Summary: Jack Abbot has been on the hunt for his reincarnated lover for the better part of his life. What happens when his lover stumbles into the ER
WC: 1.2k
Requested by @killora1708
Tags/content: angst with somewhat happy ending, reader was in car crash, Jack’s disability represented (I did my best), historical inaccuracies, reader is called “angel” as a term of endearment, strong language, let me know if I missed any!
Inspired by: Once Upon a Dream by Lana Del Rey
This is in the same universe as But If I Know You but both can be read as standalones
Jack had gotten used to the nightshift. The average crazy coming through the ER doors was a price to pay, but it was better than burning during the day shift. Then again, there weren’t any windows in the Pitt, so maybe Jack could get away with it every so often. Sun poisoning wasn’t fun for a full-time thing though. He had covered for Robby on the off occasion when Chen wasn’t available and Robby was going into rut. He just had to pull a twenty-four-hour shift like he was on now. No ambulance bay and no roof time when the sun was out. If he thought about it too hard, he could still feel the heat on his cold skin.
The pitt had been quiet all night. A drunk would come in here and there. Nothing he couldn’t handle.
Dawn was coming soon and Jack was more than glad to head home and remove his prosthetic. Immortality might cure a lot of things, but it can’t heal old wounds. His liner was starting to chafe, and the constant healing feeling was making him nauseous. Maybe he was just thirsty. His heated thermos had run out over five hours ago. He didn’t feel right about stealing from the blood bank. And drinking from a patient was just gross.
Jack glanced at the clock, Robby really should be here by now. It was fifteen till six. It wasn’t like him to be this late. God, the man was practically addicted to work.
Maybe a walk around the floor would help. Jack stood up, putting weight on his leg and immediately grimaced. No, nevermind, that was a bad idea. He flops back into Dana’s good chair behind the nurse’s station. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
Jack taps his fingers against the countertop. His charting was done, rounds were done, and the seconds on the clock seemed to pass slower than the last hundred years of his life. He fiddles with his silver wedding band. He hadn’t taken it off since his wedding back in 1922. Well, his third wedding at that point. He slips the ring off and watches as his blistered skin heals instantly, he shakes his head at the aching feeling of his chest. The memories come flooding back, the fall of Rome, the revolution, the 1920s.
He smiled as he remembered how you had held a picket at the White House campaigning for women's rights. It had been so hot that day. You had dug out an old umbrella from your father’s closet and a god-awful hat just so he could be there with you. He would have risked sun poisoning for you even if you hadn’t.
What he wouldn’t give for one more day with you. Realistically, he knew he’d find you again. He had to find you again. But the search had gone on for over forty years. That didn’t stop him from hoping.
“Where are you, angel?” he murmurs to himself as he slips his wedding band back on, hissing as fresh blisters bloom across his skin. Worth it. The burns were a physical reminder that you existed.
The sounds of sirens pulled him from his thoughts. A gurney crashed through the doors, Robby was riding on top, hands pumping into the chest of some unknown person, as paramedics rushed them to trauma one.
The smell of rubber and something metallic floods his senses. It's when the gurney turns that he catches the smell of something distinctly you. If Jack’s heart could still beat in his chest, it would be tachycardic. No, you couldn’t be here. You weren’t supposed to show up this way. It was supposed to be like a movie where he’d accidentally knock your coffee out of your hand and buy you a new one or offer you his jacket in the rain. Not you arriving at his ER by ambulance.
He’s on his feet and to the trauma bay at an inhuman speed. A nurse would later swear he nearly knocked into her. He’d have to remember to erase the security footage later.
Robby is calling clear when Jack shoves through the crowd of nurses and interns. He had to get to you. No, he was going to die if he couldn’t get to you. He doesn’t register Robby calling his name or trying to move him as Jack grabs the paddles. Your back arches as the electricity courses through you.
“Come on, Angel,” he curses as he watches the monitor. “Fuck!”
The paddles hit your chest again. Then again. Come on, beat dammit.
He prays to whatever gods are out there in a last-ditch effort. He would wait forever for you if he had to, but god he didn’t want to wait any longer. He was selfish like that.
The heart monitor beats once faintly. Then a stronger pulse. You gasp as your hands shoot out from your body. If you hadn’t been strapped down, he was sure you would have come off the table.
“You’re in the hospital,” Robby says. “You were in a car accident; Dr. Abbot and I are going to take care of you.”
Jack couldn’t focus. His eyes were darting around your face, carefully checking for any unknown injuries and listening for any hemorrhaging. Your eyes, glassy and not all there, glide from Robby to Jack. Something seems to pass behind your eyes when they meet Jack’s. Recognition, maybe? He couldn’t be sure.
“Jack?” you murmur, like some part of you recognized him from a past life. Your eyes are rolling back in your head before he can respond.
There was no way. It had to be just a coincidence. You had never recognized him in the past. It was always a reset. Every. Single. Time. He doesn’t get to stew on it for long before Robby grabs his shoulders and shakes him from his thoughts.
“Brother,” Robby shakes him hard till Jack’s eyes meet his. “Brother! You gotta go.”
Jack shoves Robby off of him. “No. I’m not leaving her.”
“Jack, I know,” Robby says. “I’ve seen her picture. But the sun is coming up. You have to go. I won’t leave her side.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It has to be good enough for today. Go. Home.” Robby orders. If Jack hadn’t been in shock, he might have put up more of a fight as Robby all but drags him from the trauma room and out to the ambulance bay. “You’re no good to her blistered and throwing up.”
Jack swallows hard. Robby was right. He was no good with sun poisoning. He’d be out of commission for days. “Okay,” he says softly.
Jack can feel the hair on the back of his neck raise as the morning sun rays caress over the buildings. The fucking sun. One thing in this world, that seems to control his reality.
The sun climbed higher behind him as he stepped back into the shadows. Somewhere inside the hospital, your heart kept beating loud enough for him to hear.
Summary: recently undead jack abbot—grappling with everything being a vampire in pittsburgh brings—has his world flipped on its axis by a new nurse.
Warnings: mentions of minor injuries, talks of ER/ED, explicit language, angst, age-gap, slow burn, pinning, mentions of widower jack, DEFINITELY will be blood !!, yearning/longing, probably some scientific & medical inaccuracies.
Author’s Note: this idea has been itching the back of my brain so i needed to do something about it !! comment below to be added to the taglist if you haven’t already !! <3
Jack Abbot didn’t do things halfway. That was especially true when it came to you. Dana’s new night shift nurse who’d just strolled through the PTMC doors with a bounce in her step and such a zest for life that it made him almost crumble right then and there.
He didn’t do things halfway with his late-wife, or the army. Not with patients and their care or the people in his life he cared deeply about. So he definitely wouldn’t with you; especially not when he could hear the blood pumping through your veins all the way from the hub; or smell the syrupy sweetness of it. Not when he could hear your rhythmic heart-beat.
It made whatever ounce of blood that may have been left in his body run cold.
His late-wife hadn’t known his secret—and in a way—he was relieved he hadn’t been old enough when she passed for her to notice that he wasn’t aging with her.
He vowed to himself that he wouldn’t repeat that mistake if he ever got the chance to love again.
For a while; he didn’t. But right now, with your laughter echoing through the ED halls, and the smell of your vanilla skin shining under the fluorescent lights—he felt something in him shift.
Not abruptly or painful just…easily; like something missing had finally slid into place.
Jack tracked you with his eyes as you moved through the ED—Lena and Dana on either side of you—and he told himself he wasn’t going to half-ass this either, whatever it was.
Even when his entire being told him you were too young, too vibrant and full of life; that he didn’t and shouldn’t ruin you—he couldn’t deny that somewhere deep down hunger grew in his chest. Each time you moved and the perfume you wore stalked across the ED, he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t push it down; he craved you.
Worse than that; you were coming towards him now, both charge nurses still by your side as the bounce in your step never left—and he felt himself freeze for the first time in decades. The sound of words leaving your perfect lips landed on almost deaf ears as he swore he felt his old, long-dead heart start pumping again. The smile on your face was enough to do him in as you looked softly up at him, your voice lilting through every sense in his body as you greeted him;
“Hi.”
Oh, Jack immediately thought; for you, i’d risk it all.
Congrats on 2.5k!!! 🫶🫶 may I request vampire!jack abbot x intern!reader, “Shh, just a little more…” (this is from the smut prompt list but you can take it in whatever direction you want), and plot wise jack forgets to feed and gets real hungry at work and reader offers to donate (insert evil laughter here)
xoxo
Cw: 18+ mdni! Orgasm, blood sucking, vampire!jack, dirty talk, no beta, English isn’t my first language<3
An: thank you bestieeeeee!!! Vamp!jack is delicious TEHEEEEEEEE
Wc: 991
You come from a long line of vampires. Your family tree is filled with different successful vampires who are thriving in their careers, have earned their place in society, and keep on doing so until they have nothing more to give.
There are various types of creatures: werewolves, sirens, shape shifters, and so many more you have yet to meet. So it wasn’t a shock when you met so many of them in The Pitt.
Not as a vampire, but as a human.
Your family waited for years for your fangs to come out. It never happened. They waited for you to lose your reflection in the mirrors. That also never happened. They watched as you devoured a large pot of garlic parmesan pasta with not a single thought. They even tried to feed you a sip of blood, which you gagged and spat out.
You weren’t a vampire; that was the truth, so you tried your best to mask the disappointment of your family by getting into the healthcare industry, receiving insurance to make sure their blood supply never ran dry.
But that isn’t the hardest thing to endure, it is having a fucking crush on the most handsome with an edge Vampire who happens to be your attending too.
Jack Abbot is everything: hot, sexy, intelligent, and a tough, protective vampire. He drinks his blood on the roof in the dead of the night, never around his staff, never where someone can see. He makes sure he keeps his distance from the dead bodies, using scent suppressants to block the smell of blood when his thirst strikes.
And you have fallen for the man from the top of a mountain.
You know what a hungry vampire looks like: the crazed look in their eyes, the tremble of their hands, the constant swallowing of their spit. You know the signs so well, and right now that is exactly how Jack looks as he has you on your back in the backseat of his truck, sniffing your pulse points — carotid, radial, ulnar — and as he goes lower, he drags the tips of his fangs on your stomach.
“Jack–”
“You smell like fucking heaven, baby–”
“Jack, are you–” you moan as he slips your pants down your legs, your underwear following closely, “Look at me…”
“Hmm?” He bites his lips, his pale skin glowing under the moonlight as he gazes down at your body, the sound of your heartbeat filling his ears. He can barely focus while you lie under him like the finest meal ever, and you catch it immediately.
“Do you… Do you need blood?” You ask, breathless from the way his hands move all over your hips, not knowing where to grip, “Jack?”
“Huh?” He can’t hear you, not when your heartbeat rings through his head like a broken record. Thump. Thump. Thump. Full of blood. Fresh blood. Alive human blood.
“You can… You can have some… if you’d like?” You offer sweetly, so sweetly, and he groans deep from his chest, mouthing at your hip, holding himself back with the last thread of self-control he has in him, “I heard… your spit can heal wounds faster, right? You can drink from my Femoral.”
“Artery? You’ll let me bite into your artery?” He chuckles, wiggling on his knees as he throws your legs over his shoulders, pressing his nose to your pulse, grunting at the gentle movements of your skin under his touch, “You don’t know what you do to me, baby…”
“You didn’t have time to… drink, I bet. You should do something about it– FUCK!”
The first touch of your blood on his fangs makes him dizzy, and the deeper he sinks his teeth into your artery, the dizzier he gets.
You are sweet. You taste so fucking sweet. He’s never had any blood like this. His body is tense as he drinks you up, every beat of your heart gushes blood into his mouth, and he laps it up feverishly.
One of his hands moves to your clit, thumb rubbing against the nerves a little faster than he likes. He is getting lightheaded, lost in his head as he sucks the dry out of the wound and touches you with purpose.
You moan at different sensations; his bite stings a little, but it is worth being the source of his feeding. You can’t see most of his face, but you can feel him getting messier the more he touches you, and that only makes you wetter.
“Fucking delicious, baby,” he groans, running the fat of his tongue over the wound before he looks up at you, his chin and lips covered in blood, even his teeth when he laughs at your whining, "Shh, just a little more..."
He dives back in again, sucking and sucking while he brings you closer to the edge of your high, enjoying the way you gasp and cling to him, fingers tangling in his curls.
“Gonna come for me?” He whispers, “Just from letting me feed on you like a starved dog and rub your pretty little clit? Oh, you filthy, filthy girl.”
Your orgasm crashes over you; each wave of pleasure raises your heartbeat, and Jack drinks up every gush of blood into his mouth without slowing down his thumb, grunting and smiling as your legs tighten around his head.
“J-Jack!” You moan, feeling a little lost in your head from the blood loss, and now you're high, trying your hardest not to faint from the intense pleasure running through your body, “Oh, fucking hell…”
“I want to take you to my place, I want to fuck you in my coffin and fill my glasses with your blood,” he licks the wound clean, leaning down to lap up your release from your cunt, groaning at the taste, “Not just your blood, baby. You are sweet all over.”
“For you, Jack–”
“Sweetest intern in this goddamn place. My sweet, delicious human.”
Warnings: dp, blood drinking, Robby and Jack kiss (as they should). Let me know if I forgot anything.
A/N: Sequel to my Kinktober fic. Read it here. We learn Robby & Jack’s origins as vampires (bonus points if you get my reference); reader explicitly has an IUD cause I don’t know if they can get her pregnant and didn’t want to make that decision now if I want to revisit this world). Title is from the HIM song Vampire Heart.
Vampires. A few hours ago you would not have believed that they were anything but myth. But now your neck had two bite marks from where Robby and Jack had bitten you. They were already healing, a benefit of vampire saliva, but they were still there. As was the memory of how fucking good it felt when they bit you together, one on each side of you. Now you were between the men, in the elevator down to Jack’s apartment. After they finished feeding from you, one of the hottest things that you’ve ever experienced, you had dropped to your knees, wanting to taste them. But Jack helped you up and mentioned it would be better in his apartment. Easier on your knees and more private.
“So boys, how did I taste? Hopefully I lived up to your imaginations,” you quipped. Jack placed a kiss on your forehead.
“Even better, sweetheart,” he said.
“The best I’ve had,” Robby added. You felt the truthfulness in his statement, and it made you glow under his praise. You leaned into Robby at your back, hands around Jack’s neck to pull him closer to you. You stay like that until the elevator reaches Jack’s floor. You follow him and Robby out and to Jack’s door. Once inside you toss your backpacks on the ground, and you kick off your shoes. Turning to the men you finally ask the question that’s been on your mind.
“How long have you two been…”
“Vampires?” Robby supplies.
“Yes. I’m still wrapping my mind around that word.”
“We’re not hundreds of years old, if that’s what’s worrying you. I was down in New Orleans during Katrina. Went back ten years later to visit some friends and was turned by a night club singer named Simone.”
“After Robby came back to Pittsburgh he trusted me enough to show me what happened and turned me. Obviously happened after my leg got blown off in the Middle East. We were together by then. It took him a while to accept that I wanted to be like him.”
“So you two are together! I thought so but all the nurses talked about how you both were players who took home beautiful women from bars a lot.”
“Well, both are true,” Jack laughed, “we are together and we do pick up beautiful women at the bar. But we make sure they don’t remember anything but amazing sex. Don’t want to scare them, or give them nightmares.”
“Man, I’d hate to forget how it felt when you two fed from me. Damn near orgasmic. You better not make me forget.”
“Darling, we don’t want you to forget. Already told you we want you for as long as you’ll have us.”
“And just wait til you feel our bite when we’re inside you. You definitely won’t forget that,” Jack added. You looked at both men, and saw their eyes darkening with lust. Your own eyes probably mirrored theirs.
“Then what are we waiting for? Show me how you’ll make me come undone.” Both men smile, walking towards you. Jack kisses you, tongue exploring your mouth. You can taste the faintest hint of iron from when he was drinking from you. It was intoxicating. Robby licked by your pulse point on your neck, lapping where his fangs were previously. You could feel both men’s erections pressing up against you. You broke off the kiss with Jack so you could kiss Robby. Once again, you tasted the faint hint of your blood. And once again you found it intoxicating.
“You wanted so badly to taste us up on the roof. How about you get down on your knees and show us?” Jack whispered into your ear. You were quick to follow his directions, kneeling in front of the two men. Robby quickly grabbed a pillow to put under your knees. You licked your lips as you took them both out of their pants, Robby then Jack. Both men cut, Robby longer while Jack was thicker. Dark curls surrounded the base of Robby’s cock, while silver and red surrounded Jack’s. Precum leaking out of both of them. Which answered your question on if they could ejaculate as vampires. You took one of them in each hand, and licked their tips, Jack followed by Robby.
“Speaking of tasting delicious,” you said, before going back and taking Robby in your mouth. You bobbed your head up and down before moving to Jack, and repeating the same thing. You took your time with them, switching off so neither man felt left out.
“Fuck you’re so good with your mouth,” Robby said, hand in your hair.
“I can’t wait to feel your cunt on my cock,” Jack added. Looking up you saw Jack lean in and kiss Robby. You moaned around Jack and came up for air.
“I can’t wait to feel you both inside me.” At that comment Jack helped you up. With no ceremony he stripped you of your scrubs, leaving you just in your bra and underwear.
“Let’s get you to our bedroom.” You nodded and followed Jack, with Robby behind you. Their bedroom was done in forrest green, with a grey bedspread on their California king bed.
“Bed’s big enough for three,” you observed.
“Yes. And time to test it out,” Robby said as he shucked off his scrub top and undershirt. Jack did the same. Both men took off their pants, and Jack sat down on the edge of the bed, taking off his prosthetic. Before either man could say anything else you dropped in front of him, massaging his leg. He groaned.
“You don’t have to—” he started.
“But I want to. Is this okay?”
“Better than okay. Your hands are amazing, thank you.” Robby came up behind you, placing Jack’s crutch on the side of the bed. He wordlessly handed you some lotion and you worked some into Jack’s leg, taking special care where his scar was. Once you were done Jack pulled you up for a kiss.
“You’re fucking amazing already. Knew you’d be perfect for us,” Robby whispered as you and Jack kissed. You broke away from Jack to undo your bra and push your underwear off. Both men removed their boxers as well. You crawled up on the bed and cocked an eyebrow at the men.
“I want you both in me at the same time.”
“Who do you want in your mouth?”
“No, I want one of you in my cunt and one in my ass. I want you to feel each other while fucking me.” Robby turned red but Jack’s face broke out into a grin.
“As our lady wishes.”
“Your lady, huh?” You grin as you tease him.
“Yes. Ours. Get up on Jack. Let him fill your cunt while I work your ass open.” Jack sat back against the headboard, and you crawled up to him.
“I don’t know if we even need to worry about this but I have an IUD.”
“Honestly we don’t either. So good to know,” Jack answered, as Robby went to grab the lube. You nodded and went to straddle Jack. He lined his head up with your folds and found you already dripping wet.
“Fuck. Just from being on your knees with our cocks in your mouth?”
“Jack, I’ve been wet since you invited me up to your roof. Your bites and tasting you were icing on the cake.” Jack moaned as you slowly sank down on him. He pulled you in for a kiss as Robby climbed up behind you. You heard the bottle of lube open, and soon felt his fingers. He slowly worked you open, and the feeling caused your pussy to clench around Jack.
“Fuck, Robby,” you groan as he adds a second finger. Jack’s hands grip your sides as you roll your hips, angling for some friction. Robby uses his free hand to swat your ass.
“Stay still, pretty girl. You’ll get what you want soon.” Robby adds a third finger, making sure you’re well prepared for him. Soon he coats his cock in the lube and slowly presses into you. You relax into him, allowing him access.
“So tight. Like you were made for us,” Robby whispers. Jack thrusts his hips up as Robby stays still to get you acclimated. They then set a motion, Robby thrusting in as Jack thrusts out, and vice versa.
“Fuck, you both feel so good inside me. Bite me again? I want to feel it again,” you moan.
“So perfect for us,” Jack moans as he brings his teeth to where he bit you earlier. Robby does the same behind you. Robby brings a hand down to your clit, giving you extra stimulation.
“You close?” Robby asks. You nod, and they both sink their fangs into you. Once again you feel like you’re high, but this time you also come. The tight coil in your stomach springs and you shatter. White hot heat flows through you, and your toes curl as your vision goes blank. Everything feels like it’s electric and you’re on fire. It’s the most earth shattering orgasm you’ve ever felt, and as you slowly float back into your body you’re aware of the men finishing inside you as well. You collapse onto Jack’s chest, panting.
“Fuck darling, you okay?” You nod, still blissed out. You don’t even know if it was Robby or Jack who spoke.
“Brother, look how fucked she is. Still riding that high.”
“I think you’re right Jack.” You nod, and mumble that it was amazing.
A little while later, when you were fully back in your body and both men have pulled out of you, you’re cuddling on the bed in between them.
“Is it always like that? That…explosive?”
“Yes. Between the sex and the bites. Maybe not as much if it was just one of us, but with both of us? It’ll always be like that,” Jack answers.
“Especially if we time it right and bite just as you’re about to come,” Robby adds.
“Well, you two timed it right.” They laugh at your addition.
“We hope you’re willing to stay with us, especially now that we’ve tasted you.”
“Oh Robby, you’re not getting rid of me. I’m yours now.” Jack kisses you as Robby nuzzles your neck.
“Well thank the gods for that. I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t want us after that. After I tasted you. And I know Robby feels the same.” You smile and pull both men closer.
“I’m still unsure if I want to live forever, but I definitely want you both.”
“Jack and I will have you for as long as you’ll have us. And we can talk about forever whenever. When I turned Jack we talked about it for a long time before I agreed to turn him. We’re not rushing it with you.”
“Mmm makes sense.” You snuggle into the two men and slowly fall asleep.
Another installation to my "Jack Abbot is a vampire" agenda + the obligatory rabbot on the side hehehehe >:} Featuring, in its first public appearance, Bullet The Cat!!
The finished art by itself and Bullet The Cat reference sheet under the cut!!
Summary: Jack Abbot's lover has reappeared again after decades. He is determined to be in her life.
or
Jack Abbot plans his own meet-cute.
WC: 1.5K
Tags/content: angst with a happy ending, reader was in car crash, Jack is a little stalker, reader is called “angel” as a term of endearment, strong language, let me know if I missed any!
Inspired by: Once Upon a Dream by Lana Del Rey
This is in the same universe as Once Upon a Dream but can be read as a standalone.
Jack couldn’t get you out of his head. It’s not his fault. He could practically smell you everywhere. On his sleeves from where they had brushed against you, on his fingertips from where he had touched you without gloves, on his skin. You were invading his senses, driving him mad.
It really wasn’t his fault. Honestly. You can’t blame him for standing across the street from the PTMC armed with an umbrella and a ridiculous hat. He had slathered SPF 100 everywhere. It wouldn’t keep the blisters away for long, but maybe he could get a glimpse of you.
He just needed to see you again.
Just one more time, please. It’s something he had said before. Something he had tried to convince himself of multiple times. This time will be enough. This lifetime with you will be enough. You’d joke about the looks the two of you would get from strangers when he walks down the street with you on his arm. You’d pull him into you on a curb somewhere and press a kiss to his lips promising that you “loved your old man.” He’d smile, a real one, and you’d caress the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
He yearned to take you down to the park and get down on one knee with the ring he had given you for a millennium. The wedding bells would chime as you walked down the aisle towards him again.
Then he’d watch you grow gray and the lines across your face deepen till you finally looked his age. You’d take him back to that curb and press a kiss you had shared for decades, onto his lips. Your smile would stretch across your face, as breathtaking as ever, and coo how much you “loved your husband.”
God, he craved it.
He just needed one more lifetime with you. Just one more. He promises it would be enough. Though, he knows he’s lying. Absentmindedly, he twists the ring on his ring finger.
His skin was crawling and his gums itchy. The fridge in his townhome was empty. He really should be out hunting, but you were here. He might have felt like a little bit of a stalker if he thought about it too hard. He could hear your heartbeat through the concrete walls of the hospital.
He had sat down on a bus stop bench when his nose caught your smell, something floral and living. Have you changed your shampoo? Stupid question, Abbot. The last time he found you was in the 1920s. Soaps have changed since then. Had you seen the 70s? You would have been ecstatic to see how far women's rights had come. Where have you been? He had so many questions he would never get the answers to.
“There you are, Angel,” The breath leaves his lungs as you appear through the glass doors.
You were shoving the discharge papers into your purse as you walked out of the doors of PTMC. Your head was pounding. Dr. Robinavitch had been very kind, a little too doting. He had ran multiple tests, in your opinion too many. You swore he had you hooked up to every machine in the building. Robby had assured you it was “just standard practice!” A quick Google search told you otherwise. Better safe than sorry, you guessed.
Jack’s eyes were lasered in on you from the moment the doors creaked open. He could bolt over there. Introduce himself as one of the doctors who saved you. Would that be weird? He glanced down the street. Yeah, the random man waiting on a bench suddenly bum rushing you might be strange. No, he would have to do better than that. You deserved better than a half-assed attempt.
He watches as you hail a cab and slip into the back seat. His eyes follow the cab till he can’t see it then he listens until your heartbeat disappears.
He would have to do better.
“Robby, brother, please,” Jack chased Robby down the hall at morning shift change, hot on his heels. “Just take my shift tomorrow night! I’ll cover your Christmas shift.”
“I’m Jewish.”
“Robby, please.”
Robby chuckles at the way the older man is practically on his knees pleading. “Is this about her?”
Jack feels his throat go dry as he nods, “I just need ten minutes with her. Ten minutes at dusk. That’ll be enough.”
Robby turns the deal over in his head. Jack had covered more than one shift for him during rut and sometimes just when Robby was stir crazy at the hospital. He knew Jack was more than likely going to be at work way less now that you had reappeared. It’s a win win for everyone really.
“Yeah alright,” Robby runs a hand over his graying beard. “I don’t want her in here with any bite marks though.”
Jack feels the relief course through his dry veins. “Don’t fuck with me, she’s mine. I wouldn’t leave any marks.”
With a tilt of his head and a quirk of his eyebrow that Robby knew meant no good, “Well, none she didn’t ask for.”
“Get the fuck out of my ER.”
The rain was falling in heavy sheets when you got off of work the next afternoon. You hold your umbrella close as you move through the crowded Pittsburgh streets. Strangers bump into you as you attempt to move through the crowd.
This day couldn’t get worse. First your boss wouldn’t let you take a sick day, then the rain started soaking through your good shoes. Fuck, you just wanted to get home.
Yet, the universe will always find a way to kick you when you are down. When you turn the corner, out of nowhere a man appears. The coffees he was carrying spilling down the front of your dress shirt.
“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” the stranger says, his hands shooting up. The man quickly pats at your ruined shirt with a napkin.
You let out a groan, “It’s fine!”
“This is my fault. I was coming around the corner too quickly.”
Finally, you look up, catching the man’s eye. No way, he was hot. Like stupid hot. A older, but that had never really turned you off. He looked familiar, weirdly familiar. Maybe you had seen him in passing or… somewhere. You couldn’t put your finger on it.
“I’m sorry,” you say, cutting his rambling off. “Have we met before?”
Jack swallowed the ache in his throat. Close enough to hope. Never enough to matter. That was the cruel part. Your soul knew him long before your mind ever did.
His lips quirks up, in a half smile. “I don’t think so.”
Sneaky bastard.
“I think I would remember a face like yours,” he offers a hand, you place your hand in his. You try to ignore how his engulfs yours. “I’m Jack.”
You smile. That soft smile that makes your eyes twinkle in that way that made Jack fall for you the first time. Time may take you from him, but it can’t keep you from him. You offer your name. He has to remind himself to act like it isn’t already engraved on his dead heart. You would think he would be better at this after thousands of years of meeting you over and over again. It never gets old.
“I really am sorry,” maybe for purposefully dumping coffee on you, but he only felt a little guilty. You looked cute covered in coffee. You looked cute covered in nothing too, but that was beside the point. “Can I take you out for dinner sometime as an apology?”
Why did you feel this draw towards this random stranger? He felt comforting and like a light in the gloom of the rain. Your heart felt like it was beating for the first time. Like actually beating, not just doing it for the sake of living.
“Do you dump coffee on all the girls?”
“Only the pretty ones.”
You huff out a laugh as your cheeks warm. Charming, he had to be charming. “I don’t know… I don’t make it a habit of going on dates with random men.”
“Oh, it’s a date?”
Shit, had you read the situation wrong? Of course, this handsome man was just being nice. Why would he be asking you out when you were waterlogged and covered in latte? It was just a common courtesy.
Wait, no it's not.
You bite your lower lip to stop the laugh threatening to bubble up from your chest. “You’re fucking with me.”
He nods, his eyes crinkling at the edges, “I am. I would love to take you on a date.”
You pass your phone over to Jack. He slips his readers on to see the phone screen. For appearances mainly, but god he had gone long enough he felt like he was starting to need them. Especially when he hadn’t drank anything in forty-eight hours. He really needed to fix that. It was embarrassing to be as weak as he was currently. Maybe you’d think the glasses were cute.
“I’ll text you?”
“Call, instead. Old ears and all.” It was a joke, he could hear better than average. He could hear the way your heart had sped up and the way your throat worked when he smiled at you. He just wanted to hear your voice.
You promise to call him tomorrow after work and bid him goodbye. When you turn the corner, Jack pulls the wedding ring from his breast pocket. The wedding ring you had put on his finger. The silver burns his skin as it settles in place. Right where it should be.
