Ah, if there are slots open still for requestober, and if you'd like to draw this one-- human RGB, and Hero's reaction to meeting him, please? Apologies if I misunderstood any of the rules and this isn't in line with them...
Scrolling through my old posts to check my current companion tags and I found my reaction to the series 8 trailer and it's so wild seeing me of 10 years ago say I'm not convinced by Peter Capaldi yet, who is my favourite Doctor of all time.
Like, I know he takes a while to warm up and I know it took me even longer to emotionally accept the fact that David Tennant had been knocked off the top spot, but it's just so weird to see!
i’m going be honest. alex is probably the first time in my life where i can really see myself in a character so much that it’s head turning. like sure i’ve related to other characters before obviously but i can actually see myself in him. he’s so many things; anxious, loyal, sarcastic, sensitive, talented, loving, smart but sometimes clueless and goofy and so much more but also importantly so comfortably gay. like i have never really seen myself or even related that much to most gay characters on tv. alex is the first time where i feel he’s an entirely realistic portrayal of a gay teen boy because i’m a gay teen boy and he’s just like me and others i’ve met like me which is amazing and i never thought i get see that. and not only is he a great rep on his own but he gets a love interest !! who likes him back !!! who is also a relatable teen boy that’s also gay !!! and them not officially getting together has nothing to do with their gayness or acceptance of themselves or something like that because there isn’t a big coming out or coming to terms that they like boys. they both already know that and are comfortable with themselves. there isn’t even a “but what if he doesn’t like boys” scene. their gayness gets to be so causal and they’re supported and loved and i appreciate that so much. and it’s obvious they would get together in a s2 which is so great. everything about alex and willie means to do much to me and sometimes i want cry about finally getting the sort of representation i so lacked growing up and it’s so important and meaningful. i love jatp and i would’ve loved it so much at age 17 too and alex and willie is a big reason why 
𝒮atoru keeps you bent over, taking his time while his eyes stay fixed on the mirror..watching every needy, dazed expression you make..
1.0k words, quick read 𝑓𝑡. byf!toru ( +18 )
Satoru had you bent over the edge of the bed, one hand splayed between your shoulder blades keeping you down, the other locked around your hip. The mirror across the room caught everything ; your face half-buried in the sheets, mouth open, eyes glassy. He watched himself fuck into you, slow and deep at first, then harder when your thighs started shaking.
“Look at you,” he murmured, voice low and rough with that cocky edge he never bothered hiding. “Can’t even keep your eyes open. You’re taking it so fucking well.”
You made a soft, broken sound, more whine than word, fingers twisting in the blanket. He rolled his hips and bottomed out, grinding there just to feel you clench around him. Your reflection showed the exact second the pleasure hit, lips parting wider, a dazed little flutter of your lashes.
“There it is.” He pulled almost all the way out and snapped back in, the sound wet and sharp in the quiet room. “That face. I could watch it all night.”
You tried to push back against him, needy, but he controlled the pace completely. Every thrust forced another soft, high noise out of you. He leaned over your back, chest warm against your skin, and reached around to cup your chin, tipping your face up toward the mirror.
“Open your eyes for me babe.”
You did, slow and heavy-lidded. The sight of yourself, flushed, messy, completely taken made you clench hard around him. He groaned under his breath and fucked into you harder, the hand on your hip tightening until you felt the bruise forming.
“.. You love this uh ? Love getting bent over and used while I stare at how pretty you look when you’re falling apart.”
“Sa..toru—” Your voice cracked on his name, half plea, half complaint. You sounded wrecked already, needy and spaced out.
He chuckled, and slowed down just enough to make you whimper in protest. “What? You want it faster? Harder? Use your words, baby. I know you can.”
You shook your head against the mattress, hips trying to chase him. “Please… just—don’t stop—”
“Not stopping sweetheart.” He drove in deep again, the force of it rocking you forward. His free hand slid down your stomach and found your clit, circling slow and deliberate while he kept thrusting. “Not when you sound like that. Not when you’re this wet for me.”
Your arms gave out. You dropped fully onto the bed, face turned to the side so you could still see the mirror. He followed you down without missing a beat, covering you, fucking you into the mattress. Every stroke punched soft, desperate noises out of your throat. He watched the whole time, your open mouth, the way your eyes kept rolling back, the helpless little trembles that ran through you every time he hit that spot just right.
“That’s it,” he breathed against your ear. “You’re doing so fucking good for me.”
You were past coherent answers, reduced to soft, continuous whines and the occasional broken “please.” He kept the pressure on your clit steady, thrusts deep and relentless, until your whole body went tight under him. The orgasm hit hard, your reflection showed it clearly, the way your face crumpled, mouth falling open on a silent cry before the sound finally tore free.
He didn’t stop. He fucked you through it, slower now but still deep, riding the aftershocks until you were shaking and oversensitive, pushing weakly at his hip. Only then did he pull out, turn you onto your back, and push back in facing you. Your legs wrapped around him automatically. He braced over you, blue eyes half-lidded and smug, and started moving again, gentler this time, rolling into you while he watched every flicker of expression on your face up close.
“Still with me?” he asked, voice softer but still teasing.
You nodded, dazed, hands sliding up his arms. “Mmm… just—just slow for a second..”
“Got you.” He kissed the corner of your mouth, then deeper, swallowing the soft sounds you made. His hips kept a steady, deep rhythm, not rushing. One hand stroked your hair back from your face. “But you’re so fucking beautiful like this. Completely gone on my cock.”
You let out a quiet, needy whimper against his lips. He smiled into the next kiss, still moving, still watching you like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.
“Gonna make you cum again princess,” he promised, low and certain. “Then maybe I’ll let you rest. Maybe..”
You didn’t argue. You just held on, legs tightening around him, already drifting back under the slow, relentless pleasure he was feeding you.
᭡ kali’s notes ⸻I think I’m a little obsessed with writing about him right now... He’s so much fun to write about him! Butttt anyway, I hope you liked it mwahh !
Summary: What happens Fwb!Peter with spiking arachnid hormones sees you with another man
Warnings: Smut(18+) mdni, possessive behavior, drinking, mentions of fights, manhandling, degradation, reader is drunk.
Fwb!Peter who had disappeared after your fight. It wasn’t your intension to bring up his letter. You had accidentally found it in his drawer inside a coffee cup while looking for your missing earring.
You had no right to be upset. He didn’t have any emotional obligations to you, wasn’t that how it was supposed to be anyways?
You weren’t his responsibility, you weren’t someone he owed an explanation to; you were just supposed to be the one place he could use to escape without having to worry about anything.
No matter how long you had paced circles in the living room, cleaning the same spots over and over again trying to get rid of the hurt, you couldn’t stop thinking about it.
At the end, you had decided never to speak about it.
Telling him you had read his deeply personal letter to the love of his life wasn’t an option. Besides the fact that he still had the letter was a good sign. It meant that he hadn’t given it to her. It meant that he was not in contact with MJ and that was all you needed.
But watching him walk in that evening with two cups of coffee from the same café, from mj’s café had destroyed all resolve you had spent all day building.
“Do you still love her?” the words rolled off your lips before you could stop them.
Peter knew who you were talking about. It also wasn’t difficult to figure out how you found out. Knuckles whitening, he turned to face you.
He had looked at you with disgust and disbelief. He couldn’t believe you would betray his trust like that; how could you intrude on the very last piece of MJ he was allowed to keep?
What followed was an ugly fight full of bitter accusations and shouts over tears until he decided he had enough of you and stormed out shutting the door behind him in a loud rattling bang.
Fwb!Peter who wouldn’t pick up your calls, who didn’t read your texts. No matter how hard you tried to apologize he just wouldn’t let you; it was like he had suddenly decided that you were not worth his time, like he was done with you for good.
Guilt and regret were mixing venomously inside you. You never should have found that letter. You never should have said anything to Peter. Memories of that night haunted you, soiling every thought you had, following you everywhere you went.
Deciding to drown in alcohol induced amnesia you walked in the first frat party you could spot.
The music was so loud it rolled off the walls. The beats pulsed down your spine in their rhythm as you stood leaning against the corner you picked the moment you entered. Red cups were scattered in every hand. The crowd laughed and danced as if relaxing more and more with every passing second.
You couldn’t have felt more out of place if you tried
The guy who approached you had spent the last twenty minutes talking about the recent updates in his favorite video game.
Maybe under different circumstances you would have actually been interested in what he had to say. Maybe he wouldn’t be a faceless man hurling words like higher pixels and better ping and you wouldn’t be having a hard time remembering his name or how he ended up here.
A decent person would have politely excused themselves from the one sided conversation and left. But you couldn’t do that. Not when you could still picture the look of disgust on Peter’s face.
You desperately needed the distraction. Without thinking much, in the deafening crowd you leaned in to whisper in the guy’s ear, asking him to bring a refill. Before you could finish the sentence cold fingers snaked around your elbow and jerked you off your spot.
When you turned and saw Peter’s face, you thought you were hallucinating. Had the drinks finally caught up to you? Was this just your life now? Pathetically thinking of Peter even when you were wasted?
With every passing second that he didn’t vanish you assured it really was him. You tried to release your arm but he wouldn't budge, an irritable glare etched on his face, as if the situation was so obviously beyond him he couldn't even bring himself to say anything.
Peter was here, standing right next to you refusing to let go of your arm. Everything instantly dissolved in an unfocused blur around you. You wanted to reach up and trace a finger along his eyebrow. You had spent the last two weeks wishing for a chance to see his pretty face again. There was so much you wanted to say.
Before you could start your apologies, you were being pulled away from the scene towards the stairs.
Fwb!Peter who couldn’t understand what was happening to him. It was like something was taking control over him. He couldn’t even remember why he was walking in this party when there was so much he had to do.
But when he saw you corned along with some guy, making no efforts to push him off, it was like something had snapped.
Watching you lean into his ear, he could feel the anger pulsating and boiling his blood. He didn’t think twice before crossing over and snatching you physically off of that man who clearly wanted nothing more than to get inside your pants.
Fwb!Peter who pushed you inside the first empty room he could find. You knew this was your chance to say everything you had in your mind before he decided to shut you out of his life again.
“I really shouldn’t have read your letter, I should have left it alone. I’m so sorry Peter” You blurted out. When he stayed silent you continued.
“You were right; we shouldn’t care about what the other person does. What you do with other people is none of my business, it was wrong of me interrupt.”
His nose flared. “Is that what was happening out there?” the words spat out like the taste of it nauseated him.
Confused you shook your head “No what?”
He started slowly walking towards you “Did I interrupt you guys? Would you be here with him instead of me if I hadn’t walked in and stopped you?”
Animosity waved off with every livid step he took. Alarmed by his sudden behavior, you started pacing back in defense till you hit the wall. “Peter I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He smiled when had you positively cornered he asked in mock whisper “Now you want to play dumb. Is that how you got his attention by playing the lost little whore?”
Heat flooded your cheeks. Gone was the sunny warmth radiating Peter who had helped you with your jammed car door the first time you met him. Heart hammering in your ribs, you placed a hesitant palm on his chest half hoping it would stop him.
“Two weeks and you’re running off with the first man that talks to you. I mean I knew you were needy but acting like this?” His breath fanned the shell of your ear, hoarse voice shooting straight down your spine.
Impatience colored his eyes black when you didn’t respond. He bent down till his teeth grazed the smooth skin of you neck and sucked on the familiar spot. Hovering there with his lips brushing near your collarbone he murmured a quiet I missed you so much.
Fwb!Peter who clawed the base of your skull, pushing your face as deep as he could into his face like he could finally breathe.
Fwb!Peter who frantically lifts you on his hips against the wall. “I know you want someone to catch us like this.”
Fwb!Peter who clamps your mouth with his hand, every thrust making it difficult to be quiet. “I missed this”
Fwb!Peter who takes his sweet time as if wanting to memorize every micro second with you.
Fwb!Peter who kisses your forehead when he is done and makes a mental promise to never let you go again. He won’t make that mistake ever again; even if you get on your knees and start begging.
piercing satoru's ears leads to him eating you out
"Are you positive that you're qualified for this?"
Gojo was gripping onto the edges of his seat — Adam's apple bobbing with every nervous gulp he took — all while you pulled out the earrings you had purchased for him earlier at the mall from your purse.
He has been begging you to pierce his ears for the past month. Always whining about how good he thought he'd look with them, how we wanted to be matching with you in some way.
And every time you would have to turn him down out of fear of being hated on by his parents more than they already did. They believed you were a "bad influence" on him for being alternative. You expressed your beliefs with your voice and through your style, something that immediately caught Gojo's interest.
"It's better than to spend $90 elsewhere." You shrugged, pulling on gloves to safely proceed.
"Not too much on Claire's." He leaned into your touch when you reached over to clean his lobes. "They were pulling through with those cat ear headbands."
"Okay and they're the reason my triple helix got infected. And also, those headbands would give me headaches." You said, all too focused with the task at hand.
You were way too close in this position, standing in between his open legs with his breath hitting you directly on your exposed chest, making you shiver. You tried your best to ignore it, but you could tell your buds were hardening under your bra.
It didn't help with the way he chuckled, voice being all of a sudden attractive . You had to remind yourself that this was your best friend, nothing more. And he had to remind himself that it was inherently wrong to keep looking at your chest.
But he couldn't help it when it was right there.
"On a scale of 1 to 10, how much will this hurt?" He asked, eyes averting to your face then back down to your cleavage. Have you always worn shirts like these? Fuck, you looked gorgeous with that necklace on.
"Considering I'm piercing you with just the earring and vodka, I'd say a solid 8."
"Don't even joke lad. Bro, tell me you're just joking."
"Don't move." You warned, marking the middle of his lobe where you would be piercing into.
"My mom's going to kill me." He closed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the needle to go through.
You grabbed the earring, putting it directly on the marking point. You've done this countless times on yourself, like your nose piercing. With the help of a friend back in grade school, you popped that bad boy right through in the middle of passing period in the bathroom. "Okay, brace yourself."
Gojo let out a pathetic whine, wincing when a sharp pain erupted in his ear. His hands moved their grip onto your hips, bruising you up through your pants.
"Ouch fuck!"
"Don't move Satoru!"
"God, I'm trying not to!"
The sound of another pop could be heard before the piercing finally went through. You sighed, grabbing the butterfly back to secure the earring it place. "See, you're good. Let me do the next one.. Satoru?" Your eyes flickered down to your best friend, watching as he trembled.
Panicked, you grabbed onto his shoulders, trying to push him back. "Hey, what's going on?!"
Gojo wasn't trembling with pain, no, he was trembling with need. "You smell so fucking good." He murmured. Somehow, the creep had managed to sniff you even over the layers of clothes. And now he was pulling at your belt desperately.
"Satoru-"
"Shh.. let me see you. Please." He begged, already unbuttoning your jeans. "You look so pretty with this outfit on."
Without hesitation, you nodded. Gojo leaned in to take one big whiff at you through your drenched panties, licking at the fabric. "Pierce my other ear.. I'll make you feel good."
"I don't think that such a ngh- good idea!"
Gojo groaned, looking up at you. "Come on sweets. We can always re do it later if you mess up."
"It can get infected Satoruuuu..! Oh my god!" You gasped, grasping onto him when he moved your panties to the side, tongue flat on your pussy. He's cutting you off with rough licks, loudly slurping up at your arousal. You weren't wet enough to take his dick, so he'd save that experience for some other time when he had lube in his hands.
"Focus." He reminded you, tapping your hip.
You nodded, shakily reaching for the other earring to put on his left ear. It was hard to follow his orders when his tongue was splitting you open, strong hands palming your sides. You gulped, doing the same as what you had done with the other ear. Lining up the needle, poking the post right on it, getting stopped midway for the first pop.
Gojo's groan vibrated on your cunt, making you gasp. "That hurts!" He said, voice muffled.
With one final push, the earring went fully through, being closed off by the back. "T-there.. all done.."
"Good girl. Thank you sweets," He finally pulled away from between your legs. "Let me just finish taking care of you." He dove right back in, flicking at your clit until your head was thrown back in an embarrassing sound.
"That's it. Moan louder for me. Let me know that I'm the one making you feel this way. Shit, I'm surprised you don't have a piercing on your pretty pussy, that'd be cute right? You should get one.. or I should get a tongue piercing so I could use it on ya."
God, he never stops talking does he?
Your legs were shivering under his hold, his own drool sliding down them. His hair was in your grip, moving his head slightly up and down just how you needed him. He chuckled, spreading your ass, hitting it just enough to sting but not hurt. "You close?"
"Y-yes.. yes I'm close!"
You bit down your lip when your stomach jumped, feeling a sudden warmth spill out of you. Gojo stayed a few more seconds, lapping at your release before pulling away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Knew you tastes good. I always did wonder why you ate so much pineapple."
"You're so gross.." You murmured, gently hitting his forehead back. He snorted, pulling you down on his lap, helping you get back dressed.
"So? How do they look?" He moved his head to the side, showcasing his new earrings. You blinked away at the blurriness of your eyes which widened when they saw how uneven the left earring was.
"Uh.. well, we might have to take a visit to Claire's after all."
For the Valko requests, I would love to see some cute family fluff between MC, Valko, his cousins, grandma, and his sister (I think he had a sister in his lore, correct me if I am wrong), because I want to see how MC would get along with Valko's family. 🐺
𝐀 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄
synopsis: when valko brings you home for the first time, he warns you about everything: his grandmother’s food, his sister’s stare, his cousin’s stories, the family jokes that always cut too close. he forgets to warn you that love in his house is not gentle or quiet, but loud, practical, mercilessly observant, and served warm at the kitchen table.
cw/tw: valko x reader. very soft domestic fluff. light family teasing.
read here: ao3 ⋅ tumblr
Valko lost his nerve three steps from the door.
It was a small death, but you saw it happen; the brave lift of his chin, the twitch in his jaw, the small, tragic collapse of his entire face when a crash came from inside the house.
His hand tightened around yours.
“Dobro,” he said.
Another crash.
From inside, and older woman called, “If that's my good plate, I will put someone in the ground before supper.”
Valko closed his eyes. You turned toward him.
He opened one eyes. “She loves plates.”
“More than people?”
“Depends on the people.”
You laughed before you could stop yourself, and relief moved through him all at once, softening his shoulders, loosening the frightened line of his mouth. He'd been nervous all morning. Badly nervous. Valko, who could grin with blood on his teeth and make danger look like a door he'd simply forgotten to knock on, had spent the whole walk here giving you warnings no sane person could have prepared for.
Do not let Mika read your palm. He makes things up and then believes them.
Do not compliment Baba's curtains unless you want curtains.
Do not say you're full.
And, most importantly, if anyone mentions the soup incident, Valko had said, grave as a condemned man, they're lying.
You had asked what the soup incident was.
He had started to walk faster.
Now he stood before the old wooden door with your fingers caught in his, trying to look calm and producing, somehow, the exact expression of a wolf about to be bathed.
“Valko,” you said softly.
“Yes?”
“You're shaking.”
“I'm not shaking.”
“You are.”
“I’m containing myself.”
“From what?”
“Hereditary embarrassment.”
The door flew open.
A girl about his age stood on the other side, dark-eyed and grinning, with flour on her cheek and murder in her posture. She took one look at Valko’s hand around yours, then lifted her gaze to his face with the slow delight of someone finding a knife exactly where she had hoped one would be.
A slow smile cut across her face.
“Oh,” she smirked. “So this is why you changed your shirt twice.”
Valko made a sound. Small, wounded, entirely unlike a wolf.
“I changed once.”
“You changed twice. The first shirt was the blue one. The second was the one that made you look like you were going to court. This...This is the third.”
His ears went red.
The woman held out her hand to you. “Milena. His sister.”
“Unfortunately,” Valko added.
“Fortunately. Without me, you'd still think soap is optional in winter.”
“It isn't optional.”
“Because of me.”
You took Milena's hand. Her grip was warm, firm, and full of judgement she hadn't yet decided to use.
Behind her, the house breathed out heat. Bread, onions, some in old wood, something sweet cooling on a counter. There were voices everywhere, layered and crossing. One person laughing while another complained, a child humming under a table, chairs scraping, a kettle whistling like a bird losing patience.
Milena stepped aside. “Come in before Baba starts saying we were raised by wolves.”
Valko muttered, “We were.”
She looked at him. “And still, some of us learned manners.”
You crossed the threshold. The house was smaller than the noise made it seem, or maybe the noise had simply learned to fill every corner. Framed photographs climbed the walls in crooked rows. Herbs hung drying above the kitchen window. Nothing matched, and yet everything looked touched, mended, argued over... kept.
Valko leaned close as he helped you out of your coat.
“Last chance,” he whispered. “We can run.”
You looked past him to where an old woman stood near the stove, hands folded over her apron, watching you with bright, wolfish eyes.
“Too late,” you whispered back. “I think she heard you.”
“I hear everything,” the old woman said.
Valko went still.
Milena smiled into her shoulder.
The old woman crossed the kitchen with the slow authority of someone who had ruled this house before any of them had teeth. She was small, broad in the shoulders, silver-haired, with flour on her wrist and no softness wasted in her face. The softness, you realised, was elsewhere. In the bread covered by a towel, in the chair pulled out before you reached it, in the way Valko lowered his head without being asked when she came close.
“Baba,” he said, and for the first time that day, his voice lost its jokes.
She, of course, ignored him.
Instead, she took your face between both hands.
Her palms smelled of rosemary, yeast, and soap. Her thumbs rested beneath your cheekbones, and for one strange second the whole house seemed to lean closer. The cousins, the kettle, the old boards, even Valko, holding his breath beside you.
“So,” Baba Vesna said. “You are the reason he forgets to eat.”
“I eat,” Valko protested.
Teta Marika appeared by the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “You came here last week, opened the pantry, stared at a sack of potatoes for six minutes, then said, ‘I wonder what she’s doing.’”
“That was taken out of context.”
“What was the context?” you asked, because love had made you brave and terrible.
Valko looked betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
A boy leaning backwards on his chair nearly lost balance from laughing, another cousin caught the chair by its back without looking up from peeling an apple.
Baba Vesna patted your cheek once and released you. “Sit, dušo. Eat something before my family embarrass me properly.”
Valko gave a strangled laugh. “Before?”
No one listened to him.
You were placed at the long wooden table as if the decision had been made before you arrived. A bowl appeared, then bread, then butter, then a small plate of pickled vegetables. Teta Marika, Valko's aunt, kissed the air beside your cheeks and took the small gift you had brought. Mika announced that he already knew your favourite colour from Valko’s face. Luka told him that was the stupidest sentence ever spoken in the kitchen, which Mika accepted as praise. The little one beneath the table emerged, solemn and bread-dusted, and introduced himself as Niko.
“Are you going to marry him?” Niko asked.
Valko walked directly into the side of a chair.
The whole kitchen paused. You pressed your lips together.
Milena leaned against the doorway, radiant with cruelty. “Careful, Niko. Val only has two knees.”
“Niko,” Teta Marika turned from the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “We ask guests if they want juice first.”
Niko nodded, absorbing this etiquette with grave importance. “Do you want juice before you marry him?”
Valko covered his face with both hands. You bit down on your smile so hard it almost hurt. This wasn't what you had expected.
Some foolish, frightened part of you had imagined a den in the old sense. Teeth, watchful eyes, a family arranged around blood and law, waiting to decide whether your bones could be allowed near theirs. Valko had never spoken of them casually. Whenever he said home, something tender and embarrassed moved through him, as though the word itself had fingers and knew exactly where to touch.
Now you sat beneath a crooked lamp while his grandmother tore bread with her hands and put the first piece on your plate.
“Eat,” Baba Vesna said.
You obeyed.
The bread was warm enough to steam between your fingers. The crust cracked softly, butter melted into it in golden lines. Across the table, Valko watched you take the first bite as if your mouth held judgment from heaven.
You chewed. Swallowed.
“It’s delicious.”
Baba Vesna clicked her tongue. “Of course it is wonderful. I made it.”
Mika leaned towards you. “He talked about you after the market yesterday.”
Valko’s hand hit the table. “No.”
“Yes, you did” Luka said sticking his tongue out.
“No.”
“You said, and I quote, 'she chooses fruit with such care'.”
The table went quiet for half a breath, your hand stilled around the bread. Valko looked at Luka as if betrayal had entered the room wearing his cousin’s face.
“That was private.”
“You said it in the kitchen.”
“That makes it private.”
Milena sat across from you and rested her chin in her hand. “He also said you have kind hands.”
Valko’s mouth opened, nothing came out. Your heart did something foolish inside your chest.
The teasing had worked him bright and flustered, but beneath it, something softer trembled. He was embarrassed, yes. Horribly, so. Beautifully, so. Yet the thing underneath was more dangerous than shame. This was exposure. A curtain pulled open in a room he had spent so long keeping dim.
He had spoken of you here.
At this table. In this warm, loud house. To these people who teased him because they knew what he looked like with no armour on. He had brought you home long before he ever brought your body through the door.
Baba Vesna filled your bowl with soup.
“He was always like this,” she said.
“Baba, please.”
“He was a strange child,” she said.
Valko groaned. “Please.”
“A sweet child,” Teta Marika corrected.
“A dramatic child,” Luka said.
“A biting child,” Milena added.
Valko pointed at her. “You bit first.”
“You looked biteable.”
“You see what I mean?” Valko turned to you with helpless outrage. “This is what I survived.”
There was love in it, the kind that had been cooked too long and reduced into something strong enough to stain. They spoke to him as if they had known every version of him and chosen, again and again, to keep putting food in front of whichever one came home.
You looked at him while he argued with Mika about whether a stolen spoon counted as a childhood trauma.
He caught you looking. For a moment, the noise thinned.
There he was.
Valko with his hair refusing every law of decency. Valko trying so hard to survive his own family and failing beautifully. His eyes met yours with a nervous brightness that made you want to reach across the table and be cruel to every fear that had ever found him.
Then Niko pointed his spoon at you.
“Are you keeping him?”
The kitchen stopped.
Valko made a tiny sound into his bowl.
Milena closed her eyes as if praying for patience and finding none. “Niko.”
“What? Mika said maybe she is keeping him.”
His gaze dropped to the table, to the bread by his hand, to the small old cuts in the wood. The blush still clung to him, but it had changed into something quieter now. Hope, perhaps. Or terror wearing hope’s coat.
You could have laughed. Everyone would have let you. It would have been easy to throw the question back into the room like a toy and watch them tear it apart.
Instead, beneath the table, you found Valko’s hand.
His fingers closed around yours at once.
“I’d like to,” you said.
The house held itself still for half a breath.
Then Baba Vesna nodded, once, as if some old contract had been signed in soup and honey.
“Good,” she said. “He is difficult, but warm.”
Valko bowed his head.
His shoulders shook.
At first you thought he was upset. Then you realised he was laughing, quietly, helplessly, with one hand over his mouth and the other holding yours under the table like he meant to keep it there until winter.
Mika groaned. “Ah, look at him. Finished. Completely finished.”
Milena reached for the pickles. “Good. He needed finishing.”
Teta Marika smiled into her tea. “Eat more, zlato. You will need strength.”
“For Valko?” you asked.
“For all of us.”
Dinner became less a meal than a storm with chairs.
Bowls moved, hands reached, stories climbed over one another and died unfinished because someone remembered a better accusation. Luka asked you practical questions in a calm voice: where you liked to walk, whether Valko had shown you the old river path, whether he still pretended not to like sweet things. Mika tried to read your palm and declared that you were fated to own a troublesome dog.
“That's just Valko,” Milena said.
“I am not a dog.”
“True,” Luka said. “Dogs listen.”
Valko began quietly placing the best pieces of food on your plate.
A soft carrot, the inside of the bread, a dumpling he pretended to move away from himself and somehow abandoned beside your spoon. He was not subtle. He had never been subtle. He was a wolf trying to hide a whole deer behind a napkin.
You noticed on the fourth offering.
His family noticed on the first.
Baba Vesna said nothing until Valko tried to give you the last honey cake. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him over her tea.
“Ah,” she said.
Valko froze.
It was one syllable. It landed like a bell.
“What?” he said.
“No, no.” She waved him off. “Continue. Starve for romance. Very noble.”
Mika threw his head back.
You picked up the honey cake before Valko could die at the table and broke it in two, placing half on his plate. “There,” you said. “No starving.”
He looked at the cake.
Then he looked at you.
His expression opened in a way that made the room, somehow, feel too small for your heart. It opened with that unguarded, bewildered softness he sometimes gave you when kindness arrived before he had prepared himself to receive it.
Milena saw it.
Her teasing quieted.
For a moment, she only watched him with something old and protective in her face.
Then she stood. “Come help me with plates.”
Valko blinked. “Me?”
“Her.” Milena pointed at you.
Valko frowned. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“That's not a reason.”
“It has worked on you for years.”
You rose before he could protest again. Milena took two plates from the table and handed you none of them, which told you at once that this had nothing to do with helping.
She led you down a narrow hallway lined with photographs.
Behind you, Valko’s voice rose. “Do not interrogate her.”
The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and dried herbs. The noise of the kitchen softened behind you, still there, still golden, but now wrapped in walls. Milena stopped by a window overlooking the yard and leaned her hip against the sill.
For the first time all evening, she let the smile leave her face.
“He likes you,” she said.
You smiled gently. “I got that impression.”
“No.” Her eyes flicked towards the kitchen. “He likes people easily. He likes old men who tell bad stories, stray cats that scratch him, children who throw rocks at windows because they want attention. Valko is built stupid that way.”
A laugh escaped you.
Milena folded her arms.
“He brings things home,” she continued. “Broken things, angry things. Things he thinks no one else will be gentle with.” Her gaze moved towards the kitchen, where Valko’s voice lifted in protest. “He does not bring people home.”
Your throat tightened.
From the kitchen, Valko shouted, “It wasn't soup. It was stew.”
Mika shouted back, “Stew cannot make a grown man cry.”
“I was overwhelmed by flavour.”
Milena closed her eyes for one second. “Bože, give me strength.”
You laughed softly.
She looked at you again, sharper now.
“He was nervous all week,” she said. “Changed his shirt three times. Asked me if the house smelled too much like onions. Asked Luka if his laugh was strange. Asked Baba if she could please not tell the story about the goat.”
“The goat?”
“Later.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Maybe never.”
You glanced back towards the kitchen.
He had asked if his laugh was strange.
Something in you ached with such tenderness that it almost felt like anger.
You looked down.
“He didn’t need to worry,”
“He is clumsy with precious things,” she said. “Because he thinks his hands are only good for breaking them, even when he is careful. Especially then.”
“So be kind,” she said. “Or be cruel quickly. He will survive either, but I prefer to know which one I’m dealing with.”
There it was.
The knife under the table. The love with its teeth intact. You didn't resent her for it, you thought, strangely, that you liked her more for it.
“I’m not here to hurt him,”
“Most people aren’t, at first.”
“Milena.”
Milena’s gaze narrowed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” you admitted.
“With any of this,” you continued. “He makes everything feel…” You searched for the word and hated every pretty one that came. Fated. Wild. Tender. All too polished for the mess he made of your heart. “He makes everything feel like I’ve been walking past a door my whole life, and he is the idiot who opened it with his shoulder.”
Milena stared at you.
Then she laughed once, sharp and startled.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re gone too.”
You looked down, caught.
She seemed satisfied. “Good.”
“Is that approval?”
“That is me deciding not to be difficult.”
“You were being difficult?”
“Dušo,” she said, and now her smile had teeth in it, “I was being polite.”
When you returned to the kitchen, Valko was waiting near the doorway as if he had tried to remain seated and failed.
His eyes moved from you to Milena. “What did you say to her?”
Milena walked past him. “That you were adopted.”
“I’m not.”
“Emotionally, you're a wet dog we found in the rain.”
He watched her go, wounded on principle, then turned to you with genuine concern. “What did she actually say?”
You reached up and brushed flour from his sleeve. “That you’re warm.”
“That was Baba.”
“Family consensus.”
His mouth twitched. “You are enjoying this.”
“I am.”
“You were supposed to be intimidated.”
“By Mika?”
“By the bloodline. The history. The general atmosphere of teeth.”
“Mika told me my palm says I’ll own a dog.”
Valko sighed.
You reached up and plucked the dish towel from his shoulder. “You have flour on your sleeve.”
He looked down, surprised, as if his own body had been making decisions without him. Then he looked back at you, and the kitchen noise faded once more, though this time it was only the two of you making the world small.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The question was casual enough for anyone else to miss the tremor underneath. You heard it. The naked, waiting part. You thought of his hand shaking outside the door. Baba Vesna taking your face between her palms, of bread steaming in your fingers, of honey cake divided in two, of Milena saying he doesn't bring people home.
“I’m all right,” you said. “Are you?”
Valko smiled too quickly. “I’m alive.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
His smile softened.
For once, he did not joke immediately. It cost him something. You could see it in the way his fingers flexed at his side, reaching for mischief and finding courage instead.
“I wanted them to like you,” he said. “I wanted you to like them.”
“I do”
“I wanted…” He stopped, then laughed under his breath. “I don’t know. Something stupid.”
He looked towards the kitchen, where his family had resumed their noise without mercy. Mika was accusing Luka of stealing the larger piece of cake. Baba Vesna had taken down a tin from the highest shelf, probably containing either biscuits or secrets.
“Valko, stop hiding her. I have photographs.”
Horror returned to his face with magnificent speed.
“No.”
“Yes,”
“No photographs.”
“Naked baby photos,” Mika added.
Valko went pale. “You do not have those.”
Teta Marika’s voice drifted after him, serene and deadly. “We have everything.”
He grabbed your hand. “We’re leaving.”
You let him pull you three steps before Baba Vesna appeared in the doorway holding a small album to her chest.
“Sit,” she said.
Valko sat.
It was remarkable how quickly a wolf could become a grandson.
For the next hour, they showed you the evidence of his life.
Valko missing two front teeth and glaring at the camera as though betrayed by dentistry. Valko asleep under the table with one hand buried in a dog’s fur. Valko at thirteen, all elbows and outrage, holding a fish half his size while crying because he had to put it back.
There was Valko covered in mud, Valko wearing a paper crown, Valko with Milena’s arm hooked around his neck while he pretended to hate her and leaned into her anyway. Valko standing beside Baba Vesna in the garden, holding a basket of tomatoes like he had been entrusted with the fate of nations.
Each photograph was another small door.
You had known him in pieces: the grin, the hunger, the awkward tenderness, the jokes he threw like branches over deep water. Here was the rest of him. Here was the child who had survived becoming himself because these hands had fed him, scolded him, dragged him upright, and remembered his softness when he tried to outgrow it.
At some point, while everyone argued over whether the goat incident happened before or after the soup incident, Valko bent close to you.
“You don’t have to keep looking,” he murmured.
You turned a page.
A tiny Valko stared up from the album, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.
“Yes,” you said. “I do.”
He stared at you.
Then, very briefly, he rested his forehead against your shoulder.
It lasted only a second. A shy, exhausted surrender. No one commented on it, though you knew every person in the room saw. That seemed to be another house rule. They would mock the wound, yes, but they protected the pulse.
Later, when the cups were cleared and the album returned to its shelf of holy embarrassments, you stepped outside for air.
The yard was cold, dark and soft around the edges. Herbs grew beneath the window, yhe old trees leaned towards the house as if listening. Behind you, the kitchen glowed gold, laughter pressing against the glass.
Valko followed after a moment, closing the door carefully behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
You looked at him. “For what?”'
“The interrogation. The photographs. Mika. The marriage question. The soup litigation.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Milena.”
“I like Milena.”
“That means she behaved.”
“She said she was being polite.”
He winced. “Then she liked you.”
You leaned back against the porch railing, and he stood in front of you with his hands in his pockets, rocking once on his heels like he wanted to come closer and had forgotten the law of his own body.
Through the window, you could see Baba Vesna pretending to wipe the table while watching you both with shameless interest. You lifted a hand and waved.
She waved back.
Valko turned, saw her, and groaned. “For the love of...Baba.”
“She loves you.”
“That's her usual excuse for crimes.”
“It’s a good one.”
He looked back at you, and the teasing left him slowly, piece by piece. Out here, with the house at his back, he seemed caught between the wild thing and the loved thing. The wolf and the boy in the paper crown. The man who had brought you to the threshold with shaking hands and still tried to joke like fear could be made harmless if he gave it a funny name.
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
“Which part?”
“When Niko asked if you were keeping me.”
The question came lightly, too lightly. A feather laid over a blade.
You reached for him.
This time, Valko did not hesitate. He came into your space at once, as if pulled by a string tied somewhere behind his ribs. His hands settled at your waist, careful at first, then warmer when you didn't move away.
“I meant it,”
His eyes searched yours.
“For tonight?”
“For longer than that.”
He didn't kiss you immediately. Somehow, that made it worse. He stood there and let the answer enter him, slowly, like someone opening the door to a room he had been told was empty and finding it lit.
Inside, Mika yelled, “Are they kissing?”
Valko dropped his forehead to your shoulder.
“Leave them. He is finally being normal.”
You laughed.
He looked at you then, and the last of his embarrassment broke open into something bright, something almost boyish
“Welcome home,” he said, very softly.
You touched his cheek.
Behind him, the old house breathed and creaked and held its golden noise. Inside, his family waited with tea, teeth, stories, and a place at the table already made yours.
summary ⸝⸝ when you finally tell jack abbot you're in love with him, he convinces himself the kindest thing he can do is pretend you didn't mean it. after all, denying has always been easier than believing he deserves you.
warnings ⸝⸝ implied age gap, workplace relationship (attending/resident), mutual pining, grief, mentions of jack’s marriage, mentions of his prosthetic, drunken confession, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, jack abbot being his worst enemy, resident reader fighting for their life against a man whose coping mechanism is avoidance, no use of y/n.
notes ⸝⸝ my first fic with a gender neutral reader, I’ve proof read it, but please lmk if there’s anything I’ve missed. unintentional taylor swift lyric title, genuinely couldn’t come up with anything else 💔 gif credits : @emziess
⟡ READ ON AO3 ⚚ PITT MASTERLIST
Over the years, Jack had seen many people. People who broke, people who didn't break. He hadn't decided which one you were.
Sometimes he thought you'd just gotten frighteningly good at hiding when you did.
He'd watched you do it for the better part of a year now. Suture a kid's eyebrow while the mother sobbed in the doorway. Call a time of death in a voice that didn't waver once. Walk out of a trauma — that would've put most second-years on the floor — like it didn't do anything of significance to you.
He'd told Robby once, that one's gonna outlast all of us. Robby had just hummed, like he already knew. Like everybody already knew except maybe you.
He didn't know what to do with that. With you. Two decades of learning exactly how much a person could survive before they gave, and you'd never given. Not once, not in any way he'd been close enough to catch — and he had been close.
Closer than he'd let himself admit, most nights. The sound you made when you were concentrating, he could pick it out with his eyes closed, how you could never stay down, even if anyone else in your position would've quit.
None of that should've mattered to a man who'd buried more people than he'd saved and still wore another woman's ring, solely because taking it off felt like one more door he didn't get to walk through.
Turning it without meaning to, he was thinking about the ring then, sitting three stools down from you at the bar nobody bothered to name, the place where everyone went to confirm they'd survived another shift.
It had been ugly that night. You'd handled it like you always did. Sunshine, somebody on the floor had called you once, not unkindly, and it had stuck.
You are sunshine.
And Jack knew he wasn't someone who got to keep something like that for himself.
"Another round?" Mateo was flagging down the bartender down without waiting for an answer.
Jack shook his head before anyone could pour him one. "I'm good." One beer in, he had no plans to go further. Somebody at this table had to drive, and it was not going to be Mateo.
You said something about him always being good, warm enough that it caught somewhere he'd rather it didn't.
He looked at you a beat too long before he could stop himself. "Most days." The truest thing he'd said all night.
Jack willed himself to look away, back toward whatever Ellis was saying about the new schedule, looking at you any longer was him being the opposite of good.
So many months spent looking sideways, stopping before the thought went anywhere it shouldn't. Whether that counted as discipline or cowardice, he hadn't decided.
Sixteen hours on feet would do that to anyone, let alone him, so Jack stretched his bad leg out under the table.
Nobody here treated it like news anymore. You'd asked him about it once, early on. Lost it overseas, he'd told you.
You hadn't pushed. He was grateful for that. Most people pushed, prodded him with questions, or completely ignored it.
You, once again, had fallen in the middle, his desired side.
The jukebox was playing a song old enough that he could sing along if he wanted to embarrass himself in front of the entire bar, which he didn't.
Javadi was muttering under her breath and you laughed at it, and Jack watched.
He'd noticed he liked watching you laugh more than was probably healthy for a man his age with his own collection of scars. But noticing it and doing anything about it were two very different problems, and he'd spent a year successfully keeping them that way.
He was still congratulating himself on that, more or less, when you said his name, followed by your slurry question, "Y'know what's stupid?"
Jack already knew this wasn't going anywhere good. You only led with y'know what's stupid when you were three drinks past the point where you usually stopped yourself.
"Don't know." He leaned back against the bar, arms crossed, tried to look casual and probably failed. "You're gonna tell me though."
"Don't be smart with me right now. I'm fragile." You weren't fragile. In the period of watching you and knowing you, he'd never once gotten the sense that the word applied to you. But you'd moved closer, not bothering to keep your voice down.
"Oh, here we go," Santos muttered into her glass.
"What's stupid," you went on, leaning forward like the table had gotten further away in the last ten seconds, "is loving somebody who is never, ever gonna let himself be loved back. That's a stupid way to spend a Friday. A stupid way to spend a year, a whole life, actually, if we're being honest."
"Who?" Whitaker leaned in like this was the best thing to happen to him all week. "You gotta say who, you can't just throw a thing like that into a bar and walk away from it—"
Jack thought you didn't need any persuasion or encouragement to blurt out whatever was on your mind.
"You know who," you said, still not looking away from Jack.
He felt that burrow under his ribs and live there. Only thing he knew how to do and he did that, try to joke his way out before it turned into something heavier. "Let's take a break, shall we?"
"No, I wanna say." The no and say came out long and drawn, each syllable stretched with stubborn insistence.
"Say it, then." Whittaker's voice once again spurred you on.
You said the older man's name like it had been sitting behind your teeth longer than just tonight, no laugh in it to hide behind this time. Jack felt the table go quiet, listening even with their eyes pointed somewhere else.
"It's you," you whispered, then laughed, a sound so beautiful, Jack wanted to keep hearing it. "It's so obviously you I don't know why I bothered being subtle about it. Everybody already knows. Mateo has watched me watch you for — for — I dunno how long —"
From the far end of the booth came Mateo's voice. "No, I haven't."
"You're not subtle, Mateo."
"I —"
"It's okay." Your concentration came back to Jack, like the rest of the table had stopped existing, which — fair, he'd been doing the same thing since you opened your mouth. "It's been you for embarrassingly long. Professionally embarrassing. I should lose my license over how long it's been."
That earned a few laughs around the table and Jack wanted to pull you in, shield you from the attention you'd suddenly become the center of.
But he couldn't.
The honest answer — the one that would never see daylight, if he had any say in it — was that he understood. More than he should've.
Long back, he'd started noticing what door you came through at the start of each shift. Your coffee. How you only remembered to eat if someone put food in your eyeline. None of that was the kind of attention an attending was supposed to pay a resident.
That also extended to you'd been watching him, mostly when you'd thought he wasn't looking. So he knew.
All that watching and he'd never once let himself do anything with it except stand in the same room and be relieved you weren't paying attention.
He should've laughed it off clean. That was the move, the one he'd used on a hundred things he didn't want to look at directly for longer than a second. What came out instead was softer and more revealing. "Let's get some water into you."
"Don't wan' water. Want an answer." You sighed and plopped your head on the table, not caring about what had been on it before. Sober you would chastise this version.
Crescents dug into his palm with the effort of not reaching to you. "You're gonna want the water in about twenty minutes. Trust me on this one."
"Is this happening?" Whitaker didn't bother lowering his voice, even though the question was only meant for Santos. "Are we just gonna sit here and watch this happen?"
"We are absolutely sitting here watching this happen," Santos deadpanned.
"I'm bein' serious, Jack." Your voice came as a whine.
"Yeah," he said. "That's what worries me." He was careful to keep it low, not let it carry.
"I am serious. I'm the most serious person in this entire building, ask literally anyone —" The apparently serious effect you were going for was lost with the way you hiccupped at the middle of your sentence.
"Not wrong about that part," Whitaker offered, unhelpfully.
"Thank you, Huckleberry."
Whitaker sighed, probably wishing he hadn't chimed in.
"C'mon." Jack stood. The room tipped half a degree, byproduct of one beer and sixteen hours upright. His weight settled wrong into the leg for a second before it found the floor right, a half-beat nobody at this table had ever clocked because he'd gotten good at not letting them. "I'm taking you home."
"You're not listenin' to me." Your arms flailed before slotting themselves on his biceps for support.
"Listening fine. Up you get."
Robby caught his eye over the top of your head while Jack hauled you up by the elbow, the two of you doing the slow shuffle toward the door that he was not, under any circumstances, going to call a stagger out loud.
Unconscious weight trusting the near solid thing, your body went slump against his. He kept a hand at your back. Told himself it was practical. Perks of telling himself the same thing for God knows how long, he wasn't going to stop now.
Robby's lips played a smirk, the one he used to get back in residency whenever Jack tried to pretend a bad shift hadn't gotten to him. Said he saw exactly what this was and was choosing, out of something resembling mercy, not to say it yet.
"Don't," Jack said anyway, covering his bases.
"Didn't say a thing."
You didn't mean it. He held onto that the whole walk to the car, the whole drive, your head against the window and your eyes closing somewhere around the second red light.
You'd had — what, four? Five? Jack had counted without meaning to. The number added upto something you'd be embarrassed the next day.
He got you up the stairs to your apartment with an arm under yours, and you went easy, pliant. The drinks had stripped you off any careful consideration you'd worn like a badge, now going loose, like you trusted him with holding you up.
He got you water. He got you to the couch, because you point-blank refused the bed, something about if I lie down the room's gonna dance, Jackie, and Jack didn't ask. Couch should be fine. But he knew he'd never recover from the Jackie.
"Jackie."
Of course.
"Yeah."
"I meant it." Your eyes were already closing again. "Jus' so you know. For later. I meant it."
"Go to sleep."
"'M not gonna remember saying that."
"Probably not."
"'Kay," you mumbled, which undercut the whole I meant it pretty thoroughly.
Jack pulled a blanket up over you and told himself that settled it. He stood there longer than he needed to and just looked at you.
He'd watched enough of you being one with the couch, only this was not the break room, and there weren't a myriad of factors fighting for his attention.
But, not like this.
He'd never quite let himself look at you when you were awake, openly, without the practiced distance he'd built between watching something and wanting it.
Whatever you wore through every shift had gone quiet. What was left was just you.
You were drunk. You didn't mean it.
That and how you said his name replayed in his head the whole drive home. He'd always been Dr. Abbot to you, and there was no recovering from either Jack or Jackie, especially the latter. Even drunk, your voice didn't waver, like you'd practiced it somewhere private long before that night gave you the nerve. He decided, somewhere around his third red light, that it didn't matter how you said it.
People said things drunk they wouldn't survive saying sober, and the kindest thing he could do, maybe the only thing he was actually allowed to do, was leave it exactly where it fell. At a bar. Five drinks in. Gone by morning.
It wasn't gone by morning.
He had a whole speech, something that would let the two of you step around this without either one having to look at it head-on. He never got the chance to use it though.
You found him first, outside trauma two. Eyebrows drawn together, a small pout playing at your lips, a look he hadn't seen on you, having watched this place fail to touch you for months.
Seemed like you'd already decided how to take whatever he was going to say.
"Hey." You not so much looked at him as over him. "So — I wanted to say sorry. About last night. I had a lot to drink and I shouldn't have put you on the spot like that, in front of everybody."
He wanted to tell you not to apologise, that you didn't put him on the spot at all, only yourself, and he would do anything to make you forget it, his one good deed.
"It's fine," he said, already half-turned back toward the chart in his hand. "Don't worry about it."
The absolute silence from you made him look back up. There was a small tilt to your mouth, like the start of a frown that got called off halfway through. "Oh," you said. "Okay."
"Hey —" He didn't love the sound that came out of you on those two words — worse than anger, a gentle resignation — opened his mouth to walk it back, except you got there first.
"Why didn't you take it seriously?"
"What?"
"Last night. You just… nothing — told me to drink water. Why didn't you take it seriously?"
"Because you'd had a lot to drink," he said like it was obvious. To him it had been, even if his subconscious would never agree with that. "You didn't mean it."
"No — no, that's — " You were shaking your head like you were trying to get the right words to fall into the right order. "I did mean it. Fuck it—" he'd never once heard you curse. "I'll say it now, even if saying it in daylight — I mean, it's nighttime, but — sober. Sober's the word I'm looking for. It's just me. Standing here. Telling you that I —"
"Trauma two minutes out," Lena called from the desk. "GSW, unresponsive."
"Bed three." Shen moved past the two of you like neither of you were rooted to the ground like statues. "Let's go, people."
Jack's hand found your shoulder without his permission, gone almost as soon as it landed, and then he was moving too, falling into step beside Shen like the last ten seconds hadn't just happened at all.
He was good at not thinking about things when there was something else that needed doing, probably his most transferable skill if anyone ever asked.
The case took eleven minutes to crash and another forty to claw back. His hands knew what to do faster than his head did, which was usually the only thing keeping him upright through one of these.
Until minute thirty, he didn't think about the hallway again, when he looked up across the bed for a clamp and caught you on the other side of it. Gloved hands steady. Voice steady, calling out vitals.
He'd watched you call a death and then go check on the family with nothing on you but patience. In all these months, the job had never once gotten anywhere near your eyes. Now it had.
And he knew exactly whose fault it was, looking at you over a man's open chest, and the knowing sat in him like something swallowed wrong, heavy and a little sick, the rest of the case.
With the adrenaline gone, and nothing left to cower behind, Jack followed you to the ambulance bay.
"Hey."
Rushing a silence never made it shorter in his experience, and you needed a beat more than he did. He gave it to you.
"Hey." You didn't look at him.
"You good?"
"I don't know, Jack. Am I supposed to be good?" Now you looked at him, and it wasn't soft anymore. He hadn't expected the fire even though he probably should've. "You're the one who decided what I'm allowed to feel about any of this."
"That's not what I was trying to do."
"That's exactly what you did. You stood there and told me you didn't think much of it. Like I was a chart you forgot to sign."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Then how'd you mean it?"
Practised, rehearsed speech was sitting somewhere behind his tongue, not one word of it came to his aid, happy with watching him scramble.
A gurney rattled somewhere behind him, two sets of footsteps moving fast toward bay four, somebody calling out a name he didn't catch. He registered none of it.
The whole building could've gone up and he wouldn't have noticed, not with you looking at him like that, waiting on something he should've had ready an hour ago. A day ago. A year, probably, if he was being honest.
He thought about lying. Old habit, reaching for the smooth thing instead of the true one. But you'd see it. You always saw it, that was half the problem with you — you'd gotten too good at reading him for him to get away with the easy version anymore.
"I was scared." Jack hated how it sounded coming out of him, unfinished.
He almost wished you would say something. Silence from you was worse than any yelling, than the fire from a second ago. At least the fire told him where he stood.
"I — I was trying to make it easy for you." He heard himself say it and knew, even as the words came out, that they weren't going to do what he wanted them to do. "So you didn't have to carry it."
"I don't want easy!" Your voice cranked at the end of it, loud enough that a passing tech glanced over before deciding very quickly to keep walking. "When have I ever once asked you for easy?"
"I don't know, maybe never, maybe that's the problem—"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You don't ask for anything." He hadn't meant to get into this here, hadn't meant to get into it at all, but it was coming out now whether he wanted it to or not. Two decades of watching people swallow things finally finding somewhere to go. "You take whatever the night throws at you and you swallow it and you smile and you call it fine. I figured you'd do the same with this."
Out loud, it sounded exactly as cowardly as it was.
"This isn't a trauma, Jack. You don't get to triage me."
"I know that."
"Do you? Because it really doesn't feel like you do."
"I know it, alright?" His voice was louder than he'd meant it to be, and he caught himself, brought it back down. You, of all people, didn't deserve to be the one who got it loud. "I've known since the second you said my name at that bar, and I — I told you it was fine. Because—"
"Because what?"
The easy thing resurfaced, sat right there in his mouth, but he looked at your face and it went nowhere. Again.
He thought of the ring. How he'd been using it, as an argument with himself. It stopped holding a long time ago. "Because if I told you the truth, I didn't know what I was gonna do with it."
"So you lied to me instead?" A sniffle worked up to your words, he hated it more than he'd hated most things this job had shown him. "That's worse, Jack. That's so much worse than just saying nothing."
"I know." Jack sighed.
"Then why'd you do it?"
He'd had this conversation in his head half a dozen times. In his version he'd been more articulate, and you'd let him get through a full sentence. But you were looking at him like you actually wanted the answer and weren't going to let him get away without giving it.
"Because I look at you and I see somebody who's never once let this place touch you," he said. "Not all the way down — and I keep thinking, if I let myself want that, I'm gonna end up being the thing that finally does."
You went quiet, thrown enough that for a second you forgot to be angry at him. "What?"
He'd turned it over in his head so many times it had worn smooth, but that wasn't the same as saying it. Saying it made it actual. Made it a thing that existed outside of him, in the cold, between the two of you.
"I'm sorry."
"You think you'd ruin me." Softest person in this building and the most stubborn, and those weren't contradictions, you weren't going to let him off the hook.
The cold was getting into him through his scrubs and he didn't care. Some part of him thought he deserved to stand out here and freeze a little, penance for a thing he hadn't even committed yet, just the threat of it.
He'd buried a marriage he didn't talk about, and somewhere along the way he'd decided that meant he didn't get a second one, didn't get to want it, like the universe only handed a man one shot at being soft with somebody and his had already come and gone.
"I think I've ruined plenty already." He'd thought he'd made peace with it a long time ago but he apparently hadn't. "I'm not in a hurry to find out if you're next on that list."
"That's not fair. You don't get to decide that for me either."
"Probably not."
"So stop deciding it!"
"I'm —"
"Don't say you're trying. You're not. You're standing there doing the exact same thing you did last night, you're just using better words this time."
"What do you want from me?"
"I want you to stop being so sure you already know how this ends before it's even started!" You tried to swallow a sob back down and failed. "I'm so tired of being the strong one. I don't — I don't want to be the strong one with you too."
It was awful watching you cry. He'd sat with families through the worst things this city could do to them and he knew that language — knew where to put his hands, what to say and how to be useful inside someone else's worst moment.
His own fault, and none of that applied here. The only useful thing would start with him closing the distance.
"Sweetheart." It came out before he'd decided to say anything at all. "Hey — c'mere."
Jack pulled you in before you could argue your way out of it, one arm coming around you, your face landing against his chest like it had been aiming for that exact spot the whole time.
Imagining this had been forbidden too him, he'd been disciplined about keeping the things he wasn't allowed to want in a place he didn't go.
But, the warmth of your body was real, and you fit against him perfectly. Absurd, if he had to think about it then, absurd that he'd wasted time. A very long time to have waited for something that felt this right.
His hand found the back of your head without him telling it to. He felt you shake once, just once, like your body was testing whether it was allowed.
Tighter, then. Just enough.
"Why won't you just let this be easy?" Your words were muffled, wrecked, into the fabric of his scrubs.
The same question he'd been asking himself, end of bad shifts, in the car, in all the hours he'd spent deciding not to do exactly this. He didn't have a good answer.
"Because nothing about me is easy." He said it into your hair. "You're—" He found a different way to say it, ended up going for the most obvious one. "You're sunshine. You don't even know you're doing it half the time. And I'm not that. I've got two decades of stuff in me that doesn't burn off, it just sits there. I didn't think it was fair to put that next to you."
"That's not your call to make."
"I'm not good for you."
"I don't care."
"You —"
"Stop." It was so much like you to cut him off.
He let out a breath that had been sitting in his chest since the bar the night before. "Okay."
Frozen in place, frozen in hug, the two of you stood there, morning sun peeking out from the clouds. He didn't let go. You didn't ask him to.
There were things he should probably say, about the leg he didn't talk about, about the wife he talked about even less, about everything he'd carried out of those years that he still hadn't found a place to put down.
But that felt like a conversation for some dawn that wasn't now.
"You really think I'm sunshine?" you asked eventually, voice still thick, pressed into him like you weren't ready to test your own legs yet.
It was the kind of question asked when you already believed something but needed someone else holding it with you. He'd heard it before, in harder rooms, from people with far less reason for it.
He hadn't expected it from you. You were the one who made every room feel like things were going to be alright. He hadn't known, until then, that you needed someone to do that back.
