hiiii!!!! i saw your post on needing to write under the jack abbot tag and i was wondering if you could write jack abbot x adhd and sleepy partner!reader who’s always on the move and is always on a swivel so he gets worried one day when they dont pick up the daily phone call so he panics just to find out they’re okay?? (very ooc imo but i love this)
MISSED CALL ₊˚⊹⋆
jack abbot x adhd/sleepy!reader
warnings/tags: no description of reader, domestic fluff, established relationship, fluff with the tiniest bit of angst, possibly ooc jack abbot, forgetful reader, protective jack
synopsis: jack knows all your habits by heart — your forgotten phone, your accidental naps, your endless curiosity. so when you don't answer your daily call, he can't help but wonder if this time is different.
word count: 1.1k
jack learnt very early on that loving you meant accepting that there was very little about you that remained still. from your thoughts, your seven half-finished craft projects scattered around the apartment, the fact that you could actively lose your keys while they were in your hands.
you lived your life in a state of perpetual motion.
but even you had your moments of stillness. for every day that you buzzed around with enough energy to last three lifetimes, there were times where your body seemed to remember all at once how tiring existing could be.
you'd tell jack you'd lay down for just 20 minutes, and he would find you two hours later sprawled across the top of the duvet — missing a sock, a book laying forgotten beside you. you were the most peaceful in those moments.
jack never had the heart to wake you. he'd simply drape a blanket over your sleeping form before rescuing your phone from wherever you'd abandoned it, plugging it into the charger before it had the chance to die.
you'd wake up some hours later, cocooned in a blanket you didn't remember wrapping yourself in, your book back on your nightstand with your page marked, and your phone alive and charging.
"you know" jack would say without looking up from whatever medical journal he was reading, "chargers only work if you actually plug your phone into them".
you'd frown at him, still blinking sleep from your eyes.
"is that how they work?"
he'd hum his response.
"good thing you have me around, otherwise you'd be walking around all day without any way of falling down your wikipedia rabbit holes".
"lucky me", you sleepily grin at him.
the calls at the beginning of his shift had started off sporadically when your relationship was still new. sometimes he'd call to remind you to eat, other times just to hear your voice before the chaos of the emergency department swallowed him whole. you usually called with little updates about whatever new thing had captured your attention that week.
over time, the calls became an unspoken way for the both of you to make sure the other was okay. they became a ritual; one final moment of normality before jack disappeared behind the ambulance bay doors for the next twelve hours.
if you couldn't catch him before he clocked in, he'd call the moment he found five spare minutes between patients. if it was a really hectic shift, you'd leave him a voice message before you went to bed, promising to catch up in the morning.
and no matter how unpredictable your days were, one of you always found a way to keep in touch.
until tonight.
jack was on his third attempt of calling you, the phone still ringing. but he wasn't worried, not yet. you could've misplaced your phone again, you could have some music playing too loudly to hear the ringing, or maybe you were busy watering the plants again.
people missed phone calls all the time.
he ended the call before it went to voicemail, making a mental note to try again later when he had a break — if you hadn't called him back before then.
the break never came. twenty minutes later EMS rolled in with two men who'd turned a disagreement over a football match into a bar fight. one with a broken nose, the other with a bottle-shaped laceration across his forehead.
then came an elderly woman in respiratory distress.
a teenager with a dislocated shoulder.
a child who'd swallowed a coin.
the emergency department moved the way it always did: relentlessly. by the time jack finally scrubbed the dried blood from his hands and reached for his phone, nearly 4 hours had disappeared.
he expected to see your name, a missed call, maybe a text.
sorry!! accidentally fell asleep lol.
instead... nothing. his lock screen stared back at him, stubbornly empty. the familiar calm he'd carried all evening gave way to something more restless.
he called again. straight to voicemail.
jack frowned. phone's dead, he thought automatically. it was the most logical explanation. it should've been enough to put his mind at ease, but it wasn't.
he spent the rest of his shift with his body and mind in two different places. physically he was exactly where he needed to be — suturing lacerations, reading x-rays, reassuring anxious families, signing discharge papers. mentally though, he couldn't stop searching for the reason for your silence.
there had to be one.
you'd misplaced your phone before. forgotten it in the bathroom, left it buried beneath a pile of laundry, abandoned it somewhere in the apartment while your attention drifted to something else. you'd fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon more times than he could count, usually waking hours later with no memory of closing your eyes in the first place.
any one of those explanations should've been enough, so why couldn't he believe them?
jack spent every spare moment checking his phone, hoping to see your name lighting up the screen. a missed call. a text. anything.
there was never anything.
by the end of his shift, jack was exhausted. he felt it everywhere.
in the ache behind his eyes after hours of fluorescent lights, in the stiffness settling between his shoulders, in the dull irritation where his prosthetic rubbed against his skin after twelve hours on his feet.
on any other day, he'd have driven home already thinking about a hot shower and collapsing into bed beside you.
tonight, there was only one thing on his mind.
he drove home as fast as the speed limit allowed, tapping restless fingers against the steering wheel every time he was forced to stop at another red light. when he finally pulled into the driveway, your car was exactly where it should've been.
relief loosened something in his chest. but only for a moment, because he still didn't know if you were okay.
the house was dark when he stepped inside.
"honey?"
silence.
he spotted your phone almost immediately, abandoned on the kitchen counter exactly where you'd left it.
he pressed the power button, nothing.
"...of course."
the tension in his shoulders eased just enough for him to breathe.it was dead, he'd been right. all the worst case scenarios that had been plaguing him for the entire shift hadn't come true.
he rounded the corner into the living room, and there you were.
curled up on the sofa beneath far too many blankets, one leg dangling over the armrest, your book lying open across your chest exactly where sleep had claimed you. the television was still playing quietly to an audience of no one.
jack stood there for a long moment.
he hadn't realised how tightly he'd been holding himself together until he felt everything finally unwind.
you were okay, that's all that mattered.
he bent down and placed a gentle kiss to your forehead before turning off the tv and grabbing your phone from the kitchen. he plugged it into the charger with the familiarity of someone who'd done it a hundred times before.
loving you had always looked a lot like this.
