be so polite. His girl wants to climb him like a tree. I think he knows.
Pairing: Clark Kent x fem!Reader
Warnings: SMUT (masturbation, oral [m and f receiving], p in v, dirty talk, praise kink, scent kink, size kink, clark is a horny mf’r for his girl pretty much)
Word Count: 4.1k
A/N: so much for this being a drabble. technically part of a series, but can be read as a stand alone fic
dandelion masterlist here
Weeks had passed since that first date.
Weeks of feeling like you would positively explode if a gentle breeze blew the wrong way on your skin after being near Clark.
You’d been on a couple more dates, now, ending in those soft, polite kisses. You wanted to rip his clothes off, but he seemed so shy and gentlemanly. It hardly seemed fair to jump him out of nowhere.
Clark, however, was feeling even more impatient than you. Every time he was close, he could smell you. He’d become accustomed to what you smelled like in different moods, and it seemed you really liked it any time he let his eyes linger on you. Or when he kissed you. Or held your hand, or hugged you, or… like, most of the time he was near you in general.
It was making him crazy.
He smiled at you across the table in another meeting at the Daily Planet, noting how you shifted a little bit after catching his eye. He felt his heart flutter every time he saw you react to him in any way. As much as he wanted to be inside of you, he wasn’t some pervert. He actually liked you. A lot. He just also felt hot under the collar any time he thought of you.
It was worse when you got a new perfume. Not that he didn’t like what you wore before, but now? The scent with the natural smell of your skin mixed together was intoxicating. It was also embarrassing. Nearly every time he could smell the trail of scent you’d leave behind you, he was fighting tooth and nail not to get hard; and often failed.
At the end of your third date, he’d kissed you a little harder than he normally would. It made you weak in the knees, and even more needy than you usually were with him. His big hands dipping a little lower on your waist than usual, and the most gentle brush of his tongue against yours. You wanted more, but true to Clark fashion, he just had to be so coy and sweet.
You almost groaned in frustration when he pulled away, his cheeks a little pink as he flashed you a smile.
“Goodnight,” Clark murmured softly. “I… I really like this. Being with you.”
Fuck. You knew it’d be a long night the second you were alone. You swallowed and nodded.
“Yeah. I do too.”
He grinned again, kissing your cheek. “Okay. See you at work?”
“Yeah. See you then.”
He watched you walk inside, letting his eyes trail down your body when he was sure you wouldn’t notice. He couldn’t handle it. Being around you all night, watching you laugh at all his stupid jokes, smelling that gorgeous smell that was all you and the sweet perfume you wore… he needed relief. Badly.
Clark found himself at home within seconds, stumbling into his room in a love-drunk stupor. He ripped at the buttons of his shirt, breathing shaky and excited. He pushed the shirt off, tugging off his undershirt as well. He shoved his pants down in one go, dropping down onto his bed with a hand wrapping around his leaky cock. He let himself picture you.
“Please,” he whispered to nobody but himself, hips starting to jut up to meet his hand.
He couldn’t help but think of how it’d feel if it was your hand touching him like this. How big he’d look beneath your fingers. If you’d use your mouth, your pretty lips struggling to fit him in comfortably. If you’d swallow around him as you tried not to gag, his cock touching the back of your throat. He stroked himself faster, throbbing and pulsing with the need to cum. He wondered if he’d be able to smell you soaking yourself as he came down your throat, and how long it would take for him to make you come on his tongue as a thanks. How you’d move against him, if you’d stay still and let him work or if you’d be so desperate that you wouldn’t be able to help but to grind against his face. He’d be overjoyed with either option.
He reached his other hand down, wrapping both firmly around himself, thrusting up into his fists, pretending it could be you. But he knew it wasn’t the same. He knew you’d be so soft and warm. Tight and cozy and wet around his length as he bounced you on his lap until you were cockdrunk and a little bit dumb. He liked the idea of being the only person who could make it so that you’d turn off your overactive brain for a little while.
He pushed himself into his hands, imagining every possible scenario, certain he could smell you even now. He breathed heavy, murmuring little pleas and whines of your name before he was tensing, hips still jerking as he spilled over his knuckles. It was a full minute of cumming to the thought of his pretty girl. His girlfriend? Maybe he should properly ask, he thought. He wanted you as his.
He glanced down, his own release drenching his hands and thighs. He took a deep breath. Time for a shower.
You saw him at work the next day, his face a little blushy every time he glanced at you. It was sweet, but a little… unusual?
He was generally shy and it wasn’t unheard of for him to get a little red-faced every now and then. But all day? Geez.
“Hey,” you said softly, walking up to him at his desk that afternoon. He looked up with wide eyes beneath his glasses. “I’m finished for the day. You want to go get dinner or something?”
“Oh! I, uh… after work is no good. But maybe later? Dessert? I can bring it to your place?” He offered, glossing over the fact that he was going to be busy with the Justice Gang. He hadn’t exactly let the Superman secret slip yet. “If that’s okay.”
“You want to come over?”
He blinked. “Oh… I, uh—”
“I’d like that,” you offer, smiling at his flustered expression. “I’ll text you my address.”
“Oh. Okay,” he breathed out, his smile bright. “Great. Maybe like… eight? Is that okay?”
“That’s perfect.”
“Great.”
You smiled at him again, then left. You went home, body buzzing in anticipation. It’s not like you planned on attacking him or anything. Just… suggesting more. Also, you figured you should probably let him know that you’d one hundred percent seen him use his super-speed out of the corner of your eye a couple weeks ago. So much for that ‘secret’ of his.
You made yourself a light dinner, then took a long, hot shower. You dressed down, a thin tank top and soft pair of cotton shorts. Nothing overtly sexy, but not covering much. You figured that the hint of a nipple through fabric would probably do the job for someone as polite as Clark. It turned out to be true, judging by the way he tried to not let you notice he was staring at your chest the second you opened your front door for him.
“Hey,” you greeted with a grin.
“H-hiya. Hi.” He swallowed, trying to make sure he kept his eyes on your face. Nowhere else. But gosh, a tank top and shorts never looked so provocative before. He lifted up the small cheesecake in his hand. “Brought dessert. I remember you liked the strawberry cheesecake from the office Christmas party last year.”
You smiled softly. “That’s sweet. Thank you. Come on in.”
He ducked his head, clearly happy that he’d done good. He stepped inside of your apartment, looking around curiously. He toed off his shoes as you took the cake and brought it to the kitchen. He trailed after you, eyes darting between your home and your ass. He was feeling a little hot.
“You have a, uh… a nice place. I like it. Smells good in here.”
“Thanks. I try to keep it clean.”
He hummed once, leaning against the counter as you popped the lid off the cake.
“Not just that,” he said softly, watching your hands as you started cutting into it. “It just smells like— you. Your perfume I guess. Your skin.”
“You know what my skin smells like?” You laugh.
He flushed. “Oh. Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound so creepy. You just… you just smell good. You smell like you. It’s nice.”
“It’s not creepy. It’s sweet.”
“Oh.”
“I like you, Clark. Quit worrying so much,” you mention, glancing at him as you lick a bit of the strawberry syrup off your thumb.
His eyes followed the movement, his tongue running over his lip once. “I like you too. A lot.”
You just grin softly. You plate up the cheesecake, handing him both slices.
“Go sit in the living room. I’m gonna grab some wine.”
He faltered for a second. “I don’t really drink much.”
“I know. It’s only one glass, I know you do that sometimes. I don’t intend on taking advantage of you, you know?”
“R-right. Okay.”
You watched as he walked away. God, he has a cute butt.
Two slices of cheesecake and three glasses of wine later, two for you and one for him, you were definitely getting a little cozier. He pretended not to notice how you leaned into his side; you pretended not to notice his hand on your knee.
“Cat totally thought you and Big Blue were hooking up, by the way.”
Clark blinked, looking away from the movie you’d put on. “Pardon?”
“Since you’re always up his ass. She asked me after me and you started dating if you were getting some super-dick on the side,” you mention with a short laugh.
“Super-d—? That’s inappropriate.”
“And hilarious.”
“Oh, please.”
You chuckle, smiling up at him. Despite his verbal protest, his cute little dimples were still poking into his cheeks. He just looked at you, his eyes wide and sparkling.
“I really do, ya know… like you.”
“You said that,” you reply softly.
“I know. I mean it.”
You just look at him, heart fluttering and body thrumming as he leaned in, his lips on yours. It started off soft. Just a few soft, lingering kisses. You snuck a hand into his dark hair, not tugging but definitely gripping. Judging by the shaky breath that left him, you assumed he liked that. Your assumption was proven correct as he deepened the kiss, one strong arm snaking around your waist to pull you into his chest. You took that as your cue, swinging a leg over his hips, settling on his lap and right over the bulge in his pants.
He gasped your name against your lips. “Geez.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded, hands running over your hips and waist. “Yeah.”
Clark felt like he could explode, metaphorically and physically, when you started kissing him again. You were aroused. He knew it well. It invaded his senses and made him dizzy, pulling your hips over his before he could think twice about it. He groaned in the back of his throat when he felt the friction against the extremely obvious erection straining to get out. He nearly passed out when you made an equally needy sound.
“I like you,” he breathed out, voice wrecked already.
“I know, Clark.”
“A lot.”
You smiled, rolling your hips again with his instruction. “I know. I can feel how much you like me, you know?”
He whimpered. Full-on, whiny little whimper. He was smart, he knew he was. And strong. He could pull a building off its foundation. But now? With you on top of him, rubbing yourself on him like this? He felt weak and brainless. Every single blood cell that should be in his brain went straight to his cock. The only reason he didn’t feel embarrassed is the fact that he knew you felt the same way, your pretty face glossed over with want. He mumbled your name once, looking up at you with big, wet eyes.
“You done playing gentleman?” you asked teasingly, brow raised.
He pouted. “I am a gentleman.”
“I know, baby. But I am a woman who wants my boyfriend to touch me for once.”
He groaned. Boyfriend. Yay! “Golly.”
You laughed, for a moment. But it was cut awfully short when his hands snaked under your top, cupping your bare breasts. You let out a soft noise, letting him grope you as he kissed down your neck.
“Clark.”
“Mm…”
Clark was in heaven. Clothing strewn all over the floor and furniture, leaving a breadcrumb trail all the way to your bed. He laid between your legs in only his underwear, staring at you bare and spread out for him as he kissed up your legs.
“Y’so pretty,” he mumbled against your thigh, looking up at you with stars in his eyes through his frames. “Smell so good.”
“Clark, please.”
He smiled, licking his lip as he dragged a finger through your folds, watching the slick gather on his fingertip. He spread you open with two fingers, taking in a deep breath. He leaned in, kissing just over your clit, tongue flicking out to taste you.
“Taste even better.”
“Fuck,” you whined, watching him with hooded eyes.
“Mhm. Thank you,” he muttered, diving in again.
Your hands tangled in his hair, gripping tight as his mouth moved over you. He smiled against you, giddy to finally be tasting you. He’d thought about it so many times, if you’d taste as sweet as you smelled. His hips ground against the bed on their own volition, wanting to find any kind of relief from how he was throbbing in response to finally being able to touch you. He’d been so good, so patient, so slow… and it was finally paying off in a big way. He moaned into your pussy, tongue delving into you, practically fucking you on his mouth. His hands wrapped around your legs, keeping you wide open for him.
Your hips moved against him as much as they could, trying hard to get that extra friction. He ate you out like he was starving for it. You wondered if he’d thought about it as long as you did.
He looked utterly ruined, his cheeks flushed and hair a mess. His glasses were fogged. You reached for them, trying to pull them off, but he quickly grabbed your wrist.
“No,” he shook his head, lips brushing against you.
“Why? Wanna see you.”
“I— I need them.”
“You said you were nearsighted.”
He looked up, trying to see you through the fogged lenses. “W-well, yeah, I just…”
“Please?”
“I really can’t.”
You huffed, horny and needy and wanting to see him.
“Clark.”
“Baby, please. You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand about glasses?”
“They…” He paused. How could he say it without saying it? He needed them because he was secretly a space alien who wore his underwear on the outside to fight crime and rescue puppies? Not exactly a sentence that rolls off the tongue. “It’s… they’re a part of me.”
“They’re not surgically attached.”
“No, but they’re, uh…” he glanced down, your pussy still wet and needy in front of his face. He had half a mind to tell you he was Superman just so he could get back to business.
“Quit it.” You pulled the glasses off before he could notice.
He jolted, shocked and nervous and feeling suddenly like he was in deep. Shoot. He stuttered out your name, his heart pounding out of his chest. You’d seen him. His cover was blown. You’d probably freak out and not want to see him again and not let him make you cum and he’d go home with blue balls and a broken heart.
“I’m… I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you, I know. I just didn’t know how to say it, and we hadn’t talked about if we were like actually a thing until you called me your boyfriend today, and… and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Clark.”
“W-what?”
“I knew you were Superman. Now in the nicest way I can say it, shut the fuck up and get your face back down there before I finish myself off instead.”
He blinked in shock, almost ready to protest before you pushed his head back between your legs. He couldn’t argue with that. He moved faster, wanting even more badly to make you feel good. You knew. You knew who he was and it didn’t matter. He could cum right then and there if he wanted to.
You gasped, back arching high as he gained a new fervor he hadn’t had before. Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t feel like he had to hold back all the way now. Whatever it was, you didn’t really care. What you cared about was the way he humped the bed and whined against your skin as you came on his tongue.
You were in a haze, the orgasm knocking your feet out from under you. Clark watched you as you came down, chest heaving. Pretty tits and a pretty face and the cutest pussy, his pretty girl. He sighed dreamily, eyes flitting all over you as he pushed his underwear down his thighs.
You blinked your eyes open, mouth watering at the sight of a fully naked Clark Kent and his monster cock. Cat totally owed you twenty dollars, you knew he’d be massive.
“C’mere,” you mumbled, reaching for his hips, trying to draw yourself up to him.
“What?”
“Want it in my mouth. Please.”
“Baby…”
You leaned closer, hand wrapped around him. “Just for a little. Just let me.”
He let out a soft, shaking breath as you touched him. He memorized the way his cock looked in your hand. He knew he was big, but he looked almost scary in your grip. It was insanely hot. His mouth watered as you licked your lips, trying to prepare yourself to take him. He gasped, hand touching your hair softly as you leaned up to brush his tip against your lips. He shifted a little closer on his knees, trying to make it so that you were a little more comfortable.
“So sweet,” he said softly, barely above a whisper. “Sweet girl.”
You smiled up at him, no more of those adorably dorky glasses covering his gorgeous eyes. His lips stayed parted, clearly paying attention to every tiny move you made as you played with him. You let your tongue loll out of your mouth, dragging it against the blunt head of his dick. He moaned outright, hand resting in your hair now, hips jerking as you took him into your mouth.
Your eyes fluttered as you took more of him in, your mouth opening wider to try and accommodate his size. He felt hot and heavy on your tongue, the salty taste of his precum nearly making your eyes roll back into your head. You bobbed your head slowly, taking as much of him as you could. He whined and moaned and made sounds you never expected to hear from him. If only the world knew that Superman was so desperate when he got his cock played with.
He suddenly pulled you off, chest heaving.
“Wait. W-wait. Sorry, honey, I just… I don’t want to cum in your mouth the first time.”
“Hm?”
“Wanna be in you.”
You swallowed, eyes still trained on his length as it jumped in excitement. “Okay. Yeah.”
“Do you have, uh… I didn’t bring any…”
“You want to wear a condom?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “You should always practice safe sex.”
“That the slogan on one of your educational billboards?”
He frowned. You laughed.
“Just want to be responsible.”
You nodded. “Okay. But, for the record, I’m on a contraceptive.”
You almost laughed at the way he clearly struggled with that though. He knew wearing a condom was still the safe option. He also knew that he wanted nothing more than to finish inside of you.
You giggled as he made his decision, pushing you back on the bed and kissing you deeply. He pushed your thighs to your chest and settled on his knees, brushing his thick tip against your pussy, still puffy and needy from the way he’d made you cum with his mouth. He let out a slow breath, rubbing your clit with it a few times before he pressed at your entrance.
“I know it’s… it’s big. Just tell me if it hurts, okay?”
You nodded, watching as his face tightened in pleasure and anticipation. You forced yourself to relax, letting him press into you slowly. You moaned pathetically as he pushed harder, the first few inches hurting as much as they changed your life.
“Y’okay, baby?” He grunted out, slowly starting to rock his hips in that shallow depth.
“Y-yeah. Yes.”
“Good. You’re taking it so good, baby. Look at you.”
You whined, not expecting the praise. You fluttered around his length involuntarily, drawing another sound from him. He pushed in further and further with each slow, careful thrust.
“That’s my girl. So good for me. So pretty.”
He dropped down on top of you, wrapping your legs around his hips with strong hands, pulling you up onto his lap. You gasped, the new angle letting him fill you to the brim. He thrust into you quicker now, arms pushing you off and on as he moved his hips.
“Pretty baby. Perfect for me, fitting all of me in you. Y’feel this?” He grabbed your hand, pressing it to your lower belly to feel the bump of him hitting you deep with every rock of his hips. “Take me so well. Gorgeous girl. You’re doing such a good job.”
“Baby… baby, please. Clark.”
He smiled. Cocky son of a bitch. “I know, honey. You like it, huh?”
You nodded quickly, brain and body turned to jelly as he rammed into you like you were his personal fuck toy. He breathed heavy, a million little sounds leaving him between all of his praises. His face was buried in your neck, moving faster now. You held onto him as tightly as you could, one arm around his shoulders, the other hand tangled in his hair.
He groaned, trying hard not to cum with every move of your body against his. He’d never felt such a perfect fit, it was like you were two puzzle pieces finally clicking. He shuddered against your skin, kissing down your neck and chest until he found one warm, stiff nipple to pull into his mouth. He sucked, alternating between a steady suction and his tongue swirling and flicking over it.
“M’gonna cum,” you gasped out, feeling deliciously overwhelmed.
“Good. Attagirl. You can finish, baby. You can cum,” his voice rumbled against your skin, switching to the other nipple. “Cum for me. You can do it.”
You whined and whimpered, letting him pump into you a few more times before you cried out his name, legs shaking hard. He moaned in time with you, trying like hell to keep moving in order to let you ride it out.
If he thought you smelled good before, the scent of you like this could rouse him from a coma. He could only move for a few more seconds before he was buried himself deep, grinding more than thrusting as he gasped your name, mouth still open against your tit. You felt him fill you, cock twitching and throbbing inside of you.
“Shoot,” he whispered, kissing up your chest until he settled his face against your neck. “Baby. Thank you. Thank you.”
“God damn.”
“Never felt anything like you.”
You smiled drowsily. “Says you.”
He laughed, rubbing your back slowly, fingers tracing the skin. “I’ve been thinking about that a long time.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“I get half hard any time I smell you.”
“What’s up with you and smells?” you asked softly, leaning back to look at him with sleepy eyes.
“Super senses.”
“Ah.”
“Super smell. I pick up a lot of stuff, and you… you smell extra good when you’re— when you’re wet?”
“That is so gross.”
“Can’t help it. You’re delicious,” he said with his lips against your neck again, voice rumbling in his chest. “Can’t believe you knew this whole time.”
“Not hard to guess, Clark. At least not when I both date you and work with you.”
“Mm… shoulda told me you knew.” He kissed your neck, then your jaw, then cheek, and finally lips. He smiled against your lips. “Dropping that and then pushing me between your legs wasn’t fair.”
You smiled back. “Yeah, well. Also wasn’t fair to hide it. We’re both at fault.”
“Maybe.”
You kissed him again, just once. “So… Superman. Super cock. Super eater. You got super stamina, too?”
summary: shen says the one word that is forbidden in the E.R. You clean up his mess with Jack and he finds out why you changed to the night shift.
tags: fluff, jealousy, flirting, denial of feelings, possible medical inaccuracies
word count: 1.1k
a/n: hiii, i've been away for a little week (relaxing and also getting my period💀) i've been outlining another fic but i miss trouble and jack so here's a little blurb :D. it's set in the past before the main storyline begins but can also be read as a separate piece. i'm still working on the final chapter for d:m? but i don't know exactly when it'll be up. hope you like it! <33
Diagnosis: Married | Masterlist
The Pitt | Masterlist
Main | Masterlist
"It looks like it's gonna be a quiet night."
You groan, spinning around in your chair to glare at Shen. "Why would you say that?"
"What?" He shrugs innocently. "Don't tell me you believe that superstitious nonsense, too?"
Your mouth parts to argue when the ambulance bay doors burst open.
Shen winces. "…Oops."
You glare at him. "I hate you."
Abbot reaches the trauma bed and glances over his shoulder. "Trouble. With me." His voice carries across the department.
"I'm sorry!" Shen calls after you. You raise your middle finger in response.
The trauma room fills within seconds. The paramedics wheel the patient in, and the team transfers him onto the trauma bed in one practised movement.
You catch the essentials as the paramedics move the patient over: thirty-five-year-old male, high-speed MVC, GCS fourteen. Open right femur fracture. Possible unstable pelvis. Decreased breath sounds on the left. Hypotensive and tachycardic, with two large-bore IVs already running.
You slip your arms into a gown, but before you can reach for the ties, Abbot steps in behind you.
"Hold still." His gloved fingers gather the collar, brushing the back of your neck as he fastens the gown before moving to the ties at your waist. The contact lasts barely a second, yet warmth spreads beneath your skin.
You shove the feeling aside before you reach the bedside.
"Primary survey," Abbot says.
Parker looks up from the head of the bed. "Airway patent."
You slip your stethoscope into your ears. The patient's respirations are fast and uneven. You listen to the right, then the left. "Markedly reduced breath sounds on the left."
"What's your next step?" Abbot asks.
"Treat the breathing first. Likely a pneumothorax."
"How?"
"Insert a chest tube."
He nods once. "Good. Do it."
Without hesitation, you pull open the sterile tray as Parker preps the left side. Abbot remains just behind your shoulder. Close enough that you're aware of him. Far enough that he never gets in your way.
"Find your landmarks."
You palpate along the ribs. "There."
"That's it, Trouble," he murmurs into your ear.
You make an incision.
"Steady," Abbot says.
You spread the tissues with the clamp. His shoulder brushes yours as he leans in to watch. With one final push, you enter the pleural space.
"Go on."
You withdraw the clamp and slide a gloved finger into the opening. A sharp hiss of escaping air fills the room.
"Good. You're in," Abbot says quietly.
You sweep once, confirming the tract before guiding the chest tube along your finger and into the pleural space.
"Breath sounds improved," Parker calls, listening with her stethoscope.
You secure the tube while Vivi connects it to the drainage system. Abbot reaches in briefly to inspect the dressing before stepping back.
"Good placement," he murmurs before shifting his focus to the pelvis. Your heart skips a beat, but it's probably just the adrenaline.
The rest of the trauma goes smoothly. Parker secures the pelvic binder while you help splint the femur. Massive transfusion is activated, and the patient's blood pressure begins to climb. Once the primary and secondary surveys are complete, the patient heads to CT.
As the bed disappears through the doors, the room finally exhales. You strip off your gloves and gown before making your way back to the hub.
Abbot trails behind you. "Good work in there," he says, resting a hand against the counter beside you.
You grin. "You're a good teacher."
"Careful," he says, the corner of his mouth lifting. "You'll give me an ego."
Before you can answer, a plastic cup lands beside your elbow with a quiet thud, ice cubes clinking against each other.
You glance up, where Shen offers you an apologetic smile. "For jinxing your night. Hope you can forgive me."
You laugh. "I wasn't really mad."
"Still." He rubs the back of his neck. "You've got a rep—I'd rather stay on your good side." He nudges the coffee toward you before giving your shoulder an easy pat as he steps away.
When you turn back, Abbot is staring after him. His eyes are slightly narrowed.
"He said the Q-word," you explain.
One brow lifts. His eyes drop to the coffee.
You lift it slightly. "Want a sip?"
"No." Silence settles between you. He picks up a tablet, his thumb hovering over the screen. "...Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"You transferred to nights."
You nod, turning the lid to catch the straw. "Yeah?"
He glances toward the hallway where Shen disappeared, then back at you. "Shen works nights."
You pause halfway to taking a sip. "…He does."
"Was that part of the reason?"
You stare at him for a second, then you laugh. "Oh my God."
"What?"
"You think I switched shifts for Shen?"
He studies you for a moment before answering. "You didn't?"
You shake your head. "I switched because I wanted more trauma."
"And not because of Shen?"
You smile. "Is that what you've been thinking?"
He looks away. Something almost imperceptible loosens in his posture. "Maybe."
You look at him for a moment, tapping the plastic slowly with your fingers. "You've been thinking about why I changed shifts?"
Abbot hesitates. "…I was curious." He glances at the board before looking back at you. "I've been trying to get you onto nights for months."
You hum.
He gives a small shrug. "Then you suddenly transferred."
"And you thought it was because of Shen?"
Another shrug. "It crossed my mind."
"Well, it wasn't." A smile tugs at your lips. "But I'm flattered you noticed."
He meets your eyes, chin dipping. "I pay attention to everyone I work with."
You fight back a smile. "Mm."
His brows knit slightly as he turns more toward you. "You got plenty of trauma on days, though."
"Not like this."
"What's different?"
"The volume. The acuity."
He waits.
You shrug. "There's more trauma overnight."
"Is that all?"
You suck in your cheek. "…And the teaching."
He nods once. "The teaching?"
"Yeah."
"What about it?"
You look at him. "Well... You..." The word slips out before you can stop it. "I mean—you explain things well."
His eyebrows lift. "You switched because of me?"
Heat rushes into your face. "No—that's…"
"No?"
"That's not what I meant."
"Could've fooled me." Abbot's mouth twitches. His lips part to say something, but the slam of the ambulance bay doors cuts him off.
Across the department, Shen catches your eye and throws both hands into the air. "Sorry!"
You laugh.
Beside you, Abbot bumps your shoulder lightly. "Ready for another one, Trouble?"
You set the untouched coffee back on the counter and give him a sideways look. "With you? I suppose I could do worse."
"I know. I'm apparently a good teacher."
"Shut up." You swat his shoulder as you step past him. He chuckles lowly behind you.
pairing: dr. jack abbot x younger resident!reader
summary: You’re used to handling things alone, even if handling them means skipping meals, ignoring problems, and laughing before anyone can see where it stings. Then Jack Abbot starts noticing too much. He pays attention in that quiet, maddening way of his, all dry comments and practical solutions, until calling him your sugar daddy stops feeling like a joke and starts feeling like the only safe label for something you’re too terrified to name.
Because the problem with Jack Abbot isn’t that he wants to take care of you. It’s that you want to let him.
wc: 12.9k
a/n: and here it is, the accidental sugar daddy abbot fic i started over a month ago!! was initially toying with the idea to turn this into a multi-chaptered story but eventually settled on a one-shot instead because i have way too many ongoing fics i need to finish at some point lmao. i really wanted to take the sugar daddy trope and make it feel more grounded and in-character for jack, less flashy billionaire fantasy, more quiet practical care that gets way too intimate before either of you knows what to do with it. not beta read.
warnings: age gap, workplace power imbalance, attending/resident turned sd/sb dynamic, class/money insecurity, possessive/soft dom!jack, semi-public sex, piv, car sex, unprotected sex, creampie, dirty talk, praise kink, mild degradation, biting/marking, daddy kink adjacent, public humiliation, no use of y/n
MASTERLIST
By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.
Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.
Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.
The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.
You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.
The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.
“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.
“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.
You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.
You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.
“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”
A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.
The machine beeped.
Approved.
You froze.
Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.
“Bag?” the cashier asked.
“No,” Jack said.
You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.
You stared at him. “Seriously?”
He finally looked at you.
Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.
“What?” he said.
You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“That’s my lunch.”
“Looked like it.”
“You paid for it.”
“Sharp today.”
You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”
That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.
“Eat the sandwich,” he said.
“I was going to.”
“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”
You opened your mouth.
Jack’s eyebrows lifted.
You closed it again.
Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.
“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”
Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”
“I don’t faint,” Santos said.
“You got lightheaded during central line training.”
“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”
Jack looked at her.
Santos looked back.
The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.
“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”
Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”
Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”
Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”
Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”
Your face was still hot.
The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.
Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.
“I can pay you back,” you said.
Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.
“Don’t.”
“I don’t like owing people.”
“You don’t owe me.”
“That’s not how money works.”
“It is when I decide I don’t care.”
You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
You should’ve let it go.
You really should’ve.
But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.
“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”
Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.
Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”
He walked away before you could answer.
You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.
Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.
“Oh, that was not nothing.”
“It was lunch,” you said.
Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”
You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.
Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”
Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”
“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”
You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.
It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.
But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.
He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.
Jack was worse.
Jack was practical.
He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.
Robby noticed before you did.
Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.
It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.
“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.
You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”
Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.
“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”
“He bought me lunch once.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And coffee.”
“Sure.”
“And maybe pasta.”
Robby’s eyebrows rose.
You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”
“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”
That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.
Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.
Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.
“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.
“I know.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”
You swallowed. “I know that too.”
Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.
“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”
“There’s nothing to notice.”
“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”
You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.
Across the department, Jack glanced up.
For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.
He didn’t smile.
He just looked.
That was becoming the problem.
Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.
You wished he’d be less good at it.
You wished you liked it less.
The car thing happened on a Thursday.
You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.
Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.
Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.
The expensive one.
A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.
You shut the engine off immediately.
“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”
The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.
You tried again.
The sound came back worse.
A knock hit your window.
You screamed.
Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.
You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”
“No,” he said. “Just me.”
“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”
“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”
“It’s fine.”
Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.
“That’s not a fine sound.”
“It does that sometimes.”
“It shouldn’t do that ever.”
You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”
“You’re not driving it until then.”
A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”
His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
Your stomach dipped.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Something else.
Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”
“I don’t need you to—”
“Pop the hood.”
There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.
You popped the hood.
The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.
It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.
He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.
“Do not drive this,” he said.
You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, Jack.”
He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”
You did not.
You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.
“I can call someone,” you said.
“Who?”
The question was simple. Too simple.
That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.
You looked away first.
Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.
Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”
“I don’t want to be a problem.”
“You’re not.”
“I don’t want you fixing everything.”
“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”
You didn’t move.
Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.
“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”
That was how he won.
Not with softness. Not with a speech.
Heat.
You grabbed your bag and got out.
Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.
He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.
You noticed.
You hated that you noticed.
Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.
“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.
His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”
“Your leg?”
“I said yeah.”
“Right. Sorry.”
His jaw worked.
Then, quieter, “Long day.”
That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.
You nodded. “Yeah.”
The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.
At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”
You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”
“I’ll call someone.”
“No.”
“You don’t know who yet.”
“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”
The light turned green.
Jack drove.
You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”
“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”
“Jack.”
“I know a guy.”
“Of course you know a guy.”
“I’m old.”
“You’re not that old.”
That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.
“No?”
“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.
“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”
“I know you can.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.
Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”
Your throat tightened unexpectedly.
You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.
The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.
Not brave.
Not independent.
Just exhausting.
He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.
You didn’t reach for the door handle.
“Thank you,” you said.
Jack nodded once.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”
“No.”
You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”
“I noticed.”
“Stop noticing.”
“No.”
Your eyes opened.
Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.
Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.
That made it worse.
You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”
The joke landed differently in the dark.
You felt it. So did he.
Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.
“You should go inside,” he said.
You nodded.
Neither of you moved.
Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.
You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.
“Night, Jack.”
His hand tightened once around the phone.
“Lock your door.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”
His eyes lifted.
There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.
“Don’t start,” he said.
You got out before your face could betray you.
The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.
Jack didn't tell you this.
The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.
Handled.
Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.
You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.
Squared it away.
You were going to kill him.
Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.
You had to wait.
That made you angrier.
By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.
“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.
Jack stopped.
Robby, behind him, stopped too.
Dana looked up from the desk.
Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.
Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”
“Oh, no, definitely here.”
Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.
“Coward,” Dana muttered.
“Experienced,” Robby corrected.
Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”
“You paid the mechanic.”
“Yeah.”
“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”
“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”
You stared at him. “That is not the point.”
“That is exactly the point.”
“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”
“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.
“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”
Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”
Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”
Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”
You barely heard them.
Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.
“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It makes it done.”
You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”
“Usually.”
“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”
Jack’s gaze held yours.
“Doing what?”
The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.
“You know what,” you said.
For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.
Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.
“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”
Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.
Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.
He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.
“Friday,” he said under his breath.
You turned your head. “What?”
“Pick up your car Friday.”
Then he was gone.
Santos waited exactly three seconds.
“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”
Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”
Santos deflated. “Damn it.”
You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.
By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.
Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.
Your old ones were unsafe.
That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.
You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.
The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.
At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.
PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.
You hadn’t planned to go.
Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”
You’d said yes before checking your closet.
That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.
Your phone buzzed.
Jack:
Car still running?
You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.
You:
yes, dad
Jack:
Don’t.
You smiled despite yourself.
You:
thank you, by the way
for the shoes too
even though you’re insane
Jack:
You going tomorrow?
You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.
You:
maybe
Jack:
That means yes.
You should’ve stopped there.
Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:
You:
it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident
The reply took longer than usual.
Jack:
Show me.
You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.
You:
the dress?
Jack:
What else would I mean?
Your face went hot.
You:
don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor
The typing bubble appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Jack:
You have tomorrow off?
You stared.
Then stared harder.
You:
why
Jack:
Answer the question.
There were several smart things you could’ve said.
You said none of them.
You:
yes
Jack:
I’ll pick you up at 10.
Your stomach flipped.
You:
jack
Jack:
10:30 if you’re going to argue.
You:
you don’t even know what i was going to say
Jack:
I’m learning patterns.
You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.
The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.
Of course he did.
He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.
“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.
“You haven’t gone in yet.”
“That’s why I still have hope.”
He gave you a look.
You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”
“Okay.”
You blinked. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“That was too easy.”
“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”
You stared at him.
He headed for the shop.
“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.
“It’s exactly a loophole.”
Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.
You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.
Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.
He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.
That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.
The saleswoman brought options.
You rejected the first three.
Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.
“No,” he said through the door.
You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”
“I saw the sleeve.”
“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”
“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”
You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.
Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.
His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.
“No,” he repeated.
The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”
You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”
The fifth dress was the problem.
You knew it before you opened the curtain.
The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.
Confidence, maybe.
Or danger.
“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.
“You’re bossy.”
“Yes.”
“You admit that way too easily.”
“I’m old.”
You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.
This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.
That was the bad idea.
You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.
For a moment, he said nothing.
The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.
His jaw shifted.
Your fingers tightened around the curtain.
“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.
Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.
“No,” he said.
Your face fell before you could stop it.
Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”
The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.
“It fits.”
It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.
You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.
“It’s probably expensive.”
“Probably.”
“Jack.”
“You like it?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s my point.”
You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”
He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.
“I can do what I want.”
“You sound like a nightmare.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.
The thought went through you too sharply.
You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”
Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”
You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”
There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.
Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”
Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.
So you made it worse on purpose.
“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”
Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.
“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”
You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.
Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.
The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.
Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.
Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.
“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”
“That’s never a good opener.”
“You look hot.”
“Santos.”
“What? I said don’t make it weird.”
Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”
Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”
You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”
“Because I’m invested.”
“You need a hobby.”
“I have one. It’s being right.”
You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.
“You doing okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”
“You too?”
“Me too what?”
“Nothing.”
Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”
“There’s not a thing.”
“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”
You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.
Dana smirked and walked away.
Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.
It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.
Robby said something to him at the entrance.
Jack answered without smiling.
Then his eyes found you.
Everything else blurred.
Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.
He walked over slowly.
“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.
Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.
“Hi.”
You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”
“I was going to say that.”
“You can still say it.”
“No.”
“Too generous?”
“Too easy.”
His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
You stared. “What is that?”
“Receipt.”
“For the dress?”
“For the car.”
Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”
“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”
You looked down.
Paid.
Your throat tightened.
“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.
“I still owe you.”
“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”
You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.
Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.
“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”
Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”
“That makes it worse.”
“I agree.”
Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.
“You look nice,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”
Jack gave him a look.
Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”
Jack didn’t move immediately.
His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.
“Don’t disappear,” he said.
Your pulse kicked.
“I’m working.”
“After.”
Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.
You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.
For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.
Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.
You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.
And Jack kept finding you.
Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.
At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”
He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”
“I was.”
“Bad idea.”
“Because violence is wrong?”
“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”
You laughed into your glass.
Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.
You saw him catch it.
That was the dangerous part.
Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.
You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.
“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”
Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”
The man’s eyes shifted to you.
You felt it like cold water.
“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”
Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.
“This is—” Jack began.
The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”
His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.
Your fingers tightened around the place cards.
Jack went still.
The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”
Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”
“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”
The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.
Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.
“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.
Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”
The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.
The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”
“I’m not interested in what you meant.”
Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.
“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”
The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.
“No offense intended.”
Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Your breath caught.
People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.
You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.
You set the place cards down.
“I need some air,” you said.
Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”
But you were already moving.
You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.
You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.
You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.
Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”
You turned on him. “Made it worse.”
“They made it worse.”
“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”
His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.
“They don’t know what you are.”
Your chest pulled tight.
“And what am I?”
The question came out too vulnerable to take back.
Jack didn’t answer right away.
Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.
He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.
You hated that you wanted him to say it.
You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.
Instead, he said, “Not that.”
A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I’ve got.”
“Great.”
Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.
You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.
“You bought the dress,” you said.
“Yes.”
“You fixed my car.”
“Yes.”
“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”
Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.
“What do you think people are going to call that?”
“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”
“I do.”
“Then tell me what you call it.”
The words took the air out of the terrace.
You looked at him.
Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.
Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.
All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.
Now Jack was standing there asking.
Tell me what you call it.
Your mouth felt dry.
“I call it confusing,” you said.
His expression shifted.
You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”
Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.
You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”
His voice dropped. “Like what?”
You shook your head. “Don’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”
The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.
Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”
The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.
His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.
“But I’ve thought about it.”
The terrace went silent.
Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.
You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.
“Jack,” you whispered.
“I know.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do.”
You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.
“What was I going to say?”
His eyes lifted.
“That we shouldn’t.”
The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.
You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.
“You’re right,” you said.
Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.
Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”
His eyes sharpened.
You took one more step.
“But it’s not what I want.”
For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.
Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.
“Say that again,” he said.
The words nearly undid you.
You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.
“I don’t want you to stop.”
Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.
You didn’t.
His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.
“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.
Your chest tightened. “No?”
“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”
The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.
Then he kissed you.
It wasn’t frantic at first.
That would’ve been easier.
It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.
You made a small sound against his mouth.
That was what broke it.
Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.
You grabbed his jacket.
He made a low sound, almost a warning.
You pulled him closer anyway.
The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.
When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.
His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.
“This is a bad idea,” he said.
You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”
“I know.”
“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”
His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.
“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”
Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t.”
Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.
You didn’t.
His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
His eyes held yours.
“My car.”
The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.
Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.
Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.
Jack ignored all of them.
You loved and hated him for it.
The elevator ride down was worse.
Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.
In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.
Jack unlocked the car.
You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.
He saw the hesitation immediately.
Of course he did.
“You can change your mind,” he said.
The words loosened something in you.
Not because you wanted to.
Because he meant it.
You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”
Jack’s eyes searched yours.
“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
He nodded once.
Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”
His face shifted.
“Do I what?”
“Know what I want.”
The garage seemed to hold its breath.
Jack opened the back door.
“Get in,” he said.
Not loud. Not cruel.
Just low enough to go through you like a match.
You got in.
The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.
Then the opposite door opened.
He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.
“You still think this is about money?” he asked.
Your breath caught.
You shook your head.
“Words.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”
His gaze dropped to your mouth.
“What’s it about?”
You could’ve said care.
You could’ve said want.
You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.
Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”
Jack’s eyes flashed.
Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.
"Jack—"
"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"
His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.
"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"
You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."
He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.
"Look at me."
You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.
“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”
Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.
"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."
You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.
"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."
He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.
"Jack—I need—"
"I know what you need."
He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.
"Get on top of me."
It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.
He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"
He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.
"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."
You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."
He didn't.
His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.
"Tell me you want this."
"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"
He pushed inside you.
The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.
"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"
He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.
Then you moved.
Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.
"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."
You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.
"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"
"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.
"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."
You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."
He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.
"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."
You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.
"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."
"Jack—I'm close—"
"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"
His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.
"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"
"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."
He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.
Then he laughed.
A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.
"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"
"Stupid," you supplied.
"Reckless."
"A really bad idea."
His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."
You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.
"We should probably—" you started.
"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."
His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.
"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.
"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."
He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.
You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.
He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.
“What?” you asked.
He shook his head.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”
That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”
“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”
“He sounds unbearable.”
“He is.”
The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”
Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”
Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.
“Jack,” you said softly.
He waited.
You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”
For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.
“You get breakfast.”
“That’s it?”
“And your car.”
“Already got that.”
“And the shoes.”
“Also already got those.”
“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”
Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”
Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”
The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.
But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.
He was looking at you like something worth keeping.
And for what it was worth, you finally believed you were.
Nothing makes me happier than the random high school classmates of mine from 20 years ago that are commenting on my Facebook about how I was the first person they thought of when they heard/saw *NSYNC was back 🥰
I wasn't known as The *NSYNC Girl at my school for nothing 😆😆 Fangirl for life 💙💁🏻♀️
I need to second this with the joy I felt at random classmates coming out of the woodwork when I updated my Facebook picture to be the photo I took with JC at the con he did earlier this year.
People I haven't spoken to since high school (22 years ago) were congratulating me and were just as excited as I was that I got to meet him 🤣🤣
TAG YOUR MOOTS AND MAKE THEM EXPLAIN THEIR USERNAME'S LORE
Well.
I don't need to go over a history of usernames because this is pretty much it. It's been this everywhere I've needed it since 2001, and at this point it's just who I am. It has become my identity outside of the reference.
So, the year is 2001, and I am a fully obsessed*NSYNC fan. Particularly in love with one JC Chasez. My best friend is also a fangirl, so we watch everything they do together, either in person, by phone, or by walkie talkie because she lives 6 houses down.
According to the internet, on May 28, 2001, the *NSYNC "Pop" episode of MTV's Making The Video aired. And in this music video, there is a scene where the guys' outfits change a lot, so they filmed the dance multiple times in different looks, and for one of those looks that's probably in the video for less than 10 seconds, JC wears a particular shirt. A maybe maroon colored shirt, with yellow sleeves, and a yellow S on the chest. A decidedly Skittles shaped S, imo.
And we saw it and decided that it reminded us (two girls not into super heroes at all) of a super hero.
Super Skittles.
Here's a shitty screenshot for reference.
I've always had a love for minimalist references and inside jokes and things that no one else will understand, so I guess the next time I had an opportunity to make a username, I went with superskittles, and it has stuck for 25 years now.
Y'all, I didn't even eat Skittles back then 🤣🤣
I'll eat them now but they still aren't even something I would really choose.
But they are me and I am them ❤️🧡💛💚💜
Thanks to @moonlightspencie for making me take that slightly embarrassing trip into the past 🤦🏻♀️. No pressure tags to help my own curiosity: @lostinthefandoms11 @scuttling @whatislovevavy
summary: One glitchy tablet, one HR email, and suddenly you’re married to your attending, Jack Abbot. HR thinks it was intentional and has already started merging your records. Claim it was a mistake, and your residency could be delayed. With only three months left until you're an attending, Jack agrees to play along. Pretending to be married might save your career—but can your heart survive the side effects?
tags: accidental marriage, slow burn romance, HR involvement, nosy coworkers, reader is a PGY-4 resident, jack is not a widow in this fic, possible medical/legal inaccuracies, fluff, smut
word count: 3.6k
a/n: the penultimate chapter ahhh. it won't be the end for trouble and jack, don't worry—we'll keep seeing them in blurbs/one shots! thank you all for still being here! it's been so much fun!! i appreciate you lots and LOVE reading your comments <33 i hope you enjoy! <33
i'm not keeping a tag list for this series!
Diagnosis: Married | Masterlist
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Morning comes fast.
By E.R. standards, it had been a relatively slow night. The most exciting case was a drunk college girl who'd managed to snap her leg spectacularly after stumbling off a curb in six-inch heels. Beyond that, it had been the usual parade of forgotten medications, minor lacerations, kitchen burns, coughs, fevers, and people convinced that symptoms they'd ignored for weeks suddenly constituted an emergency at three in the morning.
Now day shift trickles in, filling the department with the scent of fresh coffee and half-awake greetings.
Jack's at the hub finishing the final comments on his last chart when a shadow falls across the counter. He looks up to find Robby, who jerks his head toward the elevator and leaves without saying anything else.
"Better get it over with," you say, logging off your computer.
He chuckles and follows your lead. "I guess. You'll wait in the car?"
You straighten and nudge his shoulder. "Mm. I'll probably call Olivia."
"Good idea," he says, standing. He catches your hand before you can walk away. "Good luck." He wishes he could lean in and kiss you, but you agreed on no PDA. Past him was a fool.
You squeeze his hand. "You too."
Jack waits until you've disappeared around the corner to the lockers before heading for the elevators. Five minutes later, the rooftop door swings shut behind him.
Robby's leaning against the railing, staring out across the waking city. He turns once he hears Jack's familiar stride, and a grin spreads across his face.
Jack groans as he steps beside him. "Just get it over with."
"What?" Robby asks. "The fact that I was right from the beginning? Or the fact that you should've listened to me ages ago? Or maybe"—he tilts his head—"the fact that this conference was exactly what you needed?"
Jack looks over at him. "You finished?"
Robby hums thoughtfully. "I could keep going—"
"Please don't."
"—but I do have a shift I need to get back to, so yes."
"Good."
Robby laughs and turns back to look out again. For a moment, neither of them says anything.
"I'm happy for you," Robby says.
Jack lets out a lighter breath than he would've managed a few weeks ago.
"She's good for you," Robby continues.
A smile tugs at the corner of Jack's mouth, his fingers curling loosely around the railing. "She is."
"You're good for her, too." Jack opens his mouth, but Robby continues before he can say anything. "Believe it or not, everyone else can see it."
Jack rolls his eyes.
"And if we've learned anything from this whole disaster, it's that you should trust my judgement."
Jack huffs a laugh but doesn't disagree. "It's weird."
"What is?"
He shrugs. "Getting something you'd already convinced yourself wasn't going to happen."
The teasing fades from Robby's expression, and he bumps his shoulder against Jack's. They stand there for another moment before Robby claps his shoulder. "I'd better get downstairs before they manage to burn down the place. I expect an invitation to dinner one of these days."
"Yeah, yeah." Jack waves him away.
Robby is halfway to the door when he calls after him. "Hey."
Robby turns.
"Thanks."
For a moment, Robby just looks at him. Then he dips his chin once before disappearing through the door.
Jack stays there for another five minutes, just breathing and watching the city. The hospital hums beneath him. Traffic slowly fills the street below.
For the first time in a long while, he lets himself enjoy the view before heading back inside.
With both your bag and Jack's grabbed, you head toward the parking lot, moving slower than usual as you try to summon the courage to call Olivia before you get there.
You've been avoiding her—to some extent—and you already know she isn't going to be happy about it.
So, you take small steps, unlock the car, and place the bags in the back before shuffling into the passenger seat.
It rings twice before she answers. She's at her kitchen table, staring at you with narrowed eyes. "Nice of you to finally talk to me."
You wince. "I know."
"You know?" she repeats. "That's all I get?"
You offer her a tentative smile.
She takes a bite of her bread, chewing while continuing to glare at you. Then her mouth twitches. "So?"
A large smile spreads across your face, and you nod.
She lets out a triumphant squeal. "I knew it! I fucking knew it!"
You laugh at her enthusiasm.
"This is the best news ever!"
You roll your eyes. "Okay, calm down. It's not that big a deal."
"Oh, it is."
"No, it isn't."
"It absolutely is," she says. "I've spent months watching you idiots ruin things for yourselves. It's finally over!"
You shake your head, but her glee is infectious.
"Tell me everything," she demands.
You tell her about the awkward car ride, meeting Jeremy and Warren, the fight, and making up. By the time you're done, Olivia's been grinning so hard her breakfast has gone cold.
"And then we..." you shrug, biting back a grin.
Her eyes widen. "No way! How was it?"
"So good."
Her jaw drops. "Yeah?"
You nod.
She leans back in her chair, looking thoroughly pleased. "Good. You deserve nothing less."
"Hey, I'm sorry for being such a mess these past months. You've been there through everything, and I'm so lucky to have you in my life. Thank you."
She waves you off. "No need to be sappy. You'd do the same."
"How's it looking on your end?"
She groans.
"What about Robby?"
"That wasn't really anything—just a kiss." She shrugs. "And I mean, I'm here, and he's in Pittsburgh, so..."
You suck your teeth in disappointment.
Her face sours. "Damn it."
"What?"
"I just remembered that I owe him twenty bucks. I thought Jack was going to confess first," she groans. "Should've trusted that my meddling skills were better than Robby's."
You laugh. "With betting like that, you're practically part of the Pitt crew already. Maybe you should consider moving? It solves two problems."
"Two?"
"Robby, of course," you grin, "and I don't have to miss you."
"Hm," she huffs. "Not sure about the first one..."
Movement catches your eyes before you can argue further. Jack's making his way across the parking lot, and without thinking, you sit up a little straighter.
"Oh, gross."
"Hey, be nice!" you chuckle. "Jack's coming."
"I gathered," she says. "Have fun. I'm expecting to be the godmother." She winks exaggeratedly.
"Love you." You roll your eyes and hit the end button.
Weeks slip by in that sweet, honeymoon-like bliss.
Surprisingly little has changed since you started properly dating. Jack still brings you breakfast, watches your terrible shows without complaints, and washes your scrubs. The only thing that's really changed is that he's finally shown you just how affectionate he is.
You wake up wrapped in his arms most mornings. He always seems to need a hand on you somewhere: your waist while you're cooking, your fingers while you're out walking, your ankle draped across his lap while you read on the couch.
Right now, though, his hands are firmly around your thighs, keeping them spread apart.
"Jack," you plead softly.
"What?" he hums, his voice warm with amusement as he deliberately lingers just out of reach. He presses a soft kiss to the inside of your thigh.
You let out a frustrated whine, wriggling your hips. His hold tightens, keeping you firmly in place.
He chuckles. "What do you want, sweet girl?" He brushes another kiss along the inside of your thigh, just a little higher than the one before. Then another, until his nose brushes the soaked pink fabric. "This?"
You shake your head.
"No?" He kisses the edge of your underwear, close enough that it sends a shiver up your spine. "Maybe this?"
You squirm again. "Jack, please."
He clicks his tongue, his dark gaze finding yours. "I know you can do better than that, sweetheart."
Heat creeps into your cheeks, your chest rising fast. His thumb brushes the corner of your underwear, staring at the wet material with a scorched gaze.
You gasp when he presses his thumb directly against your clit. "Please touch me."
"I already am," he says, amusement flickering across his face. His thumb leaves you again, stroking lazily across your hip instead.
You huff in annoyance, finally relenting. "Please touch my pussy."
"Oh, why didn't you just say that?" He grins. "With my fingers or my mouth?"
Head hazy with lust and impatience, all you say is: "Please."
Thankfully, Jack takes pity on you. He pulls the fabric aside, then descends on you. He licks broad stripes, groaning in appreciation when he gets your sweet taste on his tongue.
"Fuck. I'll never get sick of doing this."
You moan loudly, your fingers gripping his hair.
"You taste so good," he murmurs. "Doing so good for me."
He alternates between soft kisses, slow licks, and gentle sucks until the sensation becomes almost unbearable. All you can do is try to hold on, fingers gripping his hair, shoulders, arms—whatever you can get hold of.
It takes an embarrassingly short time for you to crash over the edge.
When you finally manage to climb back to yourself, Jack is looking up at you, his chin glistening and a thoroughly smug smile on his face.
"Better?"
You roll your eyes and swat his shoulder. His hand finds your chin as he crowds over you, pressing you into the mattress.
"I asked you a question."
You suck in a breath, staring into his eyes. "Yes."
"Good." He lets go of your chin and smirks when you push at his chest. He follows, letting you shove him down onto the bed. You swing a leg over him, and his hands find your waist automatically, helping situate you on top of him.
"Fuck," he swears as you sink down on him. Your mouth crashes into his as you slowly begin moving. Jack lets you set the pace for a moment before his hips snap up, setting a faster pace.
"Jack," you moan into his ear. His fingers grip your waist as he captures your mouth again. He comes with a drawn-out sound that reverberates in your chest. You let yourself sink against him, forehead resting against his shoulder.
His hands remain on your waist long after the moment has passed, thumbs absentmindedly stroking slow circles against your skin as the two of you catch your breath.
Neither of you says anything for a while. His heartbeat thuds steadily beneath you. Eventually, one of his hands slips up your back, his fingers combing gently through your hair. "Hey."
You smile into his shoulder. "Hey."
"Better?" he asks again, quieter this time.
You nod against him before lifting your head just enough to meet his eyes. "Much."
He grins, satisfied.
You trace lazy circles across the side of his arm. "You were incredibly annoying, though."
A laugh rumbles through his chest. "You complaining?"
You pinch his skin lightly. He catches your wrist, turning your hand over to press a kiss into your palm.
"You'll survive."
"I don't know," you sigh dramatically. "I may never recover."
He bites your hand lightly. "I'll take excellent care of you."
"Hm," you huff.
"I was planning on starting with water."
That earns him a genuine laugh. You lean down to kiss him again, slow and unhurried. He hums softly into the kiss. When you finally pull away, neither of you moves very far.
"I love you," he says softly.
You smile, brushing your nose against his. "I love you, too."
His arms tighten around your waist just a fraction before he sighs. "Now..." His eyebrows lift. "Go pee. I'll get you some water. Then we can cuddle again."
"Doctor's orders?"
"Absolutely."
You roll your eyes fondly as you climb off him, stealing one last quick kiss before you do. "I suppose I'd better listen to the professional."
He watches you climb off the bed with an unmistakably pleased expression. "You usually don't."
You glance back over your shoulder. "I make exceptions if my doctor's handsome."
"I think I'm gonna throw up." Parker slumps against the counter, staring blankly into the distance.
Shen spins around in his chair. "Maggots guy?"
"God, no." Parker's seen her fair share of disgusting things. Maggots don't even register anymore. "Abbot and Trouble in the supply room."
Lena snorts from her right. "Weren't you the one begging them to make up?"
"I was." Parker sighs. "But there are some things I never needed to witness."
Shen's eyebrows shoot up. "Hold on. They weren't...?"
"No!" Parker cuts him off before he can finish. She might need to bleach her eyes, but she's not letting that rumour start. "They were just making out."
"Oh." Lena pushes her glasses onto her head. "Then what's the problem?"
Parker just stares at her. "…His hand was on her ass."
There's a beat of silence before Lily, who's been quietly working at her computer, looks up. "I think you've been single for too long."
"I'm not that single."
"Not by choice," Shen says between obnoxiously loud slurps of his iced coffee.
Parker glares at him. "And I suppose you're drowning in admirers?"
He grins. "I don't kiss and tell."
"You don't kiss, period."
"Ouch." He clutches a hand to his chest, then grins as he takes another sip.
"The point," Parker continues, rubbing her temples, "is that I have to work with them. I don't want every room I walk into to be a potential traumatic experience."
"You're so dramatic," Lily says with a grin. She stands and gives Parker's shoulder a sympathetic pat. "Hit me up if you want to come on a double date sometime. My boyfriend has some cute friends."
Parker groans.
"Just be grateful," Lena says. "At least they're happy."
"They can be happy," Parker mutters. "Just... preferably behind a locked door."
"Good luck telling Abbot that," Shen says.
Parker drops her forehead onto the counter with a muffled groan.
"What are you doing?" Jack pauses in the doorway to the guest bedroom, still in his scrubs.
You peek out from the closet, sending him a smile. "Thought I'd clear out this room. Get rid of some old stuff and move the rest into our closet."
He looks around. Half the shelves are empty, and there are piles of clothes on the bed. Textbooks cover most of the desk alongside notebooks, loose papers, and other things you'd shoved in the drawers weeks ago.
"I keep forgetting I have things in here," you say. "And it isn't my room anymore, so I'm making space for your stuff, too."
"You don't have to," he says, pressing a kiss to your head. You shrug, grabbing another piece of clothing.
Jack wanders over to the desk, picking up one of the medical textbooks. "Are you keeping these or giving them away?"
"I'll give them away after my oral boards." You throw a dress onto the bed. "I figured some of the residents could use them. Med school's expensive enough."
"That's kind."
You shrug and toss another item onto the bed.
Jack continues sorting through the clutter, smiling at old photographs and forgotten receipts before unfolding a document. "What's this?"
He knows exactly what it is. The divorce papers that had haunted him for weeks with your signature sitting dry at the bottom of the page.
You look over. "Oh."
For a moment, Jack says nothing. "I can put them back if—"
You walk over, take the papers from his hand, and tear them cleanly down the middle. Then again. You drop the pieces into the nearby trash bin.
Jack blinks. "You sure?"
You glance at the bin, then back at him. "I thought I'd gotten rid of it already." A small smile tugs at your lips. "I don't need it anymore."
You lean up to kiss his cheek before returning to the closet. "So," you say over your shoulder, "should I donate this sweater or keep it?"
Jack doesn't answer immediately. His eyes drift to the trash bin.
"Jack?"
He looks up. You stand in the middle of the room that had once been yours with things that will find their place elsewhere in your shared bedroom.
He lets out a slow breath. "Keep."
During the next few weeks, Jack can't stop thinking about the divorce papers or how easily you had ripped them apart. It takes a situation at work for him to realise why.
Cyclist vs. vehicle. A pelvic fracture and a head wound that needed immediate attention. You had both snapped into action, dividing the work between you and taking control of the trauma room.
"Dr. Abbot, here—" a new nurse had called out, and Jack's head had snapped up. But it wasn't him she was talking to—it was you. He'd seen the nurse's face flush, but you'd answered before he'd even finished turning toward you. There'd been no indication that it had bothered you at all.
You had just responded like it was your name.
It hit him a couple of hours later. You had shown him just how much you wanted him. He had to make it clear to you that he wanted the same.
Things hadn't been done right the first time. A glitch. Rings bought out of necessity. And that was that. No romance at all.
You deserve a proper proposal—a real wedding. Something you can actually tell the others about in detail instead of repeating the same brief lie you'd been telling for months: that it had been a simple affair, that he'd proposed at home.
Jack wants to make the story real.
He buys a ring. A simple but flashy one. Then he spends days waiting for the right moment.
The opportunity comes when he's sitting on the couch waiting to pick you up from work. The entire drive is spent in a nervous haze, the box pressing insistently against his thigh.
He makes coffee as you head for the shower, so his hands have something to do. As it brews, he straightens the sugar bowl, then the coffee tin, then realises he's already done it twice.
You pad down the hallway, dripping water onto the floor from your still-wet hair. "What are you doing?" You watch him with narrowed eyes as you turn to the cabinet.
"Nothing?"
You huff, but decide to let it go, standing on your tiptoes to grab a mug. "Do you wanna go sit outside and eat—" your sentence cuts off when you spin back around.
Jack's on his knee, keeping it steady despite his prosthetic. He holds out the box.
Your mug slips from your fingers onto the counter with a soft click. "Jack?"
A shaky breath leaves him which almost turns into a laugh.
"What are you doing?"
"I think you know."
A watery laugh escapes you. "Is this—? Are you—?"
"Yeah," he chuckles breathily. "So do I get to say my speech," he teases gently, "or are you going to interrupt me the whole time?"
You press a hand over your mouth and nod.
His fingers tremble slightly against the box. "I've been thinking about us. About how we started."
Your hand tightens over your mouth.
"I wouldn't change it. Not really. If that stupid glitch hadn't happened... if Robby hadn't been stuck at work that day..." He shakes his head. "I would've never been lucky enough to have you to come home to every night."
You blink rapidly.
"The best thing that ever happened to me started as an accident." His voice grows quieter. "But I don't want our story to be that we got married by accident. I want it to be that somewhere along the way, after lots of dumb decisions—"
You laugh softly.
"Somewhere along the way, we fell in love. I want you to know that I choose to be with you. I choose you. Every day. And I want you to know that."
A tear trails down your cheek.
"So... Sweetheart. Trouble." He laughs softly, shaking the box lightly. "Will you marry me?"
You drop to your knees in front of him, laughing and crying all at once as you throw your arms around his neck. "Yes!" The word comes out broken by tears. "Yes, of course, I'll marry you. Again."
Jack buries his face against your shoulder, his whole body shaking with relieved laughter.
You pull back just enough to look at him, your cheeks damp with tears and your smile somehow brighter than anything he's ever seen.
"The ring," you remind him softly.
He lets out another breathless laugh. "Right."
The velvet box is still in his hand. You hold out your left hand without him asking. It trembles. A laugh escapes you when you notice his hand isn't any steadier.
"I've had a stressful morning," he murmurs. Carefully, he takes your hand. His thumb brushes once across your knuckles before he slides the ring free from its box. This time, there isn't a clerk handing it to him.
Just the two of you.
He guides the ring onto your finger slowly. It slides into place perfectly.
You stare down at your hand, tilting it to catch the light. He stares, too.
It sits just above the first ring that made you husband and wife. This one doesn't replace it—it gives it the beginning it always deserved.
He lifts your hand to his lips and presses a gentle kiss against your knuckles before looking back up at you. "I love you," he says.
"I love you, too."
He chooses you. You choose him.
a/n: did anyone catch the pink fabric reference?? :DDD
aaron hotchner with his gf/wife who works in law (lawyer, prosecutor like he was before 👀👀) at thr courthouse…. Maybe his team meeting her….. pure fluff….. 👀👀👀👀👀👀
omg ccccuuuttteeeee!!!!!
warnings: none :) this one is super short and sweet
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“Ready, pretty boy?” Morgan asks with a smile, handing Reid a fresh cup of coffee.
“Always,” Reid replies with a curt grin back.
They sat on a bench, watching JJ and Hotch from a distance at the courthouse. Likely discussing some talking points for the press after the trial. At this point, it was just a waiting game.
JJ walked off, heading down a separate hallway, leaving Hotch alone.
“Hey, honey,” you whispered, walking a little faster when you saw your boyfriend standing there. “Look who’s all handsome in his court suit. Super crazy different that the ones you wear every other day.”
Hotch smiled. “Oh, yeah. Super different.”
You leaned up, pressing a kiss to his lips softly, just a quick peck you assumed nobody would notice. Until a loud “Whoa!” was heard just down the hall.
You glanced in the direction of the sound, seeing two of his team members staring directly at you. You’d been dating almost a year, and shockingly, he’d managed to keep it a secret this whole time. Seemed like the secret was out now. You chuckled as the two men shuffled quickly down the hall, trying not to run. Aaron sighed deeply.
“Well, hello.” The one you recognized from Aaron’s photos as Derek spoke up first with a sly smile.
“Hi,” you greet with a grin.
“Hotch, you been holding out on us? Or do pretty girls just walk around kissing you in public?”
Aaron sighed again, briefly introducing you to the men. He then looked at you. “This is Morgan, this is Reid. And… great. This is Prentiss coming along now.”
“Hey, we’re ready to head in,” Emily said to the guys, then gave you a small smile. She reached out a hand for you to shake. “Hi. You are…?”
“Hotch’s girlfriend,” Spencer supplied with a tiny grin.
“Girlfriend?” She looked at him with an expression that could only be described as devious.
“Okay, alright. Not appropriate when we’re on the job.”
“Lighten up, baby,” you snort, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “Good luck. Text me when you’re done, maybe we can get something to eat so I can get to know your team a little better?”
Hotch frowned slightly, but his eyes gave him away. They always did. He couldn’t actually be upset with you. He squeezed your hand softly before you turned around with a wave to his teammates, excusing yourself.
“So…” Morgan started, a brow raised.
“We’ll… discuss later,” Hotch replied quietly, placating them. For now.
clark smelling his coworker’s arousal with his super sense of smell OMGG YOU AND ANON ARE GENIUSES I’d love to see a part two (only if you are interested in continuing this idea) where clark asks her out or something. maybe he keeps smelling her throughout the whole date and it’s making him go crazy 😵💫
okay yessssss. switching perspective tho cause writing in second person is so much easier when im trying to avoid y/n 😛
warnings: suggestive content! 18+ only pls
read part 1 here!
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Clark was distraught.
It had been days since he decided to ask you out properly, but he couldn’t quite work up the nerve. Stopping a building from collapsing? Piece of cake. Asking out a pretty girl who liked him? Terrifying.
Well, he at least thought she liked him. She certainly thought he was attractive, as he’d found out in that file room. That could at least be enough to get his foot in the door for a date. Right?
You walked up to the coffee pot, mug in hand. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t even noon yet. An article deadline was creeping up on you, and there were still edits to be made on a few others. You went to grab the pot when Jimmy suddenly appeared, taking it first.
“So… He talk to you yet?” Jimmy asked with a smile, pouring his mug full. He noticed your frown, chuckling once before he filled yours as well.
“Thanks. Who?” You asked, taking a sip.
Jimmy raised a brow. “Uh…”
“James.”
“Don’t full name me.”
“Don’t hide things.”
He sighed, regretting for a moment that he’d ever befriended you. “Clark.”
You snorted a laugh. “Talk to me about what? He can barely look at me without shuffling away.”
“Well, he just—”
The man himself appeared, staring at Jimmy with a tensed jaw. Clark had heard your conversation from across the room, though he couldn’t exactly let it slip that he had superhearing. He had to play it cool. As cool as was feasible for him, at least.
“What are you up to?” Clark asked, grabbing himself a disposable cup to fill. He didn’t often drink coffee this late in the workday.
“Jimmy says you’re supposed to talk to me,” you state, looking up at him and his gorgeous jawline. You let your eyes linger as he glared at Jimmy. “Won’t tell me what about, though.”
“Oh. Uh… well, I…”
“I’m gonna…” Jimmy trailed off, throwing a thumb over his shoulder before he quickly retreated. He didn’t want to be there if a train wreck occurred.
“You…?” You prompted, looking up at him.
“I was just, uh, wondering. If you’d, you know, maybe want to go out some time? Like let me take you out? On… on a date.”
“Oh?”
He blinked at you, cheeks a little pink. You just smiled. May as well cut the poor guy a break.
“Yeah. Sure, I’d love to.”
He let out a breath, his own smile coming out. “Oh. Gosh. Thank goodness. Uh, well, how about tonight? Are you busy?”
“No, I’m free,” you responded, biting back a wider smile. He was adorable. “Where do you want to take me?”
He swallowed. That was a complex question, considering he’d like to take you anywhere. Against a wall, in his bed, kitchen, living room, file room, your car. None of those would be appropriate answers, though, he thought.
“How about Italian food?”
“Love it.”
“Okay! Great,” he replied with a cheesy grin. “Great. I know an amazing place a few blocks down from here, actually, that I’d love to take you to. Uh… d-does seven work for you? Enough time to head home and stuff first?”
“Sounds perfect.”
Clark was floating on air the rest of the day. He had enough time to do a few rounds as Superman after work before he had to actually freshen up and get ready for the date. He’d picked you up at your place, which really means that he flew over and then took you on a walk to the restaurant. It wasn’t far, and it gave him more time to get to talk to you.
The date went phenomenally, and you were equally as charmed as he was. He was sweet at work, but in this context? He was incredible. Chivalrous, shockingly flirty, and you could swear his eyes were literally twinkling. By the time dessert came you were three glasses of wine deep and feeling a little… warm.
“I’m glad we did this,” you say softly, reaching forward to brush his knuckles with your fingers.
He glanced down, heart fluttering as he watched you touch his hand.
“Y-yeah. I am too. I’ve… honestly, I’ve had a crush on you for a while. I’m really happy you said yes.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
You smiled, chewing your lip. He turned his hand over, taking yours. He let his thumb brush over the back of your hand. You sighed dreamily. God, he was big. And gorgeous. Your thighs pressed together under the table, trying to suppress that tingling feeling you always got when he got close. Though, this time it was cranked up to ten.
He tried asking you a question about your family, though he could hardly pay any attention to the answer as a familiar smell hit his nose. He took in a breath, glancing down at your hand again, his jaw ticking once. He tried to ignore it, he really did. But knowing with certainty that you were here, holding his hand, and getting wet just talking to him? It was driving him insane.
“You okay?” You asked softly.
“Hm?”
“You look a little spacey.”
“Oh.” He gulped, looking at you again. “Yeah. Yes, I’m okay. Sorry, just… a little distracted, I guess.”
You tilted your head in question. “Distracted? By what?”
“You,” he admitted quietly with a soft smile. “You’re just… very distracting.”
You grinned, chin resting in your palm. “Oh yeah? How so?”
He sighed once. “Well… y-you’re pretty. Beautiful. Sweet. Funny. Just really… really great. Distracting, like I said.”
Distracting indeed. You could hardly focus on anything but him. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
“We should do this again sometime,” you comment quietly as he walked you to your front door.
He nodded. “Yes. Yeah, I would really love that.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
He just smiled at you for a moment. You looked back up at him, squeezing his hand once again, trying to commit the feeling of his skin to memory. Maybe if you did it well enough, you could pretend it was his hand between your legs later that night. You figured he wasn’t the kiss-on-a-first-date kind of guy.
You figured wrong.
Clark plucked up all the courage he could, willing himself not to get hard as he leaned in. A tall order, considering he was halfway there from your scent alone. Having super-senses was certainly helpful when it came to gauging your interest.
You looked up with wide eyes, closing them only when his lips were finally against yours. His lips were soft but firm, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to yours, his hand bracing against your cheek.
This was a feeling you were sure to log in your mind for later.
He knew he’d be thinking of it for the next week every time he had an ounce of alone time.
He pulled away after a moment, sighing softly against your lips.
