Lives ruined. Bloodshed.

Rae | She/Her | 20+ | 🇵🇭

[thisgirlisonfayeeer]

Masterlist

Hey fellas! Please feel free to send an ask/ message me if you want to be included in a tag list for my fic stories.

Lucas Till

Alex Summers/Havok (X-Men)

Unforgettable:

Idea

Chapter I: First Day

Chapter II: Study Night

Criminal Minds

BAU Instagram (Hotch x Reader)

BAU Instagram Pt. II (Hotch x Reader)

[obsessivefanfictionauthor]

John shen, angst and fluff, normal, friends to lovers, "just hold on" "don't give up on me yet", break up and get back together

John Shen/Angst,Fluff/Normal/Friends to lovers/"Just hold on" "Don't give up on me yet"/Break up and get back together straight from the factory

Assemble a Dream with Me—1000 Follower Celevbration

It Has, Always, Always Been You

John Shen x fem!reader—in which, you've been friends all your lives and in love for most of that time, but it takes almost losing each other to see the truth: You belong together.

TW: Angst. Like very much angst. Reader gets in a car accident and John loses it because he thinks he'll lose you. Mutual pining. Mutual pain over helping the other get ready for dates. Fluffy scenes interspersed. Reader is an audiologist. I don't drive cause I'm disabled so if the driving scene sucks I apologise! A/N: I used "break up and get back together" quite liberally here so...yeah. Also, I just love writing friends to lovers where both are idiots and have been in love the entire time but were too scared to say anything. Also, yes, I am old enough to have grown up with VHS tapes and DVDs so...yeah. If you like it, please leave a comment, they always make my day!

Dividers: Created by me

You’ve always known John Shen, he’s always been there from the time you were children, that constant presence who was there from the innocent years of being children through those awkward middle years to now. Adulthood. 

            And you’ve been in love with him for most of that time. 

            He’s a difficult person not to fall for because he’s funny and he’s sweet and he’s balanced. He’s the calm to your storm, the order to your chaos. And you have watched him fall in love over and over again, the one to bring him the coffee ice cream and collapse on the couch beside him, watching whatever horror movie he chose as his comfort flick. 

            When his heart breaks, yours breaks for him, while also feeling just a bit better because you’re so in love with him and every time he falls, your heart breaks. 

            It’s not that you haven’t had your own loves, boyfriends and partners and people to keep your bed warm on cold nights, it’s just that John has been that constant. You know your name, your age, where you grew up and that you’re in love with John Shen. 

            It’s just a part of who you are. 

            The sky is blue, dandelions are yellow, and you are in love with John Shen. It’s a part of the universe, part of the fabric of your world. It’s essential. 

            The worst part is, is that it’s not that you didn’t try with John. Once, in high school the two of you had tried dating, had tried being more, but it never worked right, the time weird and strange and stilted. It was like the idea of being together ruined what you had built all your lives. 

            He was the one who broke up with you, saying it was just too strange, too odd and he preferred being friends. 

            You had said okay, when really you wanted to say but I love you. 

            John Shen is in love with you. Helplessly, hopelessly in love with you. He’s loved you all his life, accepting that his love for you will probably always be there, always be in his heart even if he never gets to love you. 

            He would rather love you in secret than never be in your life at all. 

            He’s there for you every time those assholes you choose to date break your heart, his are the arms that hold you when you fall apart, his shoulders are the ones you cry on, his heart is the one you return to when yours gets broken. 

            But yet, you’ll never love him like that. Like he loves you. 

            John knows this, believes it because when he asked you in high school to try, you didn’t try. The relationship was wrong, only succeeding in hurting his heart worse than before. It’s why he asked you to end it, cited friendship as the reason when really he just wanted to have you, his version of you back. 

            No one else has ever broken his heart quite like you did back then.

            And yet, he wants nothing more than to have the chance for you to break his heart again.

The High School Breakup

            You draw in a deep breath, the air of cool still nights. Open air of fields and nature and forests, flowers perfumes hanging heavy as you look up at the night sky, stars twinkling above you, grouped together in constellations, disappearing when you focus directly on them. 

            “Isn’t it perfect?” you call out, your voice not loud, just above a whisper, yet still sounding like a shout in the empty field of your parent’s acreage. 

            “Yeah,” John says, his body laying beside you, only a few inches between you yet feeling for the world like a chasm from the way his body is stiff and curving away from you. “It’s nice.”

            “Is something up with you, Johnny?” you ask, sitting up onto your elbows and glancing over at him, your arms pressing back into blanket as you look over at him, at the way his wavy hair is falling back from his face, eyes trained on the sky, never you. 

            “Nope,” he says, the ‘p’ popping in the still air, loud and rude and lying. 

            “You never used to lie to me, you know,” you whisper, your tone dropping, sadness bleeding through in every syllable as you fall back down, shifting away from him. If he’s going to lie to you, you don’t have to be near him. 

            “I want to break-up,” he says and the words may be spoken, but they feel to crack through the night air like a gun shot, ripping through you the way you imagine getting shot might feel. They hit you straight in the heart, an ache forming, blooming and spreading out from your heart through your body, tears blooming in your eyes, but you blink them away even as you throat thickens and bottom lip trembles. 

            You will not let him see you cry. 

            “Okay,” you whisper, the words quiet but sure, thick but not enough that he’ll know you’re just minutes away from crying. You press one hand against the left side of your chest, trying to press away that ache, shove it out, but it just doesn’t seem to leave as a single tear slides down your cheek, carving a path, a line through your flesh. With the way it seems to burn, the irrational part of you wonders if it will scar, if it will leave behind a mark that you’ll see for the rest of your days. 

            You know it won’t, but you also know that your heart will. 

            That your heart will now bear a scar for the rest of your life. 

            “Cool,” he says. “We just didn’t seem to click, you know? It was kinda awkward and stuff so, I think we’re just…” he sighs, a deep and soul-shattering one, his left hand reaching for your right, interlacing his fingers through yours, the touch enough to make sparks fly in your skin and butterflies in your stomach even as your heart continues to crack and break and shatter into a million pieces. “We’re just meant to be friends.”

            “Friends,” you whisper. “We’ll always be…friends.”

The High School Breakup—Shen’s version

            He can see every constellation in the sky tonight, see them glowing and twinkling, sparkling like your eyes. He can see every constellation, but he doesn’t know them like you do, he can’t identify them by name or even recognise the North Star—whose true name is Polaris as you always tell him. 

            And he wishes he could identify Polaris because maybe it would be able to guide him to the right decision. The right choice. To stay or to go. To break up or stay in this strange place. 

            “Isn’t it perfect?” he hears you say, your voice sweet and high and lilting in all the right ways, filling him with a sense of peace even as the pit in the base of his stomach grows larger, an acidic taste in his mouth from the nausea. 

            “Yeah,” he says, his voice monotone, his body growing stiff as he imagines what it will be like to have gone from being your boyfriend, having kissed your lips, back to that liminal space of friends. But he’s tired of you looking at him like you don’t really see him at all. “It’s nice.”

            “Is something up with you, Johnny?” you ask him and he flicks his gaze over to you, never once moving his head, taking in the annoyed look on your face, the pit solidifying, his decision becoming clearer. Because before you started dating, you never looked at him like that. 

            “Nope,” he answers, purposefully popping the ‘p’ sound in the way he knows you hate. 

            “You never used to lie to me, you know,” you whisper and he can hear a kind of sadness in your voice, in your tone and he understands then that you feel it too. This strange feeling of dating, the way things don’t seem to flow like they used to for no lack of trying. You got along better as friends even if he wants to be more to you. Wants to be everything. 

            “I want to break-up,” he says, the words fast like ripping off a band-aid, the words loud and echoing in the still expanse of the field, the only other sounds the quiet swish of wind through stalks of grass and the low chirping hum of crickets. 

            “Okay,” he hears you whisper, the word steady and even and normal. Heartbreakingly normal. 

            “Cool,” he says, the word taking so much from him, his throat thickening and chest burning, holding in the scream and cry and sob that wants to escape. He can’t seem like he doesn’t want this because then you’ll ask him what’s wrong and he won’t be able to lie to you and he’ll tell you that he loves you. That he loves you so much it hurts. “We just didn’t click, you know?” Please say you don’t know. “It was kinda awkward and stuff so,” please say you didn’t find it like that and it’s all in my head, “I think we’re just…” he sighs, not hearing you cry, not hearing you protest, his soul and his heart breaking instead with your silence. “We’re just meant to be friends.” Please say you disagree. Please fight with me. Tell me we’re meant to be more. Please.

            “Friends,” he hears you whisper, your voice sounding like it carries a soft and saddened smile on it, “we’ll always be…friends.”

            And John can feel his heart crack, shatter and break. Break into a million tiny pieces, each one engraved with your name. 

            Because only you can put it back together. 

After the break-up

            The DVD case in your hands is cracking, a giant crack right down the front of it, the paper and plastic bowing in a strange way, the dip between Buttercup and Wesley looking a chasm separating them. Like the divide is unreachable, yet somehow they span it. 

            “Do you have the movie, Sunshine?!” you hear John call out, his voice loud and sweet and irritating. "Because the popcorn’s popped and the drinks are poured, babes!”

            “Patience is a virtue, John Leslie Shen!” you yell and you can hear his gasp, can picture his face twisting dramatically as he falls back against the couch cushions, clutching his chest just over his heart. 

            “Not the middle name!” he cries and you shake your head, smiling softly to yourself, lips curving just a bit as you step out of the back room and into the hallway. It hurts sometimes, nights like this. Nights where you can see how it could have been, if only he hadn’t decided that it just wasn’t a good fit. A good thing. 

            “Always the middle name,” you counter, stepping into the living room and sinking down to your knees before the DVD player, pressing the open button and popping the case open, popping the disc off its circular holder and placing it in the tray, pressing the button again, tray sliding in and screen updating. 

            “I think my middle name should be illegal,” he says, voice just slightly more than a whisper and tone far too pouty. 

            “Why?” you ask, hands flattening on your knees as you push up to standing, hands drifting to your hips as you look at him, one eyebrow arching the familiar score of the movie echoing behind you.

            “It’s Leslie,” he replies, nose scrunching in the way he has when he’s disgusted and you can’t help the eyeroll you have as you walk to him, collapsing on the sofa beside him, legs pulled up to your stomach, arms wrapped around them. 

            “What’s wrong with Leslie?” you ask, tone just slightly mocking as he sighs, shifting to look at you, his chestnut eyes locked on yours, pupils expanding and contracting in minuscule amounts, but amounts you notice every time. You notice everything about him, including the flecks of darker brown and lighter gold in his irises, the way when he smiles the corners of his eyes crinkle up. The way that when he smiles, he seems to glow as if his happiness starts on the inside and radiates outwards. 

            “It’s the name of an old guy,” he replies and you feel that familiar bubble of laughter rising from your stomach, pushing up and out of your mouth, the sound that of a deep belly laugh, one that shakes your body in a good way. “What?!” he cries. “What’s so funny?”

            “Nothing,” you say when you’ve calmed down, when you’ve caught your breath. “Just you.”

            “I’m a regular comedy show,” he mutters, tone just slightly hurt as he reaches forwards, grabbing his Dunkins coffee, lips pursing around the orange straw. 

            “You are,” you tell him, glancing at the screen, the familiar and comforting voice-over of Peter Falk telling of Buttercup and Wesley. “Anyways, can you pass me my coffee? Since you’re so rudely drinking in front of me.”

            “As you wish,” he tells you, the corner of his lip just pulling up into a small smirk, his voice in time with Wesley’s and suddenly it’s too much. Suddenly, you want to cry, to ball your hand into a fist and shove it in your mouth and scream like there is no tomorrow because god does this hurt!

            It hurts to sit here beside him as his friends and hear him say the line you’ve always wanted to hear from the man you end up married too when you’re in love with him but he’s never in love with you. It hurts because he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t know how much you love him so, to him, it’s innocent. A friend being funny. 

            Not the man currently responsible for tearing your heart out. 

            “Thanks,” you whisper, your hand trembling just slightly as you reach out, taking the sweating plastic cup from his hand, slipping your hoodie sleeves down and over your hands, turning to face the TV, holding the cup between two sweater covered hands. 

            You stay like that the entire time, just praying the movie volume was loud enough that he never heard your heart cracking. 

            “She says she’s wearing pink,” John says to you, his voice tinny over your phone speakers as you click on your computer, pulling up the chart of your next client, the audiogram visible before you. 

            “And?” you ask, the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder, head bent at an awkward angle, neck just slightly stiff. “What do you need my help with?”

            “What goes good with pink?” he asks and you huff out a small laugh as you spin from your desk on your wheelie stool, one hand reaching for the device to check the ear pressure, placing new buds on it, the voice of your client echoing from reception. 

            “Black,” you answer, standing from your stool, wincing just slightly at the pain in the balls of your feet from the time you spend standing and fiddling with devices and removing ear wax with suction. “Black compliments pink but doesn’t detract from it. Baby blue works too, but in your case…” you pause, shifting the phone to your other shoulder as you add new foam tips to your audio tester, “baby blue’s too light.”

            “I feel insulted,” he says and you sigh, the sound heavy and irritated and annoyed. 

            “I meant because you have a fucking annoying habit of spilling stuff,” you hiss. “Probably best not to have clothes that show stains very visibly on a first date, genius.”

            “Well,” he says, voice just slightly affronted. “When you put it like that, Sunshine.”

            “Wear what you want!” you snap, the anger only partly because of the disruption to your work, partly because of this date he’s been talking about for weeks. “I have a client.” You don’t even wait for his goodbye. 

            You just hang up. 

            John watches as you step out of your car, cap and gown pristine, light silky blue falling in the perfect pleats. You look like an angel, the way the sun shines on you, your entire being shimmering and glowing and looking perfect. 

            “Hi,” you whisper, voice excited as your hand drifts up to touch the top of your cap, the top emblazoned with the silhouette of Buttercup and Wesley, the words as you wish underneath them. “You excited?” you ask, your hands reaching to adjust his gown, fixing the pleats so it looks like it was steamed rather than just thrown on in a rush in the morning. 

            “Totally, Sunshine,” he answers, tone dry. He likes the way you look when you roll your eyes, he likes it even more the way your hand feels in his, fingers laced tight through his. Your hand seems to fit perfectly to his as if it was always meant to be there. 

            “It’s going to be good today,” you tell him, your free hand coming to rest on his cheek, cupping it gently, a tender gesture, the kind that always makes your partners and his think more is going on then there is. “I can feel it.”

            It is a good day, your speech beautiful and perfect, your words carrying during the commencement ceremony, resonating with him and everyone. He walks the stage and takes his degree, accepts his awards, poses for pictures for his mom and yours, his arm around your waist and yours around his shoulders, cheeks pressed together, smiles wide and artificial. 

            Until he pokes your belly and you laugh, that deep rich full laugh he loves so much, the one that rumbles through you and through him, your smile wide and precious in the picture, his attention on you, not the camera. 

            Always on you.

            “All he did,” you say, your voice just a little echoey over his computer speakers, “was talk about his quote-on-quote ‘work wife’. Like, who the fuck does that on a date?” He can’t help the laugh that escapes, the small breathy chuckle, his attention falling on the framed photo on his desk, the one of the two of you at your college grad. The photo where you’re captured mid-laugh, head tipped back, sun haloing your face, his head turned to you, side profile conveying the lovesick look he has for you. 

            “That sucks,” he answers, turning back to you, the you now who sits in her childhood bedroom, pulled back for a family reunion. 

            “How’s it going with Ms. Pink?” you ask and he shrugs, remembering Felecity, the way she declared that they always needed to match so that they looked like they fit. It disgusted him.

            “We broke up,” he tells you, his tone flat, the pen held between his fingers wiggling as he moves it, liking the wavy pattern it makes before his eyes—thanks to visual persistence. 

            “Oh,” you say, tone unusually light, unusually happy. “That’s too bad.” And maybe it’s just his imagination, his hope, but he thinks you almost look happy that he left her, that he’s single. 

            “Yeah,” he says. “Guess we’re in this single life together, Sunshine.”

            “Always, my brother,” you tell him. “Always.”

Present Day

            “I will be over as soon I can,” you promise, flicking down the left turn signal as you drive up to red light, pressing on the brakes, slowing your descent until you’re stopped, idling behind a Toyota Camry. “But I have back-back appointments today.”

            “But I want our movie night,” John says, his voice surrounding you from all sides from your car’s stereo, the new surround set-up nice, but painful when it’s him on the other side of the line, when it’s the voice of the man that you love, but can never be with. 

            “Yeah, well,” you say, lifting your foot of the brake, switching to the accelerator as the light turns green and the Camry in front of you begins to move, hands turning the steering wheel, hand over hand over hand, “I don’t have the same schedule that you do.”

            “Because you wanted to be an audiologist,” he reminds you and you roll your eyes, the gesture laden with affection as you drive the turn at a reasonable speed, eyes still tracking for potential dangers. 

            “Aren’t you on a shift?” you ask, tone pointed as you flick the turn signal back up, level out the steering wheel on the straightaway. 

            “I’m on coffee break,” he says and in the spaces between his words, the spaces only you can hear from years of being friends, of being the other’s support network, emotional support person. 

            “You mean you’re waiting for your DoorDash,” you reply, his deep chuckle emanating at all sides, surrounding you in its perfection, the kind of pain that comes from being in love with someone who can never love you back the way you want. 

            “You caught me,” he says and you shrug even though he can’t see you, knowing that he knows you well enough to read into your pause, that he’ll know what you’re doing. “Where are you by the way?”

            “Driving to get lunch,” you answer, doing a shoulder check before signalling and drifting into the left lane, pressing harder on the accelerator, speeding up. “I have the orders for the whole clinic to pick up.”

            “Why don’t you just—” but you never hear the rest of his sentence, never hear the rest of his words because he’s replaced by the sound of metal crushing and breaking and shattering; glass splintering and landing, falling and raining down. He’s replaced by a dull sort of ringing in your ears, followed by silence and stillness, your body thrown to the side, head slamming into the pillar of the car door, solid plastic-covered metal, the feeling of blood trickling resounding through your body. 

            But that’s not the end of it. Because your shoulder is cut against the seatbelt, body thrown to the left, to the right, to the front, slamming into the airbag, nose cracking, cartilage breaking, blood trickling. You’re aware of none of it, instead it seems like you’re removed, floating above and witnessing your pain from above, hearing the crushing of the roof as the vehicle rolls from a witness point, everything dulled, dulled, dulled. 

            Not real, not real, not real. Nothing but a terrible, horrible dream. 

            A terrible, horrible dream in which the only true sound is that of your own screams. You scream in a long, low, guttural way. Broken moans and sobs and cries rolled into a singular, keening sound. And it continues as the sound of sirens reach you, the last sight you’re aware of that of the flashing blue and red lights of the ambulance. Or maybe it’s the police. 

            You don’t really know. 

            You only know that everything is dulled to the point it isn’t real, vision going fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy, black around the edges like an old, worn-out photograph. 

            You only know that as the darkness creeps in, invading everything, you whisper a final, broken sentence, “I love you, Johnny.”

            But the blackness swallows you whole and then everything is gone. 

            Even him, your Johnny.

            John isn’t aware of anything when he hears the crash, the sound of metal hitting metal, the grind that signals sparks flying, vehicles crashing, bodies breaking. He isn’t aware of anything expect the continuous sound of your pain, the sound of your vehicle rolling, voice breaking as you scream, but not scream in a way that anyone else would recognise as one. 

            No, you scream like you’re being broken. It’s low and deep and guttural and it tears through him with the force of a thousand lightning strikes, a thousand freight trains, a thousand of the worst sorts of things. 

            Because you are breaking and he cannot save you. 

            He screams your name, yells it, cries it, tears pouring down his face as he holds his phone so tight that he’s surprised it isn’t breaking, except not really because all he is aware of is the sound of your scream, still ongoing and the way he is shouting. Begging, pleading. 

            “JUST HOLD ON!” he screams. “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST HOLD ON!” 

            And he screams and he screams and he screams, aware of nothing but the way that everything on your end of the line has gone silent. Just silent. 

            No screams, no whispers, no begging and no pleading. Just nothing. There is no you on that line and he doesn’t know if you are dead or alive, if you are just a broken, mangled body he will see wheeled in or if you are alive and dying. 

            He doesn’t know and it’s breaking him. He is aware of nothing, just you, the name he keeps whispering yours. The way he whispers it as if it is the only thing still holding him here, still anchoring him here to the world. Still making him okay. 

            The only reason he’s not falling apart completely. 

            He’s not aware of Parker finding him in the ambulance bay and pulling him inside, he’s not aware of Robby trying to check his vitals or Dana and the way she tries to recentre him. 

            Because he’s still in that moment, that moment of the crash where one second before he had been hearing the teasing tone in your voice, that familiarity and now…you’re gone and his phone is quiet and he’s still crying and he doesn’t know if he will ever stop. 

            He doesn’t know if you will ever be okay. 

            “Where is she?” he whispers, voice hoarse and tear-filled, thick in the way of the broken. “Where. Is. She?!” He comes back to himself then, back to the doctor he is, back to the one who can save you. He comes back to himself in a hospital room where he’s sitting on a bed, strapped to a vitals monitor, Parker sitting in a chair beside the bed, head in their hands, thumbs rubbing on their temples. 

            “She’s coming in,” Parker whispers, their voice soft yet far too loud. “She’s alive, at least.” It’s the last bit that he hears, the at least. Because that says something is wrong, horribly, terribly wrong. 

            “At least?!” he cries, voice cracking on the words, tears welling again even though they must have stopped before, must have paused. Must have dried up. “What’s wrong?” Parker looks up at him, dark brown eyes shadowed and haunted. 

            “Her car was hit at 100 miles per hour from the side. Some drunk asshole cut across a parking lot, drove right over a sidewalk and slammed into her car. It rolled cause of the impact…” they trail off, shaking their head and drawing in a shaky breath, a pained and shaky breath. 

            “And?” he asks although a part of him knows the answer, knows that you’re on death’s door. That you’re just outside those pearly gates and he’s never told you that he’s loved you. He’s never told you how much he loves you, how much he needs you. 

            “It’s bad, man,” they breathe. “Really, really bad. Like…they don’t think she’ll make it bad.” 

            The world stops for the second time that day because as Parker speaks, the ambulance bay doors fly open, EMTs running in, a stretcher between them, rushing for the trauma room where the team waits, gloves on, goggles down. He can see that it’s you on that stretcher, broken and battered and bloodied. 

            Ever so bloody. 

            There are cuts and abrasions on your head, all sides, a broken nose, blood drying there too. Cuts on your arms from the glass, bruises already blossoming as your head lolls from side to side with the movement of the stretcher. 

            Your eyes are closed. 

            It’s that sight that has him standing, legs shaky and weak, threatening to give out on him, but he pushes past it, shoving out of the room, stumbling on his weak legs, ripping the tags from the vitals off his arm and letting the wires fall to the floor as he stumble-runs to your trauma room. 

            The only thought in his head is getting to you, holding your hand and whispering to you how much he loves you, how much he needs you and loves you and needs you and wants you. Don’t you know?

            It’s always, always been you for him. 

            “Get out, Shen!” Robby barks as the doors slide open and he stumbles in. “You can’t treat her!”

            “Fuck off, Robby!” he yells, voice still hoarse and shattering as he steps around the frantic doctors and nurses, your one hand off the hospital bed, fingers lax and open. “I’m not here as her doctor! I’m here as her person!” He takes your hand in his, frightened by the coldness of it, the weakness in it. 

            “Get him out of here,” he hears Robby say to someone, but he’s not really aware of it because all he knows is looking down at your bloodless, bloodied face; holding your broken, bloodied, limp hand. He’s really only aware of you. 

            “Don’t give up on me, yet, sweetheart,” he whispers, bending down, pressing a soft kiss to your lips, hoping in his heart that your accident is really just a curse and his kiss will be enough to wake you up. “Our best years are just beginning.”

            He can feel hands close around his arms, someone leading him away from you, guiding him out and he can feel your fingers slip through his, the way that water does, the way that sand does in an hourglass. 

            The last thing he sees before they lead him out is the sight of your hand, fingers stretching as if reaching for him before bodies of scrub-clothed nurses and doctors close around you, blocking you from sight. 

            It’s dark where you are. It’s dark and quiet and still. Peaceful. You look up, craning your head and taking in the sight of the stars above, perfect twinkling constellations, looking exactly as they do when you lay in the fields of your parent’s house. Looking exactly as they did all those times you watched them, eyes tracing all the patterns, dreaming of what it would be like to see them, to feel them. 

            What secrets they hid. 

            “I thought you’d never show up,” whispers a voice as familiar as your own name with a line that’s as familiar. 

            “John?” you call out, looking down and around for him, for the source of the voice, landing on him sitting cross-legged surrounded by swaying stalks of grass. “What are you doing here?”

            “You said we’d go star-gazing,” he answers and you realize then, taking in the sight of his wavy hair, the younger look of him that this is that long ago night when he broke your heart for that first time. That you’re relieving memories. 

            That you’re in some kind of limbo. 

            You remember then as you sink down on the blanket beside this young version of John, the car accident, the numbness and dullness and blackness. You have to wonder what happened, if you’re gone, dead, if this is heaven, but right now, you let it go. 

            You let it go and simply lay beside him, looking up at the stars, shoulders just inches from his, the inches still feeling like a chasm you’re not able to cross, to breach. 

            “Isn’t it perfect?” you whisper, your line from that night. John feels as stiff as he did then, not reacting to you, not really. It’s exactly as it was when you lived it before, the same lines, the same whispers, except you want to know this time what would happen if you said what you always wanted to say. 

            “But I love you,” you whisper now, the words of I want to break-up still ringing in the air, the confession that you had wanted to say but never found the courage for all those years ago here now. 

            “You do?” he whispers and it’s cruel really how it’s only in this strange limbo place that you have the courage to say what you wanted to say back then. How only when it doesn’t matter can you say what you always wanted to say, what you never told John when you were…When you were what? Alive? Are you not alive right now?

            That’s the worst actually, being here in this strange limbo unsure if this is just your mind carrying you through to waking or if you’re dead. If you’re dead and this is your hell, your punishment. 

            “Yeah,” you whisper, “I do.” You wish that it was real, you wish that you had really told John that you loved him, back when it mattered. It doesn’t now because you might never see him again. He might only see your body, tucked into the folds of velvet inside a polished wooden casket, hands folded over your heart, plastic pumped face calm and peaceful while nothing like your real one. 

            “I thought you didn’t,” you hear this memory version of John whisper, the memory that is no longer here because now it’s changing and shifting. “I thought it was only me.”

            And that’s the cruelest part of this, you decide as he turns, rolls on the blanket, his hand warm as it comes to rest on your cheek, your body tilting to him as it always, always will, his lips pressing softly against yours in a kiss that tastes sweet like summer nights, like promises and forevers and infinities that can never really happen.

            Because this isn’t real. 

            And as you roll away, you can hear a broken, sob filled voice cracking through the night air, one that sounds like your John, just a far more broken version of him. 

            “Don’t give up on me yet, sweetheart. Our best years are just beginning.”

            He hasn’t left your bedside, hasn’t moved from the chair in your ICU room and no one has asked him to leave, tried to remove him. One nurse attempted, but a single look at his face, the tear-stained, puffy, salt-streaked face with swollen, swollen eyes was enough to have them swallowing back their words and simply walking out. 

            He holds your hand in his, his other brushing a strand of hair back behind your ear, comforted by the sound of the monitors beeping, holding your life together for him. He holds your hand close, both his hands holding fast to it once that curl is tucked behind your ear. 

            “Hey, Sunshine,” he whispers, a small, breathy, broken laugh trailing out of him. “Remember why I call you that sometimes? You probably don’t. Hell, I wouldn’t if it wasn’t a story my mother likes to tell all the time.” He waits, as if thinking you’ll respond, speak out and say yeah, I do remember. But you don’t. Because you’re still unconscious, monitors beeping out the rhythm of alive, alive, alive. 

            “It was kindergarten,” he continues, his hands shifting on yours, clutching it even tighter. “I was crying and clinging to my mom’s leg, begging her to let me stay with her, to not make me go. And, I mean, this went on for a while, but then we heard this squeal of pure excitement and I turned and there you were, this little ray of sunshine dressed in a pair of overalls.” He lets out a small laugh, even that small sound ripping through him, his entire body shaking as his head falls, your one hand and both of his against his forehead. 

            “That was the first and certainly not the last time that my mom said, ‘why can’t you be more like her?’ but it didn’t even matter because I was already up and following you, racing after you and the trail of sunbeams you seemed to leave behind you. I called out to you to wait, to wait Sunshine. And that was the first time I ever called you that and certainly not the last,” he whispers, moving up to press his lips against your fingers, the ones that fall against his hand, your palm cupped between both of his. 

            “I love you, Sunshine, you know,” he whispers. “I love you so much and you almost died without me ever having told you that—” he breaks off as a sob racks through him, the fact that if the car had been going just a mile faster, just been on a different angle or if you hadn’t been at the place on the road you were, this would be a very different day. 

            This would be the day you died rather than the day you survived. 

            “Without me ever having told you,” he whispers, “that I love you. As in completely and totally, hopelessly in love with you. It’s honestly…” he pauses, a sob cracking through him, his ribs aching and bruised from all the crying and screaming he’s done today. Or maybe it was yesterday. Time’s lost all meaning here. “It’s honestly sickening how much I love you. How much I wish I was Wesley and you were Buttercup. And that we—that we…” he’s sobbing so hard now, his lips trembling, pressed against your hand, his breaths shaky and destroyed but hopeful underneath it all. 

            Because you’re still here, you’re still alive. 

            “That we get our happy ending,” he finishes, lifting his head and pressing your hand against his chest, just above his heart. “Because this beats only for you, Sunshine. Only for you. And I hope to whatever force exists that you can hear me. Because my heart is yours, always has been. Because it’s always, always been you.”

            It’s the sound of snoring that draws you out of your slumber, out of that limbo of impossibilities where you said what you wanted to years ago. It’s the sound of snoring that is deep and rich and loud and fucking annoying. The snoring you’ve been hearing for years, since his first voice-crack at fourteen. 

            John. 

            You blink your eyes open, the light of wherever you are strong and bright and cold. It stings and your eyes feel like they’ve been glued shut. It takes a lot of blinking before your eyes open, blinded for just a minute, more blinks following to adjust to the sharpness of the white lights, the sterile light of hospital lights. 

            You try to push yourself up to a sitting position, but a sort of burning, tearing pain rips through you and you can’t help the small cry that escapes your lips, that small cry enough to stop the snoring. 

            “Sunshine?! Sunshine, are you okay?!” you hear John cry, his voice loud and worried and pained and broken. 

            “Yeah,” you rasp, your throat dry and hoarse and no amount of swallowing your spit seems to soothe it. “I’m okay. I just can’t seem to sit up.” You hear his rising from his seat, his face appearing above you, puffy from tears, eyes swollen, but gleaming with love and adoration and relief as he looks at you, chapped and cracking lips pulling up into a smile at the sight of you. Awake. 

            “Hey,” he says and you smile at him, the motion easy, familiar, your lips curving up in that soft one you have just for him. 

            “You’re so not a sight for sore eyes,” you whisper. “You look fucking awful, my man.” He lets out a choked kind of laugh as if he feels he shouldn’t be laughing, shouldn’t be finding humour in the situation, but he can’t help it. 

            “You look beautiful,” he whispers, his hand reaching out to rest against your cheek, the hand warm and soothing and ever so familiar as you lean into it, into his warmth and steadiness. His very presence. 

            “Now I know you’re lying,” you say, voice rough and scratchy but growing stronger. “Because I look like shit. Like I got run over.”

            “You didn’t get runover,” he whispers, voice coming out thick as if he’s just minutes away from crying again. “You got t-boned.” You feel a laugh bubbling up inside of you and you let it out even as it hurts your ribs, your lungs, your throat…It hurts everywhere. 

            “Like that’s any better,” you wheeze and then he’s laughing with you, tears slipping down his cheeks, slow ever so slow, catching the bright white of the hospital chain lights. 

            “Do you remember anything?” he asks you, sinking back into the chair, moving it so you can see him, his hand still resting on your cheek, his other taking your hand, interlacing through it. 

            “I remember,” you pause, thinking hard even as the events cloud and rupture and fog over. “I remember being on the phone with you, driving to get lunch…You really wanted our movie night but I didn’t know when I was gonna get away from work…”

            “That’s right,” he whispers, tone encouraging, the squeeze he gives your hand even more so. 

            “I remember you started asking a question and then—” you break off, the sound of crunching metal, of the feeling of the world shifting and turning underneath you breaks over you and through you. 

            “You got hit,” he finishes and you nod, tears already gathering in your eyes. You remember what you said before it all went black, the words I love you, Johnny. The words you wanted him to know, the words he never heard, the words you need to say now. 

            “I remember…” you pause, drawing in a deep breath, the cold, sterile air of the hospital burning your nose as you do so, “I remember telling you I love you before it all went black.” You don’t pause, just keep on talking because you don’t want him to speak in response. You don’t want to know just yet. “I remember waking up in a limbo place where there was you and there was me and there was a memory that I got to relive and change the way I always wanted it to go…And…and I remember…I remember hearing you. Remember you sounding—sounding so…broken as you said…don’t give up on me yet, sweetheart. Our best years are just beginning. I remember…” except now you’re crying, every sob breaking through you with the force of a thousand lightning strikes. 

            “What else, Sunshine?” he whispers and you look over at him, not even realizing at first that your gaze had drifted up to the water-stained, pockmarked acoustic tiles of the hospital ceiling. His face is open and earnest and pleading with you—as if he needs to know what you’re about to say. 

            “I remember you, always you,” you finish, your words thick and almost unintelligible, but he hears. He always hears, his hand tightening on yours, thumb tracing a pattern on your cheekbone.

            “You know,” he whispers, “I was on the phone when you…when you—when the crash happened and I just started screaming. I just kept screaming and screaming and screaming for you but you never heard. And then they took me into a room cause I was in shock and then…you came in and I was running to you. Always you. I told you then to not give up on me because our best years are just beginning. 

            “And I have been sitting here ever since they wheeled you up, holding your hand and pleading with whatever exists that you come back to me so I can tell you to your face what I’ve been saying while you’ve been…while you’ve been—sleeping.”

            “And what’s that?” you ask him, reaching your hand up to rest over his, the one on your cheek even as your bodyscreams at you not to. 

            “That I love you,” he says. “That I have been in love with you forever in that kind of sick and all-consuming way that’s only sick because it’s so sweet, you know? The Wesley kind of love? You almost—” he breaks off, his body heaving with a sob, his face cracking open yet again. “You almost died without me ever telling you…telling you that…that there’s only you for me, Sunshine.”

            “Me too, Johnny,” you whisper, tears flowing hot and heavy down your cheeks, carving paths and tracks past your cuts and abrasions. “There’s only you for me too.”

            It’s been a hard road of recovery, of relearning your body, learning the changes that come with your accident, with the trauma. The breaking and the healing. It’s been a hard road, but never one that you’ve had to go through alone because every time you’ve been so close to breaking you’ve had John right beside you, his hand interlaced with yours and not as a friend, but as an everything. 

            Your partner and your best friend and your family. Because that’s what he is: your everything. 

            It’s been a hard road and it will be for the rest of your life, but you know now that you never have to do it alone.

            “Hey, Johnny,” you whisper now, your body curled up against his on the couch, chin resting against his chest as you look up at him, The Princess Bride playing on TV. 

            “Yeah, Sunshine?” he asks, looking down at you, eyes crinkling with a smile, lips curving in the way you love so much. 

            “Can you pass me my drink?”

            “As you wish,” he replies, his words once again in time with Wesley’s as he grabs your Gatorade, passing it to you. But this time, you do what you’ve wanted to do all those times before. 

            You kiss him. And it’s as sweet as you always thought it would be, his lips flavoured with coffee and licorice, a strange combination that seems to work. 

            “I’ve always wanted to do that whenever you say that,” you whisper, your lips curving up in a pleased kind of smile as he watches you, eyes tracing every inch of your face, soaking in your very presence, pupils bleeding across the irises. 

            “I’ve always wanted you to do that every time I’ve said that,” he tells you and in response, you kiss him again. Longer and deeper, the sweetness of the kiss flavoured with that deep kind of love you have for him, that he has for you. 

            The kind of love that says, it has always, always, been you. 

[thisgirlisonfayeeer]

This was so beautifully written!

[pencil-n-pen]

—i’m always on my own

fake boyfriend! jack x eldest daughter! reader

“Know I wanna beat it, wanna beat it bad Oh, everyone looks happy in a photograph I've crossed the county line, I cannot go back I'm always on my own.” -All Them Horses, Noah Kahan

summary: your family is in town for the annual ‘parents berating their kids for their decisions’ get together. jack overhears you talking about how much easier it would be if you had a boyfriend to shove in their face, and offers his services. No strings attached, of course.

wc: 15.7k (steak is too juicy lobster is too buttery)

tags/tropes: jack falls first and harder, reader is an eldest daughter (but not the eldest child) to a large judgmental family who are constantly disappointed in her, jack pretty much uses the fake dating as a chance to show reader what a good boyfriend he COULD be to her if she let herself have nice things, jack 'i'll pay for it' abbot, jack is YEARNING in this one, a teeny bit of mean dom jack as a treat

a/n: how are we all feeling about the latest noah kahan album. Doors is great. i do NOT repeat timestamp 2:14-2:21 of All Them Horses. i’m normal and can be trusted with noah kahan’s discography. fic has been crossposted on ao3 and is linked below :)

acknowledgements: thank you @wesandresons for the amazing gif and @saradika-graphics, @chrisssiren, and @uzmacchiato for the dividers! and thank you @leeknowpegger for your work in keeping up morale and being deranged with me

masterlist | ao3

“Your family’s in town?”

You’re at the nurses station, tucked into a corner with your head in your hands while Shen, of course, drinks what has to be his third Dunkin coffee of the day. Where he’s getting them is one of the world’s strangest unsolved mysteries. 

You can’t see his face, on account of the heels of your hands being pressed into your eyes so hard stars are bursting and swirling behind your eyelids, but you can hear the grimace in his tone. 

“Yeah. I moved out here to get away from them, but they decided to host the annual family dinner circuit here in Pittsburgh instead. My mom always complains about how it’s such a huge imposition to have the entire family fly out, but I never asked to do it and offered to just fly to them on multiple occasions. Apparently, my work schedule is too hard to work around.”

“Dinner circuit?”

You wave a hand. “It’s actually a lunch circuit now, since I work nights. Basically, for every single day that they’re here everybody has to attend a lunch, no matter what. Most of the time they’re at different restaurants, but sometimes my mom demands to have them at my place.”

“Yikes,” The attending says, sipping on the last bits of his coffee, “And the whole successful doctor thing doesn’t work on them? It got my parents off my back.”

You shake your head. “I’m the only doctor in the family, but they thought I should’ve been a hospitalist or go into general surgery.”

The sound of ice being shaken in a plastic cup rings in your ears. “There’s money in emergency medicine. Eventually.” 

“There’s money in all medicine eventually,” You groan, lifting your head and leaning against the wall, blinking dazedly up at the flickering fluorescent lights. “I’m sure if I'd picked general surgery they would’ve found a problem with that too.”

“So your fucked, basically.”

Your eyes slip shut again. “Yep. Anything short of showing up with a rich boyfriend and a promise of grandkids on the way won’t get my mom off my back.”

Shen clasps you on the shoulder. “Best of luck with that. You’re the only intern the night shift has got, so we’d rather you don’t off yourself via poisoned wine.” 

“I wouldn’t do poison. I’d choke on bread so they’d have to live with the guilt of not being able to save me.”

“Jesus fuck, man. I mean, clearly, they suck, but that’s brutal.”

You shrug. “Not as brutal as my mom not coming to my med school graduation.”

He gapes. “What reason could she have possibly had for not showing up?”

“I told her at dinner the night before that I was going into emergency medicine.”

“That’s…” Shen trails off, flabbergasted, “…Wow. Now I'm worried you’re going to kill one of them.”

“Way too much effort. They aren’t worth the jail time.”

The attending tosses his now empty coffee in a nearby trash can. “Well, if you snap and kill them all in a fit of extremely valid rage, please don’t call me. I can’t afford to be implicated.”

“You saying I can’t hide a body myself?”

“I’m saying I can’t hide a body.”

“Who’s hiding bodies?” Jack says, sidling up to the two of you with a tablet and a chart open in his hand. 

Shen jams a thumb in your direction. “She’s killing her parents later today.” 

You roll your eyes. “I’m not. Honestly, so long as I agree with whatever my mom says and don’t bring up any trigger topics, I’ll be fine.”

Jack snorts. “You’re describing being held hostage by someone mentally unstable.”

“Dr. Intern?” Ellis interrupts, using the stupid nickname Santos picked for you when she found out you’re the only PGY1 on the night shift, “There’s a woman in the lobby here to see you. Says she’s your mom.”

Your stomach drops to your feet and your heart seizes in your chest. “It’s six in the morning. Oh my god. Oh my god.”

Someone behind you says “Holy shit,” but you’re already gone. As you’re speed walking you whip out your phone, checking the dates of their flights that you’d only had a chance to skim and— fuck. They got in an hour ago. Why the fuck would she stop here? At the PTMC?

You practically slam the doors open and make eye contact with your mom across the crowded lobby. 

“Mom?” 

“There you are sweetie. I was trying to explain that there’s nothing wrong with me and I was here to see you, but they wouldn’t let me. Something about a security issue?”

“It’s not safe. We’ve had incidents in the past—“

She waves a hand, dismissing you. “I’m your mother. Honestly, I wouldn’t have had to come down here if you’d just respond to my texts.” 

“I’ve told you mom, I’m really busy here and I don’t get very much time to look at my phone—“

“Your brothers take the time out of their busy schedules to text me back,” She sighs, then continues on, “Did you get time off this week for dinner?”

You frown. “I thought we were having lunch.”

“Well, I figured since we’re all making it easier for your work schedule to come to you, you could manage to take a few days off for your family. But if we need to make an extra effort—“

“It’s fine, mom,” You tell her with a gritted-toothed smile, “I can make something work. Can you just send me the dates again?”

“It’s this Friday and Saturday.”

Before you can even open your mouth to respond, a large, warm hand settles on your shoulder. Accompanied by the hand is a steadying one on your lower back, a familiar, rich scent and a low voice. 

“Can I help you, ma’am?” 

Jack. 

Jack fucking Abbot. 

Hottest man in the ED. Probably in the world.

Your mom blinks, clearly caught off guard, before regaining her judgy senses and narrowing her eyes at him. 

“I’m trying to have a conversation with my daughter. Don’t tell me you’re security.”

You know for a fact that Jack has his stethoscope around his neck and his keycard in his scrub pocket that says ‘DOCTOR’ on it, so your mom’s just being bitchy. Figures. 

Jack’s hand in your shoulder gives you a tiny, reassuring squeeze before he speaks. 

“I’m Dr. Abbot,” He sticks out a hand for her to shake, the one that was on your shoulder, “I’m an attending here at the ED.”

And my boss, you mentally add. Your mom probably hears it anyway. 

“You work with my daughter?”

“Yes ma’am. She’s the most promising intern we have here on the night shift.”

Your lips twitch at his words. He’s joking. Testing your mother— you’re the only PGY1 on the night shift. If your mom remembers that, she’ll pick up on his joke. 

She doesn’t. She purses her lips for a moment before giving him one of her big, fake smiles. 

“Well that’s good to hear. We’re very proud of her.”

Proud of the money I send home, maybe. 

“If you’ll excuse us, I need her working on patients.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Your mom gushes, clearly already charmed by Jack. He has that effect on people. “I didn’t realize she was so important and busy here.“

You would if you’d ever let me talk about work before interrupting me and telling me what I should be doing better. 

Jack’s thumb makes tiny sweeping motions on your lower back, little tingling motions that distract you enough to unclench your jaw and relax your shoulders. 

“I’ll text you as soon as I can, okay mom?”

Your mom sweeps you into a hug, a rare show of affection. Putting on a show for Jack, more than likely. 

“No rush. Whenever you get the chance, sweetheart.”

Jack gives her a parting nod, but you wait until your mom’s turned around and walking out of the lobby before allowing Jack to steer you back inside. 

The second the doors close behind you and you’re enveloped in the sounds and smells of the heart of the PTMC, you shut your eyes and release a long exhale. 

“I,” You start, “Am so sorry. I never thought she’d show up here, I got the flight times mixed up—“

“Hey,” Jack’s voice is low and steady, a much needed anchor. He uses the hand still on your lower back to turn you towards him, “None of that was your fault. We deal with patients like that every day. It is not your job to keep your mother in line.”

“I know. I know. Still, I’m sorry. She can be… difficult.”

He snorts. “Understatement of the year. But seriously. Don’t worry about it. If I didn’t want to get involved with her, I wouldn’t have swooped in there.”

You huff a laugh. “My hero. I’m pretty sure if you’d introduced yourself as my boyfriend she would’ve had an aneurysm. Or a heart attack.”

“Are those desired outcomes?”

“Mostly.”

He slides his hands into his pockets and leans against the opposite wall. “Might be worth a shot, then.”

It’s a very well kept secret that you’ve harbored an embarrassing, ‘think about him while you’re falling asleep at night’ crush on Jack. 

So naturally, your response is to laugh. Loudly. And semi-awkwardly. Because he has to be joking. Obviously.

“Yeah, right,” You say, looking down at your feet because eye-contact has never been your forte and Jack’s gaze is too intense, “Could even take you to dinner with me. Maybe my dad would have a heart attack too. Really just wipe out the whole family.”

“You could.”

“Wipe out my entire family?”

“Take me to dinner with you.”

Jack’s body is relaxed and his tone is even. Not light and humor-filled. There’s no mischievous uptick to the corner of his lips. He looks like he’s serious. 

“Are you joking?”

He can’t really be serious. He’s probably just fucking with you. He wouldn’t actually—

“No.”

You run a hand over your hair. “Yeah, sure, laugh it up, haha—“

“I’ll go to dinner with you. As your boyfriend.”

What. The. Fuck. 

“No.” You gape, incredulous. 

“No?” He raises an eyebrow. 

“No, I mean— fuck. Dr. Abbot—“

“Jack.” 

You purse your lips. “Jack. You can’t just… pretend to be my boyfriend at a family lunch.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” You sputter, “For one, we hardly know each other—“

“You’ve been working here for three months. We’re hardly strangers.”

“You’re my boss, your way older than me, you’re—“ You cut yourself off before you can say something embarrassing like ‘you’re ridiculously fucking hot and I haven’t washed my socks in months’, “It wouldn’t even be believable. How would we even have met?”

“In the ED, obviously.”

“How long have we been together?”

“Month and a half.”

“Why are we even dating?”

“Because you’re a beautiful and intelligent woman, not to mention a good doctor.”

Your mouth goes dry, and your stomach does an entire gymnastics routine. 

“Have you… thought about this?” 

He makes a noncommittal hum, tilts his head back a bit. “Would it work?”

“Are you rich?” 

There’s that devilish, pants dropping smile. 

“I’m a senior attending on night shifts in an emergency department. I’m comfortable.”

You worry your lip between your teeth. “I still can’t… I appreciate the offer, but I can’t subject you to my family. No one else should have to suffer through these lunches and dinners.”

“But you do?”

“They’re my family.” 

Jack doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t move off the wall and walk away either. Distantly, you really hope a patient isn’t coding somewhere. 

You sigh. “Why would you even offer, anyway?” 

“You need help, and I’m in a position to give it. Plus life has been kind of boring recently. My therapist told me to pick a new hobby that doesn’t involve people dying or getting shot at.”

“So you thought spending an evening being subjected to backhanded questions, comments, and not very subtle micro-aggressions was a good substitute?”

“Beats drinking beer in the park.”

You can’t say yes. It’s crazy. One, it would make your crush a million times worse and you might never recover on that fact alone, and two, when this inevitably blows up in your face, your family will never let you live it down and bring it up in literally every conversation for the rest of your life. 

On the other hand, if it works, it will work. Your mom would probably get off your back for a while. You wouldn’t be a complete and total disappointment. If it works, it would be a much needed win. 

“So. We’ve been dating for a month and a half?”

Jack nods, another smile playing at his lips. “I asked you out, of course.”

“Flowers?”

“Naturally.”

“You pay?” 

“For every meal.”

“What’s my favorite color?”

“Navy blue. Mine?” 

You roll your eyes. “Black. What are we going to tell my mom when she pokes at the age gap?”

Someone rushes by, pager beeping, and you both wordlessly start moseying towards your respective patients. 

“Will she really be that upset about it?”

“Probably not, but she’ll definitely ask about it. My dad will probably be angry, but he’s easier to placate than my mom is.”

Jack hums thoughtfully. “When’s the lunch today?”

“Twelve-thirty, at that Italian place that has that mussel dish.”

“How about this,” He starts, apparently not needing anymore clarification on the location, “Lets focus on finishing our shifts right now. Then go home, get some sleep, and I’ll pick you up at eleven so you can pick my brain for every detail that you want to make this work. Deal?”

Last chance to back out. Say hell no, this is a crazy idea, why would you even volunteer for it, I changed my mind. 

“Deal.”

—

Holy fucking shit. Jack Abbot is your boyfriend. 

Fake boyfriend. But for the next few hours, he’s as good as yours. Kind of.

In a way. 

You’re standing in front of your bathroom mirror, dressed in the outfit you picked out for the stupid lunch when your mom texted you the plane ticket details a month ago.

Neither your makeup nor your hair are cooperating and you really need them to because you have to be perfect, so you need your mascara and stop clumping and your hair to stop laying like that and you just don’t want to fucking go. 

Before frustration induced tears can ruin your half-done makeup, a knock sounds at the door. 

You rush through your apartment, nearly cracking your skull open on the corner of the couch when you trip over a stray shoe.

Shit, he’s here and you’re not ready, god he’s going to be so upset you have to make him wait it’s so rude—

“Hi!” You swing open the door and plaster what you hope is a cute-frazzled smile and not a panicked one. It’s a thin line between the two, “I’m almost ready, I’m so sorry, you can come in and sit down wherever, I promise I won’t take too long to finish up. Sorry.”

You turn, unable to bear the anger or frustration on his face and dart away (an old method— hiding and disappearing is much better for everyone in the long run) but a hand encircles your wrist before you can successfully escape. 

“Woah, easy girl. Nobody’s mad at you. We have time, remember?”

Your smile is definitely coming across as panicked. 

Your nails wander and find a hangnail to pick at while you talk. “I know, but that was so we’d have time to plan and it’s rude to make you wait and I really need time to plan, but I can’t get my makeup to look right—“

Jack nudges you into the house and you cut yourself off with another apology. Right. Cause he’s just standing in the hallway and you’re rambling on like someone deranged. God. Why can’t your brain just work? Get into gear? Actually function properly?

“First of all,” Jack starts, gently steering you towards your couch, “You look beautiful.”

Why does he have to say these things? Has he no care for what he’s doing to your heart? Is he unaware that Simone Biles would be impressed with the flip routine your stomach is currently doing? 

He places a throw pillow in your hands which were previously clenched in your lap. It’s your favorite throw pillow, actually, because the texture is very soothing. You squeeze it and rub your fingers across the grain. 

“Secondly, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I can go home and go to bed and if you want, I’ll never bring it up again. Not even to Robby.”

You crack a wobbly smile. “Not even to Nurse Evans?”

“She’d probably guess on her own, but I would never confirm her suspicions.” 

You tuck your feet under your legs, shrinking into the corner of your couch. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I already texted my mom to add a person to the reservation, and if I show up without a plus one there’ll be hell to pay.”

“You could swap me with someone else?”

“Do you think I would have agreed to let my boss be my fake boyfriend if I had someone else to bring?”

“Touché.” 

The corner thread of your throw pillow has begun unraveling, and your wandering fingers pull and tug at it erratically. 

“I’m sorry. I’m not usually this neurotic, I swear. My family brings out the worst in me.”

“I ain’t judging, sweetheart,” Jack soothes, “Besides. We’re ER doctors. We’re all a little neurotic.”

Steadfastly avoiding his gaze (again, just a little too knowing, like he can see every insecurity you’re trying to hide) you stand on shaky legs and rush to the bathroom. 

“I’ll just. Finish up. Sorry again.”

“I’m gonna start a tally of unnecessary sorry’s. You’re gonna owe me an hour of overtime for each one.”

Oddly enough, getting ready (the rest of the way) feels much more manageable and much less difficult with Jack nearby. He doesn’t critique how long it takes you, the fact that you change earrings three times, or tell you that you look good enough and should just go. 

He just hangs out in your living room, on the couch, practically oozing calm and nonchalance. The foolish, romance-starved part of you wants to cancel on your mom and spend the rest of the day curled up next to him on the couch, like a cat. Lazily dozing while Jack watches TV or something sounds like a much better way to spend your time after work than experiencing all five stages of grief over the course of one lunch. Repeatedly. 

Finally ready, and with your sanity intact thanks to Jack, you pause by the kitchen and debate the merits of taking a shot to loosen your nerves. Unfortunately, your mom would undoubtedly somehow smell the alcohol on you and no doubt chew you out for a minimum of twenty minutes. Heaven forbid you make the event bearable.

Ever the kind host, you peek your head around the kitchen wall. “Do you want a shot, Jack?”

“You’re aware that I’m fifty?”

Right. That's probably an unhinged question.

“Just thought I’d offer,” You say, meekly tucking the bottle back under the shelf, slightly embarrassed, “Sometimes alcohol is the only way I can survive these things.”

He’s leaned up against the couch, hands in his pockets when you exit the kitchen. “It was very considerate, thank you. But I think the days of vodka and tequila shots are behind me. I’m more of a whiskey man, anyways.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when we end up at a bar afterwards to drink away memories of the lunch.”

Jack raises an eyebrow. “You act like we’re going to be hung, drawn, and quartered after showing up.”

You worry your bottom lip between your teeth. “Sorry. I just don’t want you to be unprepared, because they’re not always bad but when they’re bad they’re bad, you know? And I just don’t want to scare you off, and ruin the day you could be spending sleeping, and I really am thankful, by the way, I just don’t—“

“Do you always ramble when you’re worried?” Jack interrupts, tilting his head to the side.

“Um. No? I don’t know. I try not to. But like I said. My family brings out the worst in me.”

He searches your face for a moment, then taps the underside of your chin with a crooked finger, raising it slightly. 

“We got this, okay? I’m not easy to scare. Combat med vet, remember? Plus, if it really gets that bad, I’ll fake a call from the hospital. Say there was some horrible accident and we’re being called in.”

“Won’t my mom get wise when she never hears it on the news?”

Jack shrugs. “It’s the city. Something horrible is always happening here.”

He holds the front door open for you when you’ve got your shoes on and purse ready, but as you’re sliding past him, he leans down, the angle of his jaw almost brushing the side of your neck, and breathes in deeply. 

“You smell good.” 

Fuck the gymnastics routine. Your stomach is going for Olympic Gold. 

“Oh,” You exhale, a shiver running up your spine and a pleasant tingling sparking where your skin barely brushed his, “Uh— Thanks. Vanilla and spice. I like layering scents.”

“It’s nice. Suits you.” 

You manage to squeak out another awkward “Thanks” before hastily locking the door, hoping he can’t tell just how flustered he keeps making you. Judging by the smile playing at his lips, your hopes are in vain. 

The car ride to the restaurant is longer than it should be, on account of Pittsburgh traffic, but the time goes by quickly as you pepper Jack with questions to prepare for the million and one that your mother will no doubt ask. 

(“What should I say if she asks if we’ve slept together?”

“Do you really, honestly, truly think your mother is going to bring up the topic of sex at the table, in a nice restaurant, with your entire family present?”

“Fair point.”)

By the time you arrive, you’ve picked and torn every single hangnail and loose cuticle around your fingers down to raw flesh and tiny dots of blood. Jack parks the car (parallel parks easily in one go, no repositioning needed, in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s one of the hottest things you’ve ever seen in your life) a good distance away from the restaurant, so that your family wouldn’t be able to see you if you decided to flee to his car to escape them. 

At least, that’s what he says. 

“I want you to hang onto the car keys, okay? If they get too much, you can sneak out through the kitchen and go to the car. I’ll meet you there.”

You can’t help but smile at his efforts. “And what will you be doing while I’m sneaking out?”

“Singing your praises, of course.”

Exhaustion from the shift you worked in what seems like a lifetime ago lines your limbs, but as you step out of the car (through the door Jack insists on opening for you “In case they’re still watching,”) and loop your arm through Jack’s, you feel… almost capable. 

The lunch is going to suck. That’s a given. But Jack assured you he’s seen worse (“Probably done worse, sweetheart,”) and will not leave the lunch in a fit of rage and cause a scene. His arm is firm and solid —and fucking huge, how are his biceps that big— under your arm, and his presence is steadying. 

As you cross the street and begin your final walk towards the building, he un-loops his arm from yours, but after you make a questioning noise in your throat, worried you’d be completely untethered (how pathetic to already be this reliant on a man, but there’s no time to unpack that now) but instead he wraps his arm around your waist instead, drawing you to his side and effectively grounding you to his body. 

The entire left side of your body lights up at the contact, and if this were your apartment, it would be very difficult to refrain from climbing him like a tree or doing something equally embarrassing, like plastering yourself to his side and begging him to never stop touching you. 

You’ve almost managed to come off unaffected, but then he leans down, lips almost brushing your ear, and whispers: 

“You’ve got this, baby. And if you don’t, I do.”

Forget your family. Jack Abbot is going to be the death of you. 

When you walk into the restaurant, hyper-aware of Jack’s grip on your body (your delusional mind has you thinking how… possessive the hand almost feels, if you ignore the fact that this is all fake) your family is waiting in the foyer, talking amongst themselves. 

Your mother immediately zeroes in on you. “Honey, we’ve talked about you being on time to these things. You can’t be late to important family—“

You watch in real time as your mother’s gaze finally flicks to Jack, and the shades of recognition, shock, almost disgust, and confusion before settling back into forced pleasantness. 

Your father, however, looks downright murderous. Looks like the age gap isn’t going down too well. 

If Jack is at all nervous or put off by the several stares and outright glares from your family, he does not show it. He exudes cool confidence, the same unflappable energy he has during chaotic night shifts. The same calm that makes him so alluring to you in the first place. 

He sticks out his hand for your mother to shake, a mirror of earlier that day in the PTMC lobby. 

“I believe we’ve met before, but I’ll introduce myself again. I’m Dr. Jack Abbot.”

Your mother shakes his hand, but looks between the two of you like you’ve just spilled wine on her Persian rug that she can’t afford in the first place. 

“You’re my daughter’s plus one?”

Jack nods. “Her boyfriend, yes.”

Your brother’s gape. Your dad’s glare intensifies. You want to kiss Jack. 

“Honey,” Your mother says, gaze darting to you, “You didn’t say—“

“I didn’t want you to meet him at the hospital,” You tell her, hoping the lie doesn’t come across as too rehearsed, since you did rehearse it several times with Jack in the car on the way over, “The lobby of the hospital isn’t the best place to introduce people. And we really did have patients to get back to.”

Your mother purses her lips. “Why the last minute addition? If you’d told me that he was coming before today, it would’ve been easier to make the reservation.”

Jack is quicker to respond than you. “That’s my fault, actually. I didn’t think I was going to be able to come, what with my shifts as a senior attending, but when we met in the lobby I understood how important it was to make the time.”

You have to try hard not to smile at Jack’s not-so-subtle flex. Senior attending. 

“Yes, well. My daughter doesn’t always stress the importance of these things.” 

Jack’s grip on your waist tightens ever-so-slightly at the backhanded remark, and your mother’s gaze darts to the point of contact. But your father jerks his head towards the tables before she can say anything. “I’m starving.”

Everyone files in behind him, with you and Jack at the back of the line. Again, he leans down to whisper to you. 

“How’d I do?”

You elbow him in the side. “We’ll discuss your performance after this is over.”

“Looking forward to it.” 

The hostess leads everyone over to a large table near a window (your mother is particularly about seating) and everyone finds a seat. One of your brothers, either as a test or just to be a shit (your money’s on the latter) slides into the open seat next to you before Jack can. 

To his credit, Jack doesn’t cause a scene, but he doesn’t back down either. He just stares at your idiot brother for awhile before finally asking: 

“Do you really wanna do this right now?”

Your brother must sense that Jack Abbot is not a man to be fucked with (just a man you want to fuck), and scurries to his own seat, tail between his legs. 

Once everyone is seated and the food is ordered (you don’t bother ordering anything other than the salad; Jack orders the most expensive thing on their menu. He’s never seemed like one to care for finery and expensive Italian restaurants where you practically have to order in Italian, but again, his unfazed demeanor makes him fit in anywhere) your family immediately begins peppering him with questions. Questions you knew they’d ask and appropriately prepared him for. 

“So. Dr. Abbot—”

“Just Jack is fine.”

“—How long have the two of you been dating?”

“A month and a half.”

“Why’d you start dating?”

You take a generous gulp of your wine. 

“Because your daughter is an incredible woman and an even better doctor.”

“Do you think she’s pretty?” One of your brothers chimes in. 

Jack takes it in stride, despite that not being a question you prepared. “I’d have to be blind and stupid if I didn’t.”

You feel hot from the tips of your ears down to your toes. 

That’s going in the mental folder. 

“Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”

“Pretty much. Took a bit of a detour as a combat medic first, though.”

“Why’d you leave?” 

“Honorably discharged after I lost my right leg. Below the knee amputation.”

You drain the rest of your glass and inconspicuously motion to the waiter for more wine. 

The table is silent for the customary length of time after someone drops the “got a limb chopped off” bomb. Your family is clearly mildly uncomfortable, but Jack just keeps sipping his drink, his free hand drifting down and brushing the side of your thigh.

Your dad clears his throat. Here we go. Home stretch. Final questions before we’re in the clear. 

“Mr. Abbot—“

“Either Doctor or Jack works.” 

Ooo. There was some bite in that one. 

Your Dad frowns. He does not like to be interrupted or corrected. You’ve been on the receiving end of far too many hour long lectures (read: berating and borderline verbal abuse) to know better. 

But Jack isn’t his daughter. Jack is pretty much his equal. Actually, the fact that Jack not only served but is now a doctor places him above your father, by social conventions. 

This no doubt infuriates your father. He’s always hated it when he couldn’t tear somebody down to his level. A true coward. 

“Jack,” Your dad continues, a trademarked forced smile to save face, “You’re a smart man, yeah? Haven’t you ever considered the age difference between the two of you might be a little much?” 

Yikes. Questioning Jack’s competency is not the way to go. Jack is very competent. And smart. And capable. It’s really hot. 

Your fake-boyfriend just reaches over and grasps your hand, over the table, and looks at you with such devotion in his eyes that you forget how to breathe. 

“War doesn’t really lend to longevity. I’ve learned to hold on tight to things I care about.” 

For a moment, it doesn’t feel fake. There’s raw, punched emotion in his voice, and his thumb rubs your hand gently. Like he really does care that much. Like he wants to hold on. 

But then your brother fake-gags and your fake boyfriend looks away with that, he’s passed the tests, and the conversation moves onto to different topics. Jack laughs at all the right moments, doesn’t bring up any argument-starting topics, doesn’t rise to bait when it’s thrown his way. 

He’s perfect. 

Eventually lunch is drawn to a polite close. You have one last glass of wine while Jack settles the bill. Himself. With one card. He doesn’t even look. 

Your mom sends a smirk your way after he waves off your father’s attempt at splitting the bill or offering to pay. It’s probably the third time she’s actually looked at you for the entire duration of the lunch, but since it’s positive, you’ll let it slide. 

Pretty soon bags are grabbed, hands are shook, and Jack’s hand magically finds its way back to your lower back and you’re being (very gently) escorted out of the restaurant and to the car. 

“Wow,” You breathe as you slide into the passenger seat of his car. “I think that’s the smoothest a lunch with my family has ever gone in my entire life. You’re really good at this.”

Jack doesn’t respond though. Doesn’t make any kind of noise that he heard you. His hands are nearly white knuckled on the steering wheel and he’s staring straight ahead. 

“Jack?” 

“They didn’t even talk to you.”

You blink. 

“What?”

“Your family never tried to include you in the conversation. Didn’t even ask you any questions.”

You snort. “Trust me, it’s better that way.”

He hasn’t started the car yet, just keeps staring off into the middle ground. He can’t be old enough to start doing a thousand yard stare already, right?

“You ordered a salad.” He says, a very prominent frown on his lips. 

“So? It wasn’t too expensive, was it? I swear, if I knew you were gonna pay for the whole bill I would’ve looked at something cheaper, I don’t know why salads are so expensive—“

“Please don’t apologize for ordering a salad,” Jack says, voice pained, “Especially because I know you hate salads.”

Oh. 

“How do you know that?”

“I overheard you talking to Dr. King that time you two were discussing the merits of Olive Garden. You said the salad there was the only kind you like, because of the dressing and the pepperoncinis.”

Your cheeks heat. “I never said I hated all salads. I said I like that one in particular.”

“You hardly ate anything during lunch.”

“My family tends to have that effect on my appetite.”

Jack does not look placated. He doesn’t take the out that your little joke provides. Doesn't so much as huff. He looks upset. Distressed. 

Something about what he said goes ding! in your mind.

“…Mel and I had that conversation like, last month. You seriously remembered that?” 

He frowns harder, like the answer to your partly rhetorical question should be obvious.

(It’s not. Why would he remember that conversation? Why would he care at all?)

“Of course I remember.” 

There isn’t much to say after that. You’re not really sure what in particular has upset Jack, what possibly blunder or error you’ve made to incur him going completely monosyllabic and frowny. Ever eager to appease, you refrain from any attempts to cajole him, make conversation, breathe too loudly, or make any kind of indication that you’re still present. 

The tension in the car is thick and uncomfortable. It prickles at your skin and the hairs on the back of your neck, but the only thing you dare to do is scroll through Pinterest, only looking at the safest, basic boards in case Jack glances over (he doesn’t.)

But then he does glance over. He just doesn’t look at your phone. 

Jack just keeps looking at you. 

He’ll look over, eyes darting over your face like he’s looking for something, and then he’ll look away. Over and over for almost the entire course of the drive. He only stops when you accidentally time your staring (monitoring) of him wrong and make eye contact. 

He parks by your place (he once again sexily parallel parks with ease) and then puts the car in park. And then he starts talking. 

“You’re so much more than them.” 

Jack has the heat on, but the air in the car suddenly feels cold. 

“What?”

“Your family,” Jack clarifies, like that was the confusing part “Your parents. I hated watching you… disappear like that. You deserve better than that. You are better than that.” 

You try to swallow, almost choking on the sudden lump in your throat. 

“Listen,” You start, unaware of how to even begin processing what he said, let alone formulating the best response because your brain is just flashing abort! Abort! Abort! in big neon letters,, “Thank you for today. I really appreciate it. But if this is all just too much, I can handle things from here. Really. I can say that someone called out and you had to cover shifts—“

“No.”

Jack says it with such vehemence, bordering on vitriol, that it startles you, and you flinch backwards ever so slightly. 

An old habit. 

Something flashes across his face —gone before you can decipher it— and he noticeably forces himself calmer.  

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you go alone again. Ever.” 

Your brain starts short-circuiting at his words. “I really can’t ask you to—“

“It’s a good thing you’re not asking me then.” 

“Jack—“

“Please.”

You’re stunned silent at the rawness in his tone— the pain. 

He said please. He said it like he was begging. He is begging. 

“I don’t know how you do it,” He continues, jaw working, “I can see it on you, plain as day. How you hate what they do, how it makes you hurt. But you keep going.”

You shrug uselessly. “Is there another option?” 

Jack reaches out for you, then falters, like he thought better. A tiny part of you wishes he’d followed through; bridged the yawning gap between the two of you that’s made up of the center console in his car, a couple decades, and your own unwillingness to try at vulnerability. 

“I’ll walk you to your door.” 

The walk to your door is a stark contrast to the walk to the restaurant. There’s no mischief on his face now, only a mask of stony distress. 

At the doorway to your apartment building, you pause. It seems customary. Appropriate. Necessary.

Really, you just want to look at Jack some more. Try to puzzle out why the lunch that felt like it went so well made him so upset. Where you’re getting signals wrong and crossing wires. Why success to you is failure to him. 

(As an ED resident, you’ve seen child abuse cases. You’ve seen foster care children littered with cigarette burns and criss-crossing scars of broken bottles and the corners of coffee tables and haunted eyes.  

You know your family isn’t great. But there aren’t any cigarette burns or glass scars or eyes that track fast movement.)

You have this burning inclination to apologize to Jack. Logically, you know you haven’t done something wrong, but you feel like you have because he’s upset so maybe you can make it better? 

“You have that look on your face.”

You frown. “What look?” 

“The ‘I’m gonna apologize for something stupid’ look.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking about it,” Jack ducks down, catches your eyes, “Hey, listen to me. You cannot fix what I am upset about. It is not your job. My mood is not your responsibility.” 

“It’s freaky when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“You always know what I’m thinking.”

Jack just huffs; shoves his hands in his pockets. 

Emboldened by his reassurance, you ask: “Why are you upset?” 

“Because your family treats you like shit, and I want to fix it, but I can’t.” 

“Oh.” 

It’s not that bad. It can’t be that bad. You’ve seen bad. This isn’t it. It’s hard, but it’s not bad. 

He stays quiet, seemingly sensing the inner turmoil his words have sparked. That, or he really is that good at reading you. 

Jack nods towards your door. “We can talk later. Get some sleep. We both have shifts tonight.”

Right. Yeah. All of these events roughly occurred over the course of six hours. Time makes sense. 

Despite the fact that you are exhausted and desperately need to sleep if you have any chance of surviving your –quickly approaching– shift, you linger. 

“How am I supposed to repay you for all of this?” 

The question that’s been burning a hole in your pocket since he said I’ll do it. 

He just shakes his head. Like it’s simple. Easy. “This isn’t something I want repayment for. Now go. You’re no good to me as a zombie.” 

“I’ll just have some of Shen’s Dunkin.”

“He doesn’t share that shit. Besides, he’s off tomorrow.”

“Maybe I‘ll—“

“Sleep,” He points at your door, “Now.” 

You smile at his insistence. He’s sort of like cold coffee with sugar. Seems all bitter but then you get a bit of that sweet crunch, so it balances out. He balances out. 

Sometimes it feels like he balances you out. 

“Goodnight.”

He gives you a little smile of his own. 

“Goodnight.”

—

Jack Abbot does not take his own advice. Mostly because he knows if he doesn’t talk about what happened during that lunch from hell, he’s going to do something that will end in him being thrown in prison and having his medical license revoked. More importantly, if that happens, he won’t be around to take care of you. 

So instead he collapses on his couch, works his prosthetic off to give his stump a needed break, and dials the number at the top of his favorites in his contact list. 

“This really isn’t a good time—“

“Robby,” Jack starts, “They didn’t even fucking talk to her.” 

“Jesus, okay. Whitaker! Cover for me a sec, will you? I gotta deal with this.”

“They just…” Jack continues, genuinely at a loss for words. His vocabulary feels woefully unequipped to relay the depth of anger he feels about the events of the lunch, “…Ignored her. They talked over her, didn’t ask her questions, hardly ever let her finish speaking when she did finally get a chance to speak, and threw jabs at her constantly. It was fucking awful.“

The background noise quiets over the phone, and Jack knows Robby’s moved to either the break room or an empty patient room. 

“She fight back at all?”

“No. Just… grinned and beared it. It was fuckin’ unsettling, man. I’ve seen her yell back at rude patients, watched her stand her ground to EMT’s who think they know better. It was like she hollowed herself out to sit at that table.” 

“Christ.”

“She flinched away from me. Afterwards, in the car, when I raised my voice on accident.”

“Fuck. Do you think—“

“I don’t know. Maybe when she was younger. They don’t live in state, so if they are, she’s safe.” 

Jack scrubs a hand down his face. “God. I don’t know what to do, Robby. It doesn’t seem like she’s got… anybody. She didn’t even understand why I was upset. She doesn’t get why that would be upsetting.” 

“She’s friends with Mel and Santos, right?” 

“And Whitaker by extension, yeah. But those are recent friends. I’ve never heard her mention anybody from back home. No boyfriend or best friend or anything. She’s just been doing everything on her own.”

Jack can picture Robby nodding. “We’ve done our fair share of that.”

“Yeah, and look where that got us. I can’t just leave her here. Fuck, it was like watching someone kick a puppy, over and over.” 

“That bad?” 

“Yeah.” 

The line goes silent for a bit, both men stewing on the subject at hand. 

“She’s always had these habits. I thought they were just personality quirks, you know. I mean, we’re all fucked up, but watching it happen…”

“It’s different.” 

“You could say that,” Jack sighs, “She soaks up praise like a fucking sponge. She looks surprised every time I do something nice for her. And she keeps trying to make me happy.”

“You lost me on that last one.” 

“It doesn’t… She’s not doing it to make me happy, exactly. She just does everything she can to keep me from getting mad.” 

“Is there a difference?”

“There is. Eager to please versus eager to appease.”

“Are you sure you want to get involved?”

“Bit late for that.”

“You could pull back.”

“Fuck no, I can’t. Then I’d be kicking the puppy.”

“She is a grown woman.”

“Who happens to look like a kicked puppy.”

He scrubs a hand down his face, groaning into the microphone. 

“You finally realize how ridiculous you sound?”

Jack grunts. “I’m not giving you the satisfaction of answering that.”

The line crackles with the staticky sound of Robby chuckling. “That’s an answer in it of itself, and you know that.” 

He lets the line go quiet again, briefly debating just hanging up. 

“I don’t know, Robby. It’s just…”

“Worse than you expected?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on. You knew that was a possibility. Has it put you off, at all?”

“Fuck no.”

“Exactly. Now please, go to bed so I can get back to saving lives? Whitaker is covering for me and he’s only gone through two pairs of scrubs so far today. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d bet money that he’s moved onto his third during this conversation.” 

“I save lives too.”

“You won’t save any if you fall asleep on the drive over and die.”

“I would never fall asleep behind the wheel.”

“That’s what they all say.” 

Jack really does hang up after that, plugging his phone in and rushing through everything he needs to do before bed. 

But even as exhaustion pulls his body down into deep, dreamless sleep, he can’t stop thinking about that hollow look on your face. And he knows, even half-asleep, that he won’t be able to let it go.

—

The next night at work is weird, because nothing has changed, except now you know what the inside of Jack’s car looks like and how his voice sounded when he begged you to let him help. 

It’s jarring, to say the least. Unsteadying and mildly world-rocking if you’re being honest. 

But gossip travels fast within the walls of the PTMC, so by the time night shift is halfway over, you’re convinced you’ve heard every variation in existence of the same two questions: 

“Did you and Jack go on a date yesterday?” 

And: 

“What’s Jack like on a date?” 

The answer to the first question is complicated and embarrassing, so you don’t answer it or any of it’s variants. The answer to the second question is not complicated but it does, however, stir some very complicated feelings, so you refrain from answering that one too. You just try to refrain from thinking about or seeing him in general.

You’re not avoiding Jack, per se. Just keeping busy. With other stuff. That’s conveniently nowhere near him. 

Ellis keeps shooting you entirely too knowing looks, Mckay, who’s pulling a double, pats your shoulder and tells you she’s there if you want to talk, Shen is absent as Jack said he would be, and Jack himself is acting like nothing happened and everything is normal and he’s never been to your apartment smelled your perfume. 

(“…I like layering scents.”

“It’s nice. Suits you.”)

It’s all too much.

Hence the avoiding.

You try to curb your own ridiculousness for the sake of your patients, but it’s oddly difficult. You’ve always been amazing at compartmentalizing. If your family gave you any kind of skill, it’s the ability to shove your feelings in a box, and then shove that box in a corner of your mind you won’t access consciously until you end up on public transportation with your headphones. You should be more than capable of gathering up all the loose feelings labeled ‘For: Jack Abbot’ and tucking them all nice and neat in that little box and then shove it in a dark mental corner. 

But you can’t. And along with the flurry of Jack Abbot causing a hurricane in your head, there’s a lesser storm that is the result of your family. More specifically, how they look to Jack. 

All roads lead back to Rome. Or, in your case, to Jack. 

You catch yourself during every spare moment or menial task that doesn’t require 100% of your brain power analyzing every interaction he had with them. Everything they said, everything they did, and how Jack would’ve taken it. And why. Because clearly, the act of dealing with them isn’t the problem. The ease and finesse in which he did so crosses that off the list. So it’s something else. 

It’s how they treat you. 

You understand, logically, that it would be upsetting, from his point of view. If you were in his place, you’d also probably be upset too. 

But this feels different. Jack’s reaction is different. Jack is different. 

It’s just never really been something that anyone should be upset over. Your family are who they are. Not great, but not truly bad either. You deal with them sparingly. You don’t even live in the same state anymore. It’s not a big deal. 

“Why are you hiding from me in a supply closet?” 

You whirl around, a box of gloves clutched in your hands.

“I’m not hiding from you.”

Jack crosses his arms and leans against the doorway. “This is the third time you’ve been here in two hours.”

“So? I just want to be… on top of things. I’m a productive person.” 

“You are,” He amends, “But all of your productivity tonight has been pretty strictly nowhere near me. Funny how that works.”

You sigh, placing the gloves back on the rack. “Things are just… weird, okay? I don’t know how you’re being so normal about all this?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Normal how?”

“You seemed pretty upset yesterday. You’re acting like nothing’s changed, but–”

“Nothing has changed.”

Your fingers wander and find a loose piece of skin on the edge of your cuticle, and you begin absent-mindedly picking at it. 

You can’t exactly disagree with him, right here, in the supply closet at the hospital. But you can’t quite bring yourself to agree either– because whether he acknowledges it or not, things have changed. Seeing him outside the hospital, perfectly placating your family into one of the most peaceful get-togethers you’ve had in years isn't just nothing. 

It’s everything. And you, for one, can’t just pretend that it didn’t happen. 

“Hey,” He calls your name softly, “What’s on your mind? What’s bugging you?” 

“Nothing.”

He snorts, pushing off the doorframe and shutting the door behind him, so it’s just the two of you alone. “Liar.”

He doesn’t probe any further, just leans against the now closed door with his hands in his pockets, eyes flitting over you like they’re looking for an answer. An answer you’re too hesitant to give. 

“I’m just worried.” 

“You? Worried? No.” 

You cut him a glare, “There’s a very real chance that this could all go horribly awry, you know.”

“Sure,” Jack dips his head, “But that’s not what you’re really worried about.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because that doesn’t address the fact that you’re avoiding me.”

You sigh, scrubbing a hand across your face. 

“Why do you care?” 

The question that’s been nagging at you since the beginning. The little itch in the back of your mind that you just can’t seem to get rid of. The puzzle you can’t figure out; the tune you can’t place. 

You’re a logic driven person. You like knowing how things works– why they work. Why things do the things they do. 

You like having the why. Having the why makes the world make sense. 

Nothing about Jack Abbot makes sense. 

“Why do I care about what?”

“This,” You gesture vaguely to the air, “Me. I don’t buy that you just didn’t have anything better to do or whatever it was you said. People don’t just… do that. You’re really ruining your life for an entire week for what? So I'm a little less uncomfortable? Me? At the end of the day, we’re just coworkers. I know how important your down time is for you, so I just don’t get why you’re so okay with being miserable just for my sake. I’m not that important. These stupid lunches aren’t that important.” 

It’s a stupid confession. Much too vulnerable for a supply closet and a man you’re harboring feelings for. 

He doesn’t respond right away. Hums, stares at his shoes for a bit. Re-adjusts so his prosthetic isn’t taking so much weight. 

“You are important. You’re important to me, to this hospital, to your patients. And for the record, I am not ‘ruining my week.’ If it was that easy for my week to be ruined, I never would have become a doctor, let alone joined the military.”

“But why?” 

“Jesus, you watched a lot of the science channel growing up, didn’t you?” 

You snort. “Guilty as charged.” 

Now it’s his turn to sigh. 

“You… seem to have this misguided belief that caring is reciprocal in nature.”

You frown. “It is.” 

“It isn’t. At least it shouldn’t be, but I don’t think anyone ever told you that.” 

You scoff. “So this is about my family.” 

He shrugs. “Amongst other things.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“They are.” 

“Other people have it worse.”

“It’s not a competition.” 

You resist the urge to throw your hands in the air. “Why is this such a big deal to you?” 

“Because it’s a big deal to you.” 

The air gets quiet and tense. Like the supply closet and all the medical supplies in it are holding their breath. If they were alive, if they were holding their breath, you’re convinced they’d all be looking at you. 

It’s Jack who speaks first though. 

“I can see it. You do everything yourself, get back up even when it’s hard. You look out for other people more than you look out for yourself. You’re selfless and kind and I don’t think very many people give that back to you.” 

A reflexive smile pulls at your lips, a habit you never quite managed to kick after years of people telling you ‘smile, look grateful, stop looking so upset, there’s nothing to cry about.’ It feels awkward and clunky on your mouth but you don’t know what else to do. There’s no pre-written protocol for something like this.

“I still don’t really get it.” You murmur, more to yourself than to Jack.

Jack sends you a light grin. “We’ll work on it.” 

“We will?” 

“Sure,” He shrugs, “Already started anyways.” 

“If you’re sure.” 

“I’m sure,” He opens the door, “Now get back out there. And bring the gloves too.”

You roll your eyes but comply, snagging the box off the shelf where you’d left it and following him out. 

The rest of your shift passes much smoother than before, even with the routine influx of patients as the time inches closer to morning. Jack doesn’t hover, but doesn’t pull the disappearing act that you (totally fairly) pulled on him either. He truly seems unfazed. Like it really, actually doesn’t bother him. 

Well. Correction. It does bother him, but not because it’s something he’s doing for you, the part that bothers him (apparently) is how all of this affects you. All this caring makes you feel like a deer in the headlights.

You recall something he said that night. Something that had made you shiver– something that hit the nail right on the head. 

“Hey, listen to me. You cannot fix what I am upset about. It is not your job. My mood is not your responsibility.” 

He always seems to know exactly what to say to you. How to act, what to do, what specific worry you’re feeling and the best course of action to soothe it. It’s great but it’s also difficult, because there’s a part of you that wants to let him keep doing it, but then there’s the part of you that bristles every time and wants to snap that you’re completely capable of doing things yourself. 

That probably wouldn’t even work. He’d just say something infuriating and sexy, like “I know, but I want to do this for you.” 

He would. He totally would. 

The thought is equal parts haunting and reassuring. 

(And maybe, also, a little, kind of really sweet?)

–

The next two lunches go great. Jack is still freakishly incredible at charming your family. And, with his help, you actually manage to hold a (mostly) civil conversation with your parents for the first time in… years. 

The lunches are fine, but the part you’ve started looking forward to is the before and after. Before, Jack comes to pick you up, and sometimes he comes early and helps prepare (which mostly involves him either talking you off the ledge, pouring a shot or two, or assuring you that your makeup and outfit look great. Not fine, great) or just to hang out. The hanging out part is nice, because he never comes with any sort of expectation. He’ll sit on your couch and scroll through his phone and entertain all the inane chatter you like to get out of your system beforehand but never had an outlet for before. 

The after is even more fun. You run through the highlights of the night and hate on all the annoying things your family said to you. This usually also involves stopping somewhere for food (only for you, Jack’s never hungry because he eats t=at the restaurants but you’re never allowed to order anything that isn’t a salad) and then the two fo you fight over who pays. You always insist since you’re the only one actually eating any of the food, but then Jack usually takes your card, puts it in his pocket, and uses his own. 

It’s as frustrating as it is hot. 

But for the most part, the lunches and your shifts at work have actually been pretty good– as good as night shifts in a trauma center can be, anyway. Jack’s presence is… steadying, even when he’s not physically there. He’s always present in some way– whether it’s little reminders he leaves at your favorite spot for charting (he only uses blue sticky notes) or a real lunch left for you in the breakroom fridge (you weren’t previously aware he actually knew how to cook, or that he knew how picky you are when it comes to what you’ll actually eat for lunch and how often you get too busy to properly make something.) Sometimes he’s there in your head; in little things he’s told or taught you that you remember in the moment. 

It’s nice. To have someone be around. Someone you can relax with, joke with– someone who hasn’t looked down on you for the the way you turned out. 

You were pretty ready to declare smooth sailing ahead, but then on the third lunch your mother shows up and is decidedly not in a good mood and the seas turn choppy and the boat smashes into the rocks below. 

At least, two peach bellinis in, that’s what it feels like. 

“Honestly,” Your mother puffs, “I don’t understand why making some simple appetizers could take so long. This is why I hate going to restaurants during lunch hours, the staff just gets so lazy. The menu is always better at dinner anyways.” 

You ignore the thinly veiled dig and instead choose to quietly drain the rest of your third peach bellini. They taste like juice and take a much needed edge (or two) of the evening. Lunch. What-fucking-ever. 

Jack, ever aware of the best way to survive these functions (somehow) whilst keeping his sanity, remains silent as your mom huffs and puffs, seeming to understand that trying to placate her when she gets in these moods is a fruitless endeavor that only leads  to your mom getting more upset and everyone else more annoyed. 

You, made slightly optimistic by the wonderful powers of alcohol, attempt to put her in a better mood. 

“I have the next three days off, mom. We’ll be able to do dinners instead.”

Your mother, however, only scoffs. “That’s no good to anyone now. We’ve already spent half this week dealing with poor restaurant service. I mean, no respectable job would have such a ridiculous schedule." 

“I’m a doctor, mom. It doesn’t get more respectable than that.” 

Jack nudges your leg with his, either a silent laugh, show of support, or quiet question of your sanity. Maybe all three. 

Another bellini appears in front of you, this one heavier on the alcohol than the last. Your server is getting a giant tip when this is all over. 

“You work in the emergency department, dear. That’s hardly stable, and stable is respectable,” Jack clears his throat, and your mother at least has the manners to look mildly sheepish, “No offense, Jack.” 

He smiles thinly. “None taken.” 

Conversation from there is stilted at best with even your brothers tip-toeing around your mother. No one wants to be the subject of a nitpicking lecture, even when the version she gives them is a slap on the wrist compared to what you endure. 

So you keep drinking your bellini’s and they keep coming. After your fourth, you think you should maybe slow down a little, but then your dad starts grilling Jack about his life (again) and you decide that alcohol is, in fact, necessary. 

“Have you ever been in a serious relationship before, Jack?” 

That one almost makes you ask the server for a shot of vodka, straight. That’s a question you ask a nineteen year-old pimple-faced boy, not a fucking fifty year old man. 

“I have, yes. But, like most things in life, they were learning experiences. I’ve moved on.” 

Your dad snorts, then gestures to you. “You could teach her a thing or two about moving on.” 

Your blood runs cold. 

Jack sets his glass down. “And what do you mean by that?”

It’s your mother who answers. Because one vulture circling your soon-to-be carcass wasn’t enough. 

“I’m surprised she hasn’t told you. It was all she ever talked about for years. She’s had exactly one boyfriend before you– what was his name honey?”

“Christopher,” You answer hollowly, stomach churning. 

Your dad snaps his fingers. “That’s it. It took ages for her to get her first boyfriend. We were fairly convinced it would never happen, but then one day she came home with Christopher. Whole family wanted to throw a party– finally found someone to put up with all that attitude!”

Your family laughs, but Jack doesn’t. 

“Where’s the funny part, in all this?”

Your mother clears her throat, just a tad awkward. “When she broke up with him it was awful. She refused to leave her room for works, cried all the time. Honestly, I would have understood if he had broken up with her, but it was all her decision.” 

Your dad nods in agreement. “We had to have a sit-down conversation with her about decisions and consequences before she finally stopped crying and hiding in her room. Christopher was such a nice boy, we hated to see him go.”

Jack opens his mouth, poised to fire something back and defend you, but you beat him to the punch. 

“He cheated on me with my best friend.” 

At that, your mother frowns. “That’s not what Christopher said. You were in your teen angst era, remember? Always picking fights? He told your brother that you were so distant with him he didn’t know you were still together.” 

“I wasn’t distant, I was really busy. I was studying for the MCAT. He knew that. He knew how important medical school was to me.” 

Your brother rolls his eyes. “Med school was all you talked about. It’s not like you were putting out.”

Your mother snaps her fingers once. “That is inappropriate talk for public. You know better.” 

“Come on, mom. It’s true. Everyone knows–”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jack says, not at all sounding sorry, “But the hospital just texted. There’s an emergency, and we’re needed, so we have to go.” 

Jack does not wait for your mother or father to excuse him. He just stands, offering you his hand. It turns out that you need it, because there is, apparently, such a thing as too many peach bellinis. Your mom sends you a pointed glare as you stumble once, after which you make a concerted effort to look more sober. 

Neither you nor Jack bother saying proper goodbyes. Once he grabs your jacket and purse (and your vision stops swimming so much and you’re sure you can walk in a convincing approximation of a straight line) you’re both gone. You pass your server on the way out, who is slipped a very generous cash tip for the excellent bellini service. 

By the time you get to the car, you realize that you’re about to have to save patient lives and you are very, extremely, drunk. There is no way you are capable of doing any life-saving at the moment. 

“Jack,” You mumble, fumbling with your seatbelt, “I think I’m too drunk to go in. Did they say how serious the emergency was? Can I just get a banana bag?” 

“There is no emergency,” He says calmly, batting your hands away and buckling you in properly, “I made it up. I figured you’d be okay with ducking out of there.” 

“Oh. That was nice of you.” 

He clicks you in and gives you a wry grin. “Told you I would handle things.”

You nod, the movement exaggerated and lopsided. “I hate it when they bring up Christpher. They always take his side. Like, is there ever a situation where it’s okay to cheat on a girl with her best friend? I was studying for the MCAT. I didn’t even wallow or break up with him when I found out. I waited until after I took the exam so I didn’t fuck up my score.” 

“That’s my girl.” 

“Christopher was an asshole. He was a real dickhead. The whole situation sucked. I lost the only two people who I thought cared about me at the same time. My family acted like I was the fucking anti-christ for being upset about it, too. It was fucking terrible. I’m so glad I don’t live with them anymore. I mean, I still love them, and I care about them, cause they’re my family, but everything is just so much easier when they’re not around.” 

“You’re allowed to hate them, you know.” 

“I know,” You say, fiddling with a hangnail. “I know I probably should.” 

You sigh, tilting your head back against the headrest. “I always keep holding out hope, you know? That one day they’ll apologize, figure their shit out, care about me in a way that matters. I know it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” 

You frown. “It’s not? It kinda seems stupid. You’d think by now I would know better.” 

“No,” Jack eases the car out of the parking space, “We’re biologically wired to love our families. It’s the reason why they can fuck you up so bad. Your brain can’t compute why the people who are supposed to love you above all else just… don’t. Not in any of the right ways.” 

You blow air through your lips. “I think my parents fucked me up. I was so happy when I matched into the Pitt, because it was so far away. But then I got out here it just kind of hit me, all at once, that I was alone. My best friend was gone, my ex boyfriend sucked, and I was too busy in med school taking care of myself and my family to make any friends.”

Shit, that sounds so whiny. “But it turns out it wasn’t so bad. Now I've got Mell, and Santos, and I’m pretty sure I’m friends with Shen too. Mckay is nice too. I like her. She’s cool.” 

Jack huffs something that could be a laugh, and you turn to study him; the angles of his face awash in the glow of the red light you’re currently stopped at. From here, you can see the tiny bits of tension he carries in his face— a slight pinch in his brow, the tiniest downturn of his lips. It’s the only evidence that he’s not as unaffected by your family as he pretends to be.

Then the light turns green, and his face isn’t illuminated the same. 

“And what about me?” 

Oh. Well. That’s a loaded question.

The alcohol emboldens you to answer honestly. “I don’t know what to think about you.” 

“Oh really?” 

“Mmm. Nope.” 

“How come?” 

"You're so–” You gesture vaguely, “Confusing. I can’t figure you out. For a while there, I was pretty sure you hated me, but then you offered to help me with this and you keep saying you care so I think I’m wrong.” 

“You think you’re wrong?”

“Still can’t figure you out.” 

“And how can I show you that I mean it?” 

That’s. Hmm.

“I don’t know. I think what you’re doing is working,” You pause, debating the pros and cons of continuing to just say whatever the fuck you want before deciding you’re too tired to care, “It helps that you’re really hot.” 

His lips twitch. “Oh, does it now?” 

“Mhm. You’ve got this whole… capable thing about you. It’s hot. Competency is in.”

“If you say so.” 

“I do say so. I feel like if I had a problem I could call you or something and you would fix it. You’re so…”

“Competent?” 

“That’s the word.”

If he’s at all irritated, annoyed, or otherwise put off by your stupid rambling, he didn’t show it. 

“You should call me whenever you have a problem. Chances are, I can fix it.” 

“Are you like Bob the Builder?”

“I’m a doctor, so no.” 

“You’re kind of like Bob the Builder.” 

“Whatever you say,” He pauses at an empty intersection before continuing on, “Before I start heading towards your place, do you want to stop by mine? You didn’t even get to eat your salad, and I have leftovers. You can say no.”

“Are you gonna be mad at me if I say no?” 

“No.” 

‘Then yes.” 

“You sure? I wasn’t lying.” 

“I know. But I like your cooking.”

You spend the drive to Jack’s continuing to ramble about nothing and everything, to which he entertains with a seemingly endless amount of patience. The only time he interrupts is to hand you a bottle of Gatorade he procured from his back seat. Apparently, he bought a few to keep in his car after the first lunch. “For any alcohol excursions.” 

It’s freaky how prepared he is for every situation. 

When you arrive, he unbuckles your seatbelt for you (unbuckling is just as difficult as buckling when you’ve had an unknown amount of peach bellinis) and helps you up the stairs to his apartment. 

His gigantic apartment. 

“Woah,” You mumble as you shuffle through the doorway, pulled along by your hand in Jacks, “I didn’t know they made apartments this size.” 

“Its not that big.” 

“I think, like, four of my apartments could fit in here. Your living room is the size of my entire place.” 

You stumble once, heel catching on the little rug on the entry way, and he’s immediately motioning for you to sit on the little bench by the door and pats his thigh once. You clumsily raise your leg, barely managing to land your foot on the general area he gestures to. He pulls the first shoe off, then repeats with the second with an air of total calm. Like this is normal and he does this all the time for you. Like you regularly find yourself drunk in his apartment.

You decide to unpack the moment when you’re sober. 

“One, it’s not that big, and two, that’s what you get for renting a studio apartment.”

“Like you could afford better when you were an intern.” 

He snorts, leading you to his couch and gesturing for you to sit. “If you want to change clothes you can borrow some of mine.”

You chew on your lip. The outfits you choose to look nice for your mother are never exactly comfortable, and when else are you going to get the chance to privately live the scenario you fantasize about several times a week before falling asleep?

“Only if you don’t mind.” 

“I wouldn't have offered if I wasn’t. Stay there.” 

Jack’s only gone for a few minutes before he reappears with a dark grey sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants in a slightly lighter shade. The sweatshirt is oversized and looks well worn, but the sweatpants are suspiciously new, close to your size, and look eerily similar to a pair you changed into after a shift a few weeks ago.

He hands them to you. Neither of you mention the sweatpants. “You can change in the bathroom. Door locks from the inside. I’m gonna change too, and then I’ll heat up the food.” 

Jack shows you the bathroom (you don’t bother unpacking why exactly he felt the need to tell you that the door locks and from the inside, that’s for when you’re significantly more drunk than you are now and when you’re not in his fancy-ass apartment.) 

Because he’s a man and men take approximately three seconds to change, he’s already in the kitchen setting stuff on the counter by the time you emerge from the bathroom. His countertops are solid granite, because the apartment is clearly expensive and he’s a man. They’re an inky black color with  tiny flecks that sparkle when the light hits them just so. 

“What are you doing?” Jack asks when he turns from the fridge to find you tilting your head this way and that. 

“Looking at the sparkles.” 

“Oookay. Do you want me to heat up the vodka pasta or the chicken?”

“You made vodka pasta?” 

He shrugs. “You said you liked it.” 

You slide into a seat at the kitchen island, a flush creeping up your neck. “The pasta, please.” 

Suddenly exhausted now that you’re in soft, comfortable clothes that smell like Jack, you decide to just rest your head on your arms for a bit. And close your eyes. But you’re not going to fall asleep. You’re not. 

“Don’t fall asleep. You need to eat something first.” 

“M’ not fallin’ asleep.” 

“Mhm. Sure.” 

With great effort, you blink your eyes open and watch Jack while he heats up the pasta and prepares something else. A salad maybe?

“What’re’you’ making?”

“Just a little salad. In case the pasta is too heavy for you.” 

“Oh. How come?” 

“Because I don’t want you to throw up.” 

“I promise I won’t throw up on your furniture. I don’t usually throw up when I’m hungover.” 

“You drink often?” 

“No,” Your head lulls to the side, “I’m too busy. I’m actually not-so-secretly very boring. I don’t really like partying. I much prefer staying at home.” 

“Thought you went to that thing with King and Santos?” 

“Yeah, but that was ‘cause Trinity really wanted me to come and I felt bad and I didn’t want her to think I was a boring, uptight bitch.” 

“I see.” 

“Yeah. I kinda had fun, though. I wished you were there.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” You sigh, probably a hint too dreamily, “Makes me feel better when you’re around.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

He slides a little bowl with a light salad in it to you across the counter, and it's perfectly refreshing. Not at all heavy like the pasta ends up being. 

“Sorry I couldn’t finish it,” You say, forcing down a yawn and resisting the urge to burrow into your arms and go to sleep right there, “I feel bad that you went through the trouble of making it and heating it up.” 

“It wasn’t that much effort. Besides, now you can just eat it for lunch tomorrow instead. I’ll send it home with you.” 

“Mhm.” You hum, slowly inching your arms forward and down onto the counter, your head quickly following suit. 

Jack chuckles, and you can hear the light step of his feet as he rounds the corner of the island and nudges you in the arm. 

“Come on, sweetheart. You wanna get home to bed, don’t you?”

“No,” You shake your head, “I wanna sleep right here. It’s comfortable.”

“It won’t be when you wake up.”

You whine, curling away from him. 

He just puffs another little laugh. “You can either sleep in your bed, or my bed. You can’t sleep on the kitchen island.”

“Why not?” You finally lift your head, “And why is your bed an option?”

“One,” He lifts up one finger in front of your face and slowly drags it back and forth, “Because the kitchen island is not a bed. Two, I’m not letting you sleep on the couch.”

“Why? Is your couch uncomfortable?”

“No,” He says, shuffling back over to where the leftovers are and tucking all the food away in the proper places, “It’s just not right to make a woman sleep on the couch.”

“I like sleeping on couches.”

He shoots you a look over his shoulder, “I’m sure you do. But you’re still a little drunk, and my bed is closer to the bathroom than the couch is.” 

You prop your head on your hand. “Who said I’m even staying here tonight?”

Jack closes the fridge. “Do you want to? Because I don’t care either way. We both have tomorrow off.”

“It’d be weird to wake up here.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my boss.”

“And I’m faking being your boyfriend so your parents get off your back. Pretty sure we’re past coworkers.” 

“What would we even do in the morning?” 

“Sleep.”

“I don’t want to kick you out of your bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.” 

“You’re my guest–” 

“You’re already doing so much for me,” You blurt, stomach clenching, “I– You know me. I can only handle so much. Let me do this one thing? Please?” 

Jack glowers for a bit, then sighs. 

“Only because you asked nicely and I believe in rewarding good behavior. And because I know my couch isn’t uncomfortable. I’ll help you make it up.” 

Jack’s apartment is surprisingly tidy for the fact that a man lives in it (Christopher’s room at his parent’s house always looked like shit) and he pulls down a couple options for bedding. You go with the plain black sheet and its matching thick, fluffy comforter. He insists on making up the couch himself (despite the fact that the alcohol has mostly worn off by now) and even sets up a glass of water, a liquid IV packet, and a bucket– “Just in case those bellini’s don’t love you back.” 

The sight of it all is almost too much. It’s just so much care. All of it. The fact that he’s helping out with you and your disaster of a family, the way that despite the horribleness of it all he hasn’t judged you at all for how you deal with them. He refuses to let you drive yourself, always pays for every lunch for your entire family and the little snacks you get afterwards. Listens to you rant and he makes you food and gets you blankets and–

“You okay there?” 

“Mhm,” You hum, “Just thinkin’.” 

He leaves you be for a moment, busies himself with fixing your pillows and and tugging the comforter into its proper place.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you turn, throwing your arms around Jack’s middle and burying your face in his chest. 

“Thank you,” You say, voice muffled by the fabric, “For doing all of this. Thank you for looking out for me.” 

Jack is still for a second, just long enough for you to second guess initiating physical contact –a line you were previously too scared to cross– but then his hands come up and it's so, immediately, remarkably over. Because you’re never ever going to draw that line again. You can never go back to your life without having this. Without having him. 

Jack’s hands are big and deliciously warm as they slide up, around your waist, lingering to rub a few circles on the mid of your back before moving on. One arm stays, tightening around your waist and drawing you closer while his other glides further up, up, up, his callused palms sliding over the knob at the very base of your neck before his hand settles around your nape, fingers just barely brushing the edge of your hairline. 

You barely manage to suppress a whine at how warm and incredible it feels to be fully enveloped by him. You never want him to let go. Goosebumps erupt everywhere he touches, little sparks of electricity lingering under your skin in his wake.

“I will always,” He presses the lightest of kisses to your temple, just a feathering of his lips, “Look out for you, baby. I’m always gonna be right here.”

His arms tighten around you, drawing you in— closer, closer, closer. Wrapped up in everything that is Jack you can’t help but sag, going completely boneless in his grip and allowing yourself to just bask in him. 

“You smell good.” You mumble into his shirt, completely lost in the moment. 

“Do I?”

“Yeah. Good. Like man.” 

He chuckles, the sound vibrating pleasantly against your cheek. “Thank you sweetheart.” 

“Why do you call me sweetheart?” 

“Because you’re a sweetheart.” 

“I am?” 

“Don’t play dumb now,” He pulls back a little, just enough to get a good look at you, fingers curling in the fine hair at your nape and tugging down, angling your chin up so you’re forced to look at him, “You know you are.” 

You shrug, eyes darting to the side, your cheeks flushing, “I don’t know. I was just making sure.” 

“Mhm.” He hums, tone almost mocking, fingers tightening around your hair just before the precipice of pain.

You stay like that for a few moments of charged silence. Jack’s eyes shamelessly rove over the planes of your face, mapping it out in his mind. He keeps his grip on your hair, not completely forcing eye contact but keeping your head firmly in place. 

It’s possessive. Bold. Probably too intimate for two people who (supposedly) are not actually dating

And you love it. 

Jack only lets his hand (and your head) drop when your jaw opens in a splitting yawn. 

“Okay,” He huffs, taking a step back, “Time for bed. Get going.” 

Embarrassment is the only thing keeping you from whining at the loss of contact and impending reality of sleeping on the couch alone. But you made your bed (figuratively) so now you have to lie in it. 

The couch does look comfortable. Especially since Jack put all the blankets together. 

He waits until you’ve crawled under the comforter to bid you goodnight, followed by a parting reminder to “Wake him up if you start aspirating on vomit.” It’s a very Jack thing to say. 

You’re out almost the second Jack turns the lights off. You fall into deep, blissful sleep, dreaming of that final moment in the living room, your eyes boring into each other. 

Except in the dream, you tilt your head up those last few inches, and kiss your fake boyfriend as hard as you can. 

–

Generally, the annual lecture event ends with a massive blow out argument. Something dramatic and filled with expletives, after which your mother will refuse to answer any texts or calls you send before finally telling you that’s she’s sorry if (always if) something she said offended you, but talking to you is just so hard sometimes so she doesn’t want to unless you’re ready to be more civil. By the time the two of you are on neutral terms again, it’s time for the next annual lunch circuit. 

You’re a mess of nerves in the hours before the last one. Like usual, your mom requested that the last dinner be held at your place. “So it can feel like a real family dinner.” While you know that there isn’t any saying no to your mother, you also know that there is no way you’re cramming your entire family in your tiny ass studio apartment. It happened once. It will not happen again. 

You originally asked Jack during a last minute shift you both got called in to cover if he would help you move some of the furniture at your place to accommodate them, and then he’d gotten this incredulous look on his face and then told you to tell your mom that you’re having dinner at his place. 

“Jack,” You’d gaped at him, “It’s fine. My apartment isn’t that small, and you don’t have to help move the furniture if you don’t want to. I can ask Dennis to give me a hand instead. I really don’t think you want to host my family.” 

“Sweetheart, it’s just logic. You’ve seen my place.”

“Okay. No need to rub it in.” 

He’d just rolled his eyes and pinned you with a firm look. “Come on. You know this is the best option. If your mom throws a fit, tell her I insisted and give her my number.” 

“Do you have a death wish?” You hiss, “That’s asking for torture.” 

Jack had just shrugged. “Would having it at my place be easier for you?” 

“...Yes?” 

“Then we’ll do it there. You’re off in a bit, right?” 

You’d nodded. 

He fishes something small and shiny out of his pocket and tosses it to you. “That’s my spare key. I’ll be here later than you, so just let yourself in if you want to get there earlier to start setting up. I’ll be home soon.” 

Robby shouted his name soon after and Jack was whisked away, leaving you standing in the middle of the ED, holding the fucking spare key to his apartment, gaping like a fish. 

The line between real and fake has become so blurred you’re not sure if it ever was there to begin with. 

He’s started calling you sweetheart more and more often– sometimes when no one's around. No familial audience to be persuaded into the romantic lie you’re selling. Is it still a lie if it doesn’t feel like one anymore?

The question and accompanying feeling follows you all day. All throughout your harried dinner preparation. Even now, with a solid hour until your family is supposed to start showing up, you can’t help but pace the length of Jack’s kitchen, heeled feet clicking on his floor. Jack himself is similarly dressed up, wearing a pair of dark jeans (“I’m not wearing slacks in my own home, and I’m not old enough to start wearing khakis with everything.”) and a black button down shirt with the first two buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He makes a very nice view and under other circumstances you might take the opportunity to climb him like a tree. But alas. Anxiety. 

“Take your shoes off if you’re going to pace. You’re gonna give yourself blisters.” 

You ignore him, chewing on an already stinging cuticle. 

“Things have been pretty good this far, right? Do you think she’s just waiting until the very end to bring up some secret thing that she’s upset about?”

Jack begins preparing the wine –your mother only likes red– for decanting. “I think if your mother were that upset about something she wouldn’t be able to hide it.” 

“True. But what if?”

“I’m not going to help you spiral.” 

“Why not?” You whine. 

He looks at you with a heavy glare and points to the shoe tray at the door. “Shoes. Off. You can put them back on when they get here.” 

You grumble under your breath the entire way but comply. Only because your feet were starting to hurt. 

When your family finally does arrive, it ends up being annoyingly anti-climactic. You spend the entire time on the edge of your seat (literally and figuratively) waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for conversation to turn sour, arguments to erupt, someone to choke on a piece of lettuce and die despite professional intervention. 

But the argument never starts, conversation remains what it usually is and becomes no worse (or better, unfortunately) and no one passes away due to unevenly chopped vegetables. 

The torture is over fairly quickly. Most everyone’s flight back home leaves early the next morning and your dad is paranoid about flight times. 

Pretty soon it’s all just… over. They leave, your mother bickering with your father on the way out about something that probably doesn’t matter, and then it’s just you and Jack and the entire scheme is just done. Finished. Just like that. 

There won't be anymore knee's brushing under the table, no more shared glances and pecks to the cheek when you make a joke that actually lands. No more excuses just to sit and watch him under the guise of playing the adoring girlfriend. No more late night milkshakes.

You'll just go back to being coworkers-- People who pretend not to know each other intimately. Jack probably won't struggle with it. But to you, right now, the idea of just not having him anymore seems like a another wound, right over top all the others.

You don't want him to become another person who used to know you.

You’ve been staring at the closed door for upwards of five full minutes, clenching and unclenching your fists when Jack comes up next to you. He hands you the same clothes you wore the last time you were there and jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom.  

“Why don’t you go and change, huh?”

Your lip wobbles a bit as you answer. “But I want to help you clean up.” 

“You can,” He soothes, “After you change.”

“But–”

“Hey,” He interrupts, “No. You’ve been stuck in those clothes for hours. Go change. I’ll wait for you.” 

Jack keeps his word. He’s leaned up against the kitchen island when you emerge, rubbing at your –now bare, having had the foresight to bring makeup wipes with you– face. 

He looks up when the door opens. “Better?” 

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

He just hums, heading back over to the kitchen table, stacking plates and cutlery. You follow in silence, and he thankfully doesn’t push for conversation. 

Cleaning up doesn’t take long enough. Jack has a fancy dishwasher (and probably doesn’t want to stay standing any more than he has to this late in the day) and there aren’t any leftovers to pack up. Your brothers are bottomless pits when it comes to free food. 

It can’t just be over like this. It can't.

When everything is finished and there isn't anything left to do, Jack wordlessly leads you to the couch and puts something quiet and calm on the TV. The white noise washes over you as you attempt to get comfortable, but the knowledge that it's all over proves to be an itch under your skin that you just can't seem to squash.

“So,” You say after the two of you are seated on opposite ends of the couch, “That’s it then.” 

“So it is.” 

“Guess I owe you big time, huh?” 

“I’ve already told you I don’t care about that.” 

“Right,” You look down at your lap, “Yeah. Sorry.” 

You lapse into silence. 

Jack sighs. “Sweetheart–”

“Was it fake to you?” You blurt, jiggling your knee, still staring at your lap, “Were you– did you mean it?”

It never felt fake. It never felt like pretending. 

It felt real.

It felt like, for the first time in your life, things could be easy.

Maybe easy isn't the right word. But it life sure as hell didn't feel as hard.

When you look up, uncomfortable in his silence and hoping there’s answers in his face, but instead of finding something like disappointment or irritation, he’s grinning. 

“What do you think?” 

“I don’t know.” 

He dips his head once. “Yes you do. You’re a smart girl, I think you can figure it out.” 

Your fingers are curled around the hem of his sweatshirt, white-knuckling the fabric as if to stabilize yourself. Like you’re liable to somehow float away if you don’t dig your heels into the couch and hold on tight. 

“What if I’m wrong?” 

“You won’t be.”

A scoff escapes your lips, “You can’t know for sure.” 

He taps his pointer finger on his leg in an unhurried rhythm. 

“You do.” 

Your stomach is rolling in a combination of leftover anxiety from the dinner that went better than it was supposed to and the weight of Jack’s gaze on you. 

“I think…” You pause, worry threatening to overwhelm you, and take a deep breath before continuing, “I think you might like me.” 

“You think,” He drawls, “I might.” 

“I don’t want to be wrong!” You cry. 

Jack huffs, throwing his head back in a good-natured sigh. 

“Come here.” 

You scoot further down the couch, sitting criss-cross right in front of him. This is not going the way you thought it would. You were almost certain you’d walk away shamed and embarrassed, forced to fake your death and flee the country out of the sheer humiliation of thinking your boss would actually have a crush on you. 

Jack does love to prove you wrong.

“Soo,” You start, still hesitant, “You do like me.” 

Jack props his head on his hand, his expression something you’re starting to recognize as fond. “Yes.”

“More than a little?” 

“Yes.” 

“And you weren’t faking anything. You were serious about the— You know.” 

“Use your words.” 

“The flirting.” You clarify, ears burning. 

“All correct,” He nods, “Though I would have said it differently.” 

You frown. “And how would you have put it?” 

“I would have said,” He reaches out, snagging your arm and tugging until you fall down onto his chest with a little oof, “That you have a hard time believing things that are good, so I had to audition for my role. Like old-fashioned courting.” 

You want to be offended, but unfortunately, it did work. 

You frown. 

Wait. 

“Have you known I liked you this whole time?” 

Jack snorts. “Overheard you talking to Whitaker about it during your second week.”

He’s known since the second week?

“Oh my god.” 

“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. Except Robby. He’s been hoping you would figure it out for awhile now.”

“Oh my god.”

“I thought it was cute,” He smoothes a hand over your hair, “You were so much more nervous back then. You’ve come a long way.” 

You shift uncomfortably at the praise, but Jack’s having none of it. He wraps his arms around you, holding you in place. 

“Can you take a compliment?” 

“No.” 

He re-positions under you, getting more comfortable. “We’ll try again later.” 

“Am I– Can I stay here tonight then?” 

“Of course,” he murmurs, “My one condition is that you’re not sleeping on the couch.”

“Fine,” You sigh, long and drawn out, “I suppose we can share.” 

“How kind of you to share my bed with me.” 

“I have been told I’m kind.” 

You both smile, and everything just feels so right and so perfect that you can't help but lean up, clearing the last few inches, and pressing a hesitant, gentle kiss to his lips. 

It’s just like your dream. 

Only this time, it’s real. And Jack is kissing you back. 

And you’re not alone anymore. 

[traumatized-tiefling]

"Can you perform under pressure?" "No, but I can try Bohemian Rhapsody"

[staytrueblue]

shawn hatosy at 24 and 50

[thisgirlisonfayeeer]

SIR 🥹

[mysoulbelongstobuckybarnes]

—sunshine of the dark.

jack abbot x sunshine!reader

the sunshine of the night shift, all cookies and lavender, loves to make the grumpy, sassy, silver fox attending smile through attempts at flirting and baked goods. but what happens when he asks a certain replacement attending for drinks and the sunshine dims?

—angst. hurt/comfort. fluff ending. reader can be described as plus size but no specified race. age gap (reader is in her late 20s, early 30s, our grumpy man in his late 40s, early 50s). medical inaccuracy.

part two coming soon !

thank you to @cafekitsune for the lovely divider!

"Are those croissants?"

"Better yet, they are vanilla cream stuffed croissants."

The unsubtle smell of your new croissants wafted through the air, alerting almost everyone of your presence that came with new baked goods like a package deal. All the pittlings, as you so dearly called them, looked up as Dana playfully scoffed at the obscenely mouthwatering croissants which you brought in.

"Trin, wait—"

"Nope!"

"No, no, no! You stole all of the cookies last week!" Matteo came running, hands already up to defend the desserts as Trinity opened up the lid of your container before you could even reach the nurses' station.

"What about me—I'm literally her favourite—"

Dennis almost tripped trying to catch up as you gave custody of your beloved croissants to one of the hands trying to poach them away. You walked up to the nurses station handing a secret stash to dana and lena, your mama nurses, before grinning at the scene in front of you.

"You're spoiling them." Dana scolded, without any bite. She also knew how much they deserved it, and how you were too sweet to actually stop treating the youngest of the pitt.

You gave her a side hug. "They deserve something after busting their asses here, especially under Robby. God knows what's up his ass these days. How many times did he yell at Samira today?"

Dana and Lena scoffed, "Almost told her she didn't belong here again."

You rolled your eyes. This wasn't new at all. You made a mental note to check up on the girl yourself.

You looked at them in front of you. Matteo, Trinity and Dennis were already battling against each other and somehow Langdon had already gotten away with two pieces—one for Mel, obviously—and then Shen's invading hands also won the match.

Your heart warmed at all of them.

"You done distracting my staff, nurse?"

A buzz of electricity shot through your spine at the deep, gravelly voice. You turned around on your heels, a sly grin adorning your face, cheeks bumped up to meet his almost smirk and beautiful hazel eyes.

Dr. Jack Abbot. Your grumpy, sassy, hot attending. Your personal mission.

"So you agree that I'm distracting?"

Javadi made a choked noise that sounded almost like chortle while covering her mouth.

He huffed at you, crossing his arms on his chest. You had to keep your eyes from drifting to the muscles on his big arms taut against his broad chest.

"Bribing my students with baked goods? That's distracting."

"You know, its crazy—all I keep hearing is that you find me a.k.a my cooking is distracting, doc."

"Yeah? Well that's medically compromising—you should get your ears checked."

You rolled your eyes, your grin unwavering by his dry quips. "Well, what's medically compromising is your appetite, Abbot. Say, when was the last time you tried any of my distracting goods?"

He raised his eyebrows, "Why? You want me distracted too, nurse?" His voice dropped a decibel, as if the whisper was a secret meant to only rile you up. Your cheeks immediately turned pink, dusting the tips of your ears as well.

Your grin faltered. His almost came into view.

"Very subtle—" Shen coughed up, very unsubtly as your intimate moment with the attending came crashing. Jack took a quick look at your face; pink cheeks and ears and the confidence of the sunshine he managed to falter. A prideful feeling almost bloomed in his chest—only he could affect you like this. Fluster you like this. A small smile was about to make to his face, but was he about to let you win?

"Okay, back to work everyone! Santos, you still have to finish those charts!"

He moved away from your space, the warmth lingering in your heart. But you saw it—he almost gave in.

"Well, sunshine—you almost made it. take the win, will ya?" Dana's voice rang out in the back. but you shook your head, your lower lip getting caught between your teeth, leaning back onto the counter, watching your grumpy attending order around. "Never giving up on this, Dana. Not until he actually smiles, or even laughs."

"God, when will you both stop?"

—

It all started during a particularly, mercifully uneventful night at the pitt.

You, including almost everyone at the pitt, had their eyes glued on the screen with dollars on stake. Will the stupid teenagers who stole their professor's car, with a brake fail, be caught by the unwitting police? Or will they crash? In who's vicinity? Presby or will they have to save lives in the pitt, yet again?

You had put 40$ on presby and he had snorted. "You're optimistic."

"You should try it sometimes—might just make your grumpy face prettier, old man."

Whittaker's eyes widened, Trinity side eyed Perlah and Princess who were looking like they just found gold, Jesse and Donnie stopped incessantly organising the crash cart in case the car did crash in the pitt's vicinity and Dana and Robby smirked at each other.

Amusement etched onto the attending's face and it was a thrill you never stopped chasing. "C'mon, even the grumpy dwarf in snow white smiled, doc—what's stopping you?"

He just shook his head at you, huffing at the comment and walked off. You watched him walk away with his back towards you and accepted the challenge. "One day or the other, I'm gonna make you smile, Abbot—maybe even laugh—you'll see!"

He raised his eyebrows at you and leaned back onto a wall with his arms crossed on his chest, making something thunder inside your body. "We'll see about that, nurse. But first, you might want to look at the screen."

The police had caught them.

—

After that day, you brought in your best food and your best lines. But somewhere along the way, it stopped being just about seeing him smile. I mean, obviously you wanted to see him smile, almost concerned it would make your heart stop, but Jack Abbot started to mean something more.

Seeing him everyday, looking into his soulful eyes, his stupid soft voice while talking to patients and the almost smile he gives you during your shenanigans bloomed a deep, warm, ridiculously fuzzy feeling which had set itself somewhere behind your sternum.

Even if it got a huff out of him, a scoff, a smirk that burned its way through the small space in between you both to between your legs or just raised eyebrows.

So, you never stopped flirting. Never stopped baking. Never stopped chasing his smile. It became your dream. Because you knew it would be breathtaking to see it, feel it and know that you were the cause of it.

So, you were here, with a hop in your step, making your way towards the man.

"And I thought these dull hospital lights could never make anyone look good, but here you are, proving me wrong, Mr. Grouch."

He didn't even look up from the chart he was assessing. "Don't you have patients to check up on?"

"Don't you have some smiling to do?"

He turned to look at you and the warm feeling started to spread through your body, unwarranted. He was about to quip back, his mouth opening slightly when—

"19 year old, GSW to the chest, head trauma, pulse is thready—"

Jack's shoulders and jaw set itself tight, as if bracing for whatever was about to come next. he kept the chart back with a thud, going around you, hand brushing on your lower back. "You're with me. Smiling later." He said, lowly, breath fanning your ear.

"Promise?" Your voice had gone heavy.

You gulped as you both walked towards the gurney, his hand still on your lower back, a small comfort before heading into the storm. He glanced back at you, before getting to the boy after you gave him a nod of readiness.

"Trauma 2 is open!" You heard princess yell.

You took a deep breath before going in, hoping this one will turn around. Everyone is here. Jack is here.

It was going to be okay.

—

Your hands trembled.

Your breath was stoic. It didn't dare to move the air between you or the resident still doing cpr.

Jack glanced at his watch. "Stop."

His voice had lost its sharpness but it still held authority. It honeyed through the trauma room, reaching you. But it didn't warm you up like it usually did. His concerned face was focused at the year 2 resident who was starting to hyperventilate. She still kept going.

He glanced at you. You understood what he needed. You moved forward, your body numb. "Sweetheart, you need to let go. Its okay, its going to be alright—"

"No!" She shrieked. You heard Jack calling her name. "He was younger than me—" She whispered.

Jack stepped forward and gripped her shoulders. "Its okay, doctor. Let go. Look at me—I need you to breathe."

Her hands went slack. The machine beeped mercilessly. "Time of death, 5.57 am."

You circled your arms around her as she fell, weeping into your chest.

"shh, I know. C'mon let's get you out." You whispered, your voice sweet as sugar, your soul numbing as the machine beeped.

Jack looked at you but you avoided his gaze. Your hands were trembling, your vision was blurring and your heart was trying to punch its way through your body. Your brain couldn't take it. But you still took care of the people around you. You squeezed donnie's hand on the way out because you knew his kid was also a teenager. You promised princess a treat because you knew she was not going to eat after this. You took care of the resident in your arms because you knew she wont be able to sleep after this.

His gaze burned on your back as it followed your figure through the overbearing walls of the pitt.

After, you got the resident settled, you were about go off to take a breather when Ellis called your name. "Hey! The kid in trauma 2, do you mind calling his parents and informing them?" Your heart ached and flashbacks of another trauma, another death, another set of parents losing their whole world burned in your mind. But you nodded.

"Hello? am I speaking to Mrs Shah?" You introduced yourself, "I'm speaking from Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center—"

Immediately the questions started, the panic, the desperation, the devastation. You sighed, your exhaustion and anguish slipping out. You tried to explain the urgency, that they needed to come immediately. Your hands shook as you hung up and closed your eyes.

You tried to busy yourself, checking up on other patients, but your mind still wandered away to the boy. The sorrow of another soul departing, another young life you couldn't save, another injustice was too heavy. The grief set in your bones.

It was a reminder of how this job got harder. These walls sometimes seemed too hollow, too empty, with the losses all of the doctors had faced. This department wrung people out with its cruelty. You were expected to move on with no time to process everything.

That's where Jack came.

Being with him, bantering, flirting, joking—it gave you joy—something that the E.D could never steal. He made working and just being there easier, as if the air got much more breathable around him. You were almost addicted to the giddiness you felt around him. his salt and pepper curls, his teasing voice with you, his dry sarcasm, the way his black tee stretched around the muscles on his back and biceps—

"Excuse me? We were called in urgently? We are looking for our son? Neil Shah?"

The grief crashed down on you. Your eyes turned glassy again and tried to look for any other nurse or even Jack so that you wouldn't be in this position. Not again. Not where you have to inform the parents that their beloved child has passed away. Not where you have to hear the wails of the mother and denial of the father.

You sighed in defeat and led them to an empty room. Slowly, you explained what had happened. How their son had passed away. "I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs Shah. Truly."

They had started crying, asking you questions, Demanding answers to truths you didn't know. Until one question. "How did he get shot?"

"He—" Your voice broke, but that's when you felt a warm, steady hand on your shoulder. Your beacon of comfort. You immediately recognized it. "I'm Doctor Abbot—I performed the surgery on your son. Nurse, could you please assist Dr. Kwan with a consult in south eight?"

Your heart filled with gratitude. He gave you an out. And you took it. You nodded but not before mouthing a thank you to the man in front of you. He squeezed your shoulder before holding the door open for you and your heart squeezed. Why did he have to be so kind?

You took a quick glance towards him before getting out. You felt you could breathe.

That did not long last.

"Can you believe he did that? I mean, if I was in his place, I would never put my life on the line—for a girl i just met? That was so stupid—"

You took a sharp inhale and jerked your head to the voice. "How dare you? Just because you don't even have an ounce of the bravery, the courage and the empathy that he had, doesn't mean you get to call it stupid, you—"

Before you could go up to him and slap him, strong hands grabbed you, wrapping around your torso, with no harshness but just comfort coursing through.

"Ogilvie, if you don't have even 1% basic empathy or haven't heard the phrase 'dont talk ill of the dead' I suggest you drop out of medical school and go back to 3rd grade."

You shoulders visibly relax at the voice and at his fingers which softly caressed your chubby love handles—this man was not helping you keep cool. Heat travelled up your neck when you felt his chest rumble with some instructions he gave to the resident in front of him.

Jack called your name and his hands travelled to your shoulders. "Come on, let's go—"

"What? what about the consult—"

"That was a lie—"

"You dog—"

"Come on, you nuisance. Let's get you a breather."

—

"The roof?"

"You'll see."

The door busted open and strong gust of wind hit you in the face. And there it was.

You gasped and your hands went to Jack's forearm. "Oh my god."

"Oh my god."

"Come on, you wanna see the sunrise?"

"Well, at least ask me for a cup of coffee first, old man. You losing your touch already?" He gave you a deadpan look. "But of course, if you insist."

He took you to the railing. "I've heard you go even beyond the railing..."

Jack gave you a side eye. "Oh come on, you really believe anything really stays in the box at this hole?" He still did not entertain you. "Please, Jack?" You gazed up at him, with your best puppy eyes.

"Alright. But only this time."

He ducked and got across first, holding out his hand for you, fingers gently taking your palm and helping you cross the railing. "Thank you," You softly murmured, the touch growing the warmth in your chest. the sunrise had only taken its footing—the soft blue of the sky was slowly lighting up. "So," You took a deep breath, "why did you bring me to your sacred space?"

"Sacred space? Really?" Jack scoffed.

"Everybody knows its where you and Robby come to make heart eyes at each other—" He grunted and you let out a soft laugh. "Come on, tell me." You whined.

"I saw you." He spoke. "After–after you realized he was gone, after we declared the time of death. your hands were trembling," Your breath hitched. "Your breaths were small, your voice was—" You looked away. His gaze bore deep into your eyes, trying to probe out the vulnerability gently, and his voice was too tender, too warm, almost wrapping you up in their saccharine like blanket. "The point is, you still took care of everyone. Donnie, Princess, the resident—"

"Someone has to. I just choose to. Nobody forces me to, Jack." Your voice gets small.

"And when will you let yourself take care? When will you take a breath?" Your breath hitched. "You're the sunshine of the dark side, sweetheart. We don't want you fading out while you take care of others." He syruped.

You hoped it would stay dark so that he couldn't see the red on your cheeks, the heat crawling up your neck and how you couldn't trust your own voice anymore. But you braved on.

"um, I dont know if you know this, doc, but I shifted to nights for a reason other than one grumpy teddy bear," You let out a giggle when jack let out an annoyed huff, "there was a girl, 19, just like today's kid. She was abducted and tried escaping, but the abductor shot her. She was brought in, I was a part of the surgery and despite everything, despite Robby busting his ass—she–" Your voice broke and you gripped the railing. "She almost escaped it, but...her parents were angry more than heartbroken. Her mother threw things at the father, he yelled back and I tried to calm them down, but h-he pulled me in, threw me in the wall and said I was too incompetent, I couldn’t save his daughter's life."

You inhaled sharply. "He killed himself 2 months later."

"Look at me."

"Jack—"

He pleaded your name. "That was not your fault. It will never get easy, I know that...too well. But you learn to live around it, but I need you to understand that it was not your fault."

You nodded. "How do you live with it?"

"Before returning to Pittsburgh, before my...leg, in Afghanistan—we used to get this street food. It used to be sold at nights and we used to switch routes and trade fucking mattresses and anything just to have a chance to get it. Its called kolcha. It used to be heaven in the hell we were put in.

I used to see my brothers get blown up, losing their lives, civilians losing a sense of humanity after the way everyone treated them. But there are soft joys that help the grief. that helped me live. Stopped me from..." He trailed off, a pensive look forming on his face.

Your hand clasped around his on the railing. He gazed up at you, your eyes already on him, so honeyed, filled with care and admiration, with so much compassion, he didn't know what to do with it.

You both just gaped at each other. Your hearts filled to the brim. Getting lost in time.

Suddenly, a ray of sunlight reflected in Jack's hazel eyes and you broke your contact, a gasp forming on your lips as you tore your eyes away to marvel at the jawdropping sunrise.

The sun was officially peeking up. Its rays bounced off skyscrapers made of glass, lighting up the small alleys of the street. The orange and yellow shades painted the horizon and you almost died right there. "Its so beautiful..."

The sunlight was colouring your skin, your giddiness coming out with the sun.

"Will you take care of yourself, sunny?"

You let out a sweet giggle. "Sunny?"

"The sun clearly loves you." He murmured softly before tucking in a strand of hair fallen haphazardly on your eyes, blocking him from the view.

"Hmm, you're going soft on me, old man. Or are you just manipulating me so that I won't tell anyone that your grumpy attitude is a hoax and you're just a big ol' teddy bear?"

He snorted and let out a soft smile.

Your heart jumped.

"Oh my god!" you gasped and pointed. "Oh my god! You smiled!"

"Come on, sunny. Let's get you inside before you tragically die due to slipping while celebrating something that never happened—"

"Excuse me—" You scoffed but let him lead you onto the safer side of the railing, his hands on your shoulders, sliding down to your hands to steady you as you come over.

"Try convincing Robby that you did it—"

"Oh fuck off, you are just a big, fuzzy, loving teddy bear inside—"

His smile burned through you, in your heart.

And as you predicted, you could never forget it.

—

The next day, there was a new skip to your walk as you entered the pitt. You had spent your day trying to calm down your heart every time you reminisced what happened on the roof. Your skin would jump with goosebumps and your cheeks would immediately redden. So you distracted yourself in the best way.

You walked in with a box in your hand. The aroma of the newly tried recipe made everyone turn their heads. But this time you refrained from giving in to your beloved pittlings' puppy eyes.

Lena and Dana raised their eyebrows. "What's got our sunshine happier than before?"

"Nothing." You squealed softly.

"Mhm." Lena hummed. But mama nurse knew you too well. She knew all of you too well. "You know, you spent an awful lotta time on the roof yesterday. And what's that in the box you're tryin' so hard to keep away?"

"Its for Jack." You murmured. "He mentioned this food he had when he was in Afghanistan—"

"Didn't Dr. Abbot take you up on the roof yesterday?" Joy chimed in.

"What!?" Trinity yelped.

"Excuse me?" Dana took her glasses off and left them on the counter with a thud.

"Are you serious?" Matteo asked you, with her eyes wide open as Princess squealed to Perlah. "i knew it! may utang ka sa akin ng 50 bucks!"

Donnie gave you a pat on the back, like he was proud of you. "W–wait—guys—"

"What's going on here?"

You closed your eyes and sighed in defeat. The voice, the man, the mchottie who had you in trouble. Ellis leaned up on the counter with a dangerously smug look on her face. "Well, we were just talking about sunshine here and yo—"

Your eyes widened and embarrassment crawled up your veins in your neck, swirling anxiety in your brain with all the ways this could go wrong. "Okay! Everybody go back to work, now! Trinity, go home. Ellis, your labs for the 33 year old lady in north five are here and Matteo—"

She peered at Matteo with her glasses slid down till her nose, staring at his phone dreamily, who straightened up, as if he was caught with a scandal. "—do us all a favour, keep the yearning for Dr. Javadi aside and get. back. to. work!"

Everyone scrambled off. You gaped at her with a grateful look in your eyes. "You are amazing."

You turned around to look at the man you've been—shamefully or shamelessly you didn't know—thinking about the whole night and your jaw almost dropped. The sight was marvelous.

Jack abbot in gear.

Camouflage pants and a tight black tee.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer." He dryly quipped at you.

Before you could reply, a gurney came bursting through the bay. "55 year old man, cardiac arrest—"

You felt his whole body reset and bracing like it always did. "Sunny, you're with me—"

"Sunny?" Shen asked, a knowing, smug look adorned his face as his eyes jumped from him to you. Your whole body flushed. He was going to be your ruin. Jack ignored Shen's absolutely valid inquiry with the excuse of the patient in front of him. But you're frozen.

He still remembered your conversation.

Did he think about it again and again and again like you did?

Your heart did not stop pumping blood but your brain stopped producing logic it seems.

"Sunny? You still with me?" Hus rough yet gentle voice coaxed you out of your thoughts and reminded you of the situation at hand. You cleared your throat and just nodded wordlessly, hoping no one would notice the red on you face.

How will you survive this man?

After sending him off to surgery, Crus looked between the both of you, as if he could sense the electricity between you, the tension, the undying sense of something happened here and just these two are in denial. "That was smooth."

Jack raised one eyebrow at him, amusement etched onto his face. "What was?"

Crus cleared his throat. You stilled. You knew what was coming. Crus did not stop. "You two make a good team."

You shot him a glare that seemed somewhere between 'i will kill you' and 'please don't make my life hell'. He saw it, noted it, considered it.

And threw it in the trash apparently. "Just saying. Everyone saw it inside. Its like you both were in sync. Unstoppable. Inevitable—"

Don't say it.

"—made for each other."

Shen made a choked sound and Ellis pursed her lips, trying to contain her giggle. Beside you, Jack stilled.

"Sunny makes it easier. Made for the night shift." He grunted out.

"Don't make it sound dramatic." He signed on some discharge papers and handed them to Lena. His hand brushed against yours. "Bye, sunny." he murmured softly against your cheek and left you. All by yourself. To process what just happened.

"So, sunny?"

"Shut up, guys."

You turned around and walked towards the supply closet, nothing but an excuse to ditch the conversation that you are about to face.

They followed you like little ducklings.

"What happened to you guys on the roof?" Crus asked.

"Nothing happened—and how do you know?"

Ellis scoffed as if the notion of anything staying a secret in this hospital was absurdly ridiculous. "Come on! tell us—"

"Nothing happened guys and shush!" You glared at them. They peered on you with curiosity as your body shook with embarrassment? Humiliation? Adrenaline? The mere thought of Jack abbot and you on the roof?

Shen slurped on his stupid watered down coffee. "You should go for it."

"I will stab you—"

"No, he's right! At least then your sexual tension in between emergency traumas will not traumatise us."

"Excuse me?"

"Please—even the unconscious patient can sense it!"

You huffed and crossed your arms as if it could save you from this conversation and put on a mask of denial. "That's not even remotely true. besides—I don't like him!"

The three of them stared at you. "Yes, and Shen doesn't live on caffeine." Ellis deadpanned. "You cant deny something we see literally everyday. You banter, flirt, tease and even cook for him! Didn't you make something specially for him today?"

Crus gasped dramatically. "Whaaaat?"

You rolled your eyes. "Its not that big of a deal."

"Yes, it is." The three of them chimed in unison. Your eyes fell on their faces, their relentless questions and sighed in defeat. You scrunched your face, closing your eyes for just a second and then squinting at them. "Am I that obvious?"

"Yes—"

"No—"

You pursed your lips and raised your eyebrows at them. "Seriously?"

They gave you wordless looks almost meant to serve with pity, empathy, hope. You don't know. "Listen, you just made this afghan food for him which I know you've never even heard of before. You try to make him smile everyday and there is this embarrassingly obvious sexual tension in between you. Don't think that the ED is half blind to miss the looks you give him."

You sharply inhaled.

"Hey, there's no harm in going for it—he will say yes. If he doesn't, that's his loss. some other person will get your perfectly baked goods." Ellis assured you.

That's when your brain imagined it—wildly. Not in the unsaid, shy and restrained ways it has been doing for the past months. The vivid image of you and the attending you made smile, together, in each other's arms, happy. Holding hands, requited secret glances, soft kisses, stolen touches, his eyes with a gentleness and passion just saved for you and a love that's not a secret—its known, its seen and understood—but its just for both of you.

Your heart skipped a beat.

Your cheeks blushed furiously.

The three of them smirked, knowingly.

"I—" You gulped and stammered on your words. "I need to be somewhere." Your hands shook and your brain didn't comprehend what you needed, nor did your body and it all was about to go crashing when—

"What are you all doing there? Don't you have jobs?"

Jack.

You didn't whether to sigh in relief or wring your hair out in frustration. This man was going to end you. "You know, sunny also has patients to attend to, rather than hearing you guys bicker or gossip about whatever it is."

You felt heat and humiliation hiking up your neck as you notice the smug looks they give each other before wandering off. "Yes boss."

But not before Ellis winked at you, Crus gave you a smug salute, and Shen slurped away loudly, obnoxiously, knowingly, looking back and forth between you and Jack.

Speaking of the man, he just leaned against a counter, gazing at you, with an unpredictable and unreadable look on his face. "Well, since you're done organising that supply closet for the 4th time, some patients are getting starved of your sunshine. Unless, of course, the supply room is in dire need of your attention, sunny."

Sudden confidence flared in your chest. "Well, cap'n grumps, you could just say you are in dire need of attention. No need to shame my perfect supply room."

Your mouth spoke before your brain you could stop it. His mouth twitched, just slightly, his amusement not hiding under a curtain and a glimmer in his pretty eyes which made you weak in the knees. "Get back to work, sunny." He murmured, head shaking and his shoulders lighter than before.

You almost giggled. "Of course, boss."

You walked away. every sense in your body was tingling, goosebumps on your skin and a fire somewhere in the pit of your stomach and a familiar fuzzy feeling growing stronger beneath your chest.

You didn't know if you were going to survive this man. You didn't know if you wanted to.

—

The next hours of the shift were determined to drain the soul out of you.

There were 4 traumas at the same time and a statewide insufficiency of nurses. So that meant you had to jump back and forth. Chairs was filled and actually overflowing while you had a scarcity of beds so all the nurses were charged with scheduling, organising and moving beds according to the level of emergency and pain patients were facing. Plus, you had multiple patients and a family who had declared that dr. google was more knowledgeable than a nurse.

Amazing.

And you hadn't gotten a chance to even eat.

When you finally got a chance to eat in the breakroom, that's when you saw it. The kolcha. Untouched. Because you wanted him to have the first bite. First taste. Just to see that Heartwarming smile again.

You bit your lip and took a peek outside. Everything had slowed down. Just for bit, you were sure, before another trauma, another emergency, another goddamn patient too obnoxious and blind to only believe what google says pulls you in.

This was the time, you decided.

So, you picked up the box, an extra hop to your walk, as you looked for him.

Jack abbot.

Ellis' words rang in your ears and your heartbeat sped up. Should I do it?

Take the chance, the risk?

"Hey, Lena, do you know where Jack is?" You asked softly, almost bashfully, as she narrowed her eyes at you but then flashed you a knowing look before pointing at a room.

The buzz in your heart and brain intensified as you walked towards him. You were so giddy, it hurt. Your soft smile had turn into a beam. The anticipation had turned to you nervous and exhilarated. You wanted to see his smile, the one he'll give after you give him a kolcha. Will it be a soft and dedicated one, reserved just for you? Will it be a joyous and unwithdrawn one, not shying away from showing his beautiful wrinkles?

Everything made your heart soar.

Your feet slowed down as you got there and you heard voices. His and... Dr. Al-hashimi. She was laughing before Jack spoke.

"So, you want get that beer we talked about?"

You heard Jack chuckle. A vibration that rumbled through his lungs in his chest to the ground that you apparently walked on. You felt as if it had just been pulled underneath you. It was lighthearted, casual—directed at someone else.

The ringing of elation in your ears stopped. Replaced with a haunting stillness.

"Yeah, of course. I would love to."

Your breath stopped in your lungs.

It was casual without any audible or visible awkwardness. You glanced inside only to see Jack smiling, a sly and playful grin, lighting up his whole face. Directed towards her. Not you.

Never you.

You wondered if she made it easy for him. Like you probably never did. His whole body was turned towards her, a casual openness to him that was never reciprocated with you. Your chest tightened. Throat strained. Something in your temples felt like it was being pulled.

Jack asking Dr. Al Hashimi out for beers. Your breathing felt shallow. Why wouldn't he? She was brilliant, kind almost dazzling with every step she took. She carried herself with maturity that only comes with facing warzones and fighting injustice. She never had to take constant efforts to make someone smile. He did it instantly for her.

Your hold on the box full of kolchas loosened.

Your legs moved before your brain processed everything. Your eyes looked into the distance, your thoughts melding, twisting your heart, a suffocating hurt settling deep in your bones.

You just kept walking.

"Hey, hon—you okay?" You heard someone say, but your mouth didn't move, your voice had gone numb. So, you just gave tight smile and gave a wordless nod and moved ahead.

Get back to work. You have patients.

Your body moved, on instinct, but without any soul in it.

He didn't owe you anything, you realized. He never reciprocated your efforts, nor did he respond. He just grunted, shook his head, raised his eyebrows, scoffed. It was meaningless. Fruitless. It was just amusement to him. You felt your heart hitting the pit of your stomach. He probably never even considered it. You were his nurse. He was your attending. You tried too hard it was almost entertaining. The sunshine of the night shift. Overbearing. aAways shining. Never needed anything back.

You were nothing like her.

She was everything he could want.

You never even understood where you left the box of kolchas meant for him. It was discarded somewhere like it never included unconditional efforts, hope and love. Like you didn't just stay up the hours you were supposed to put in for sleep to make something you had never made from scratch, just for him. It was not like he ever tried anything you made.

You just walked to a patient, and gave them a smile.

But it felt foreign on your face.

You asked them what was wrong, checked their pulse, gave necessary meds and equipment to the resident in front of you. It felt mechanical. Your eyes were vacant. Too preoccupied with trying to see the things your heart missed. the hope that you harboured over time, the anticipation and giddiness on seeing him, the fuzzy feeling inside your sternum.

Now replaced with a sudden anxiety. A hollowness.

"There she is." You almost jumped, startled by the intrusion of the voice you were now dreading to listen to. "I was looking for you."

Flashes of his soft smile, the wonderful sound of his chuckle, the casual openness—never meant for you—shattered you. You stood there still, unresponsive.

"Sunny?" Jack asked, oh-so-gently, but it just pricked your skin like needles. Even his soft words had become a sign of betrayal. Was he just dragging you along?

A shaky exhale escaped you but your face remained stoic. Your movements were calculated.

"Lena wants you to talk to this patient, he doesn't agree with any of the nurses, says he wants a 'real, qualified doctor'."

"Okay—"

"—and ortho has your results ready for north five, just sign on those." You said in a clipped tone. Tou couldn’t even look at him anymore. You had to get out of there.

But you could still feel him. His furrowed eyebrows, tensed shoulders, concerned eyes—searching for answers, searching for you. All confused. But you didn't have answers. Not anymore.

So, you left, wordlessly, with your broken heart.

Him, with confusion etched onto his features.

Because you realized that while you looked for him in every room before even entering it, he probably never did.

So you should stop too.

Shouldn't you?

oh, what a curse it is to be lover girl

—laufey.

thank you for reading!

because there are already more than 100 people in the taglist, I am closing it. but feel free to comment and show your love!

tagging ppl who commented on inspo post:

@thefemininemystiquee @celestialceremonials @cloudwerewolf @seraphk1ss @mafercita101 @sugakookieswithacupoftae16 @loveisallyouneed1125 @moondustfairies @amethystmoonempress @pear-1206 @allthatisbuck1917 @rkentzler9 @hahaifolded @caroficrecommend

[sammy-bryant]

SHAWN HATOSY as JACK ABBOT The Pitt S02E07 | 1:00 P.M.

[thisgirlisonfayeeer]

The Pitt, but the star is Jack Abbot’s sweaty armpits 😌

[bluetimeombre]

J OVER MY HEART

synopsishi again(im gonna be so annoying with this). i had some voices whisper into my ear about a shared tattoo with jack abbott and wife(pediatrics doctor?) reader? reader and jack having two tattoos. one that everyone would see and the other where only the two of them would. and what if, their marriage is like not known to everyone except for Robby and Dana(?hehehe) request!

warningstattoo talk? general hospital stuff, language, making out, smut-ish

authornotein honour of tom holland and zendaya coming back to screen soon i dedicate the tattoo's to them. i had soooo much fun writing this, i can't believe i'm slowly moving into being a jack girlie. ignore the fact that Jack is for some reason in day shift. this one's for @expreissionism

The first time the Pittlings made the connection they thought nothing of it. Some ink swirled around the skin of two doctors wasn't anything, many of them had tattoos themselves.

Doctor McKay had the sort she got in collage and regretted, Robby had one or two that meant something to him, that he'd find himself tracing in times of despair. Doctor Santos had lost count of how many she had and what they all meant.

Javadi herself was pretty terrified at the idea of putting a sharp needle to skin. She was afraid of the permanence of it. The pain.

And her mother finding out.

That was until she spotted yours.

“You have a tattoo,” she noted standing behind you, paying close attention to how you examined the boy in front of you.

You nodded like you weren't trying to listen close down your stethoscope as you asked the boy to breathe in, listening at his back. “I do.”

“That's... really cool,” she said.

You smiled, small. “Thank you.”

Javadi watched your wrist move and arm flex as you put the stethoscope back around your neck, holding onto it either end. She'd called you down for a pedes case but was finding herself distracted by the beauty of the ink on you.

There were hard strokes of black and lighter ones, all drawn around in swirls that came together to make a sun. She thought it looked like the sun from tangled- one of her favourite movies. But you were a grown woman. Maybe you liked the movie as much as she did.

Javadi shook off the idea as you stood, telling the parents what you found. A small crackle in his breathing but as he'd been down with a flu and fever it might not mean anything terrible. Kept for observation and some blood work was ordered before the two of you were slipping away.

“What does it mean?” asked Victoria, hot on your heels as you walked to the nurses station. “The-the sun, I mean? Not crackles in the chest, I-I know that.”

You chuckled, tapping in to chart. Although you worked floors above on the pedes ward, your vintage disney top under the lab coat representing that, you were down enough on emergency and trauma cases to be a familiar and welcome face.

“Oh, you know,” you said, balancing your elbow on the table and checking on the ink. Your lips quirked at looking at it. “Just a little sun, for brightness and stuff.”

Javadi thought it was fitting. You were a sunshine person, hopeful and kind, like a ray of light in the depths of hell she called the ED. She supposed it came with the job, having to be the hope for the sick children.

Everyone down the Pitt could afford to be miserable, with a good enough excuse in working in the emergency department. You were with kids, helping them and their parents through anything minor to the worst days of their lives.

“Kinda, look to the light, kinda thing?” Victoria asked.

You slowly glanced up at her, finding a new perspective. “Yeah. I like that take.”

“Well, well, well,” said a hoarse voice coming closer to the two of you.

Beyond Javadi you looked past her.

Jack Abbot casually strolled over, hands behind his back, arms pulled in tight muscles and freckles in his dark scrubs. “You know, you're down here so often anyone would think you're after a Pedes attending job.”

You rose a brow, challenging him. “Are you offering?”

“Oh yeah, anything to keep sunshine down here.”

You rolled your eyes playfully, leaving Javadi to look between the two of you. She hadn’t realised the two of you knew each other so well.

Sure, you were the first everyone went to for a pedes case but how often was that?

“Sunshine! That’s funny,” said Javadi, standing between the two of you

Jack rose a brow. “It is?”

“Yeah- yeah,” she said with a clear of her throat. “Cause’- she has a sunshine tattoo.”

Jacks lips quirked up to a smirk. “Really?”

You leaned over the counter, chin resting in the palm of your hand. “Yeah. Got it some time ago.”

“Is it somewhere PG-13?” He asked.

“Well to know that you’d have to buy me a drink first.”

“I plan to.”

The two of you shared a smirk.

Suddenly, Victoria thought she was stuck in the middle of something.

It was Whitaker who discovered it next.

He was working with Abbot and Shen on a patient in trauma one, still waiting for the feeling in his feet to return to him after a twelve hour shift. But he wanted to see this patient through first, even if he could have left now the night crawlers had swept in.

He was shooting an x-ray for the guy in a car crash, checking his ribs after being found pressed up against his steering wheel.

Somewhere else you were stitching up his young daughter.

“The car came from nowhere,” fretted the patient, wincing with every breath. “I swear- I swear!”

“Don’t you worry, sir, we’re gonna get you sorted,” assured Jack, peeling off his jacket and replacing it with a vest.

“Is my- is my daughter okay?”

“She just needed a couple stitches,” said Denis.

Jack stretched up, moving the x-ray machine over the patient. “Don’t worry, your daughter is in the best hands. They lumped you with the second best, I’m afraid.”

The patient gave a huff of a laugh that evidently hurt more than anything.

“Okay… shooting!”

Everyone without a vest backed away.

It was at that moment as Jack hovered shooting the x-ray that Whitaker got his first glance at some ink peeking out from his wrist. His watch hid most of what Denis could make out as a tattoo but he thought it strange that Robby should have his own tattoo also typically hidden behind his watch.

Robby and Jack always called themselves brothers, from their years of friendship and shared experiences in the Pitt.

He just hadn’t realised they were that close.

The x ray was quickly done and the machine pushed away as everyone focused on stabilising the man.

A couple broken ribs, a severely bruised chest.

An OR was free to check on any internal bleeding, get the chest sorted.

The doors pushed open and you walked in, a maybe eight years old propped on your hip, little arms hugging around your neck.

Jack’s lips tilted up at once. “Second visit in one day, upstairs must be boring.”

“Well we do like to call this place the circus,” you teased. “This is Mr Peters daughter, she wanted to check in on her daddy.”

Jack tugged off his gloves and Whitaker watched as he approached you and the little girl. “Your daddy is doing fine, he’s strong. I reckon just as strong as you. He’s gonna go upstairs for a closer look but you can go with him, if you like?”

The girl hid her head closer into your shoulder, mumbling something that Whitaker could just about make out.

“Will you come up with me?” She’d asked you.

You bounced her gently. “Course. Upstairs is where all the fun is anyway.”

Jack hummed. “Hm. She has the best candy too.”

Whitaker watched the young girls eyes light up.

As a team from surgery came to drag the father away you followed behind with the daughter in arms, Abbot and Whitaker following out and taking a moment to watch the crowd dissapear.

“Did good in there, Whitaker,” said Abbot, the both of them tearing off their gowns and gloves.

“Thanks,” he said. The both of them went separate ways. Oddly enough, Jack was following in the steps of the team that took up the man and his daughter.

Doctor Robby wondered over, sliding into his seat. If even one of his day shift was left, so was he. It was his own morale code to not go till everyone on day had, Denis was learning.

“Hey,” greeted Denis. “You know I had no idea you and Abbot had matching tattoos.”

“Huh, yeah...” said Robby of absent-mind as he watched the computer. It took him a second to register what he was saying and look up. “Wait, what did you say?”

Suddenly Whitaker felt like he'd said the wrong thing, seeing his attending look over his glasses at him. Maybe nobody was supposed to know? Maybe it was super personal? Or it was a stupid drunk choice they were both trying to forget and he'd just brought it up.

“Oh god, I didn't, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-”

Robby scratched at his beard. “Jack and I do not have matching tattoos.”

“Oh.”

“What made you think that?” he asked. “Did someone... say something?” there was something akin to mischief in his eyes, alight.

“No! No! I just- I saw something that looked like a tattoo under where he keeps his watch, and I know you have one there too. Or- well- don't know but I've- I've seen-”

“Yeah, yeah I've got one there,” said Robby, looking back to the computer bored. “So does Jack. His is a moon. Mine's something to do with my grandmother.”

“A moon? Oh.”

Somewhere beyond Whitaker, past his shoulders, Victoria passed by, catching the conversation.

A moon on one. A sun on another. Interesting.

Samira was only looking for her patient when she found a shirtless Jack Abbot hiding behind the curtain with you standing behind him.

Both your heads shot up when the whirl of the curtain pulled back.

“Oh. I'm sorry,” said Samira. She was only momentarily shocked at Jack shirtless, SWAT gear discarded in the corner and the typical pedes case worker standing behind him, working on a bad obviously over eighteen.

Jack tried to shrug his shoulders but came away wincing. “S'alright.”

“Have you guys seen my patient?” she asked, going on to describe him.

“No, sorry. This room was empty,” you said, rolling a q-tip along Jack's shoulder blade. “Anything you need help with?”

Samira deflated, taking a seat on the chair in the corner of the room. She was feeling sorry for the patient she couldn't get to in time she didn't realise the look you and Jack shared, one of mutual agreement of apprehension.

“What happened to you?” Samira asked.

“He got shot,” you said.

“You were shot?”

Jack made a 'pfft' noise at the two of you. “Shot at. It was nothing. Hardly a graze.”

You scoffed, reaching over for some bandage and applying it to the wound. “I'll be the judge of that.”

“You my doctor now?” asked Jack.

You bit back a smirk. “Someone has to be.”

Samira had worked with Abbot a handful of times, you maybe more on cases with children that required delicate matters. She never realised the two of you were close enough to tease. Close enough that you would be the first person he runs to for help.

Curious, Samira walked around Jack, standing on the other side of his bed as you showed her the wound.

“Oh. Ouch.”

“See?” you said with a raise of your brows.

Jack's freckled arms crossed over his chest in protest.

“You have a chart?” asked Mohan.

“No,” you said. “We're keeping this off the chart.”

Samira nodded, lips quirking. We?

“Don't need the paperwork from the hospital,” said Jack. “Got big plans tonight, can't have paperwork getting in the way.”

“Big plans?” asked Mohan.

Jack hummed in affirmation.

With your careful bandages around his shoulder he stood and reached for his shirt on the side.

It wasn't just a quick glimpse Samira got of where another tattoo lied. It was a long look as Jack made work at pulling over his navy shirt overhead. At the ache in his shoulder you helped pull it over him and he didn't object, he let you help him like it was natural.

But just under his armpit, on the side of his chest there was a clear stroke of black ink in the curves and strikes of a letter. Just one simple there, no bigger than a finger nail next to his heart.

“All good to go solider,” you said, rubbing his un-injured shoulder.

“Thank you, Doc.”

You smirked. “Don't go straining yourself this evening.”

Jack chuckled, low in his throat. “I make no promises.”

It was only when watching the two of you leave that the hole in her heart for her own devoid love life sung with something other that sorrow. With hope and joy. It was only when she noticed Jack's hand linger on the small of your back as he leaned into say something to you that she realised the slope of the letter at his chest matched the very first letter of your name.

A week later and slowly Samira was forgetting the whole thing. Not forgetting the patient that had ran out on her but forgetting the state she found Jack in, forgetting how you helped him and the letter etched into his skin.

She hadn't told anyone either, because what business of others was it.

It wasn't even hers.

Maybe Jack knew someone in the army had the same initial as you. Maybe it was his mothers name. It didn't have to be yours. It was only seeing him shirtless, seeing you with him that had her thinking of you, she was sure.

But a week later she was brought back to that room.

“Woah- what happened to you?” Robby chuckled as you walked through the ED, a mixture of bodily fluids over your scrubs.

“Emergency c-section, twins,” you said. “I had no time for a gown.”

Robby's smile creased as you squelched closer. Your blue scrubs, typically a baby blue, was dyed darker due to blood, amniotic fluids and what he guessed might have been urine. “They didn't call OB?”

“OB was busy, apparently.”

“Apparently?” he asked, tablet in hand as he followed next to you as you walked to the scrub bin. You walked, arms slightly raised to not let them drop. Robby walked close but not close enough to touch the mess of you.

“Someone in OB has it out me.”

“Evil ex?”

“Yeah, one of yours,” you teased.

“Ouch.”

“I'm cranky.”

“I can tell.”

Santos and Samira were on a case together but stopped when they got a look at you. “Woah, what happened? A pile up?”

“Don't ask,” you grumbled.

From behind you Robby mouthed 'twins' and both knew not to say anymore.

“You know we have gowns for such messy procedures,” said Trinity.

You flashed her a grimace. “You're funny, Santos, must get it from this guy,” you said, slapping Robby in the chest as you stood in front of the scrub bins. However, as an official upstairs pedes resident you didn't have authority for more scrubs. “Is Jack around?”

“No,” said Robby, tapping his own ID cared on the pad and getting you an order of scrubs.

“Thanks.”

Samira wondered, briefly why you asked for Jack when it was probably easier to find some woman for your size. Like herself, for instance.

But in seconds you were pulling off your scrub top, leaving you only in a bra. Your scrub pants were next but you had a thin pair of leggings underneath. No one batted an eyes, except maybe Robby who cleared his throat and turned away, hypothetically hiding you behind his back.

“Thanks again, Robby,” you said, gaining his new scrubs.

“No problem,” he said, leaning over to you. “But you can bring this up to Jack,” he added in a mummer that Mohan just caught.

As you reached up, pulling the scrub top over you Samira caught it again. It was a smaller trace, a think line but there with no doubt.

A simple J in black ink in almost the exact spot as Jack had one of his own.

“Is that-” Mohan didn't get the words out before your scrub top was pulled over, swallowing you from Robby's scrub.

Robby and you looked to her as you pulled on the pants. “What?”

They were all looking at her, expectantly.

“No, nothing, it was nothing.”

“Okay, then.”

But now there was a knowing in there. That she didn't believe in coincidences, not when they were etched into skin.

“You look lovely.” Jack crept up behind you, his voice falling upon your ears with his head quick over your shoulder. He was like hot breath on a glass, there and gone the next second.

You understood why. Knew it had been easier to keep it quiet when things were fresh, yet, things had moved on from new and simple a long time ago and neither of you made to say it. Did you get a banner? Make a public announcement? You had no idea how to do it.

Keeping it on the low was all you knew how to do.

And anyhow, it made things far more exciting.

“Thank you,” you said, passing him a quick smile.

Jack hummed, crowding next to you at the station, leaning an arm on the counter and looking you up and down. “You'd look even better in scrubs that were mine.”

Your eyes rolled. “They're Robby's-”

“Robby's-” he scoffed, shaking his head.

“I had a messy C-section and it was this or several bodily fluids.”

“I'd have rather bodily fluids,” he said.

You hummed. “You think that but then you see me and you'd think different.”

“Oh, yeah?”

You turned your attention onto him, knowing he wouldn't give it up till he had it all. It was something about Jack and un-divided attention, he thrived on it. Giving it to you, or taking it from you. He needed it like sustenance. “Think wet. Think baby fluids that should be in a body on me. Think blood. And probably puke on there somewhere too- I don't even know how.”

“And I bet you still looked beautiful,” he said.

“I wouldn't be so sure about that,” you chuckled.

“I would.”

His hand crept up to your ribs, holding there. As if he was anaesthetic himself, his touch was soothing.

He held over where your initial of his name was, just as you did with him where yours was. It still felt fresh though the ink was imbedded into skin for almost a year now.

It was the soft knowledge of carrying each other closer than you already did. Working in the same building wasn't enough, falling asleep next to each and waking up next to each other wasn't enough but the soft initial of each others name might just have been.

Even if it weren't romantical (which it certainly was) the two of you had at least always respected each other in the work setting. It was a bond running deeper than blood, than respect, than love.

Something the people hadn't come up with a word for yet.

Robby passed by the two of them. “I thought you two were being discreet.”

“We are,” you said, you and Jack turning to face Robby as he took his space behind the nurses desk.

“He's all but holding your breast,” said Robby.

“Physical exam,” Jack shrugged. “And I thought I told you to stop making moves on my woman.”

Robby held up his hands in surrender. “I don't want any funny business in my scrubs,” he warned, s sharp look past his glasses at the two of you.

Jack quirked his lips, pretending his innocence. “We'll change into mine.”

You smacked his shoulder.

“Hey,” said Robby, leaning on the counter next to you as if you were all gossiping nurses and not different attendings in your own rights. “You know, Whitaker thinks we have matching tattoos,” he said, nodding to Jack.

You laughed, tilting your head down.

“Oh yeah, I have an R over my heart,” he teased.

Robby scoffed. “Yeah and I got a J on my-”

You looked pointed at them both. “Don't you have jobs to get to?”

Robby surrendered and headed off, making himself busy.

Upstairs would need you soon enough too, there was only so much time you could leave your pedes ward alone. Your hands were gentle on Jacks, squeezing lightly.

Meaning to let go, Jack squeezed and pulled you back.

“Jack? Woah- what- where are we going?”

His thumb worked up and down the back of your hand as he dragged you off. He found an empty room, checking the room before closing the door and pulling the curtains around.

“Jack!”

His hands found their ways up Robby's shirt on your body, pulling at the skin of your waist and drawing you in till he was kissing you, open-mouthed. It was as if he hadn't kissed you that morning, hadn't stole a make out in the car before heading in, hadn't text you in his spare five minutes that he wasn't thinking about you.

He grinned into the kiss, licking into your mouth.

As bad as it was, stealing a kiss in an empty exam room, your hands wound up to his hair, tugging at the strands. Your body curled into his as his hands moved from under your shirt to over, pulling at it.

“Take this off.”

Biting back a smirk you pulled it off you as Jack leant down to kiss at your neck. He bit and sucked, dedicating time to one mark that would be a tattoo on your neck.

Jack was obsessed with marking you, considering you tried you best to be secret.

This wasn't very secret.

“Jack,” you moaned, own hands clawing at his shirt.

He pulled back long enough to toss his off. “When we're done here... when I've made you come on my fingers,” he uttered next to your ear, breath hot. “You're gonna put my scrub top on, you understand?”

Your lips pursed and nodded.

Jack pulled back enough, lips ghosting yours. “Yeah, baby?”

“Yeah,” you whined.

“Yeah.”

His lips crashed into yours again with fire like need. Hie entire body moved over yours, hands steady on your hips to bring you in. You were stumbling around the room, trying to find a wall or bed.

“God,” Jack whined at your lips. “I could eat you.”

He kissed down your neck, over your chest and leant to press a kiss over his initial. He'd been there when you'd gotten it done, as you had when he got his. The two letters in each others hand writing.

Jack came back up and kissed you again before the door sprung open.

“Room three's open why's nobody-”

Jack jumped in front of you like jumping in front of a bullet for you, his arms fell on either side of you, caging you in behind him.

A woman was sat on a gurney, eyes wide at the two of you.

Dana was leading the charge, Mohan, Whitaker and Santos following and eyes falling wide, jaws agape at the sight of you.

Robby walked past, shaking his head and- taking one look at Jack- decided it wasn't a HR nightmare he could deal with.

“We were just...” said Jack, hesitating. “Doing a physical.”

Dana smirked. “I'll say.”

“Sorry, we'll just-” you apologised.

The two of you fumbled with scrub tops but Jack still found enough time in the mess to pass you his own scrub top and take Robby's himself. In sheepish moves the two of you moved by the group, catching only a couple words.

“Did you see those tattoo's?” said Samira.

“Each others inititals, right?”

“How longs this been going on for?”

Jack threw his arm over your shoulder, bringing you in close and peppering a kiss to your forehead. “Guess we told them, huh?”

[se7entyrell]

another man's jeans masterlist

a frank langdon exes to roommates to lovers fic

this fic is COMPLETED.

It's been a long ten months for Frank Langdon. Rehab, endless meetings to prove he's fit for his job, and losing you.

It's his own fault. He knows that. He couldn't handle the pressure of his entire life going to shit, and combusted, destroying your life in the process. If things had gone to plan, the two of you would've been married by now. Instead, you're near strangers, and Frank doesn't know how long he can watch you date a guy that absolutely doesn't deserve you.

Until you turn up on his doorstep, with nowhere else to go after being kicked out by your ex.

And so, Frank Langdon's second chance begins.

warnings: 18+, mdni! this fic will feature medical gore, a little bit of violence, and explicit sex. more detailed warnings on each chapter individually

prologue

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

[hotchnerbau]

“I asked chatgpt-” yeah well I asked special agent aaron hotchner and he said the unsub is a straight white male in his 30s

[unearthlydust]

SEBASTIAN STAN GOLDEN GLOBES 2025

[gaybuckybarnesss]

MARCELLO HERNANDEZ SNL - HR Meeting

[heythere-mel]

✨them✨

[thisgirlisonfayeeer]

okay hear me out: Marcello Hernandez 😩🫶🏼

[endofevangelion1997]

hearing a political analyst on the news say that "the democrats clearly misread how high on the priority list that women's rights are for the average american" is just so chilling

[mcbealism]

Ally McTweets

the silliest lawyers 🫶🏻

[l0v3-qu4rtz]

All photos found on Pinterest <3