summary ﹏ Loving Jack Abbot means loving a man who survived too much. Between the trauma left behind by war and the devastating loss of his wife Claire, Jack moves through life carrying grief like a second skin. Even years later, he still wakes up calling her name in the middle of nightmares, still feels guilty whenever happiness finds him again. And despite how deeply he loves you, there are parts of his heart permanently frozen beside the woman he buried.
cw ﹏ angst / slice-of-life. fem!reader. Jack's dead wife backstory is not canon. fic with timeskips. age gap relationship. bittersweet romance. PTSD&survivor's guilt. panic/night terror mentions. grief and mourning. emotional cheating undertones (through grief and memories). insomnia&nightmares. fear of abandonment. tender physical affection. open-ended but bittersweet ending. inspired by the song Merry-Go-Round by BTS.
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You meet Jack during your second year working at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
Everyone knows who he is before you even officially meet him. The Pitt Jack Abbot has the kind of reputation people speak about quietly; the brilliant trauma attending, former Army medic. The doctor who can keep a patient alive with his bare hands and then disappear into himself for twelve straight hours afterward. The one with the dead wife, the one who never really came back from the war.
You notice him long before he notices you mostly because he looks perpetually exhausted like someone carved grief directly into his face. You expect him to be cold and instead, he’s kind.
Not warm exactly, not easy in his words but kind in all the small ways that matter. He remembers nurses’ names, he checks on residents after rough cases, he covers coworkers’ shifts without complaint, he walks family members through deaths with devastating gentleness.
The first real conversation you have with him happens after a sixteen-hour shift when you find him sitting alone outside the ambulance bay smoking a cigarette in the freezing rain. “You know those things kill you, right?” you ask him, joking. He glances up at you with tired eyes. “That’s usually how cigarettes work.”
You snort softly despite yourself and he studies you for a second before holding the pack out. “Want one?” You shake your head at the words, almost grimacing. “I don’t smoke.”
“Smart girl.”
And he crushes the cigarette out, that’s how it starts.
Tiny things; coffee left beside your station during night shifts, sharing exhausted smiles over impossible cases, sitting together in silence after coding a teenager neither of you could save. Jack isn’t flirtatious, not even remotely. Half the time, you’re not entirely sure he even realizes you’re falling for him. Maybe he thinks you’re too young for him, his junior by more than a decade. Maybe he’s not ready for something with you; or anyone else for that matters.
Then one night, after a particularly brutal shift, he walks you to your car in complete silence. Rainwater drips from the edges of the parking garage. You’re rambling about something pointless just to fill the quiet when he suddenly says, “You should stop looking at me like that.” You blink. “Like what?”
“Like I’m someone worth saving.” The vulnerability in his voice guts you instantly. You don’t think before answering. “Maybe you are.”
Jack looks at you then, really looks at you.
And that’s the beginning of everything.
Loving Jack becomes an exercise in learning how to live beside ghosts. Claire isn’t hidden away, that almost would’ve been easier. Instead, she’s everywhere. Pictures tucked into bookshelves, her favorite mug still sitting in the cabinet, a scarf hanging untouched near the coat rack because Jack can’t bring himself to move it.
At first, you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, grief isn’t betrayal. You know that, you understand it intellectually. Jack was married to her for nearly fifteen years, they built a life together and he watched her die while being utterly powerless to stop it. How could he not still love her?
The problem is that sometimes it feels like he loves her more than he’ll ever be capable of loving you.
One night, months into your relationship, you’re sitting on his couch while he cooks dinner. The apartment smells like garlic and tomatoes while an old jazz record crackles softly from the speakers and for once, he seems relaxed. Until you casually ask, “What was Claire like?” Immediately, you see him disappear somewhere far away.
His shoulders soften first, then his face changes entirely like grief itself reaches up and touches him.
“She was…” He exhales shakily. “God, she was funny. Funniest person I ever met. Could make me laugh even overseas. She used to leave dumb little notes in my luggage before deployments.” A small smile flickers briefly across his mouth. “Terrible cook though.” You smile faintly. “Really?”
“Horrific, she nearly poisoned me twice.”
You laugh softly, but your chest aches watching him. There’s so much love in his voice, so much devastating tenderness. You’ve never heard him talk about you like that. Then he looks at you suddenly, like he’s only just remembered you’re there.
Guilt crashes over his features immediately. “I’m sorry.” Your stomach sinks at the words and expression on his face. Like you weren’t supposed to see it. “For what?”
“For talking about her.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” But he does anyway and somehow that hurts worse.
The fights between you and Jack are never explosive; that would almost be easier too. Instead, they’re quiet and exhausted and deeply sad like two people drowning beside each other.
The worst one happens nearly a year into your relationship.
Jack has been spiraling for weeks after losing a patient that reminds him too much of someone he couldn’t save overseas. He barely sleeps, barely eats. The nightmares get worse. You wake up to him pacing the apartment at 3 a.m., breathing like he’s trapped underwater. Then he starts pulling away again; missing dates, forgetting conversations, flinching from affection because his mind is somewhere else entirely.
You try to be patient, you always try but eventually exhaustion catches up to you too.
The argument starts because you find him sitting alone in the dark living room at two in the morning with a bottle of whiskey half gone beside him.
“Jack.” He barely looks up. “You said you stopped drinking like this.”
“I said I was trying.”
“That’s not trying.” His jaw tightens instantly. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything, I’m worried about you.” You say back, eyebrows furrowing in concern. “I’m fine.” He lies, you know he does. “You haven’t slept in days.” You can only add.
“I said I’m fine.” The sharpness in his voice slices straight through you. You stare at him for a moment before saying quietly, “You keep saying that like if you repeat it enough times it’ll become true.” Something ugly flickers across his face then, anger maybe, or shame.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Can we not do this tonight?”
“Do what? Pretend everything’s okay?”
“No, pretend you can fix me.” The room goes painfully silent and Jack realizes immediately how cruel that sounded. You see it happen in real time but the damage is already done. Your throat tightens. “I never said I could fix you.” There’s a trembling in your voice when the words gets out.
“You don’t have to say it.”
“I love you.” You whisper to him, trying to diffuse the fight. “And I’m ruining your life.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.” Jack laughs bitterly at the words, dragging a hand over his face. “You’re too young to waste your life on somebody this fucked up.” The words hit harder than you expect because part of you fears he’s right. You stare at him. “Do you even want me here?” Instantly, his expression cracks.
But not enough, not enough to stop this. “That’s not fair.” He says, quietly and there’s a silence in the room before you add. “It’s a real question.”
Jack looks down at the whiskey bottle instead of you and that silence tells you everything. Your eyes burn suddenly. “You still love her more than you’ll ever love me.” He closes his eyes immediately like you physically hit him. “Don’t,” he whispers. You know the words are not fair to him, you know you shouldn’t say something like this but you’re only human.
“But it’s true.”
“It’s different.” He’s right, it’s different and yet, you speak up again. “Different how?” His voice breaks, you swear to see his eyes tearing up.
“Because she’s dead.” The apartment goes completely still and Jack looks devastated the second the words leave his mouth, but he can’t take them back now. You stare at him through tears. “So what am I then?” He opens his mouth but nothing comes out.
You grab your coat with shaking hands. “Wait,” he says immediately, standing too fast. “Hey.” But you’re already heading for the door because if you stay another second, you think your heart might actually split open. “Don’t leave angry,” he says hoarsely. You stop with your hand on the doorknob.
Then quietly, without looking back, you ask, “Would you have loved me if she lived?” Jack doesn’t answer and you hate yourself for asking the question; it’s not fair.
The silence follows you all the way home.
You don’t speak to each other for nine days and it’s the longest you’ve ever gone.
You throw yourself into work because otherwise you’ll think too hard about the expression on Jack’s face when you walked away. You tell yourself you’re angry but the truth is worse. You miss him so badly it feels physical. Everything reminds you of him; coffee that’s too bitter, cigarette smoke outside the ER and jazz music drifting from passing cars.
On the tenth day, you finally see him again.
A trauma case comes in during your shift, multi-car pileup, it’s total chaos. You’re helping stabilize a patient when Jack walks into the trauma bay and the second you see him, your chest tightens painfully.
He looks awful, even worse than usual; unshaven, exhausted, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and crying. And then he sees you, for half a second, neither of you move. Then instinct takes over because someone is dying and personal heartbreak doesn’t matter in trauma medicine.
You work together seamlessly anyway, you always do. It’s like muscle memory, like gravity.
Hours later, after the patient is stabilized and transferred upstairs, you finally find yourself alone with him in the supply room. The silence between you is unbearable. Jack looks at you like he hasn’t breathed properly in days. “I’m sorry,” he says immediately. You stare at the floor. “Jack—”
“No, let me say it.” His voice shakes slightly. “What I said was cruel.” You fold your arms tightly across your chest because if you don’t, you might start crying. He steps closer carefully. “I love you,” he says quietly. “I do.”
“But?” Pain flashes across his face instantly because you already know there’s a but. “There’s always gonna be parts of me that are broken.” You nod at those words, looking away for a second before your eyes fall back onto his face. “I know.”
“I don’t think I know how to stop grieving her.” The honesty in his voice destroys you because he sounds terrified. You look at him finally. “Do you want to?” Jack opens his mouth, then closes it again and there it is. The awful truth sitting between you both, because grief is all he has left of her; letting it go feels like losing her twice. Tears sting your eyes immediately. Jack notices and looks stricken. “Hey.”
“You’re still living with one foot in the grave with her.” His face crumples so subtly most people would miss it entirely but you know him. You know every fracture line in him by now. “I know,” he whispers.
“And I don’t know how to compete with someone who’s dead.”
“You’re not competing.”
“It feels like I am.” Jack reaches for you hesitantly then stops halfway, like he’s afraid he no longer has the right to touch you, that somehow hurts even worse. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he says quietly.
You laugh shakily through tears. “I know and I feel awful for the feelings I have.”
That’s the tragedy of loving Jack Abbot; he never hurts you intentionally, he just bleeds on everyone around him because he doesn’t know how to stop bleeding himself.
Finally, after a long silence, you ask the question that’s haunted you for months. “If she walked through that door alive tomorrow… would you still choose me?”
Jack goes completely still and you instantly regret asking not because you don’t want the answer but because you already know it.
Jack’s eyes close briefly, his breathing turns uneven and when he finally speaks, his voice is shattered. “I don’t know.” The words carve straight through you. For a second, neither of you move. Then Jack suddenly looks horrified with himself. “Fuck—” But you’re already crying now, wiping angrily at your face. “No, it’s okay,” you whisper even though it absolutely isn’t.
Jack reaches for you desperately this time. “Please don’t—”
“I asked.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.” His voice breaks completely on the last word.
You look at him standing there under the harsh fluorescent hospital lights—this deeply damaged man you love so much it physically aches—and suddenly understand something awful.
Jack loves you, truly, but part of him died with his wife and no matter how tightly you hold him, you cannot resurrect the dead. You step closer anyway because love is cruel like that and he looks stunned when you cup his face gently. “You’re not broken beyond repair,” you whisper. A painful sound escapes him then, almost a laugh, almost a sob. “You don’t know that.”
“Maybe not.” Your thumb brushes beneath his tired eyes carefully. “But I know you keep trying to punish yourself for surviving.” Jack’s composure finally cracks entirely at the words leaving your mouth.
He bows forward suddenly, forehead pressing against your shoulder as his body shakes with silent grief. You wrap your arms around him immediately while he clings to you like a drowning man. “I’m tired,” he whispers brokenly. “I’m so fucking tired.” Your own tears spill over instantly, rolling down your cheeks. “I know.”
And you do know, that’s the problem; you understand him too well to hate him for this.
So you stand there together in the hospital supply room under flickering fluorescent lights while Jack cries against your shoulder for the first time since you’ve known him, the kind of crying pulled from somewhere ancient and wounded. You hold him through all of it because despite everything, despite the grief and the ghosts and the unbearable ache of loving someone who still belongs partly to the past, your heart still turns toward him instinctively.
Like a merry-go-round you can’t get off: spinning, spinning and spinning.
And somewhere beneath all the wreckage, Jack still loves you enough to break over it.
But loving Jack hurts, because he says another woman’s name in his sleep.
Not loudly or anything of the sort, but just a rough, exhausted murmur against the darkness of his apartment while rain taps against the windows and ambulance sirens hum faintly several blocks away. You’re half asleep beside him, tangled in the heavy sheets that still smell like antiseptic from the hospital no matter how often he washes them, when you feel him twitch violently beside you.
His breathing turns ragged, sweat dampens the back of his neck and then, in a voice so wrecked it sounds torn straight out of him, he whispers, “Claire.”
You freeze, breath hitching like thunder just felt on you.
Jack jerks awake a second later with a sharp inhale, chest heaving, eyes wide and unfocused like he’s still somewhere else entirely. Somewhere overseas, somewhere with blood and smoke and bodies. His hand immediately reaches beneath the pillow where no gun waits anymore, but the reflex is still there, engraved into his bones. It takes him several seconds to realize where he is, eyes lowering to the absence of a leg beneath the covers, the phantom pain being real.
It takes him a second to realize you’re there too. His gaze lands on you slowly and shame flickers across his face so fast you almost miss it. “Sorry,” he mutters hoarsely.
You swallow around the ache in your throat and try to smile. “You don’t have to apologize for nightmares.” But the truth is that it doesn’t feel like a nightmare to him, it feels like a memory and somehow, even lying beside him with his body warm against yours, you suddenly feel impossibly far away.
Jack sits up heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. The dim orange glow from the streetlights outside cuts across the sharp exhaustion etched into his features. He looks older like this; older than he really is. The deep shadows beneath his eyes, the silver beginning to creep into his hair, the permanent tension in his shoulders like he’s bracing for impact every waking second of his life.
You reach for him carefully. “Hey.”
“I woke you up.” You shake your head at the words leaving his mouth. “You didn’t.”
“You’re a bad liar.” There’s almost a smile there, but it dies before it fully forms.
You watch him stare at the floor for a long moment, jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. Jack has always carried grief strangely; quietly, like a man trying to hold together shattered glass with his bare hands. Even after almost three years together, there are still entire sections of him locked behind steel doors you’re not allowed to touch.
Sometimes you think he wants you close only because he doesn’t know how to survive being alone anymore and other times, you think he genuinely loves you. The worst part is that both can be true. “You wanna talk about it?” you ask softly and immediately, he shakes his head. Of course.
Jack moves to the edge of the bed, grabbing his prosthetic leg in the dark of the room. You hear ruffling, a grunt leaving his mouth before he finally stands, wobbling a little, running a tired hand through his hair before heading toward the kitchen. You hear cabinets opening, the low hiss of the kettle. His insomnia routines are painfully familiar to you now: tea, sitting in darkness, sometimes staring blankly out the window for hours, sometimes drinking enough whiskey to make himself sleep.
You stay in bed for a minute longer, listening to the apartment creak quietly around you then you hear it. A muffled sound, it’s not the kettle. It’s Jack, crying. Your chest caves in at the sound because he cries so rarely that when it happens, it feels catastrophic. Like witnessing a building collapse in slow motion.
You slip out of bed and walk carefully toward the kitchen. Jack stands at the counter with both hands braced against it, head lowered, his shoulders shake once before going rigid again the second he notices you. He wipes his face quickly and turns away. “Jack…” You whisper his name in the quietness of the apartment. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” His laugh is humorless and exhausted. “No shit.”
You move closer carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. Sometimes touch helps him, sometimes it sends him spiraling. PTSD has turned affection into something unpredictable and fragile But tonight, he lets you wrap your arms around his waist from behind.
For a few seconds, he simply stands there breathing shakily while the kettle whistles in the background, then he says the thing that finally splinters something inside you. “I can’t do this to you forever.” Your stomach twists instantly. “Do what?”
“Be like this.” You rest your cheek against his back, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath his shirt. “Jack—”
“She deserved better too.” The words hit like a slap, not because he means to hurt you but because he doesn’t even realize he did. Claire, always Claire. The ghost in every room, the ghost in his heart and the one roaming your brain. You close your eyes tightly. “I’m not her.”
“I know that.” But he says it like a confession instead of reassurance. Jack goes still after that.
The kettle still screams softly behind him before automatically clicking off, rain still taps against the apartment windows and somewhere outside, tires hiss against wet pavement. But inside your arms, something in him retreats so suddenly that you feel it happen, like a door quietly locking.
You keep holding him anyway.
Your cheek rests between his shoulder blades while his breathing slowly evens out beneath your hands, though every inhale still sounds uneven around the edges. Fragile. The kind of breathing people do after crying too hard in private bathrooms and pretending they’re okay afterward.
Neither of you speaks for a long time because what is there left to say? You’re not her and he knows that and God, that’s the problem. If you were Claire—if you laughed like her or spoke like her or carried pieces of her inside you—maybe this would make sense to him, maybe loving you wouldn’t feel so much like betrayal.
But you’re only yourself.
Young and warm and alive in a way Jack doesn’t know how to reach anymore.
Finally, quietly, you loosen your arms from around him. “You should try sleeping again.” Jack shakes his head immediately. “Can’t.”
“You haven’t slept properly in days.”
“Been doing that for years.” The bitterness in his voice isn’t directed at you but it feels all the same in your mind.
You move around him carefully until you’re standing in front of him instead. His eyes look exhausted in the dim kitchen light, red around the edges. There’s still moisture clinging to his lashes, though he’d probably hate knowing you noticed.
You touch his wrist lightly. “Come sit with me?” For a second, he hesitates, then he nods once.
The couch creaks softly beneath your combined weight when you sit down together. Jack leans forward immediately, elbows braced against his knees while he rubs tiredly at his face again. He looks like he’s trying to physically hold himself together. You curl one leg beneath yourself and watch him quietly.
Sometimes loving Jack feels less like being in a relationship and more like standing beside a wrecked shoreline waiting for the tide to decide what it wants to take next. “You ever think,” he says suddenly, voice rough with exhaustion, “that some people are just too damaged to come back?” Your chest tightens instantly at the words. “Jack—” You whisper.
“No, seriously.” He stares hard at the floor. “You patch people up long enough, eventually you realize some injuries don’t heal right. They close, maybe… but they never heal.” You know this isn’t really about medicine. “You came back,” you say softly.
His laugh is quiet and hollow. “Did I?” Silence settles heavily between you.
Jack reaches for the mug sitting untouched on the coffee table, though his hands shake slightly around it. PTSD always gets worse at night, especially after nightmares, especially after memories of losing his leg, especially after Claire.
You watch him swallow hard before speaking again. “I used to think grief would get smaller eventually.” His voice sounds distant now, like he’s talking more to himself than to you. “Everybody says that; time softens it, time heals things.” Another humorless laugh. “Bullshit.” You don’t interrupt because this is rare. Jack almost never talks about the inside of his grief. Usually he only lets you see the aftermath of it.
“It’s like…” He pauses, jaw tightening. “It’s like carrying shrapnel around in your chest. Some days you can function, some days it shifts wrong and suddenly you can’t breathe without feeling it cut through you.” Your eyes burn instantly. Jack stares into the dark apartment ahead of him, completely unaware of how devastating he sounds. “I loved her so much,” he whispers finally.
There it is: not Claire, not my wife. Her. Like the word itself is sacred.
You feel something in your chest crack quietly despite already knowing this, despite always knowing. Jack notices your silence then and his shoulders tense immediately.
“I love you too.” Too. Such a tiny word, such a horrible one. You force yourself to look at him anyway. “But not the same.” Pain flashes across his face so sharply it almost looks physical.
“No.” The honesty knocks the air from your lungs.
Jack closes his eyes immediately afterward, like he hates himself for saying it out loud. “Fuck.” But you asked, right? And he promised himself a long time ago that he would never lie to you, even when the truth destroys you both. You stare down at your hands because looking at him suddenly hurts too much. “I think part of me always knew that.”
“You shouldn’t have to settle for half a heart.”
The thing is, you don’t think it’s half and that’s what makes this unbearable.
Jack loves you completely in the only way he still knows how; all tenderly, fiercely sometimes. He remembers how you take your coffee, he touches you like you’re something precious, he kisses your forehead when he thinks you’re asleep, he lets you drive across the city at three in the morning if you have a bad shift and don’t want to be alone afterward.
But there’s another part of him permanently frozen in time beside a hospital bed where Claire died and no matter how much he loves you, he cannot thaw it.
“I don’t want anyone else,” you whisper. Jack’s expression crumples. “That’s the problem.” He whispers back at you and you finally look at him then. Really look at him.
At the grief carved permanently into the lines of his face, at the exhaustion hollowing him out from the inside, at the guilt sitting so heavily on his shoulders you wonder how he still stands upright beneath it.
And suddenly you understand something awful: Jack doesn’t think he’s capable of healing because healing feels too much like leaving Claire behind.
“You think moving on means losing her,” you say quietly. His entire body goes rigid and the silence afterward tells you you’re right. Jack stares ahead for several long seconds before speaking in a voice so low you almost miss it. “She used to sleep with one hand under my shirt.” His throat bobs hard. “Said she liked feeling my heartbeat.”
You stay very still.
“Every deployment, every shift, every stupid argument…” His voice starts fraying apart again. “She’d always check if my heart was still there afterward.” Tears sting your eyes instantly and Jack laughs softly then, but it sounds wrecked. “And now she’s gone and mine’s still beating anyway.”
“Jack…”
“I don’t know what to do with that.” He looks at you finally, and the grief in his eyes is so enormous it nearly swallows you whole. “I love you,” he says again, desperately this time, like he’s trying to make you understand. “God, I love you so much.” Your throat tightens painfully. “But?”
Jack’s voice breaks. “But every time I start feeling happy with you, it’s like…” He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes hard enough to hurt. “It’s like I’m betraying her, like I’m leaving her behind somewhere.”
“You’re allowed to keep living.”
“I don’t know how.” The confession lands between you both with devastating softness and the honesty in his voice hurts more than you thought. You move closer slowly until your knees brush flesh one. “You don’t have to stop loving her.” Jack looks shattered by that alone. “But you can’t keep punishing yourself forever either.” A long silence follows your words. Then, so quietly you barely hear it, he says, “Maybe I deserve it.”
Your heart twists violently. “No.”
“You didn’t see me over there.”
War, he almost never mentions it directly. The apartment suddenly feels smaller.
Jack’s stare goes distant again, pupils unfocused. “There are people whose faces I still remember every night.” His voice turns hollow. “People I couldn’t save as a medic.” He swallows hard. “Claire used to say surviving didn’t make me guilty, just human.” You reach for his trembling hand immediately. “She was right.”
“But she’s dead.” The words come out rougher than he means them to. Jack immediately looks horrified with himself again, squeezing his eyes shut. “Jesus Christ.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” His breathing starts quickening unevenly now. “You’re sitting here trying to love somebody who’s still in love with a ghost.”
“You’re not loving a ghost.”
“Aren’t I?” His eyes meet yours then, and you realize with sudden devastating clarity that Jack genuinely believes his life ended with Claire’s. Everything after has simply been surviving the aftermath and you think that’s the moment your heart truly breaks for him. Not because he still loves his wife but because he genuinely cannot imagine a future where he deserves joy without her in it.
You touch his face carefully, and he leans into your palm instantly with exhausted instinct. “I’m here,” you whisper. Jack’s eyes close. “I know.” But he says it like an apology.
A tear slips down his cheek before he can stop it, then another. “I wish you’d met me before all this,” he whispers brokenly. “Before the war, before her. Before…” He gestures helplessly toward himself. “This.” You feel yourself starting to cry too. “I would’ve loved that version of you too.” Jack lets out a shaky breath that almost sounds like a sob. “But this is the only version left.”
The room falls quiet again except for the rain outside and you realize then that neither of you is going to sleep tonight.
Jack turns his head slightly, pressing a tired kiss against the inside of your wrist while his eyes stay closed; such a small gesture and so heartbreakingly tender.
“I keep thinking eventually you’ll realize I can’t give you what you deserve,” he says softly. You brush your fingers through his hair. “And what do I deserve?”
“Someone whole.”
You almost laugh at that, not because it’s funny, it’s not. But because nobody is whole, not really. “You think I’m not damaged too?” Jack opens his eyes slowly. “But I still know how to love people without drowning in ghosts,” you whisper.
That one hurts him, you see it happen immediately. His face folds inward with quiet devastation because he knows you’re right and maybe that’s the cruelest part of all this.
Jack Abbot loves you.
He loves you enough to hold you after nightmares and memorize your coffee order and kiss your sleepy forehead before work. He loves you enough to fear ruining your life, enough to cry over hurting you. But some nights, when grief crawls into bed beside him again, you can physically feel that there is another woman between you.
A dead woman, a woman he still carries everywhere.
And no matter how tightly he wraps his arms around you afterward, no matter how softly he whispers your name into your skin like a prayer, part of him is still spinning endlessly beside her on that same terrible merry-go-round. You feel it now in the quiet apartment, in the way he sits beside you looking utterly exhausted by his own heart.
Jack stares at the floor for a long time before speaking again. “I don’t know how to be okay,” he admits softly. The confession sounds unbearably small coming from a man who spends every day holding other people together.
You look at him for a moment, at the grief etched permanently into his face, at the guilt hollowing out his eyes, at the man trying so desperately to love you correctly while drowning in memories he cannot put down.
Then you move closer, slowly and carefully like he’s made of glass. The couch dips beneath your weight as you slide into his space, your hand finding his jaw gently until he finally looks at you.
“You don’t have to stop loving her,” you whisper. Jack’s face tightens instantly. “But I’m here too.” A tear slips down his cheek before he can stop it, you wipe it away with your thumb. “I’m not Claire,” you say softly. “I never will be.” His breathing catches, you hear it. “But I’m still me and I still love you.”
Something in Jack’s expression breaks apart then—not violently, not dramatically, just quietly, like exhaustion finally giving way beneath too much weight. He leans forward until his forehead rests against yours and for a while, neither of you says anything.
The rain keeps falling outside, the city keeps moving.
And somewhere in the middle of all that grief and love and unbearable longing, Jack finally wraps both arms around you like he’s afraid you might disappear too. “I’m trying,” he whispers shakily. You close your eyes and hold him tighter. “I know.”
And maybe that’s all the two of you are in the end: not healed, not whole.
Just two people sitting awake in the dark, loving each other as carefully as they can while the merry-go-round keeps spinning anyway.
Summary: When you moved halfway across the world to work nights at PTMC, the last thing you expected was for your soulmate string to lead straight to Dr. Jack Abbot—who’s already happily married to his own soulmate. So you bury your feelings beneath friendship, trauma shifts, and years of silence… until tragedy changes everything, and both of you begin to realize that maybe soulmates were never about fate, but choice. Or, the Soulmate AU with Jack Abbot.
Pairing: Jack Abbot x FilipinaNurseFem!Reader (Can still be read by anyone! It’s not super specific)
Warnings: 18+ Soulmate String AU, Unrequited Love to Requited Love, Age-Gap Romance (Not Specified), Hospitals, ER, ANGST, Fluff, Crush, Blood, Friends-to-Lovers, Slow(ish) Burn, Eventual Hurt-to-Comfort, Longing, YEARNING, Major Character Death, The Pitt AU, Grief, Tragic Heroine, Tragic Hero, Widow!Abbot, Depressed!Abbot, Anger, Crying, GSW, Happily Ever After, COVID-19, Kissing,
Word Count: 22.5k
A/N: We're gonna take a break from Ducky and Robby for a bit. Welcome, Jack Abbot. You are in my domain now >:D ALSO, I HIT THE LIMIT ON SPACING SOOO THE FORMAT MIGHT BE FUCKED IDK. Sorry :(((
Side note: Gif in the moodboard from @/keeryscupid. I’m not a doctor or a nurse. I’m dyslexic, and English isn’t my first language! So I apologize in advance for the spelling and/or grammatical errors. As always, reblogs, comments, and likes are appreciated. Thank you and happy reading!
Songs: Orbiter by Noah Kahan, Brush Fire by Gracie Abrams, and If You Let Me by Maisie Peters (with Marcus Mumford)
| Jack Abbot Masterlist | Main Masterlist |
2018
PTMC, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT — NIGHT
The first thing you notice about the Pitt isn’t the noise.
It’s the pace.
Everything moves fast, but no one looks rushed. People pass each other like they’ve done this a thousand times, sliding through narrow spaces without looking, voices overlapping in half-finished sentences, monitors beeping in uneven rhythms that somehow don’t throw anyone off.
Organized disaster is exactly what an emergency department should feel like. You tighten your grip on the strap of your bag as you follow Lena down the hall, trying not to stare at everything like it’s your first day on Earth.
New country, New hospital, New job.
Night shift.
Your body still hasn’t figured out what time zone it’s supposed to be in, but adrenaline is already kicking in, that familiar hum under your skin that always comes when you step into an ER. You tell yourself you’ve handled worse. That you’ve worked typhoon nights, mass casualty drills, and overcrowded government hospitals with half the supplies you needed.
You can handle this.
Lena pushes the double doors open with her shoulder, not even breaking stride. “ER’s through here,” she says. “You said you worked trauma before, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” you answer automatically.
She glances back at you immediately, “Drop the ma’am. You’ll make everyone feel old.”
Heat creeps up your neck, “Sorry. Habit.”
“You’ll fit in,” she mutters, half amused, half distracted as she scans the room.
You step through the doors behind her—and the sound hits all at once. Phones ringing, a monitor alarming somewhere in the back, sharp and insistent. A patient down the hall is yelling that he’s been waiting for three hours and he’s going to sue somebody.
It’s loud and crowded, but very alive and all too familiar. Your shoulders drop just a little, tension you didn’t realize you were holding easing out of your spine.
Lena stops near the central desk, scanning the board, then jerks her chin toward the far side of the room, “That’s Dr. Jack Abbot. He’s on trauma tonight, so you’ll probably be with him most of the shift.”
You follow her gaze without thinking.
He stands near the counter, scrolling through a chart on an iPad, stethoscope hanging loose around his neck like he forgot it was there. Curly salt and pepper hair slightly messy, the kind of tired that comes from too many night shifts in a row.
He looks up when someone calls his name, and the moment your eyes land on him, your wrist burns.
You suck in a small breath, instinctively looking down. There’s a red string looped around your wrist, thin, bright, and impossible to miss.
Your stomach drops so fast it makes you dizzy. Because what the actual fuck? No. Not here. Not now.
At some point, you’d convinced yourself maybe you simply didn’t have one. Maybe the universe skipped you.
The thread pulls slightly, like something on the other end just moved, and your fingers curl around it before you even realize what you’re doing. A voice in your head tells you not to look… but you look anyway. The string stretches across the room, weaving through people and stretchers and equipment like it doesn’t care about physics; it never has.
Your breath gets stuck in your throat as you follow it as it leads straight to him—Jack Abbot.
Your heart stutters hard enough that you feel it in your ears.
No.
No, no, no.
Lena is still talking beside you, something about assignments, but the words blur together. “…good with procedures, just don’t let him skip charting, he tries— Abbot!”
He looks up again, this time, at you. The string pulls tight between your wrists. For a second, neither of you moves. Then he walks over, casual, pumping sanitizer on his hands like this is just another shift, just another new nurse, nothing important happening at all.
He’s taller up close.
Tired-looking in a way that somehow makes him seem softer instead of intimidating. Curly salt-and-pepper hair slightly messy, sleeves rolled to his elbows, stethoscope hanging around his neck like he forgot it was there hours ago.
“You the new one?” he asks. His voice is warm and easy. Maybe a little rough around the edges from too much coffee and too many overnight shifts.
You force your brain to function.
“Yeah,” you manage. “First night.”
He nods once, then holds out his hand.
“Jack Abbot.”
Your hand hesitates for half a second before you take it. The second your skin touches his—the string snaps tight. It feels like something deep in your bones clicks violently into place.
Your pulse jumps hard beneath your skin, and for one horrifying second you think maybe he can feel it too.
But Jack just smiles politely, completely unaffected.
Because he can’t see it, not fully. The thread only loops faintly around his wrist before disappearing, incomplete and one-sided.
You swallow hard, “Nice to meet you.”
“Welcome to the Pitt,” he says. “Try not to run.” You let out a shaky laugh before you can stop yourself, “Too late for that.”
A faint smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth, like he likes your answer. By God, that tiny expression alone nearly kills you.
Then he shifts the iPad under his arm—and you see the ring.
A silver band on his left hand.
Your entire body goes cold.
For a second, you genuinely can’t process what you’re looking at. Of course, he’s married. Because, yes, the universe would do something this cruel.
You force yourself to look away before your face gives you away—and that’s when you notice her.
A woman stands near Central holding a paper bag against her hip, looking around the department with the comfortable familiarity of someone who’s been here a hundred times before.
Waiting for him.
Jack notices her immediately, and his whole face changes. It softens enough for you to understand instantly how much he loves her. “Hey,” he says quietly, already walking toward her.
The incomplete thread around his wrist brightens faintly.
She smiles the second he reaches her, “You forgot dinner again.” Jack laughs softly, taking the bag from her, “I was busy.”
“You’re always busy.”
“Occupational hazard.”
She rolls her eyes affectionately, and he leans down automatically to kiss her cheek. It’s absent-minded and natural. The kind of intimacy built over years. Loving her is as easy as breathing. Suddenly, the red string around your own wrist feels unbearably tight. Because the universe already chose—it’s not you. Never you.
Lena nudges your shoulder lightly, “You good?”
You blink quickly, forcing your expression back under control before anyone notices the way your soul feels like it’s collapsing inward. “Yeah,” you say, your voice almost sounds steady. “Just jet lag.”
Lena nods distractedly and turns back toward the board.
Across the room, Jack says something under his breath that makes his wife laugh. The warm and happy sound carries across the department.
You look down at the string around your wrist one last time before pulling your sleeve over it completely.
You can do this—you’ve survived harder things than heartbreak.
You square your shoulders, take the iPad Lena hands you, and step fully into the chaos of the Pitt.
So when Jack glances back at you a moment later, smiling like you’re just another coworker starting a shift, you smile back, pretending that your heart didn’t just fall through the floor.
A FEW MONTHS LATER…
PTMC, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT — NIGHT SHIFT
By the time the Pitt starts feeling familiar, it’s already too late. You know the rhythm of the department now, the same way you know your own breathing. Which monitor is about to alarm before it starts screaming. Which psych patient is one bad interaction away from throwing a urinal at security, or a resident is about to panic during a difficult intubation.
You know the trauma bay doors stick when it rains, and Lena hides the good coffee above the Pyxis because Ellis steals the decent stuff first, and the fluorescent lights over Hallway C flicker around three in the morning like they’re barely holding on, and you know Jack Abbot’s footsteps before you even see him.
Well, to be honest, that part happens slowly. Shift after shift. Trauma after trauma. Somewhere between your first week and your third month, working beside him stops feeling intimidating and starts feeling natural.
You know how he likes his trauma setups organized. You know he taps his pen twice against the desk when he’s thinking too hard. You know he rubs the back of his neck when he’s exhausted and trying not to show it. And worse—he knows you too.
“Lifeline!” Ellis’ voice cuts across the department as you walk out of Trauma Two carrying an empty suture tray. You stop mid-step. “You people are never letting that nickname die, are you?”
Ellis swivels around in her chair with a grin. “Absolutely not.”
The nickname started during your second week after a pediatric code that had gone catastrophically wrong.
A seven-year-old nearly drowned—no pulse on arrival. The room had dissolved into controlled chaos within seconds—respiratory trying to secure the airway while one of the newer residents nearly froze trying to place an IO line.
Shen, still early enough into residency that panic sometimes beat experience, had looked one second away from completely spiraling.
But through all of it, you had stayed calm.
You’d guided Shen through the tibial IO placement while simultaneously pushing epinephrine prep toward Jack and coordinating compression rotations so nobody burned out too early.
At one point, Ellis had looked up from the monitor and muttered, “Jesus Christ. She’s everybody’s lifeline in here.”
Unfortunately for you, the name stuck. Now, half the ED used it more than your actual name.
“Lifeline, Trauma Two,” Lena calls without looking up from the board.
“On my way.”
Jack steps out of the trauma bay at the same time you do, peeling bloody gloves off his hands. “You steal my nurse again?” he asks Lena.
Lena snorts. “You don’t own her, Abbot.”
“That’s not what I said.”
There’s something easy in the exchange that makes warmth spread unexpectedly through you.
Jack falls into step beside you automatically as you head toward Trauma Two.
“You eat yet?” he asks.
You glance at him suspiciously. “Are you asking because you care or because you need me conscious enough to survive this shift?”
“A little of both.”
You huff out a laugh. Because that’s the problem with Jack. He’s kind in ways that sneak up on you, a quiet attentiveness that drives you nuts. He notices when you haven’t sat down in seven hours or when your hands shake after a bad pediatric trauma and when you’re pushing yourself too hard, and casually hands you a granola bar like he didn’t specifically go looking for one because he knew you skipped dinner.
The kind of doctor who stays with family members after delivering bad news instead of disappearing the second the conversation gets uncomfortable, and the kind of man who wears his wedding ring like it means something sacred.
Which somehow makes all of this hurt even more. Because every soft look. Every quiet joke at three in the morning or moment beside him in a trauma bay—belongs to someone else.
And you know that.
The universe reminds you every single day that the red string hidden beneath the cuff of your scrub jacket pulls tight whenever he gets too close.
You’ve gotten good at ignoring it or pretending to.
TRAUMA ONE — NIGHT
Tonight’s MVA is a disaster. Twenty-six-year-old male. Ejected through the windshield. Hypotensive on arrival. The second EMS wheels him through the ambulance bay doors, and the department shifts gears instantly.
“BP seventy over forty,” Ellis says from the monitor. “Heart rate one-forty.”
“Breath sounds diminished on the left,” Shen adds quickly, trying to keep up.
“Alright, let’s move,” Jack says sharply.
You’re already there.
Trauma shears cut through blood-soaked clothing while respiratory preps for intubation. You place oxygen and start hanging fluids while Jack performs the FAST exam. Free fluid in Morrison’s pouch appears on the screen almost immediately. Internal bleeding, most likely splenic rupture.
“Call OR,” Jack says. “He’s going upstairs.”
“Already on it,” you answer, grabbing the phone before he even finishes speaking. Jack glances toward you over the patient. There’s blood smeared across the sleeve of his scrub top, exhaustion pulled deep into the lines around his eyes. Yet still—that small flicker of trust when he looks at you. He knows you’ll catch whatever he misses.
You hate how much that matters to you.
CENTRAL WORK AREA — NIGHT
By four in the morning, the Pitt settles into its strange version of quiet. You’re charting near Central when the elevator doors open.
Jack’s wife walks out carrying six pizza boxes stacked in her arms.
The entire department visibly brightens.
“Oh thank God,” Ellis says dramatically. “An angel sent from heaven.”
“You people are unbelievable,” she laughs.
Ellis immediately takes two boxes from her. “Respectfully, I would die for you.”
“That’s deeply concerning,” Lena mutters.
“You’re just jealous she likes me more.”
“I absolutely am not.”
You can’t help laughing softly under your breath. There it is again— that awful ache in your heart. Because she’s truly, genuinely wonderful. The universe could’ve at least made her cold, cruel, or difficult.
Instead, she remembers everyone’s coffee orders and asks about your family back home, and brings food for the night shift because she knows none of you remember to eat unless somebody forces you.
“You must be Lifeline.”
You blink, startled when you realize she’s suddenly standing beside you.
Up close, her smile is warm and effortless. You force yourself to smile back. “That obvious, huh?”
“Oh, very,” she says easily. “Jack talks about you all the time.”
Your heart stumbles painfully against your ribs.
Before you can recover, she continues casually, “Apparently, you’re the only reason this department functions after midnight.”
You laugh weakly. “That gives me way too much credit. Obviously, Lena holds everything down.”
“Have you met these people?” she asks quietly, glancing around Central. “I’m pretty sure Shen would eat expired yogurt if left unsupervised.”
“That happened one time,” Shen shouts.
“You were hallucinating by hour two,” Ellis replies.
You laugh again before you can stop yourself, and somehow, talking to her is easy. Isn’t that cruel? Because you like her immediately, she asks about the Philippines, about your family, and how you plan on surviving Pittsburgh winters.
You’re halfway through explaining that black ice feels like a personal attack when Jack walks out of Trauma Two. He tosses his gloves into the biohazard bin before sanitizing his hands automatically. His curls are damp with sweat at the temples now, scrub top wrinkled from the shift.
Then he looks up to find the two of you talking and smiles—soft around the edges in a way that makes your eyes water.
“Well,” his wife says immediately, “there he is.”
Jack points toward the pizza boxes. “You bribing my staff again?”
“Your staff?” Lena repeats flatly from across the desk.
Jack ignores her completely.
His wife gestures toward you. “Lifeline and I decided you’re actually the problem in this department.” You blink. “We did?”
“We did now.”
Jack looks genuinely betrayed, “That was fast.”
“She’s nice,” his wife says simply. Jack’s eyes flick toward you for half a second, warm and amused. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “She is.”
Your pulse skips hard enough you nearly miss it. Coward, coward, coward.
You look away first while his wife grins triumphantly. “See? I win.”
“You gang up on me constantly.”
“Because you’re easy to bully,” you say before thinking.
Jack stares at you in mock offense. “Wow. Okay.”
“You walked into that one,” Ellis says.
“You’re all terrible people.”
His wife reaches up automatically to straighten the collar of his scrub shirt. Such a small gesture, absent-minded and intimate. The kind of touch that only exists between people who know each other completely.
Your wrist aches beneath your sleeve as the string pulls tighter. Still connected to him. So very impossible and still wrong. But somehow, standing there laughing with both of them at four in the morning, you realize something infinitely more dangerous than loving him.
You’re becoming part of their lives.
CENTRAL WORK AREA — LATER
The shift slows near dawn as you’re charting near Central when Jack drops into the chair beside you with a tired exhale.
“You ever think about leaving emergency medicine?” he asks suddenly. You glance sideways. “Every shift.”
“That’s healthy.”
“I think about becoming a florist at least twice a week.”
Jack huffs out a tired laugh. “You’d last six days.”
“Rude.”
“You yelled at a surgeon yesterday.”
“He was wrong.” You pointed out.
“He was technically right.”
“He was spiritually wrong.”
That earns a real laugh from him, the low and warm kind. God. You hold onto sounds like that more than you should. Silence settles comfortably between you afterward—the kind that only exists between people who know each other well. Then, almost absentmindedly, Jack asks, “Have you met your soulmate yet?”
Your fingers stop over the keyboard. For one horrible second, your entire body forgets how to function. But your face stays calm, because years in emergency medicine have made you terrifyingly good at composure. You keep typing as you reply, “Nope.”
Jack glances sideways at you. “At all?” You shrug lightly, forcing your voice steady. “Might just not be in the cards for me.”
Something softens in his expression immediately. Jack looks at people like he wants to understand them, not fix them. “I doubt that,” he says quietly. You stare at the chart on the screen because looking at him feels too dangerous. The red string hidden beneath your sleeve suddenly feels impossibly heavy.
“I mean it,” he continues softly. “Whoever ends up with you is gonna be lucky.”
Your throat tightens painfully as you force a laugh under your breath before the emotion can show on your face. “Smooth.”
“I’m serious.”
The worst part is—he means it. You finally risk looking at him. His eyes are tired and honest in that devastating way that makes lying to him feel terrible.
“I hope whoever you love…” he says quietly, almost like he’s thinking out loud, “loves you back just as much.”
The cruel irony nearly splits you open. Because you already know exactly what loving him feels like. It feels like swallowing it down every single day, pretending friendship is enough because it has to be, while standing three feet away from your soulmate, while he talks about his wife with soft eyes and absolute devotion.
Your eyes sting suddenly, and you blink hard before he notices. “Me too, Jack,” you whisper. You mean it so much it hurts.
“Me too.”
2020, COVID PANDEMIC
PTMC, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT — NIGHT
The world changes fast. One week, people are joking about a virus overseas between trauma calls and coffee runs, and then the next week, the Pitt is overflowing.
Then, suddenly, every hallway smells like bleach and sanitizer, strong enough to burn your nose through the mask. Every shift feels like drowning—N95s cutting grooves into your skin, face shields fogging every time you breathe, and isolation gowns crackling every time you move.
The emergency department transforms into something unrecognizable almost overnight. There are no visitors or waiting rooms full of family. Alarms, intubations, oxygen sats dropping, and the sound of ventilators become part of the background noise of your life. Everyone starts looking exhausted, and then everyone starts looking haunted. You stop recognizing your coworkers without PPE. Even you stop recognizing yourself.
Through all of it, Jack keeps working.
You think maybe the entire world could collapse around him and he’d still show up for trauma shift fifteen minutes early with coffee in one hand and exhaustion carved into his face. Some nights, the two of you barely talk beyond patient updates. There isn’t time. Not anymore. Every room is full, and the waiting room looks like a war zone; people are dying faster than you can process. But even through the masks and face shields and layers of plastic, you still know him.
You know the crease between his brows when he’s worried and the exhaustion in his posture. The look in his eyes when a patient reminds him too much of somebody else.
To add to that, around the beginning of the pandemic, his wife dies. Not from COVID, which somehow makes it more merciless.
Pedestrian versus drunk driver—DOA. The call comes in just after midnight. You don’t know it’s her at first. Female in her late thirties. Severe head trauma. Massive internal injuries. CPR in progress.
The paramedics wheel her through the doors while respiratory rushes to clear Trauma One. For one horrible second, before you even see her face, the red string around Jack’s wrist burns.
You freeze, not because you understand yet. Because something deep inside you already does.
Then Jack steps into the trauma room, and everything stops. You watch recognition hit him in real time, the way his body locks up and how color drains from his face beneath the mask.
“No,” he says immediately, as if he says it softly enough, maybe reality will change its mind.
“No.”
Lena moves first.
“Jack—”
“That’s my wife.”
The room goes dead silent. Even with monitors alarming and compressions ongoing, along with Shen asking for another round of epi.
It all disappears under the sound of Jack’s voice breaking.
You’ve seen grief before—you work in emergency medicine, so you see it every day. But nothing prepares you for the sound a person makes when their entire life shatters in front of them. Jack tries to step forward, but Lena catches him immediately. “Jack.”
“No, let me—”
“Jack.”
“She’s still warm—”
His voice cracks apart on the words. The paramedic quietly says they found no pulse on scene. Prolonged downtime. Non-survivable head trauma. You can’t breathe—nobody can.
Jack looks at his wife lying on the trauma bed like he genuinely cannot understand what he’s seeing; his brain refuses to process it. Blood in her hair and on the sheet, with her wedding ring still on her hand. Suddenly, the red string around your own wrist pulls painfully tight—before snapping loose.
Jack stares at his own wrist instinctively. The string tied there—gone. His face crumples. All that’s left is a man realizing the universe just took something from him that it can never give back.
COVID restrictions mean none of you are allowed at the funeral. No gathering or reception. No sitting beside him in church or placing a hand on his shoulder in comfort; bringing food to his house while relatives fill the rooms with noise and stories and grief.
Only Zoom.
Fucking Zoom.
You sit alone in your apartment at three in the afternoon after night shift, still in scrubs because you were too tired to change, laptop balanced on your kitchen table.
Everyone’s little squares flicker on-screen. Lena is crying silently, Ellis is muted, while Shen is trying and failing not to cry. Multiple other night shift staff are trying their best to pull themselves together—to be brave for Jack.
While Jack is sitting alone in a black button-down shirt in a house that suddenly looks too empty.
He looks hollow. That’s the only word for it. Hollowed out from the inside. You realize halfway through the service that he hasn’t stopped twisting his wedding ring around his finger once. Maybe he believes that if he keeps touching it, maybe she’s still here somehow.
You cry with your microphone muted.
Afterward, nobody knows what to say. There are no casseroles or hugs. No standing together in shared grief. Only little squares blink off one by one until Jack is the last person left in the call.
You stay after everyone disconnects. “You should sleep,” you say quietly. Jack lets out a humorless laugh, “Yeah.”
But he doesn’t move, and neither do you. Finally, he says, “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
There it is… the unbearable part, because she died instantly—no final words or closure. She was there one second—gone the next.
You press your lips together hard enough that they hurt as you faintly say, “I’m so sorry, Jack.”
He nods once because he’s heard it too many times already. Then his face folds inward suddenly, grief cracking through whatever fragile composure he’s been holding together. You’ve never seen him cry before, not really. Now he looks destroyed by it.
“I keep thinking she’s gonna walk through the door,” he whispers. “I keep forgetting for like… five seconds.”
Your lungs ache so violently that it feels unbearable.
Because despite everything—despite the string and the guilt and all the ways you tried to keep your distance—you love him. And loving someone means you cannot stand there and watch them suffer alone.
Not him.
Never him.
So you stay.
At first casually, then constantly, you start checking on him between shifts. You bring coffee, he forgets to drink, and force him to eat crackers during overnight shifts because grief has hollowed him thin. You sit beside him in the break room when he can’t sleep between traumas.
Some nights he talks, and there are nights he doesn’t. Later on, you learn grief has moods. Some days he’s numb, and some days he’s angry. Or days, a patient wearing the same perfume as his wife nearly sends him spiraling mid-shift. Once, after losing a COVID patient around his wife’s age, Jack locks himself in the stairwell for twenty minutes.
You find him there eventually. Still in PPE with his face shield shoved onto the top of his head, breathing hard like he’s trying not to come apart.
You sit beside him without saying anything. For a long time, neither of you speaks. The stairwell is cold through your scrub pants, concrete hard beneath you. Somewhere beyond the heavy metal door, the hospital keeps moving. Monitors alarming. Phones ringing. Ventilators hissing.
Life continued like his world didn’t just end.
Jack sits one step below you, elbows braced against his knees, surgical cap shoved halfway off his head. His N95 hangs loose around his neck now, leaving angry red pressure marks across his skin. He appears worn out in a manner unrelated to sleep. The type of tiredness that becomes bone-deep.
For a while, all you hear is his controlled breathing, but then, you know, if he lets himself lose control for even a second, he’ll never stop. Then quietly, without looking at you, Jack says, “I don’t know who I am without her.”
You nearly shatter at his confession, because it’s proof he loved her so completely. You saw it every day in small, ordinary ways. In the way his face softened when she walked into the department carrying takeout, or the absent-minded way he leaned toward her without realizing it. In the wedding ring, he twisted whenever he talked about her during quieter shifts. He loved her with the kind of certainty people spend their whole lives searching for, and somehow that only makes you love him more.
You look down at your hands, clasped tightly in your lap.
“At work?” you say softly after a moment. “You’re still Jack.” A weak laugh escapes him, humorless and tired, “Very inspirational speech.”
“I’m serious.”
You glance toward him carefully. Even now, he’s still wearing blood on the sleeve of his isolation gown from the code downstairs. His curls are damp with sweat, exhaustion carved deep into the lines around his eyes.
"When everything hurts," you say carefully, "you don't have to figure out how to survive the next ten years."
Jack finally looks up, with his eyes bloodshot, red-rimmed, and devastatingly tired. "You just find the next thing." His brow furrows slightly as you keep going, "The next cup of coffee that tastes okay."
A faint huff of breath leaves him.
"The next shift." You offer a small smile. "The next stupid joke Shen makes that isn't actually funny."
That earns the ghost of an eye roll—you take it.
"The next hour. The next day." Your throat tightens, but you push through it, "And eventually..." Your voice softens. "Eventually you realize you've made it farther than you thought you could."
Jack stares at you, fully paying attention and listening.
"The pain doesn't disappear," you admit quietly. "Some losses stay with you forever. But one day you wake up, and it isn't the first thing you feel."
The stairwell falls silent again, and you watch as Jack's eyes close briefly as if the possibility of hope hurts. When he opens them again, there's something unbearably raw there—something stripped bare. "You really believe that?" The question comes out almost broken, and you don't hesitate as you reply, "Yes."
Because you have to, for him, for yourself, and for every patient you've ever watched claw their way through impossible things.
"Yes," you repeat softly. Jack studies your face for a long moment—searching for something there. Maybe hope or permission. Or proof that somebody still sees him underneath all the grief. Then he gives one small, fragile nod, because he's trying very hard to believe you, too.
A softer shared silence settles between you again afterward. You remain beside him on the stairwell steps while the hospital hums around you. Two exhausted healthcare workers in the middle of a pandemic. One grieving the loss of the love of his life. The other grieving quietly beside him. Then, after a long time, you speak again.
Your voice barely rises above a whisper, "I don't think there's such a thing as a good goodbye." Jack doesn't look away, but you stare at the concrete floor.
"People say it gets easier. That you find closure. That eventually you make peace with it." Your fingers tighten together. "But I think losing someone just becomes part of you. You learn how to carry it." Your throat burns, "There are days when you think you're okay. Days when you laugh and work and breathe normally." You glance toward him. "And then something happens. A song, a smell, maybe a memory.” Blinking back your tears, you revealed, "The grief finds you again."
Jack's eyes shine slightly as you continue softly, "Not because you failed to move on." Your voice wavers. "But because they mattered."
A long silence follows. Then, quietly—"So what am I supposed to do?" When he asks the question, it sounds incredibly trivial.
You look at Jack—at the man who spent years helping everyone else survive. He stayed with frightened soldiers, and loved his wife so completely that even death couldn't erase her from him.
"Keep loving her," you say softly, and Jack's breath catches. "Just don't let her be the reason you stop living, too."
The silence that follows feels sacred, somewhere beneath your sleeve, hidden from the world, the red string wrapped around your wrist aches. Not because it hurts, but because for the first time since she died, you realize you would carry his grief with him for as long as he needed.
Even if he never knew.
2021
YOUR APARTMENT — NIGHT
By late 2021, you recognize the symptoms almost immediately. The exhaustion first. Not normal exhaustion—the kind every ER nurse carries around like a second heartbeat—but something meaner. The sort that becomes deeply ingrained in your bones and wears you out just by standing straight.
Then the fever, then it’s the cough that follows soon after, and the body aches that feel like somebody took a hammer to every joint you have.
You take the rapid test in your bathroom with trembling hands, already knowing what the result will be before the second line even appears.
Positive.
You stare at it for a long moment anyway, “Fuck.”
You’d been vaccinated months ago. Healthcare workers got priority access early on, one of the very few benefits of spending every shift neck-deep in a pandemic. And thank God for that, because without it, you’re almost certain this would’ve landed you intubated in an ICU somewhere.
Still—it hits you hard.
Your immune system has never exactly been reliable. Too many years of stress, skipped meals, night shifts, and pushing yourself past exhaustion had seen to that long before COVID ever existed.
So you quarantine immediately with no qualms or arguments. Immediately, you text Lena and Dana to tell them that you’ve contracted COVID-19. Then you lock yourself inside your apartment and prepare to wait it out.
The loneliness settles in fast after that. The first day isn’t terrible, but the second day is worse. By the third day, you genuinely feel like you’re losing your mind. Your apartment suddenly feels too small and too quiet. Every surface smells faintly of disinfectant and cough drops. Empty Gatorade bottles and medication wrappers clutter your coffee table because you’re too exhausted to clean properly.
You sleep in fragments. Wake up drenched in sweat. Cough until your ribs ache. Then fall asleep again, only to wake up disoriented an hour later. You try texting your family back home once, but hearing your mother’s worried voice over FaceTime nearly makes you cry, so you stop answering calls after that.
You tell everyone you’re fine. You’re not.
One particularly bad night, you sit on the bathroom floor wrapped in a blanket because the cold tiles feel good against your feverish skin, genuinely debating at what oxygen saturation you’d finally call an ambulance.
Ninety-three? Ninety-two?
You know too much…that’s the problem. You’re aware exactly how quickly patients can crash, and what respiratory distress looks like. You know what COVID sounds like when it starts settling deeper into the lungs. And alone in your apartment at two in the morning, feverish and exhausted and struggling not to spiral, you think: If this gets worse, I’m gonna end up at Presby or PTMC.
By day five, your phone is full of unread texts. Lena is checking in, Shen is sending memes, and Ellis is threatening to physically fight you if you don’t hydrate. But then there’s Jack calling twice… then three times.
You don’t answer any of them. Not intentionally. Your brain feels too foggy to function most of the time. Looking at your phone takes effort you barely have energy for. So when there’s suddenly a knock at your apartment door that evening, you frown from beneath your blanket without moving.
Probably the wrong apartment.
Another knock. Then—your real name, muffled through the door in a voice you’d recognize half-asleep.
“Hey.”
Your stomach drops.
No.
Absolutely not.
You push yourself upright too quickly and immediately regret it when dizziness crashes over you. You stumble toward the door anyway, coughing into your elbow before peeking through the peephole.
And there he is.
Jack Abbot. Standing outside your apartment in full PPE. N95. Face shield. Gloves. Isolation gown. Holding a plastic takeout bag in one hand. You stare at him in complete disbelief before yanking yourself back from the door. “Jack?!”
“Oh, good,” his voice comes through the other side, dry with relief. “You’re alive.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” you hiss through the door. “How did you even find where I live?”
“Lena told me… and Dana.”
Traitors.
You lean your forehead briefly against the door, exhausted. “You can’t be here,” you argue weakly. “You could get sick.” Jack snorts softly from the hallway, “Lifeline, we work in an emergency department.”
“That is not comforting!”
“Also,” he continues, ignoring you completely, “is there a reason you’ve been ignoring my texts and calls?”
You close your eyes briefly. Honestly, you hadn’t even realized how many messages you missed.
“Jack—”
“Open the door.”
You blink as you screech, “Are you fucking insane? No.” His voice lowers slightly then, gentler but firmer somehow. “Lifeline.”
Somewhere behind your ribs, the moniker settles heated and perilous.
“Open the door.”
You stare at the wood for a long moment. Then, against every ounce of common sense you possess, you unlock it. The second the door cracks open, Jack’s eyes immediately scan over you clinically. You can practically see the ER doctor in him assessing your flushed skin, fatigue, and mild shortness of breath. The way you’re subtly bracing yourself against the wall to stay upright. In an instant, his face tightens.
"Oh," he murmurs. Somehow, that soft little sound embarrasses you more than if he’d outright said you looked terrible. You cross your arms defensively, “I look worse than I feel.”
“That’s concerning, because you look awful.”
You let out a tired laugh despite yourself, immediately coughing afterward. Jack’s eyes narrow behind the face shield, “How high’s the fever?”
“It’s fine.”
“Temperature.”
“One-oh-one earlier.”
“And oxygen?”
You hesitate half a second too long, and Jack notices immediately, “Lifeline.”
“Ninety-four. I’ve been checking my Apple Watch.”
His jaw tightens, “Okay.”
You step aside reluctantly. “There’s hand sanitizer and ethyl alcohol everywhere. I’ve been disinfecting the place whenever I can.”
Jack walks inside carefully, setting the takeout bag down near the kitchen counter. Your apartment suddenly feels unbearably small with him standing in it. Messy blankets on the couch. Medications scattered across the coffee table. Laundry you’ve been too sick to fold. You suddenly want the earth to swallow you whole. “Sorry,” you mutter. “It’s kind of a disaster.”
Jack glances around once before looking back at you. “I’ve seen residents cry over missing lab results. This is nothing.” That earns another weak laugh out of you while he pulls out one of the dining chairs and gestures toward it, “Sit down before you fall down.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You almost passed out opening the door.”
Rude.
You sit anyway because standing suddenly feels impossible, and Jack immediately starts fussing. Taking your temperature again. Checking your pulse ox. Asking when you last ate.
In a manner that hurts your core, it's somehow intimate. After observing him in silence for a while, you gently inquire, "Why are you here?"
Jack pauses before he shrugs one shoulder like the answer should be obvious. “Because I know you.”
“You don’t have family here,” he continues quietly. “No roommates. No neighbors you’re close enough with to help if things go bad.” He leans back slightly in the chair across from you.
“You moved halfway across the world by yourself,” he says. “So yeah. I came to do a welfare check.” Something warm and painful twists in your chest all at once, so you try covering it with humor. “Am I that unlucky or just that special?”
Jack looks at you for a long moment. Then, softly, he replies, “Just that special.” The room goes very still while your pulse stutters painfully against your ribs. Jack clears his throat first, looking away. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
He gives you a tired, unimpressed look immediately, “Don’t start with me.” You sigh, shoulders slumping. “I feel…” You swallow hard. “Honestly? Like I got hit by a truck.”
Jack nods once like he expected that answer. “My chest hurts when I cough,” you admit quietly. “And I’m exhausted all the time. Walking to the bathroom feels like running a 10k.”
Jack’s expression softens instantly to concern. “Okay,” he says gently. “That sounds about right for breakthrough COVID.”
You laugh weakly, “Reassuring.”
“You’re vaccinated. Your sats are holding. Fever sucks, but you’re stable.” His voice shifts into that calm doctor cadence you’ve heard him use with terrified patients a hundred times before.
“You’re gonna feel miserable for a little while,” he says softly. “But you’re not dying.”
The ridiculous thing is—you believe him immediately. Maybe because it’s Jack, he always sounds certain even when the world is falling apart. Or maybe because after spending almost a week alone in your apartment feeling terrified and sick and invisible—having somebody show up for you feels dangerously close to relief.
Somewhere beneath the fever and exhaustion and the red string hidden under your sleeve, you realize this is the first time since his wife died that Jack has willingly stepped into somebody else’s home again.
The thought nearly breaks your heart.
Grief has a way of shrinking people's worlds—you'd watched it happen to Jack in real time. After his wife died, he stopped inviting people over. Stopped talking about home or lingering after conversations that might eventually end with someone asking how he was doing outside of work. The walls had gone up slowly. Brick by brick. Most people probably never noticed, but you did. Yet here he is, standing in your cluttered apartment with a stethoscope in one hand and a grocery bag full of electrolyte drinks in the other.
"Drink."
You stare at the bottle he shoves toward you, "You're very bossy outside the hospital."
"Drink." He insists.
"Is this because I ignored your texts?"Jack gives you a look, the one he usually reserves for patients actively making terrible decisions. "Partly."
You sigh dramatically and take the bottle, "Happy?"
"No."
That catches your attention. You look up, and Jack is standing near the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest. The concern on his face isn't hidden anymore. Hasn't been since he walked through the door. "You should've told somebody you were this sick." Your laugh comes out hoarse, "I did."
"No." Jack shakes his head, "You told people you were fine."
"...I was trying not to worry anyone."
"You had a one-oh-one fever and couldn't walk to your bathroom without getting winded."
You look away because when he says it like that, it sounds bad. "It sounds worse when you say it."
"That's because it is worse."
You can't help smiling, but that only seems to annoy him more.
"Why are you smiling?"
"You care."
Jack stares and then immediately looks away. Your fever-addled brain doesn't miss the faint flush creeping up his neck. "Of course I care."
The answer comes too naturally, and for some reason, that makes something warm settle beneath your body. The television murmurs faintly in the background, forgotten as Jack eventually disappears into your kitchen. You hear cabinets opening and then closing. A frustrated sigh leaves him, "How do you have absolutely no food?"
"I have food."
"You have soy sauce and olive oil."
"That's food-adjacent."
Jack pinches the bridge of his nose. "You work in healthcare."
"So do you."
"I know."
"Have you seen what doctors eat?"
He points at you from across the room, "Deflection."
You grin while Jack shakes his head again, but he opens the takeout containers anyway and pours you soup. Then make sure you actually eat it and wait until you're halfway through before finally sitting down. The quiet and unexpected realization sneaks up on him that somehow—he likes taking care of you. Because it shouldn't feel this good. It shouldn't feel this natural to be here. To fuss over your fever, refill your water glass, and check your pulse ox every twenty minutes because he doesn't trust you not to lie about your symptoms.
Yet every time he glances up and sees you curled beneath a blanket on the couch, alive and stubborn and complaining—something in his heart eases. The same feeling he gets when a trauma patient finally stabilizes. When someone he was worried about turns out okay. Only different. This time, it’s more personal and complicated.
You cough suddenly, and Jack is moving before he even realizes it, quickly handing you water. Waiting until the coughing fit passes. Your eyes lift toward him over the rim of the glass. It’s soft and sleepy. "Thank you." Your words are quiet and sincere.
And God help him—that does something to him. Something he doesn't examine too closely.
Because if he does—he might have to ask himself questions he's not ready to answer. Questions like why spending an afternoon taking care of you feels better than spending it anywhere else, or why your apartment already feels strangely familiar. Why did the idea of you being here alone all week bother him so much?
Instead, he focuses on something safer—annoyance. "You know," he says, sitting back in his chair, "your soulmate's doing a terrible job."
You blink at that, frowning, "What?" Jack shrugs, "If they're out there somewhere, they're slacking." A surprised laugh escapes you. "What does that even mean?"
"It means," he says, gesturing vaguely toward your blanket burrito state, "you're sick. Alone. Living on cough drops and spite."
"I had soup."
"You had olive oil."
"That was one time."
Jack rolls his eyes, "My point stands." A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "They should've shown up by now." The joke is spoken carelessly, and he doesn't know it nearly stops your heart.
You look away first, toward the rain-streaked window, literally anywhere but him. Because if you look at Jack right now—if you look at the man sitting in your apartment, taking care of you, worrying over you, complaining about a soulmate who never appeared—you might break.
The red string hidden beneath your sleeve suddenly feels impossibly burdensome. But Jack doesn't notice, he's too busy opening another bottle of water and making sure your fever isn't climbing again. Somewhere in the quiet warmth of your apartment, he doesn’t realize the irony. Jack is sitting exactly where he should be. Doing exactly what he was supposed to do, and somehow, he can’t see it yet.
2023
PTMC, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT — NIGHT
Five years ago, you were the new nurse from the Philippines. Now you're simply part of the Pitt. Nobody really introduces you anymore. You're just there, part of the machinery. You know where everything is and everyone's habits. Or when Ellis is pretending to chart and is actually looking for the next best place to nap for her double. You know when Shen is about to spiral before he even realizes it himself. By now, you have memorized Lena's "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed" face is significantly more terrifying than actual anger.
Somewhere along the way—you became one of the safest places in Jack's life. Neither of you meant for that to happen.
It just did.
There are hundreds of tiny moments, none of which seem important on their own. But together, they're devastating. A patient's husband is screaming in the hallway after a failed resuscitation. Security is trying to de-escalate, family members are crying, and the entire department feels tense. Then, appearing devastated, Jack leaves the room but not in a noticeable way. Most people wouldn't recognize it, but you do.
You don't say anything; instead, you simply hand him a cup of coffee. Exactly how he takes it. He looks down at it, then at you. "Mind reader?" You shrug, "You looked like you needed caffeine." The corner of his mouth twitches, "Thanks."
Somehow, that small smile stays with him the rest of the shift.
Another night, it’s three in the morning. Everyone's fucking exhausted. You're sitting on the floor of the supply room because it's the only place nobody can find you for five minutes. Jack opens the door and stops. He finds you sitting there cross-legged, eating stale vending machine pretzels. "You hiding?"
"No."
"You are literally hiding."
You hold up a pretzel, defensive, "This is self-care." Jack stares at you, then, to your horror, he sits beside you on the floor. Like it's completely normal. "You know we're adults, right?" he asks.
"Says the man eating peanut butter crackers for dinner." Jack looks offended; he scoffs, "I had a protein bar." You roll your eyes at that, "Oh. Well, that's different."
His laugh echoes through the tiny room. It’s warm and unrestrained. The sound settles somewhere dangerous inside your chest. Then the days keep passing by, and then the days turn into months, then it’s another shift, another trauma.
Another impossible night.
A frightened little girl refuses to let go of your hand while waiting for stitches. You're sitting beside her bed, explaining every step of the procedure. Making balloon animals out of gloves while telling ridiculous stories.
By the time you're finished, she's laughing. You don't notice Jack standing in the doorway watching or the expression on his face either. The one that lingers long after he walks away. Because somewhere over the years, admiration has quietly become affection.
Affection has started becoming something else—something he doesn't have a name for yet. Jack's issue is that he doesn't immediately feel things. Without thinking, he simply begins searching for you first.
A difficult trauma comes in? His eyes automatically find yours. A bad shift? He looks for you at Central. A joke occurs to him? He wants to tell you. A patient reminds him of something sad? Somehow, you're the person he ends up talking to.
It happens gradually enough that neither of you notices.
Until everyone else does.
"You know Abbot's gonna have a breakdown if Lifeline ever leaves, right?" Ellis says it casually while charting. You nearly choke on your coffee, "What?" Across the desk, Shen immediately nods. "Oh, absolutely."
"Parker."
"I'm serious."
You point threateningly, "Stop." Parker raises both hands. "Hey, I don't make the rules."
You refuse to acknowledge the strange warmth crawling up your neck. Because if you acknowledge it—you'll have to acknowledge the way your heart still skips whenever Jack smiles at you. After all these years, that feels pathetic.
2024
PTMC, MAIN ENTRANCE — DAY
The rain starts sometime around six in the morning. Not a drizzle—a proper Pittsburgh downpour. The kind that turns streets silver and pounds against windows hard enough to drown out conversation.
After twelve hours of chaos, the entire department begins filtering out toward the parking garage and bus stops. You finally clock out around seven—exhausted and half-awake, absolutely ready for sleep.
When you step outside, you immediately spot Jack standing beneath the small emergency department awning.
Watching the rain… alone with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. Looking at him, you pause, "You're still here?"
Jack glances over, "My car's in the shop."
That explains it.
"How'd you get here?"
"Rideshare."
You look out toward the street, and the rain is somehow worse now. Jack follows your gaze, "Trying to decide how miserable walking home is gonna be." You glance over, "What happened to your ride?"
Jack lets out a tired breath, "Canceled."
"What?"
"Driver got stuck downtown." You wince at that, and he pulls his phone from his pocket and turns the screen toward you. The rideshare app is a disaster—surge pricing, long wait times. One estimate says thirty-eight minutes, while another says unavailable. Apparently, every exhausted healthcare worker in Pittsburgh had the same idea after shift. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Yeah." Jack stuffs his phone away again. "I've been refreshing it for ten minutes."
You look back toward the rain, then down at the umbrella dangling from your wrist, and then back at him. You ask, "No umbrella?"
"Nope."
You stare at him, then at the rain… and then at the very obvious lack of any workable plan. So, without thinking twice, you hold the umbrella out. Jack blinks, looks at the umbrella, and then at you. Then back at the umbrella. It's baby pink and covered in tiny Miffy rabbits. The ears are even printed around the trim—the thing looks aggressively cheerful.
"You serious?"
"Very."
A laugh escapes him, a real one. Low and surprised and completely unguarded. It's probably the first genuine laugh you've heard from him all shift, maybe longer. You feel absurdly proud of yourself as you snort, "Sorry about the color."
Jack studies the umbrella again, "I think I'll survive."
"You sure? Might destroy your reputation."
"My reputation was already questionable."
"Fair."
You press the handle into his hand without hesitation, because that's just who you are. Someone needs help, so you help; it's that simple. Jack looks genuinely baffled. "Wait."
You pause.
"What about you?" He asks, concerned. You shrug. The rain is cold, and the morning is gray. You've worked twelve hours, and your back hurts, along with your feet. But somehow none of that feels important. "I live closer than you do."
"Lifeline."
"Jack."
"You'll get soaked."
You smile, bright and softly. The same smile you've given frightened patients, overwhelmed residents, and grieving family members. You shrug, "It's rain."
His brow furrows, "You say that like hypothermia isn't a thing." You laugh at that, "I'm from the Philippines. Rain and I have a long-standing relationship."
"That's not remotely reassuring."
"It shouldn't be."
Jack shakes his head, but he's smiling now, which gives you a bit of peace. His eyes linger on you a second too long. Or maybe you're imagining it. You probably are—you usually are. Then you add quietly, "Besides, sometimes life is easier when you stop trying to avoid every uncomfortable thing."
Jack's expression softens, and you glance toward the rain. "Sometimes you just accept you're gonna get soaked and go home anyway." Neither of you says anything for a little bit. Because you both know that your words aren't really about the rain, neither of you acknowledges it. A laugh escapes him again, and he shakes his head, "You always have an answer for everything."
"No." You step backward toward the edge of the awning, and the cold rain immediately spatters against your scrub pants while you grin. "You just have to trust you'll be okay once you get there."
That gets another laugh out of him, the kind that reaches his eyes. You would do almost anything to keep hearing that sound. The umbrella remains clutched in his hand. Pink, ridiculous, and entirely yours. But for some reason, he can't stop staring at it. Or at you, standing in the rain, completely unapologetically yourself. No performance or hidden agenda. Only your kindness offered freely, as if giving away the only thing keeping you dry is the most natural decision in the world.
The thing is—Jack has spent years watching people take. Watching grief take, life and death take. And you...You are always giving… your time, your patience, and your terrible vending machine snacks. Your heart, if someone needed it badly enough. Now, it’s your umbrella.
Something warm twists unexpectedly inside of him, and he feels tingling all over his skin, as well as his mouth begins to dry. You lift a hand in farewell, "See you tomorrow, Dr. Abbot."
Then you turn and jog into the rain, water immediately drenches your hair, and you laugh when your shoe splashes into a puddle. You keep running anyway. While Jack just stands there—watching, until you disappear around the corner. Long after you're gone, he remains beneath the awning with your pink umbrella still hanging from his hand.
The rideshare app was forgotten entirely, and the rain pounded against the pavement as the morning traffic crawled by. For the first time in a very long time—the thought of going home doesn't feel quite as lonely. He looks down at the ridiculous little umbrella again. Then, despite himself, he smiles. Because somehow the damn thing feels exactly like you.
2025
NIGHTCLUB, PITTSBURGH — NIGHT
The music is loud enough to vibrate through your ribs. Honestly, you're having fun, a rare occurrence these days. Between night shifts and overtime and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life outside of the Pitt, opportunities to be a normal twenty-something are increasingly rare.
So when a few friends invited you out, you said yes. You danced, drank, and laughed. You let yourself forget about work for a few hours, and somewhere between your second drink and the realization that your feet hurt, you discovered a very important problem.
Your apartment keys were gone—completely vanished, you checked your purse three times. Your jacket pockets twice, then the bathroom counter, next the bar, and still nothing. Which is how you found yourself sitting in a booth near the back of the club with your phone pressed to your ear.
Waiting for Jack to answer.
He picks up on the second ring, "Everything okay?" You immediately relax, which is probably a problem. "Maybe."
Jack sighs, the sound of a man who has known you far too long, "What happened?" You look mournfully into your drink, "I lost my keys." A pause on the other end, and then, "You what?"
"They're gone."
"Lifeline."
"They disappeared."
"Keys don't disappear."
"They absolutely do."
The music swells around you, and someone screams happily near the dance floor. Through the phone, Jack suddenly goes quiet. He asks, "Where are you?"
You blink, "Huh?"
"Where are you?"
You frown, then glance up at the neon sign hanging over the bar, "Oh." You tell him the club's name. The silence on the other end lasts approximately two seconds before you hear him ask, "How are you getting home?"
You wave a hand vaguely despite the fact he can't see you, "M'gonna Uber." The words come out more slurred than intended. Silence... a long silence, then you hear him sigh, "Jesus Christ."
"It’s not that bad—"
"No."
You open your mouth to argue, but Jack beats you to it. "I'm picking you up." You immediately sober, exclaiming, "What?"
"Do not leave with anybody."
"Jack—"
"Do not get into a stranger's car."
"That's literally what Uber is." You throw back in response.
"Lifeline." The warning in his voice makes you sit up straighter. "I'm serious. Stay where you are."
"Jack—"
"I'm already grabbing my keys."
Your stomach flips unexpectedly as you point out, "You're working tomorrow."
"So are you."
"Jack."
His voice drops lower, gentler as he begs, "Please." And that ends the argument before it starts. You stare at your drink and reluctantly reply, "...Okay."
"Good." A beat and then you hear, "Don't hang up."
Twenty-five minutes later, Jack walks into the club and promptly forgets how to breathe, because he has never seen you like this before. At work, you're always in scrubs, with your hair pulled back, minimal makeup, and practical shoes.
Tonight—tonight you look nothing like the nurse who steals his coffee and argues with surgeons. Your hair is down, and your makeup catches the flashing lights every time you move. The outfit you're wearing should probably be illegal—at least that's what his traitorous brain immediately decides. Far too much skin and too beautiful—too distracting.
Jack stares for half a second too long, but then immediately hates himself for it. Because he's Jack and you're you. You're his friend, and he's forty-something years old and should absolutely know better. But the sudden realization that other people are staring at you, too, fills him with an entirely unreasonable amount of irritation. There are multiple reasons he hates that realization—none of them are good. You spot him immediately, and relief floods your face, "Jack!"
Somehow that's worse—because you're happy to see him, you always are. Jack pushes through the crowd toward your booth. He asks, "You okay?"
You grin, a little tipsy and a little tired, "Hi."
"That's not an answer."
"I lost my keys."
"You mentioned."
You immediately point at him, "I looked."
"I believe you."
"I looked everywhere."
Jack softens despite himself, "I know."
Just like that, some of the tension leaves your shoulders. The amount of trust you've placed in him over the years—it sneaks up on him sometimes, along with the amount he's placed in you. Neither of you ever talks about it—it's just simply there.
"Where are your friends?"
You blink.
"Oh."
You glance toward the dance floor, where your group has completely disappeared into the crowd. One of them is standing on a platform dancing with a stranger. Another appears to be attempting karaoke despite there being no karaoke machine. Honestly, nobody looks remotely concerned about your whereabouts. You point vaguely, "Over there." Jack follows your finger, and immediately regrets it. "Jesus."
You laugh, "They're having fun."
"They look like a liability."
"They are." A pause, then you smile warmly at him. The kind of smile that's become increasingly difficult for him to ignore lately.
"You ready to head home?" The question comes out gentler than he intended. Your expression softens immediately. "Mhm."
There’s no argument because the answer was always going to be yes. After all, it's him asking. Something in Jack's chest tightens unexpectedly. You climb out of the booth and wobble slightly when your heel catches on the edge of the floor. His hand is on your elbow before either of you thinks about it. It’s steady and instinctive—the contact lasts barely a second, but you both notice. Your eyes flick down to his hand, then back up to his face. Neither of you says anything, and Jack clears his throat first before he lets go, "You good?"
You nod immediately, "Mhm. Yep." Then point at him. "I need to go tell them I'm not being kidnapped by you."
The laugh that escapes him is helpless, "You go do that."
You grin, "Okay.” Before turning toward the dance floor, you lightly tap his arm. It’s a small gesture, mindless and affectionate. The kind of touch friends make without thinking. Yet Jack feels it long after you've disappeared into the crowd. He watches you weave through the dancers. Watch you throw your arms around one of your friends.
You laugh at something that makes your whole face light up, and standing there in the middle of a crowded nightclub, surrounded by strangers and flashing lights and music loud enough to shake the floor—Jack suddenly realizes he's smiling. He's smiling because you're happy and somewhere deep down, in a place he has been carefully avoiding for a very long time—he knows that's becoming a problem.
You weave your way through the crowd, dodging dancers and spilled drinks, until you finally find your friends near the center of the dance floor. One of them immediately grabs your arm, "There you are!" You laugh, "Apparently, I'm leaving."
"What?" another groans theatrically. "Already?"
You point toward the edge of the club—toward Jack. Standing near the entrance with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, waiting. The second your friends spot him, several heads swivel at once. Then all of them turn suspiciously slowly back toward you.
"Ohhh."
You immediately know that tone, you shake your head, "No."
"That's the doctor."
"No."
"The hot doctor."
You cover your face, "Oh my God." One of them leans closer, asking, "Is he your boyfriend?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Very."
"Because he definitely looks like he's here to pick up his girlfriend." Heat floods your face instantly, "No, he does not."
Across the room, Jack glances over, as if sensing he's being talked about. But when he spots you, his expression visibly relaxes. And unfortunately, your friends see that too. "Oh my God."
You groan, "Stop."
"He likes you."
"He does not."
"He drove here to rescue you from yourself."
"That's called friendship."
"That's called middle-aged pining." You nearly choke, "Please never say those words again."
Laughter follows you all the way back toward the entrance, and Jack looks mildly concerned the closer you get. "You okay?"
"Apparently not."
He narrows his eyes at your response, "What happened?"
"My friends are terrible people."
"Fair."
You point at him, "Don't encourage them."
"I'm not encouraging anybody."
"Liar."
The corner of his mouth twitches, and just like that, some of the tension leaves your shoulders. The simple fact that he's here has solved half the problem already. Then you take two steps toward the exit, but Jack is moving before he even thinks about it. One hand catches your elbow, and the other settles briefly at your waist, steadying you. The contact is innocent, but your breath catches anyway. It’s practical and necessary, at least that's what both of you tell yourselves.
"Whoa there." Jack says, and you blink up at him, then immediately start laughing, "I think the floor moved."
"The floor did not move."
"It absolutely moved."
"Lifeline."
"I'm just saying." Jack shakes his head, and his hand doesn't immediately leave your waist. Neither of you seems to notice. Or maybe both of you notice too much. "Come on."
You allow him to guide you outside, and the cool night air hits immediately. Rain lingers on the pavement, turning the streets into rivers of reflected neon. You inhale deeply, then sway again. Jack catches you before it becomes a problem. His hand settles more firmly against your side this time, and your body immediately relaxes into the contact like it's familiar.
Jack notices that too. "You good?" He asked, and you nod, "Mhm." A beat, and then you add, "The ground's still suspicious."
That earns a real laugh out of him, and you love that sound.
The parking lot isn't far, but Jack keeps his hand on your waist the entire walk there. Just in case… well, at least that's what he tells himself. Not because he likes the feeling of you beside him or how perfectly you fit there.
Just in case. That's all…. at least for tonight.
Jack sighs. The long-suffering sigh of a man who spends his life dealing with stubborn people. "Come on."
You allow him to guide you… well. at least until you nearly walk directly into a group of people entering the club. Jack catches your shoulder and redirects you gently, "Okay."
"What?"
His hand settles more firmly against your back, "Maybe we're graduating from independent walking." You gasp dramatically, "I am fully capable." But your words come out slightly slurred.
Jack raises an eyebrow, "You just tried to walk through three people."
"They were in my way."
A laugh escapes him. God. You're something truly special.
Now he has a new problem. Namely, getting you safely into his truck before you attempt something stupid.
The passenger-side door swings open, and you stare at it, then back at the seat. Jack immediately knows what's happening. "Need help?"
"No." A pause as you squint at the truck suspiciously. "Maybe."
"It's higher than it looked five seconds ago, isn't it?"
"It definitely wasn't this tall before."
Jack bites the inside of his cheek, hard, trying not to laugh.
"Okay."
Before you can protest, his firm hands settle at your waist, and suddenly you're being lifted just enough to get into the passenger seat. The whole thing takes maybe two seconds, except neither of you feels normal afterward. You freeze, and Jack also freezes. His hands are still on your waist, and you're looking directly at each other—far too close.
For a brief, dangerous moment, neither of you moves. Then Jack clears his throat, immediately stepping back. "Seatbelt."
Your brain takes several seconds to reboot, "What?"
"Seatbelt."
"Oh."
Of course, duh. You fumble with it and miss the buckle twice before Jack reaches over and clicks it into place. His face is suddenly very near again. Near enough to see the tiny scar near his jaw, and that your heart starts doing things it absolutely should not be doing. "There." His voice comes out lower than usual. You swallow, "Thanks."
Neither of you acknowledges how strange the moment felt and the warmth lingering where his hands had been. Or the way Jack has to grip the steering wheel a little tighter once he's behind it. Because some things are easier left alone. At least for now.
JACK ABBOT’S APARTMENT — NIGHT
The drive back to your apartment is quieter than the nightclub. The city has settled into that strange hour between night and morning, when the roads are mostly empty, and the traffic lights seem to change for no one. Rain taps softly against the windshield as Jack drives, one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the gearshift. You are attempting to stay awake. Attempting being the important word here. Every few minutes, your head tips toward the window before jerking upright again.
Jack notices every single time, "You can sleep."
"I'm not sleeping."
"You were asleep thirty seconds ago."
"I was thinking."
"You were drooling."
You gasp in offense, and Jack doesn't even look at you as he commands, "Go to sleep."
"You're mean." A laugh escapes him at your comment. He realizes that he’s been doing it a lot when he’s around you.
By the time you arrive at your apartment, you’re humming a song, trying to stay awake. Then Jack pats his pocket, and freezes when he realizes, "...Shit."
You blink, "What?" He closes his eyes, "I forgot your spare key." You stare, then immediately start laughing.
Jack groans, "Oh my God."
"You drove all the way there."
“Don’t.”
"You forgot the whole reason you picked me up."
"Don't."
Your laughter gets worse, and for the first time in years, Jack lets out a full belly laugh too. He begins to drive to his apartment, and since it’s late, he offers for you to crash at his place.
By the time he pulls into his apartment complex, you're visibly losing the fight against exhaustion and alcohol—mostly alcohol. The second you step through the front door, you kick your heels off exaggeratedly. One lands near the couch, and the other somehow ends up halfway down the hallway. Jack silently watches this happen. Then watches you attempt to unbuckle whatever complicated contraption is keeping your outfit together. "Okay," he says immediately.
"What?"
"Maybe let's not do that."
You frown at him, "Why?"
Because you're drunk—very drunk, and apparently completely unaware that you're standing in the middle of his apartment trying to peel yourself out of an outfit that has occupied far too much of his attention already. Jack suddenly finds the ceiling fascinating, the wall too. Actually, maybe the floor. Anywhere except you.
"Because," he says carefully, "you need pajamas."
"Oh." You consider this, then nod solemnly. "Pajamas are smart."
"Thank you."
"I am smart."
"You are." He nods, and you point at him, "I knew you'd agree."
Jack presses his lips together. God help him. Somehow, over the years, you've become one of his favorite people. A few minutes later, after much negotiation and several failed attempts to convince you that sleeping in sequins is a terrible idea, Jack disappears into his bedroom closet. He returns holding an old Army shirt—worn soft with age, the fabric faded from years of washing, along with a pair of boxers. You stare, then grin. "These yours?" Jack immediately regrets everything, "Yes."
"Cool."
Then, before he can stop you—you start changing.
"Jesus Christ."
You blink, "What?"
Jack is staring firmly at the opposite wall. "You could've warned me."
"Why?"
Because you're still drunk enough that embarrassment hasn't caught up with you yet. Meanwhile, Jack is discovering entirely new levels of self-control.
"Bathroom," he says.
"Right." You pause, then gesture wildly. "The bathroom."
"Correct."
Five minutes later, you emerge wearing the oversized shirt. The hem brushes your thighs while sleeves hang past your hands. The sight nearly kills him, because you look comfortable—like you belong here. Which is a thought he immediately shoves into a locked box and throws into the ocean. Nope. Not touching that. Absolutely not. That’s reserved for a future therapy session. Boy, is his therapist going to love that.
"Sit."
You immediately sit on the edge of his bed.
"Drink."
You obediently accept the water bottle, and Jack blinks, "That's new."
"What?"
"You listened."
You point at him, "You're bossy."
"Drink the water."
You drink the water, then he hands you a spare toothbrush and makes sure you actually use it. Then spends several minutes making certain you don't accidentally fall asleep face-first into the sink. By the time he's satisfied you're hydrated and functional enough not to accidentally die overnight, you're sitting cross-legged on the edge of his bed, wrapped in one of his old shirts and looking increasingly sleepy.
You dig through your purse. "There are makeup wipes in here."
Jack pauses, asks, "You carry those around?"
"My eyeliner smudges." You shrug. "My mascara too."
Jack shakes his head, "Prepared for everything."
"It's literally why we carry purses."
"Pretty sure that's not why."
"It absolutely is."
He finds the packet eventually and pulls one free, then gestures to you, "Come here." You blink, dazed, "What?"
"Your mascara's halfway down your face."
Well, that’s fucking mortifying—immediately you cover your face, "Oh my God." Jack laughs softly; the sound is low and warm. "You're fine."
"No, I'm not."
"You really are."
Gently, he pulls your hand away and carefully brushes the wipe across your cheek. His touch is light, patient, and unhurried. The same hands that place chest tubes and suture wounds and perform procedures under pressure somehow become impossibly gentle. They always do around people he cares about. You go strangely still, and the room suddenly feels too quiet and small. Jack is close enough that the details become impossible to ignore. The silver was woven through his hair. The exhaustion that never quite leaves his eyes. The traces of loss he carries with him even now. And still, despite all of it—or maybe because of it—he remains devastatingly, painfully beautiful.
"You've done this before." The words leave your mouth before you can stop them.
Jack's hand stills briefly, then resumes. "Mmm." His voice is soft, a little distant. "She hated taking her makeup off."
The ache arrives instantly—it’s deep and familiar.
"She'd fall asleep on the couch." A small smile touches his mouth. "Every time." His gaze drops to the wipe in his hand, "Eventually, it was easier to do it myself."
A tender silence settles over the room, and suddenly your eyes sting. Because even now—all these years later—he still misses her. Of course he does, he always will.
"Jack." He looks up, and you swallow hard. "I'm sorry."
His hand pauses, and he asks, "For what?"
Your throat tightens painfully, "I know you miss her." The words come out small, but completely honest, and are barely above a whisper. Jack looks at you, and what he sees nearly unravels him. Because you're crying for him—not for yourself, or because you're drunk. You're crying because his pain hurts you. Because somehow you've always carried pieces of everyone else's heartbreak as if it belongs to you too.
A tear slips down your cheek, and before you can wipe it away, Jack reaches up, his thumb tenderly brushes gently across your skin.
The touch lingers slightly.
"Hey." His voice is impossibly soft, "Don't cry, honey."
The endearment slips out before he can stop it. The second it does, the room changes. Your breath catches, and Jack freezes. Neither of you moves. For one suspended second, the entire world narrows to that single point of contact. His hand against your cheek, your eyes locked on his. The silence between you is suddenly filled with things neither of you knows how to say. Then Jack does the only thing he can think of—he opens his arms, and you go willingly. The hug is immediate, warm, and safe. Your forehead presses against his shoulder, and his strong arms wrap around you while you melt into him without hesitation. Trusting him completely, the way you always have. Fuck—that might be the most dangerous thing of all. For a moment, neither of you lets go, because none of you wants to. Jack can feel your heartbeat through the thin cotton of his shirt and feel your breathing gradually slowing. He can feel himself becoming far too aware of how perfectly you fit against him.
He closes his eyes for a second.
A mistake.
Because the truth waits for him there—the truth that somewhere along the way, you stopped being just his friend and just his favorite nurse. Stopped being just the person he trusted most and became something he doesn't know what to do with.
Eventually, your breathing evens out. Then slows….then slows again. Jack glances down and realizes you've fallen asleep curled against him. Carefully, he shifts and lowers you onto the bed, pulls the blanket over you, and tucks it beneath your shoulder. The motion is automatic, and for a moment, guilt rises sharp and sudden. Not because you remind him of his late wife. You don't, and you never have. You never will. But somehow that realization doesn't hurt. It simply feels true. You are different—entirely your own person. Entirely your own place in his life. Jack stands there for a long moment, watching you sleep peacefully. Then quietly, he reaches for his crutches resting beside the nightstand.
The apartment is dark now, silent, as he pauses at the doorway, looks back one last time, at you sleeping in his bed. Wrapped in his shirt, breathing softly against his pillow, and despite every effort not to—Jack smiles. Then he switches off the light and heads toward the couch. Completely unaware that he's already fallen far deeper than he ever intended to.
JACK ABBOT'S APARTMENT — MORNING
The first thing you notice when you wake up is that you're comfortable. Suspiciously comfortable. Wrapped in sheets that smell faintly of clean laundry and something familiar you can't quite place. For a few blissful seconds, you remain exactly where you are, half-buried beneath the blankets, eyes still closed. Then your brain starts working slowly… like an old computer booting up. Your mouth is dry, your head hurts, and you have absolutely no idea where the hell you are.
You crack one eye open, and a ceiling you don't recognize stares back. Your stomach immediately drops. "Oh no."
Then the memories start returning. The nightclub, losing your keys, calling Jack… Jack picking you up. The drive to his apartment, the makeup wipes, and the hug. Oh God. The hug.
Your eyes fly open, fully awake now. Mortification floods your entire body with terrifying speed. "No, no, no, no..."
You immediately bury your face in your hands. Maybe if you stay here long enough, you'll evaporate, and the earth will open up and swallow you whole. Maybe cardiac arrest—you'd accept cardiac arrest. Slowly, you peek out from between your fingers, and a glass of water sits on the nightstand. Beside it is a bottle of ibuprofen and a neatly folded note in Jack's handwriting.
Drink water before standing up.
Your heart does something deeply unhelpful as you groan, "Oh, my God."
Because that's such a Jack thing to do, he’s practical, thoughtful, and annoyingly sweet. You whimper and flop backward onto the pillow.
Unfortunately, reality remains—and reality is that you are currently in Jack Abbot's bed. His bed—his actual bed, the place where he sleeps. The place where—You immediately shove that thought into a dumpster and set it on fire. Nope. Absolutely not. Not going there.
You drag yourself upright before your imagination can make things worse. The oversized Army shirt hanging off your shoulders shifts as you move. Your eyes immediately drop. Jack's shirt. You are wearing Jack's shirt. You consider throwing yourself out of the nearest window.
The bathroom is somehow worse. Because now you're sober, fully sober. Which means you remember everything… mostly. You splash cold water onto your face repeatedly. Trying to wash away the embarrassment and the memory of crying. The image of him calling you honey and you falling asleep against him.
"Oh, I'm never recovering from this." You groan into the sink before you force yourself to look in the mirror. You survive trauma shifts and twelve-hour nights. You went through fucking COVID. So… you can survive breakfast. Probably.
After one final pep talk that accomplishes absolutely nothing, you step out of the bathroom and immediately stop. A framed photograph sits atop the dresser, Jack and his wife, both smiling. The picture looks old, well-loved, the edges slightly worn. Guilt arrives like a punch to the ribs. Because no matter how much time has passed, she's still here. In photographs, memories, and the quiet spaces, he doesn't talk about. You stare at the picture for a moment longer, then look away. The guilt lingers anyway.
The smell hits you before you reach the living room. Coffee, eggs, and toast, along with something frying in a pan. Your stomach growls traitorously, then you turn the corner, and nearly walk directly into a wall. Because Jack is standing at the stove, shirtless. You stop functioning completely. Gone. No thoughts. Head empty. Just panic. Because somehow, in all the years you've known him, you've never actually seen him like this.
At work, he's always covered by scrubs, layers, a jacket, and PPE. Now—now he's standing barefoot in his kitchen wearing nothing but athletic shorts and his prosthetic. Morning sunlight spills through the apartment windows. Across broad shoulders, freckled skin, and muscle earned through years of physical therapy, stubbornness, and sheer determination. The prosthetic is already attached as part of him, as familiar and unremarkable as breathing. You know the story and what happened, and understand now the work it takes to live with it.
Still—seeing him outside the hospital feels strangely intimate, and very human. Your jaw nearly hits the floor as Jack turns. He immediately catches your expression, and to his eternal satisfaction, you look horrified. Not by him, but by being caught staring. His mouth twitches, "Morning."
You blink once, then twice, and you begin rapidly looking anywhere else.
"Morning." Your voice cracks. Well, that’s spectacular. Jack's eyebrow rises, "Rough landing?" You clear your throat. "Oh, absolutely."
His smile grows slightly. "There are worse hangovers."
"Don't."
"You called me at midnight because you lost your keys."
"Jack."
"You accused the floor of moving."
"Jack."
"You tried to negotiate with a coat rack."
Your eyes widen as you sputter, "I did not."
"You absolutely did."
"Oh my fucking God."
Jack laughs—there it is again, a little lighter than it used to be. "Come eat." You hesitate, still standing awkwardly in his shirt, and painfully aware you're in his apartment—his space. Then Jack glances over his shoulder, "You need food before your headache gets worse."
There it is. His doctor voice—the one that brooks absolutely no argument. You sigh dramatically and obey. Because apparently that's become a habit. Jack places a plate in front of you. Eggs, toast, fruit, and a giant glass of water.
You stare, and then at him, then back at the plate, "You made breakfast."
"You sound surprised."
"You made breakfast."
"You were hungover." You blink because he says it so simply, as if taking care of you is the most natural thing in the world, and maybe that's what gets you. It's how easy it seems for him—the quiet way he shows up. Again, and again. So instead of saying any of that, you pick up a piece of toast. "Thanks." Jack glances up from his coffee, his expression softening almost imperceptibly. "Anytime, Lifeline."
You lower your gaze quickly and focus on your breakfast instead. Unfortunately, that only makes things worse because now you're sitting at Jack's dining table, in Jack's apartment—wearing Jack's shirt.
Eating breakfast, he made for you. The domesticity of it settles wrong inside your conscience. Not because you or him have done anything wrong. But because it feels like you're standing in a place that once belonged to someone else. Your eyes drift toward the bookshelf across the room. A framed photograph sits among the books, showing Jack and his late wife. They’re smiling and happy.
The familiar guilt immediately curls around your throat. You look away, and your appetite suddenly harder to find. Jack notices and asks, "You okay?"
You force a smile, "Mhm." Jack raises an eyebrow. The same look he gives patients who claim their pain is a three out of ten while actively dying. "Lifeline."
You sigh at being caught, again. "It's stupid."
"If you're saying that, it probably isn't."
The concern in his voice makes the guilt worse. You stare down at your plate, picking apart a piece of toast. "You've done so much for me."
Jack frowns immediately, "Okay."
"And I kind of crashed into your life last night."
His confusion visibly increases as he points out the obvious, "You lost your keys."
"I know."
"You called me."
"I know."
Jack waits as you groan softly because this sounds ridiculous out loud. "It just feels like I'm imposing."
Jack's expression softens as he says, "Lifeline." You hate it when he says your nickname like that—as if he's trying to talk you down from something.
"You are not imposing."
You look away, stubbornly mutter, "Still."
"No." His answer comes immediately.
You glance up, and Jack is looking directly at you now. Completely serious. "You called because you needed help. That's what people do."
"But—"
"It's not a burden."
You open your mouth; however, Jack cuts you off again. "You would've done the same thing for me."
And unfortunately—he's right. You would've, without hesitation. At three in the morning, or in the middle of a thunderstorm. Without a second thought.
Jack sees the realization cross your face. A faint smile touches the corner of his mouth.
"Exactly."
You look back down at your plate, suddenly embarrassed. Because he's making it sound so simple. Meanwhile, your brain is spiraling. You risk a glance upward and immediately regret it. Because Jack is leaning against the counter. Coffee mug in hand. Morning sunlight spilling through the kitchen windows behind him. Now that you're sober, you're trying very hard not to notice things. Like the freckles scattered across his shoulders. Or the way years of physical therapy and hospital shifts have built quiet strength into him. Maybe the fact that he looks unfairly good for someone standing barefoot in his kitchen at eight in the morning. Your eyes immediately dart back to your eggs because you’re a coward.
"So." Jack takes another sip of coffee. The amusement in his voice is impossible to miss. "You gonna keep staring at your breakfast like it’s inedible?"
You nearly choke, "What?"
"The eggs."
"Oh." Your face feels suspiciously warm. "They're intimidating."
Jack stares at you, then laughs.
Somehow and somewhere along the way, Jack stopped being your soulmate, the impossible person at the end of a red string, and became Jack. The man who remembers your coffee order, and the one who checked on you when you had COVID, who keeps spare electrolyte packets in his kitchen because he knows you're terrible at taking care of yourself. The man who made you breakfast because you were hungover, and the man who still loves his wife. The guilt returns instantly. You glance toward the photograph again. Jack follows your gaze this time. His expression changes subtly. The smile faded into something quieter, more thoughtful. Neither of you says anything for a moment. The apartment settles into a small, comfortable, sad silence. The kind that comes from old grief that never fully disappears. Finally, you clear your throat. "I'm sorry."
Jack immediately looks confused. "For what?" You gesture vaguely around the apartment. "Sleeping in your room." His expression somehow becomes even more confused. "Lifeline."
"I'm serious."
"Why?"
You stare at him, "Because it's your room."
"Correct."
"And your bed."
"Also correct."
You narrow your eyes because Jack is enjoying this. The asshole. "Jack."
"What?"
"I feel bad."
His expression softens immediately into a quiet gentleness. "It's fine." He replied. You shake your head, "But—"
"No." His voice is calm. "I wasn't going to wake you up so you could sleep on the couch." You open your mouth. Close it. Open it again. You try to rebut, "But—" Jack points toward your coffee, "You would've fallen asleep sitting upright."
"That's not true."
"It absolutely is."
"It happened one time."
"It happened three times."
"Allegedly."
Jack laughs into his coffee, and for a moment, just a moment, the guilt eases. Because he's looking at you like you're welcome here. As if your presence isn't an intrusion or that helping you wasn't an obligation. It was just something he wanted to do. That realization follows you for the rest of breakfast. Maybe that's why loving him has always felt so dangerous. It's the spare apartment key he keeps on his keyring. The electrolyte packets in his kitchen because he knows you're terrible at remembering to drink water. The bottle of ibuprofen is waiting on the nightstand before you even wake up. The way he remembers—he doesn't even realize he's doing it.
Eventually, breakfast ends, and you help carry plates to the sink despite Jack's protests. "I'm perfectly capable of washing a plate."
"I know."
"You sounded doubtful."
"I wasn't."
"You were."
Jack rolls his eyes, and you grin.
For a moment, it feels normal. As if this is something the two of you do all the time. Then Jack glances toward the hallway. "I should shower."
Your eyes immediately dart away.
Why are you suddenly embarrassed? You've seen this man covered in blood during trauma activations, and somehow, showering is what's awkward.
"Okay." Jack nods, then pauses, a small frown appearing. "You don't have clothes."
You blink, "Oh." You hadn't actually thought that far ahead. Your club outfit is currently somewhere in the apartment and likely smells like spilled alcohol, perfume, and poor decisions.
Jack disappears down the hallway before you can offer a solution. A moment later he returns carrying a pair of gray sweatpants and another shirt. You immediately recognize the Army logo faded across the front. "Here."
You stare at him, then back at the clothes. "I can't take your clothes."
"You're already wearing my clothes." Unfortunately, he has a point. You glance down at the oversized shirt hanging off your shoulders. Jack's mouth twitches, "The sweats have a drawstring."
"Oh, good."
"They should fit."
"Should?"
"Mostly." You narrow your eyes, but Jack looks entirely unapologetic. "You can keep the shirt." Your heart immediately forgets how to function, breathless, "What?" Jack casually shrugs, "It's old." You can’t fucking breathe, so you settle for, "Oh."
The thought of keeping it, taking it home, and sleeping in it. Smelling his laundry detergent every time you wear it is incredibly intimate. "Thanks."
Across his expression is as soft as his response, "You're welcome." Then he gestures toward the hallway. "I'm gonna shower."
You nod, "Okay."
"The shower chair's in my bathroom, so I'll be in there awhile." The statement is matter-of-fact and unremarkable. The same way he always talks about it. Not because it doesn't matter. But because Jack long ago learned there was no point treating every accommodation like a tragedy. It's simply part of his life—part of him. You nod again, "Take your time."
Jack studies you for a second; he's checking for lingering hangover symptoms. Then apparently decides you'll survive. "I'll drive you home after."
"Sounds good." You agree. There’s a pause before Jack says, "Try not to break anything while I'm gone." Your gasp is immediate, "Rude."
"I know you."
"You wound me."
Jack laughs, then walks down the hallway. A few moments later, you hear the bathroom door close. The apartment becomes quiet—the one that only exists in the homes of people who live alone. You wander slowly—absolutely not snooping. You were observing, there's a difference. The apartment itself feels like Jack. Comfortable, practical, and unpretentious. Bookshelves line one wall of the living room. Medical textbooks, military history, and novels with dog-eared pages. A few framed photographs scattered throughout the apartment—friends, coworkers, and people who matter.
You pause near one shelf. A photograph sits there. Jack and his late wife, when they were younger, were laughing. The picture caught in the middle of a moment rather than a pose. She has her head tipped toward him, and Jack is looking at her like she hung the moon.
Your stomach lurches. Because even now—years later—she still belongs here. Of course she does. This was their home, their life. You gently set the frame back exactly where you found it. Suddenly feeling like an intruder again, your gaze drifts around the apartment. There are signs of her everywhere if you know where to look. It isn’t overwhelming or frozen in time. There’s a photograph, a ceramic mug, and a framed postcard tucked between books. Evidence that she existed, and you hate yourself a little. Because standing here, wrapped in Jack's clothes, waiting for him to finish showering, part of you wishes things were different. Part of you wishes you weren't standing in the aftermath of someone else's great love story. The guilt settles heavily, along with the red string hidden beneath your sleeve. You glance toward the hallway, and the sound of running water. Toward the man you've loved for years. Because no matter how badly you want him—you've never wanted to replace her. Not for a second. Never. You just...wanted him to be happy, even if it was never with you.
The drive back to your apartment is quiet, but not uncomfortable. You sit curled into the passenger seat, your folded dress resting on your lap alongside your heels. The sleeves of Jack's old Army shirt hang past your wrists, and the sweatpants are too big with the drawstring pulled tight enough to keep them from falling. You feel ridiculous, like a child playing dress-up. Outside the window, Pittsburgh drifts by in shades of gray. You keep your eyes fixed on it. Because every time you glance at Jack, your heart hurts. Especially after last night… the makeup wipes, the hug, his hand on your face, honey. You don't trust yourself anymore, not even a little. Beside you, Jack steals another glance. You're unusually quiet, and that alone is enough to make him nervous. Normally, even hungover, you'd be talking, making terrible jokes, or complaining about your headache.
Instead, you're staring out the window like you're already somewhere else. His fingers tighten slightly on the steering wheel as he asks, "You okay?" You nod immediately, humming, "Mhm."
A lie that Jack recognizes instantly, but he lets it go for now. When he finally pulls up in front of your apartment building, neither of you moves immediately. The truck idles softly as silence stretches, then you suddenly unbuckle. Before Jack can process what's happening, you lean across the center console and wrap your arms around him. The hug catches him completely off guard, and for a moment, he freezes. Then instinct takes over. His arms come around you automatically. Your face presses briefly against his shoulder. Jack's heart does something strange and painful. Because it feels like goodbye, and he has absolutely no idea why.
"Hey." His voice comes out softer than intended. You squeeze him once before you let go, because if you hold on any longer, you won't be able to leave.
"Thanks," you whisper. Your eyes sting immediately, but you force a smile anyway. "For everything." The words shouldn't sound final, but they do. "Anytime, honey." The endearment slips out effortlessly and naturally now. Neither of you acknowledges it. Jack studies your face, trying to figure out what's wrong, to understand why you suddenly look like you're trying not to cry. So he asks carefully, "I'll see you later at work, yeah?"
Your throat tightens while you nod. "Mhm." It's not technically a lie. The second you step out of the truck, you don't look back. You can't. Because if you do, you'll stay. So you practically run inside your apartment building.
Leaving Jack staring after you, confused, worried, and somehow strangely unsettled.
PTMC, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT — DAY
Dana and Lena listen quietly. The three of you sit in an empty conference room before shift change. You make it approximately halfway through your explanation before you start crying. Not graceful tears, pretty tears, but the ugly kind. The tears you've spent years swallowing, "I'm sorry."
Dana immediately reaches for you, "Hey." You shake your head, "I'm sorry."
"Hon." Dana rubs circles against your back, her voice gentle, maternal. "Why are you apologizing?" You laugh through your tears because the answer feels obvious and impossible. "Because I'm in love with him."
The room falls silent as Lena and Dana exchange a glance. A look. One that says they already knew. Everyone always knows except the people involved. "It's just for a little while," you whisper while you wipe furiously at your face. "I just need some space." Dana's expression softens. She asks, "And what about your heart?"
That's the problem, isn't it? Your heart—your stupid, stubborn heart. You stare down at your hands, "Until it relearns how to stop beating for him." Then quietly you hear Lena ask, "So you're not gonna tell him?" You shake your head immediately, "I can't."
Because how do you tell someone that you've been tethered to them for seven years? That you've loved them through a marriage, grief, and loss. Through healing. How do you tell someone that? Especially when he never chose you. So you don't.
THREE DAYS LATER…
PTMC, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT — NIGHT
Three days later, Jack notices immediately, the second he walks into the ED, you're gone. No coffee sitting beside your workstation and sarcastic comments from Central—there’s no you. He finds Lena first and asks, "Where is she?" Lena doesn't even look up from her charting, "Where's who?” Jack stares, "Lifeline."
"Oh." She clicks something on her computer. "Day shift." His stomach drops, "What?"
"She switched."
"When?" Lena shrugs at him, "A few days ago."
Jack blinks slowly. "Why?"
"Ask Dana." Suddenly, Lena becomes very interested in her chart.
A week passes, then two, and Jack begins losing his mind. Because you are avoiding him, deliberately and aggressively. You leave before he arrives, or arrive before he leaves. You disappear down hallways and take lunch at different times. Find literally any excuse not to be alone with him. The few times he manages to catch sight of you—you smile and wave.
Then vanish again, like smoke, as if you're afraid of him, and that hurts. Because Jack keeps replaying that night. The club, his apartment, the hug, and the morning after. What did he miss? What did he do? Did he cross a line? Did he make you uncomfortable? Did he somehow ruin the one friendship he can't bear to lose? Every answer leads nowhere, and every day you drift a little farther away. Three weeks later, during shift change, Jack finally spots you. Walking quickly through the corridor, badge swinging from the clip of your scrub pocket, and iced coffee in hand.
He immediately changes direction. "Lifeline." You freeze for a second, then keep walking. Fuck. Jack follows and calls after you, "Lifeline." Your pace somehow gets faster, and now he's genuinely irritated and hurt. "Hey."
Finally, you stop, turning around, with a careful smile already in place, too careful. But not him, never him, not until now. "Hi, Jack." The distance between you feels enormous as he asks, "What is going on?" Nothing. Everything. You force a shrug, "Nothing."
That’s bullshit, and Jack knows it's bullshit. You know he knows, but neither of you says it. Then somebody calls your name from down the hallway, and relief floods your face at escaping him. The realization dawns on him like a punch.
"I gotta go."
"Lifeline—"
"See you around." Then you're gone, again. Practically running.
That's when it happens—Jack stares after you, heart pounding, confused, angry, and hurt. Suddenly—pain flares around his wrist. It’s sharp and hot. He physically flinches, "What the—"
A red thread appears beneath his skin, bright and impossible, but all too real. Jack freezes as the world tilts. No. No. No. The string winds itself slowly around his wrist. As it has always belonged there, it was simply waiting.
His breath catches because he knows what it is; everybody knows what it is. His pulse begins hammering. The thread stretches down the hallway, past nurses, residents, and stretchers, straight toward—You. Jack stumbles, his hand slamming against the wall to keep himself upright as the hallway blurs and his vision tunnels.
No. No, that's impossible. His heart pounds so hard it hurts. The red string glows softly between his wrist and yours, unbroken. Years… all these years. Every conversation, every shift, every cup of coffee, and every moment. Every time you'd looked at him and then looked away, or when you'd disappeared when things became too close. All the times you'd chosen distance. The truth crashes into him all at once. You knew. Oh God. You knew, and somewhere down the hallway—completely unfazed—you kept walking.
While Jack stands frozen in place, one hand braced against the wall, staring at the impossible thread connecting him to the woman he's been desperately trying not to admit he's fallen in love with.
2025
6:00 PM
PTMC, CENTRAL WORK AREA — DAY
The emergency department shifts from busy to catastrophic in less than thirty seconds. One moment, people are charting the next—every television screen in the department lights up with breaking news.
There’s an active shooter at PittFest—mass casualty incident. Every healthcare worker in the room recognizes it instantly. The moment before impact… before disaster arrives.
"Hey, what's going on?" McKay asks.
Robby strides into Central, already moving and planning. Carrying the weight of what is coming. "Mass casualty at PittFest."
Samira looks up sharply, "How many victims?"
"We don't know." Robby's face is grim. "Expect the worst.” A terrible silence settles, while someone else immediately reaches for a phone. "Did the police find David?" McKay asks. Robby shakes his head, then raises his voice, "Okay, everybody, listen up."
Every head turns to pay attention to Robby.
"There is an active shooter at PittFest. As the nearest trauma center, we are going to be getting the majority of the victims." The room goes completely still. "We don't know yet how many we're getting, but we are instituting hospital-wide emergency protocols. We need to move every patient out of here. Either home, upstairs, or Family Medicine. Call your loved ones now if you need to."
Robby glances toward the windows, toward the city. Towards the disaster unfolding somewhere beyond it. "I can guarantee cell service will soon be overwhelmed. Eat something. Stay hydrated. Use the bathroom while there's time and meet back here for a full briefing in five minutes."
Then his gaze lands on someone entering through the ambulance bay doors, relief flashes across his face.
"Brother." Robby exhales. "I'm so fucking glad to see you." Jack, carrying his backpack and wearing his black scrubs, briefly hugs Robby, "Heard it on the scanner."
Jack drops his bag onto a workstation. "How many are we expecting?"
"I don't know." Robby's expression darkens. "But it doesn't sound good."
After placing his things down, Jack looks up directly at you. The breath leaves your lungs. Already focused entirely on you.
Your stomach drops. Oh no. No. No. No. He knows. The realization slams into you so hard it feels physical. You don't know how or when. But something in his expression tells you immediately.
He knows about the string—your secret. The thing you've spent seven years burying. Your pulse begins hammering, and blood rushes up to your ears. Across Central, Jack doesn't look away; his jaw flexes, hard, angry. You know that look—you've seen it directed at negligent parents, reckless drivers, people who made choices that hurt others.
Five minutes. That's all you have before the briefing. Before the entire hospital erupts into chaos. Apparently five minutes is all Jack needs. The second he catches you alone, a hand closes firmly around your elbow. "Lifeline." You freeze, your heart immediately dropping into your stomach. "Jack—"
"We need to talk." The words come out low and controlled. He steers you toward an empty supply room. A narrow space lined with IV fluids and sterile procedure kits. The door swings shut behind you, and the silence is deafening.
You turn toward him, trying to keep your face neutral, and completely fall apart. "What's going on?" The question sounds pathetic even to your own ears. Jack stares, and for a moment, he says nothing. Which makes everything worse, because his eyes are furious.
Furious at being hurt and at being lied to. At realizing something important happened without him knowing. His jaw clenches, "You knew." Your vision immediately blurs, "Jack—"
"You knew." The repetition is softer, devastated. You feel your tears threatening already.
"Don't." Your voice cracks. "Don't look at me like that." Something flashes across his face—pain, but then anger returns to cover it. "So what was the plan?" His words come out sharp.
"Jack—"
"What?" His voice rises, years of confusion finally boiling over. "What were you doing?"
You flinch, and Jack immediately hates himself for it, but he can't stop, not now. "Were you just waiting?" The accusation hangs between you, ugly, unfair, and born entirely from hurt. "Were you waiting for your chance?"
Your eyes widen as the tears come instantly, and suddenly you're angry too. Years of restraint snap all at once.
"No." The word echoes off the walls. "No." You step toward him, furious, heartbroken, and shaking.
"I buried it." Your voice breaks. "I buried every part of it." Jack freezes as you keep going, "You don't get to stand there and act like I wanted this." The tears are falling freely now. It’s hot and humiliating. "I buried every chance of loving you so deep I could barely breathe around it."
The room goes silent as Jack stares while you choke on the next words, because they're true, every single one. "I buried my wanting for you." Your voice cracks again. "And don't you dare accuse me of waiting." The anger disappears, leaving only raw, ancient grief. "You don't get to accuse me of that when I respected it."
Jack's face changes back to confusion and regret. But you're not finished, "I respected her." The words nearly destroy you while you wipe at your face, failing miserably. "I respected both of you."
A photograph flashes through your mind. Then she laughed in the department, bringing Jack lunch, loving him. Being loved by him, the woman you'd genuinely cared about. The woman who had never done anything except be kind to you.
"She was brilliant." You laugh bitterly as another tear slips free. "Beautiful. And I knew I'd never measure up."
Jack physically recoils, as if you'd struck him. "What?" The word comes out strangled. You look away because you can't bear seeing his face. "I know that."
"No." Pain flashes across his expression. "No, you don't." You laugh again, broken, "I do." Then quietly, you add, "The first time I saw the end of the string." Jack goes completely still at your admission.
"The first time I saw it unfinished." Your voice drops, barely above a whisper. "I knew I was going to lose you either way."
Silence—absolute silence. Jack feels like the floor has vanished beneath him, because suddenly, he understands. All those years, smiles, retreats, your careful boundaries. How you'd chosen distance instead of possibility. You weren't waiting. You were grieving the entire time.
The supply room door suddenly swings open, and Robby appears, already halfway through speaking. "Abbot, I need—"
Then he stops, immediately, because you're crying, and Jack looks wrecked. The tension in the room is thick enough to choke on.
"...Whoa." Robby looks between both of you a few times, then decides he absolutely does not want whatever this is. "What the hell is—"
You move first, past Robby and Jack. Past all of it. Your shoulder brushes the doorframe as you leave. You don't stop, and can’t look back. Because if you do, you'll fall apart. While Jack just stands there, watching you go, understanding too late. For the first time in seven years, understanding exactly how much it must have hurt. Then, somewhere outside the room—an overhead page sounds. The first ambulances are arriving, signaling that the mass casualty has begun. However, the conversation isn't over. Not even close.
7:00 PM
CENTRAL WORK AREA — NIGHT
All at once, the emergency department is already overflowing. Trauma bays filled, hallways lined with stretchers, and blood smeared across floors that Environmental Services doesn't have time to clean. The overhead speakers haven't stopped paging for nearly twenty minutes. Victims keep coming. Gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries, and crush injuries from the stampede that followed.
The air feels thick with adrenaline and fear. Every single person in the department is running on instinct, training, and experience.
You haven't looked at Jack since the supply room, not really. You can feel him occasionally, like a gravitational force somewhere at the edge of your awareness. A pull you refuse to acknowledge. Every time your eyes accidentally find his across Central, you immediately look away. You don't have the luxury of falling apart right now, because people are dying, you know that, and so does Jack.
So, whatever happened between you has been shoved aside by necessity.
"Let's go!" Langdon's voice cuts through the noise. Another victim on a gurney in Central. Male, approximately late twenties, multiple injuries, semi-conscious, and blood soaking through his shirt. Samira immediately moves to the stretcher, "Who do you have?"
"Semi-conscious. Responds only to pain. Decent carotid."
"Strip him." Mateo reaches for trauma shears, and so does Tim, "Let's go." The team descends immediately, beginning to cut clothing, assessing injuries, checking his airway, and breathing. Everything is moving with practiced efficiency. Then—something feels wrong. You don't know why, it’s just a feeling. A prickling sensation along the back of your neck.
The patient suddenly jerks, and the nurses yelp. A hand disappears beneath the shredded remains of his shirt. Langdon freezes, then shouts. "Whoa!" Everything happens at once.
"Gun!" The word detonates through Central. "Gun! He's going for his gun!"
Every person in the room reacts instantly; some hit the floor, and others dive behind workstations. The patient somehow manages to yank a handgun free. His eyes are wild, disoriented, and terrified. The muzzle swings wildly across the room and lands directly toward Robby and Jack.
Time slows for you as you watch. Later, you'll never be able to explain why you moved, whether it was instinct, training, love… or something much darker. A part of you wonders if maybe you were simply tired—tired of carrying this, of loving him, maybe of being afraid. You never figure it out, because your body moves before your brain does.
One second, you're standing near Central, the next you're running.
The gun fires, and the sound is deafening. A violent crack that echoes through the department. For one suspended moment—nobody moves or breathes. Then pain explodes through you, white-hot, blinding.
You stagger as your knees immediately buckle while the floor rushes upward. Somewhere nearby, people are screaming while others are shouting for security. The world becomes noise, blurred shapes, blood—too much blood. Then, you hear Jack scream your name, and it tears straight out of him. Raw, animal, nothing like you've ever heard before. The resident beside him barely has time to react before Jack is already moving. He’s running—ignoring everyone and everything. None of it matters, not anymore. Because you're on the floor, and you're bleeding. Suddenly, the worst thing Jack has ever imagined is happening right in front of him.Again.
He drops to his knees beside you, not caring that his stump is aching, hands immediately searching, assessing, locating the wound, trying to stop the bleeding while SWAT restrains the man who shot you. His trauma training takes over automatically, even while the rest of him is breaking apart.
"Pressure!" Somebody throws him gauze, Jack slams it hard against the wound. Too much blood—so much fucking blood, and the sight makes his stomach turn. "No."
Your vision swims, and you can barely focus. But somehow—somehow—Jack is all you see. Always him, maybe it was always going to be him. His face is pale, terrified—more terrified than you've ever seen him, and somehow that hurts worse than the bullet.
You manage a weak laugh, and blood touches your lips. Jack immediately hates the sound, "Don't." Your eyes find his, and for the first time in years, you stop hiding. "It was painful."
Jack freezes, "Lifeline—"
"When you looked at me." Your voice trembles, blood continues soaking through the gauze. "When you smiled at me."
"No." His hands shake, just slightly, but you feel it. "When you believed in me." Tears blur your vision. "It hurt."
Jack's face completely crumples because now he understands all of it.
"It tore me apart." The words barely make it out, and an unfiltered sob escapes him. Because you're dying, and he just found you. He spent seven years standing beside you without seeing it. "No." His voice breaks. "No, no, no."
Someone is calling for Trauma One and bringing a stretcher. The department is moving around him. But Jack doesn't care, because the world has narrowed to you—only you.
"I just got you." The words rip from his throat, his eyes shine, desperate, furious, and every bit terrified. "I just got you." Your breath catches. You love him, you always will. So maybe—maybe honesty won't kill you now. "I love you."
Jack closes his eyes, as if the words physically hurt. You smile weakly, doubling down, "I love you, Jack Abbot."
Silence for a moment, then, firmly, "No." The answer comes instantly, violently, as if he's rejecting reality itself. "No." His forehead presses briefly against yours. "You're not doing this."
Tears slide down his face, but he doesn't even notice. "You hear me?" His voice cracks. "You're not doing this to me."
The stretcher arrives, and Robby appears, blood on his gloves. Panic hidden beneath professionalism. "Jack." Nothing… Jack doesn't move. "Jack." Still nothing.
"Abbot!" Finally, Jack looks up, and Robby immediately understands. Oh. Oh no. "We need Trauma One." Robby's voice softens. "Now."
Jack nods once, then helps lift you onto the stretcher himself. Refuses to let go or step away. He refuses to leave your side as they race down the hallway. Trauma One is already being prepared. Blood products, thoracotomy tray, massive transfusion protocol—Everything and anything. Whatever it takes.
Dana meets them at the door, and one look at Jack's face tells her everything, every awful piece of it. "Oh, honey." Jack doesn't even hear her; his eyes never leave you, not once. Dana steps close, careful. "Jack." No response from him, so she tries again, "You need to let them work."
His jaw tightens, "No."
"Jack."
"No." His voice breaks again. Because he knows—he knows exactly how bad this is. Knows every possible complication, terrible outcome, and statistic. Every nightmare, and he cannot survive another one. Not you, God, please, especially not after all this—after finally finding you.
The trauma team begins crowding around the bed. Voices overlap, orders fly, blood pressure dropping, airway concerns, surgical consult from Garcia, massive transfusion. Yet, Jack refuses to move, standing beside your stretcher, his hand wrapped around yours. As if letting go might somehow allow death to take you, or sheer stubbornness can keep you here.
As if love might finally be enough this time around.
PTMC, ICU — DAY
The surgery lasts hours—too many hours, long enough for the adrenaline to burn away, and for exhaustion to settle into everyone's bones. Long enough for Jack to memorize every crack in the ICU waiting room floor.
The bullet had done catastrophic damage. A through-and-through gunshot wound with massive internal bleeding. Multiple units of blood transfused. Emergency surgery. Complications halfway through that had nearly sent the entire operating room into a panic. At one point, Robby had physically forced Jack to sit down because he looked seconds away from collapsing. Jack couldn't remember most of it afterward, only fragments. Your blood on his hands. Your voice. I love you, Jack Abbot.
The terror of watching your blood pressure disappear from the monitor. The awful realization that he might lose you before he'd ever gotten the chance to tell you—I love you too. But somehow, you survive. The surgeons manage to stop the bleeding and repair the damage. They brought you back. It feels less like medicine and more like a miracle.
Three days later, you're still asleep, intubated, and hooked to enough machines to make the room hum softly around you. But you're alive, and right now, that's enough.
Jack hasn't left at all. Dana, Robby, Lena, and even Whitaker—all of them fail. Because every time someone tells him to go home, he looks at you lying in that hospital bed and refuses. The man is impossible when he decides on something, and he decided he was staying.
So he stays, wearing scrubs more often than not. Surviving almost entirely on hospital coffee and vending machine food, and sleeping in the uncomfortable chair beside your bed. If you could see him, you'd probably yell at him. Tell him he's being ridiculous, and that he should shower. To stop looking like a man who personally lost a fight against a tornado. Unfortunately, you're unconscious, which means nobody can stop him.
The red string remains, that impossible thread winding around his wrist before disappearing into yours, completely visible now. Neither of you is hiding anymore. Sometimes Jack simply stares at it, as if he's afraid it'll disappear—a chance he'll wake up and discover this was some cruel fever dream. Because for years he believed he'd had his soulmate, then he lost her. And now—now the universe has somehow handed him another sacred thing. A second chance he never expected. One he's terrified of losing before it even begins.
The ICU room is quiet that afternoon as sunlight spills through the window. Your face is pale against the white pillow. Your hair is messy, and there's bruising along your neck from procedures, tape securing lines, and dressings. Evidence of how close death came for you. Jack reaches forward, his fingers brushing gently through your hair. The movement reverent, as if touching something precious. Something fragile and almost lost.
His thumb traces softly across your cheek. "You scared the hell out of me." His voice is rough, sleep-deprived, and broken around the edges. You don't answer, but that never stops him.
The door opens quietly as Robby steps inside, coffee in one hand and concern written all over his face. He pauses immediately, taking in the scene. Jack slumped beside your bed, wearing his scrubs, faintly stained with blood—your blood. His hand wrapped around yours, and the red string was visible between them. For a moment, Robby says nothing, simply watches. Understanding settling over him piece by piece. Then finally, he asks, "How's she doing?"
Jack glances up. His eyes are bloodshot and exhausted. "Stable." The word comes out cautious. Because saying it too loudly might somehow jinx everything.
Robby nods, steps closer, looking down at you, at the monitors, then at Jack. A realization flickers across his face. "Is she also..." His voice softens. "...your soulmate?"
The question hangs quietly between them, and Jack's gaze immediately drops to your hand. To the red thread wrapped around both wrists. He can't speak for a little while, then he nods once.
"I think so." The words sound ridiculous even now. "I didn't think..." His voice catches as he looks down at you. At the woman he'd spent seven years loving without understanding why it felt different. Not understanding why losing your friendship hurt more than it should, or why seeing you happy mattered so much. Why he'd kept showing up, again and again. "I didn't think it was possible."
The rRobby remains silent, letting him continue as Jack swallows. "I didn't think it would happen to me." The confession comes out almost embarrassed—he's admitting something shameful. Robby exhales slowly, nods. "There've been a few reports."
Jack glances up.
"A few studies." Robby shrugs. "The theory is that some soulmate bonds don't form immediately." His eyes drift toward the red string, toward your intertwined hands. "Sometimes they form after loss."
The room falls quiet, neither of them says the obvious thing. That his late had been Jack's soulmate too, and loving her had been real, complete, and true. That none of this erased her.
Jack looks back at your sleeping face, the rise and fall of your chest, and the steady rhythm on the monitor. Alive and still here. His fingers slide gently through your hair again, careful not to disturb anything, as his hand cups your cheek. The gesture impossibly tender. Robby immediately looks away, because some moments aren't meant for witnesses.
Jack leans forward, pressing a kiss against your forehead, lingering there for a second, eyes closed and relieved. Terrified and very in love. When he finally pulls back, his thumb brushes across your skin. And for the first time since the shooting, a small smile appears. Fragile, hopeful, like he's allowing himself to believe it. Just a little.
"Come back to me, Lifeline." His voice is barely above a whisper. The red string glows softly between your wrists, and Jack squeezes your hand gently, as if you're already listening. As if somewhere beneath the machines and medications and healing wounds, you can hear him. Maybe, for the first time in a very long time, he isn't asking fate for anything. He's only asking for you.
PTMC, ICU — DAY
The first thing you become aware of is discomfort, not pain, well, not yet anyway, just wrongness. A strange pressure lodged in your throat—something foreign. Your eyelids feel impossibly heavy, as if someone glued them shut. The effort required to open them feels monumental. Slowly, painstakingly—you manage it, and the world arrives in fragments. White ceiling, muted sunlight, the rhythmic beeping of monitors, and the steady hiss of oxygen.
A hospital room—your hospital room, and immediately your nursing brain starts putting pieces together. ICU, you're in the ICU, which means—Oh. Oh no, the shooting. Memory crashes back all at once: the gun, Jack, blood, Trauma One. I love you, Jack Abbot.
Your eyes widen immediately as panic flares. Because there is definitely a tube down your throat, a ventilator tube, and suddenly every survival instinct in your body starts screaming. You try to move—a mistake, as pain explodes through your abdomen. Pain that says somebody has spent several hours trying very hard to keep you alive. A strangled sound leaves you; your heart monitor immediately speeds up.
Then you feel it, a hand, wrapped around yours. You turn your head, slowly, and there he is… Jack. Curled awkwardly in the chair beside your bed, wearing his black scrubs, asleep. His head was resting against folded arms near your mattress, one hand tangled with yours, the red string winding quietly between your wrists. For a moment, you just stare because he looks awful. His curls are a mess, dark circles shadow his eyes, his jaw is covered in stubble, his scrubs are wrinkled because he hasn't slept properly in days, and he hasn't left. This whole time, he stayed. Your fingers twitch, weakly, barely enough movement to count. Then you squeeze his hand.
Jack jerks awake instantly, years of emergency medicine, and years of sleeping lightly. His head snaps upward, disoriented and confused. Then his eyes land on yours, and the entire world stops. For a moment, he doesn't move or breathe. Doesn't seem capable of either. He just stares, afraid you're another dream, or another hallucination born from exhaustion.
"Hey." The word comes out rough, barely audible, and your eyes immediately fill with tears. Because he's crying, relief floods his face so quickly it looks painful. His hand tightens around yours.
"My Lifeline." His voice cracks completely, and suddenly, tears are sliding down his cheeks, unashamed. Jack laughs once, a choked sound halfway between a sob and a prayer. "Oh, my God."
You try to answer, then immediately regret it, because the tube is still there. Panic spikes again.
Jack notices instantly, "Hey." His hand cups the side of your face, gentle and grounding. "Hey, hey." His thumb brushes your cheek, "You're okay." Your breathing becomes faster, the ventilator alarms immediately begin protesting. "You're okay." Jack is already reaching for the call button, never taking his eyes off you. "You're okay."
Within seconds, the room fills with people. Garcia arrives first. Followed by respiratory therapy, a nurse, and half the ICU, apparently. "Well, look at that." Garcia's grin is immediate. "About time."
You want to roll your eyes, but unfortunately, you still have a breathing tube. The respiratory therapist immediately begins assessing and following commands. Checking your neurological status. Making sure you're strong enough for extubation. You squeeze hands, follow fingers with your eyes, nod appropriately. All while Jack hovers nearby. Trying desperately not to interfere, and failing miserably.
"She's ready." The therapist glances toward Garcia, and then Garcia nods. "Let's do it."
Jack immediately moves closer, instinctively. Like he physically cannot help himself. The ventilator disconnects, the securing device is removed, and the respiratory therapist gives instructions. You barely hear any of them; your entire focus is on the tube. Then—it's out. Immediately, you cough violently because your throat burns. Every breath feels strange and uncomfortable, but you're breathing on your own.
Jack is already helping support you upright, one arm behind your shoulders, the other holding a cup with ice chips. "Easy." His voice is impossibly soft. "Slow down."
You cough again, eyes watering. Jack looks ready to fight somebody on your behalf. Possibly the tube or the entire ICU. Eventually, the coughing settles enough for you to breathe comfortably, and the monitors stabilize, everyone visibly relaxing.
Garcia steps forward, professional mode fully activated. "Okay. The surgery went well." She begins carefully. "You sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen." Jack's jaw tightens visibly as she continues, "There was significant internal bleeding." Garcia continues. "We had to perform an emergency exploratory laparotomy."
Your nurse brain immediately fills in blanks, searching for damage, complications, and probabilities. Garcia notices this and says, "We repaired injuries to your small bowel and controlled several bleeding vessels."
Stable—the most beautiful word in medicine. You glance toward Jack; he's staring at the floor, hearing the details physically hurts. Garcia notices that, too, a tiny smile appears. One that says she understands far more than she's commenting on.
"Recovery's going to suck." You manage a weak laugh; the sound comes out raspy. Garcia points immediately. "There she is. Don't make me regret taking that tube out."
For the first time since waking, you actually smile. Garcia gathers her chart and steps toward the door, then pauses, looking between you. Then Jack, the red string, then back again.
"Oh." A knowing expression crosses her face. "Right."
Jack immediately looks uncomfortable, which is almost impressive considering everything that's happened.
Garcia grins. "Try not to stress her out." Then she points at you. "And try not to get shot again."
The door closes behind her, and the room suddenly feels much quieter. Much smaller and more intimate. Silence settles; neither of you quite knows what to say. Because there are too many things, seven years' worth.
Jack remains seated beside the bed, his hand never leaving yours, not once. He's afraid the second he lets go, you'll disappear again.
Your throat hurts—everything hurts, but somehow none of it matters right now. Because Jack is looking at you, really looking at you, and there are tears still caught in his eyelashes. Evidence of how terrified he'd been, your fingers tighten weakly around his. "Hi." The word comes out hoarse, barely audible. A wet laugh escapes him, disbelieving, and relieved. "Hi."
His thumb brushes across your knuckles, again and again. As if he needs the contact—he needs proof. Then Jack lowers his head, pressing his forehead gently against your joined hands, his eyes closing. Breathing shakily, and in that moment, you realize he was just as afraid of losing you as you'd always been of losing him.
Finally, Jack swallows hard, then asks quietly, "How long?" You know exactly what he means, not the shooting or the string. All of it. You stare down at your intertwined hands. At the red thread winding around both wrists, then back at him, and answer honestly. "Since my first day.”
Jack blinks, once and twice. He genuinely thought he'd misheard you, "Your first day?" You nod, a sad laugh escaping. "Yeah."
His mouth opens, then closes, and opens again. The physician in him is clearly attempting to process impossible information. Unfortunately for him, he's currently operating as a man in love, not a doctor, which means none of this is going well.
"Seven years?" The words come out strangled, and you give a tiny nod. Jack leans back in his chair, looking dizzy. "Jesus Christ."
A weak laugh escapes you. "That was more or less my reaction too." His hand tightens around yours to reassure himself.
"Why didn't you tell me?" The question is quiet, not accusing anymore, only hurt. He’s trying to understand. You look away first, toward the window. Because this part is harder. "You were married." The words are simple, obvious, and true, Jack's expression immediately softens.
"You loved her." You smile sadly. "Of course you did." Because he had, you'd seen it, every day, in every smile or phone call, at the mere mention of her.
"I wasn't going to be the woman who showed up and destroyed that." Your voice trembles. "I couldn't. It's why I never said anything." A tear slips free, and you don't bother wiping it away.
"I respected her too much." Your laugh cracks. "And honestly?" You finally look at him, unwaveringly, you admit, "I loved you too much.” Jack closes his eyes, processing the truth of it all. "I knew you were happy." You smile weakly. "I thought… I thought if I couldn't be the person you loved, then I'd settle for being someone you trusted."
Jack stares at you, completely speechless. Suddenly, every memory makes sense, every retreat or careful boundary. You chose distance over possibility. You weren't waiting. You weren't hoping for his wife to die. Goddamit. The thought makes him sick now. You were protecting him—protecting both of them, at the expense of yourself, for seven years.
"That's insane." The words slip out before he can stop them. You blink, offended. "Excuse me?" Jack actually laughs, a wet, exhausted sound. "You loved me for seven years."
"You make it sound like a disease." You frowned.
"It kind of is."
You point weakly, "I got shot."
"Exactly." For the first time since waking up—you both laugh. The sound fades slowly, leaving only the truth behind. Jack shifts closer, his chair scrapes softly against the floor, until he's sitting right beside the bed, close to you, so that there's nowhere left to hide.
"I need you to understand something." His voice lowers, gentler now, and more vulnerable than you've ever heard it. Jack looks down briefly, then back up. "She was my soulmate." The words settle softly between you, simply true and not at all cruel. You nod, because you know—you've always known.
"I loved her." His eyes shine, "I'll always love her."
You squeeze his hand, "I know." Jack exhales shakily, then continues, "But somewhere along the way..." His voice falters, and you can’t recall if you've ever seen him this scared. His thumb brushes your cheek, the same way it did the night you almost died. "You became my favorite part of the day. The first person I wanted to talk to." Another stroke of his thumb. "The person I looked for first." His eyes never leave yours. "And when you started avoiding me..."
He laughs once, humorless and every bit painful. "It felt like somebody was ripping pieces off me." The confession steals the air from your lungs, and Jack leans forward slightly, and your heart starts racing.
"I thought I was losing my mind." A tiny smile appears at the corners of his mouth. "Turns out I was just in love with you."
Everything disappears—leaving just him and tears blur your vision instantly.
"Oh." It's all you can manage. Jack smiles, soft, beautiful, it’s entirely his. "Yeah."
Suddenly, you're crying. Because after seven years—after all that grief and silence and fear—he chose you. Not because of the string or fate. Or because destiny told him to. But because he loved you.
"You idiot." Your words wobble and Jack laughs, "I know."
"You absolute idiot."
"I've been told."
You laugh through your tears, and somehow, he wipes them away before they can fall. The gentlest touch imaginable, as if you're something precious. Then his forehead rests against yours, and neither of you speaks. You don't need to. The red string glows softly between your wrists, a silent witness, and for the first time—it doesn't feel like a chain. It feels like a beginning.
Jack's gaze drops briefly to your mouth, then immediately back to your eyes. Giving you every opportunity to stop him. Every opportunity to say no. You don't. Not even a little.
So, he kisses you, softly, as if you're something holy. Something he spent seven years searching for without realizing it. His hand cups your cheek, while yours finds his wrist. Right where the string wraps around him, the kiss is gentle and tender. A promise rather than a fire.
When he finally pulls back, neither of you moves very far, foreheads touching, breathing the same air. Jack smiles, the kind of smile you've spent years secretly collecting. "Hi."
A laugh escapes you, "Hi." Then his eyes soften, filled with something warm enough to last a lifetime. "There you are."
After seven years of loving him in silence—you finally get to stay.
End Notes:
Where do I even begin? This idea has been cooking in my head for MONTHS. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I wanted this story to go. But then you know how things just suddenly click and fall into place? That’s exactly what happened.
It was absolutely euphoric—once I got the plot beats down, I just couldn’t stop writing lol.
I wanted you, the reader, to know how much you respected Jack’s wife and that you weren’t trying to replace her.
Also.. do you get it? Lifeline = Line = String…. Ha ha ha. You are his Line…
Everyone blame Noah Kahan for making me cry to Orbiter.
LOWKEY, wasn’t expecting a lot of people to read this…
Plot summary: In 1870s Texas, Joel Miller loses his wife and son in childbirth, leaving him to raise his five year old daughter Sarah alone. Faced with losing her to his wife's grieving parents, or being forced into marrying her younger sister, he turns to you - the town's thirty-something spinster - and asks for your hand in a marriage of convenience.
Warnings: 18+only due to eventual explicit smut. Also references death and grieving.
LOSING MY RELIGION (Din Djarin x f!reader) Masterlist
(moodboard by @grogusmum)
FANDOM: The Mandalorian / Din Djarin
READER: Adult female. Former Jedi, current healer. Old enough to have been trained by the Order and survived Order 66. Reader is picked up in one chapter, but it is later explained/implied that Din is strong enough to hold you. No other physical descriptors, no use of y/n.
RATING: Mature (adult intimacy from chapter 8 on)
No Minors Please: My work is 18+. I will respectfully ask minors to turn away to protect themselves and me. Thank you.
SUMMARY: Set post season 2, a Mandalorian comes looking for you with an assignment from an old friend, sending you on a mission and a union that you both need. (Canon compliant through season 2, diverges from TBOBF and season 3).
NOTES: A romance built on strong mutual respect and kindred spirit. Reader is post-Order 66 Jedi (exploratory corps, non-knight). Each chapter takes a Din/you/Din POV format. This series is ongoing.
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LOSING MY RELIGION
Chapter 1: The Healer
Chapter 2: The Recruit
Chapter 3: The Admirer
Chapter 4: Resonance
Chapter 5: The Attack
Chapter 6: The Survivor
Chapter 7: The Substitute
Chapter 8: The Consort
Chapter 9: Reunion
Chapter 10: The Deception
Chapter 11: Fusion
Chapter 12: The Camp
Chapter 13: The Exchange
Chapter 14: (working on it)
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ONE SHOTS IN THE LMR UNIVERSE
Complication and Yearning: When Ahsoka Met Luke - a direct prequel to Losing My Religion
Din / Dance - Din doesn’t understand the point of dancing. You teach him what makes it worth doing.
A Rare Treat - a little drabble about braiding Din’s hair while he sleeps
Eyes Closed, Comm Open - Din communes with your heart. (Can be read as part of the LMR universe or alone)
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SIX SENTENCE FICLETS
Winktober 2022: Body Worship - Takes place any time after chapter 7
She Probably Gives You Butterflies - From Ahsoka’s POV, takes place during chapter 9
Winktober 2022: Pet Play - Takes place in the Tusken camp during chapters 12/13
Is Somebody Jealous - A possible meeting during chapter 13
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ARTWORK INSPIRED BY LOSING MY RELIGION
Shiari questions Din about his helmet - by @literallydontlook inspired by Chapter 6
Mala puts flowers in LB’s hair - by @literallydontlook inspired by Chapter 7
Din Djarin eats ribs at a festival - by @mjpens inspired by Chapter 7
Din and Little Bird - by @mjpens inspired by Chapter 11
Easy there, Little Bird - by @littlemissskuld inspired by Chapter 5
Din and Little Bird - by @grogusmum inspired by Chapter 11
Moodboard - by @beskarandblasters
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COMMISSIONED ARTWORK
Din and Little Bird by @miranhas-art based on Chapter 11
PLEASE NOTE: I write my stories with myself in mind, but I try to keep them as reader characters as inclusive as possible. This art is not meant to represent all readers. Your reader is you. My reader is me, and when I commission artwork, I usually do so with myself as reference. I write what I yearn and yearn to see what I write, and I can’t do it myself, so I choose to support fanart artists. They do beautiful work and there’s no way I’m not going to share it with you!!!
Summary: Din Djarin is on what he expects to be his last bounty hunt for Greef Karga. However, after capturing a wanted starship engineer who would rather go anywhere other than “home,” the Mandalorian is forced to reassess his priorities.
Your taste of freedom had been brief but glorious. Now you are a prisoner of the most infamous bounty hunter in the Outer Rim – it’s only a matter of time before he turns you in. There isn’t much you would not do to keep from being sent home, but as you find yourself growing closer to your captor and his strange little companion, you start to wonder whether escape is really what you want.
Set immediately following Chapter 13: The Jedi.
Tags & Warnings: 18+ MDNI, slow burn romance, minimal descriptors of reader character, no use of Y/N, dual POV, canon-typical violence, sexual tension, angst, mutual pining, SMUT (Each chapter will have specific warnings, please check them before reading!)
Summary: Set in a brothel in the late 1800’s in the Wild West, you’ve only been working there for a month when Din Djarin shows up. A bounty hunter who makes stops into town between jobs, he is known at the inn for his generous appetite and demanding preferences. Asking for you one night, he is pleased to learn you are well suited for him: your sweet nature soothing to his gruff temperament and surprising him with your ability to handle his rougher tastes. Demanding that you be made available to him every time he is in town, neither one of you is ready for where this request leads.
summary: When you are unable to conceive, Joel offers to help in more ways than one.
lbl!au though this can be read as a standalone
warnings: loose historical au (historically inaccurate), smut (piv, m!receiving oral), reader is scarred, mention of masturbation, mention of past painful sex and virginity loss, discussion of food and diet, religion (implied christian), arranged marriage, abusive relationship dynamic, infidelity, infertility, inaccurate science and medicine, unspecified age gap, shame, loneliness, guilt, anxiety and depression, mentions of death/wanting to die, abusive family dynamics, gender norms of the time period
a/n: well. here we are. I rewrote this four times and am not sure I'll ever be totally happy with it. but I love lbl, and I hope you like this version of them. may they find each other in every universe.
The gnarled knuckle of a tree root digs into your spine.
Joel, when you cup his face between your palms and kiss him, tastes of plum. You grunt against his mouth, feel his hands curl against your hips, your waist. “What?”
You shake your head, sinking deeper against the root in defiance.
His hand snakes behind you, feels the root and shifts you bodily to the left of it on the soft cushion of the blanket spread beneath your bodies.
He sinks inside you, thrusts lazily.
“This must be the last time,” you breathe, widening your legs, your knees against his hips.
He bows his head against your chest. The flutter of his hair brushes your chin. You feel the sharp scrape of his beard between your breasts, the sweep of his lashes against your collarbone. You lace your fingers against the back of his skull, eyes fluttering closed.
“Said that the last time.”
When it’s over, when he slips out of you, you always tell yourself it’s the last. You tell yourself you will not fall prey to lust again.
You think of your husband, his increasing frustration that you have yet to give him an heir, the desperate way he rutted into you, a dead weight arched over your spine each evening. And Joel, faithful, faithless, guard, standing on the other side of the door, listening to your husband have you. Knowing he was there first.
“I mean it this time,” you gasp, ignoring the pool of warmth flooding your belly, an overflowing urge to pull him deeper, swallow him whole.
Joel doesn't answer, sitting back on his knees, tugging your thighs over his, your upper body a soft slope toward the ground. His gaze flicks over you, the long, supple line of your body beneath his.
You reach for him, skimming your nails along his skin, from his hip to his chest, the coarse dark hair on his chest a pleasant scrape against the pads of your fingers. He has a scar on his stomach, a long, ugly crack beside his navel. It’s the best of them, the scars that had drawn you to him like a wolf to the scent of blood. Criss-crossed over his forearms, his knuckles, the bridge of his nose. You were drawn to the violence of it, but also the reminder that something damaged could still be beautiful, intriguing.
The first time your husband had seen you, after your betrothal to him, his gaze had been disappointed, finger tracing the length of the scar on your cheek. The shock of his touch, the first of any man, had shocked you into silence, stillness. It detracts from her beauty, he’d pronounced, no matter. It’s not as though she can pass along this ugliness to a child.
Joel’s hands are as gnarled as the roots of the willow tree you lie beneath, soft golden light filtering through the swaying branches, drooping in the humidity, cords of dark ivy wrapping around the trunk.
He watches your face, the determination that settles over you like a well-worn coat.
“Y’do?”
“Yes,” you answer, resolve slipping already. You shift your hands to your chest and his eyes follow the movement as you unhook the eyelet clasp. “So you should take all you can.”
Gather the memories like rain collected in drums, hope it is enough to water you the rest of your days.
He frowns, anchors his hands on your hips again, lowers himself over you, setting a steady, firm pace, fucking you slow and hard. You feel him everywhere, the aftershocks of each thrust felt in little flaming bursts from your core to the tips of your toes, the roots of your hair. Joel supports himself on one palm beside your head, the fingers of his opposite hand skimming up your side to cup your breast in his too big hand.
He plucks at your nipple until it hardens and then leans down to suck it into his mouth, beard rasping against the sensitive skin.
“I will, of course,” you gasp, confounded at your own insistence to have this conversation now, “release you from your post—”
He lifts his head, his face close to yours. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
His voice is a growl, a low, threatening rumble. The statement is punctuated by a particularly hard thrust. Stars of pleasure burst behind your eyes, fizzling.
You pant against his lips in time with the pulse of his hips against yours, straining to kiss him, but held back up the hand that steadies against your jaw. The lewd sound of his skin slapping against yours makes the knot in your belly curl and clench. “Joel, I—”
You want to protect him as fiercely as he protects you, watches you, waits for you. The only way to see him safe, was to see him away, stop these trysts, his visits to your rooms after dark.
“Uh-uh, no” he cuts you off. Then, softer, still fucking you, “Open your mouth, darlin’.” And your mouth pops open on instinct. You think he’ll pull out of you, push his swelling cock into your mouth and finish there, but he pushes two fingers against your tongue instead, sliding them against the wet, slipper pink of your tongue until you gag, chest heaving.
He coos something you don’t hear, then hooks his thumb into your cheek, pulls your head to the side and buries his face in your throat.
You feel like an exposed nerve, fit to bust beneath him, hating how he knows you.
But you don’t mind being caught like a fish in a catch, a rabbit in a snare, by him. You feel safe there, held beneath him.
Besides, you caught him just as often. The memory of his overwrought body beneath yours, pinched and sweat soaked, your hand around his cock, coaxing him toward a second release, sweet as you could. After raiders had attacked the borders of your husband’s lands while he was away, and gotten dangerously, perilously close to your side of the estate—well, reassurance that you were unharmed was needed. That you were there.
It is the only time he has slept in your presence, bloodied, sweated body wrapped in your sheets. You had laid against him, afterward, breathing in the musky scent of leather and horses and gunpowder, blood and sweat.
Now, you moan and then close your lips around his thumb, laving your tongue against the salted flesh of him, pushing one hand between your bodies to rub your cunt.
He grunts, rubs the inside of your cheek. “Good girl,” he mutters, fucking you harder, thrusts sloppier, his breath against your neck, warm and humid as the new summer air around you.
Your climax approaches suddenly and without warning, snaps like the crack of a wip, your body contorting with it, a warm, convulsive pulse in your center that floods outward in a blind, white haze.
Joel’s thumb leaves a track of spit across your cheek as he pulls back, slams into your twice more before he pulls out with a pained moan, jerking his cock above your stomach.
You shake your head frantically, pussy fluttering, sucking around the empty space he left inside you. You prop yourself up on one elbow and he seems to know what you want, shifting forward to push his cock between your lips.
You suck gently at the tip, tonguing the leaking slit, tasting your cunt on him. Your eyes roll back, flutter shut, at the taste. He palms the back of your skill, thrusting shallowly, carefully into your mouth, until he bursts, salty and bitter across your tongue.
You swallow it down, the taste of him good and bad at once, until you gag, glad enough not to have the mess of him on you, wishing you could let him come inside you. But you are afraid. Afraid that he might see you pregnant, or, that nothing might come of it.
He shutters above you when you push the tip of your tongue against the vein threaded along the underside of his cock, palm cupped against his balls, tugging gently, until he pulls away from your need stricken mouth.
You try to slide away, shame and embarrassment and horror at your own desire flooding you in the aftermath as always, but he’s pushing you down again, kissing you, fitting the length of his body along yours.
The knob of root wedges against your spine again, persistent as a toothache. This time, you barely feel it. His heartbeat is steady against your chest, beating against the cage of your ribs. Your breathing evens and quiets, sun dappling warmly over your calves.
Joel pulls back, gazing flicking over your face, palm slotting against your jaw. “Get the idea of me leavin’ out of your head. It ain’t happenin’,” he says, as though your conversation has continued uninterrupted.
He doesn’t like it, you know, that you could. You could decide to discard him, one day, release him from his post, reassign him, and he’d have no choice in the matter.
You cover his hand and search his eyes, counting the rings in his irises. “It would be safer.” Exasperation crosses his face and your own irritation flares in response. “Would you let me up?”
Joel dresses as you fling off the remainder of your clothes and wade into the cool creek, shadowed by arching tree branches, a wild canopy that tinges the air with a softened emerald tint.
The water is crystal clear, clean, round stones shifting underfoot, the current pulling at you, toward the rushing sound of falling water the creek ended in. You wash, careful to keep your hair dry, and wade back to shore.
Joel watches you, his own expression tipped with guilt. Nothing to do with sex, nor having it with a married woman, but that you were so much his junior, under his care, protection.
Had he made some kind of oath when he was hired, you wonder.
It’s you who is at fault for the whole wretched thing.
Your husband had lavished you with attention when you first married. Extolling about your beauty and breeding to visiting parties and friends, interspersed with humbling reminders under his breath that your beauty was flawed, marred by that ugly scar that could only be your fault.
Still, you had enjoyed his attention, had romantic notions of his desperate need to see you pregnant, even if you only sometimes managed to come, even if he only ever had you from behind. But when your blood continued to appear regularly, month after bitter month, he had become sullen and distant and uninterested. You were useless to him as an empty bottle of ale, left entirely on your own for long swaths of time.
Alone, but for your watchful guard.
Joel.
You liked him immediately, liked the weight of his name in your mouth, like a polished marble rolling over your tongue. And, despite that like, you’re reluctant to admit now, that you had been afraid of him too. Fascinated and terrified, by this man always rooted at the edge of your vision, in the shadowy corners of rooms, outside doorways, lingering in corridors.
He was a mercenary, after all. Your husband’s estate had trouble with bandits, after all. What kind of man could you expect him to be then? Brutal, to be sure. Mean, almost certainly.
But he wasn’t.
He was kind to children and animals, eyes softening like candle wax.
So, you engaged him, tentatively, and he surprised you by indulging you. Your conversation and whims and perilously imaginative, romantic thoughts. He indulged you in a way your parents had not, that your husband did not, that no one ever had.
He liked doing things for you, liked providing when it was within his ability to do so, even if it wasn’t strictly something that fell within his duties.
It was only then that you realized how much of your husband's attention was rooted in his own vanity and lust. He had you when he wanted, however he wanted, humiliated you for your scarred face, shamed you for your inadequacy and inability to get pregnant, paraded you around when he had need of a softened presence, a jealous little treasure to wave in peoples faces.
But Joel saw you. He asked after the books you read, played marbles and chess and cards with you until you were both sick of it. He showed you how to tend to the horses, how to wield a blade, never losing patience as you cycled through movements with a wooden training dagger, panting roughly in the sun.
It passed the time for you both.
You weren’t naive enough to believe Joel did any of those things other than out of a sense of obligation.
But wasn’t your husband obligated to know you? Perhaps not. Perhaps you were fanciful and too romantic. Perhaps you should not ask for so much.
Months passed, your womb remained stubbornly empty, your husband’s attention and attitude soured, wavered, then departed altogether.
You touched yourself to the thought of him, cried as you came, shame unfolding around you in thick drifts. You’d avoided him, spent almost an entire week sequestered in the chapel on the grounds of the estate until the priest asked if you had something on your mind, something to confess. When you returned to your rooms in the evenings, Joel trailing your steps as was his duty, you’d touched yourself to the thought of your husband, as though to make up for your transgression. You hadn’t managed to bring yourself to climax, frustrated with the way your mind would snap to another’s face.
When you tried a different route, stealing into your husband’s chambers, pressing yourself into his chest, ignoring the way he smelled of other women, he’d clamped his hands on your upper arms and steered you away. Disgust pooling in his expression.
“If I have need of you, I will seek you out.”
“I only want to please you, to feel close to you—”
“It sickens me,” he’d interrupted, not looking at you. “To look at you is a reminder of what you have not given me. I would not have agreed to such a low bride price if I knew it would be this difficult for you to give me an heir.” His eyes had run over your face then. “I knew you were damaged, but not in this way.”
It had been humiliating—how easily he pushed you away, didn’t want your company, sought solace in the women of the tavern in the nearby village. So you’d gone away, stupidly dressed in lace, covered by a thin silk robe, that your husband refused to even look at. Joel, ever faithful, waited in the hall.
He must have heard, and the shame of it all had stung, nettle sharp and poisonous. He’d followed you down the corridor as your face burned hot, and only spoken when you arrived at your door. Your name was tender in his deep, gruff voice.
Something forbidden brewed between you. It was wretched, but sweet, too, and demanding as opium.
You had not backed away when he pressed his hand to your jaw, traced that ugly scar that marred your cheek with the pad of his calloused thumb.
Something nameless had passed between you, vast as the sea, unalterable as wind through trees, rain from purpled clouds.
You had willingly stepped closer, into the circle of warmth he provided. It had been too close, too familiar to be friendly, when you shouldn’t have even been that. But there had been no one around to see for once. Just you and him, pressed close in a darkened hall, orange lamp light flickering over your skin.
“Joel,” you’d said, and the pining softness in your voice had been apparent even to you.
His lips, when you’d leaned in to kiss him, had tasted of sweetened coffee.
It had been a night of firsts, a night plagued by anxiety that at any moment your husband would throw open the door, that you would be caught, fingernails clawing at another man’s back, but he’d made it clear that he had no need of you.
Joel, on the other hand, had seemed only to have need of you. Desperation tucked between your ribs for safe keeping. He’d pushed into you as he held your face in his hands. It was more intimate that you were used to, to be facing him at all, let alone to have his eyes watching your expression so carefully, his thumb against that marred skin your husband hated.
It started something dangerous between you, that gathered momentum the longer you let it go on, instead of slowing when the newness and unfamiliarity of it wore off.
You learned from him, absorbed his attention and instruction with enthusiasm and desperate need, like a plant collecting light. With your husband, you only ever laid there, fists clenched in the sheets, waiting for him to spill inside you, willing your body to reach that peak, too, and rarely managing it.
Joel scooped your breasts in his hands, put his mouth on your nipples, kissed down your thighs to the backs of your knees. He put his tongue in your cunt, so surprising and overwhelming you’d had to bite back a cry.
But each time he left, each time you parted, you were reminded instantly of how pathetic and worthless you were.
A flash of silver in the late afternoon sun catches your attention, yanks you out of the memory like a hound by its chain.
You glance back to shore and find Joel crouched near the bank, knife slicing through one of the remaining plums. The ground beneath the willow tree is littered with plum pits and the rinds of cheese, evidence of your greed and languorousness.
Joel holds out the newly pared wedge of plum out to you as he groans and sits. Temping you closer, back to land. You oblige, glad to be beckoned, to be wanted. You swim to the edge and cross your arms over the gray outcropping of rock he sits on.
“It’s gettin’ late,” he says as you take it, fingers brushing together. He braces his arm across the top of his bent knee and squints at the angle of the sun, measuring it against the horizon. “We probably been gone too long.”
You’ve been gone nearly the whole day, and though you are ignored by your husband, alone and isolated most of the time, the household staff will notice this absence. And if there is anything your husband does pay attention to, it is gossip and appearances.
The plum bursts bright and sharp on the back of your tongue, eyes on his hands, his knuckles as he cleaves free another chunk, balances it on the flat of the blade. He holds it out to you, and instead of pinching it between your fingers, you slide your lips over the dull side of the metal and pull it into your mouth.
He watches you, something like desire swimming in his gaze.
Already you crave him again, a pulse between your legs echoing the darkness in his eyes.
“Probably. But I like it here. I want to stay here,” you answer, kicking your legs in the current, juice running down your chin from the fruit.
You allow the fantasy for a moment, a future where you aren’t trapped and Joel doesn’t leave. One where you swim together and eat fruit and have your fill of him. One where he is the one trying to get you pregnant, and it works, because he cares for you.
It’s a fanciful daydream. Nice, in its simple pleasure. Ripe with love and promise. If women could only get pregnant by men who loved them, the world might be better for it.
It would not, you think bitterly, help you at all, if that were the case.
He watches you for a long moment, blue shadows growing in the shallows of the river, passing another plum slice to you, this time on the tips of his fingers, like he’s hoping you’ll take it from his hand.
You oblige, like being fed as much as he likes feeding you. His fingers are like salt under the sweet fruit, pungent with the taste of you left behind on his skin. You like his attention, his care.
It had been a lie, like it always was, when you said this was the last time. The notion was easier to stomach, to imagine, when he was deep inside you, impossible to separate him from you, you from him. You could resolve yourself to it then, be brave, when letting go was impossible.
He cups your cheek, slides his thumb over your lips as you chew, then the scar etched into your skin.
“We got some time.”
His voice is quiet. The rush of the river and falls are only broken by the flutter of birds hopping from branch to branch, the soft snuffle and snort of your horses grazing nearby.
You lean into his touch, unembarrassed somehow, of your loneliness and need.
“So,” you say, turning your mouth against his palm. “Will you leave as I asked?”
His laugh is a rumble. “No.”
“What shall I bribe you with?” You hum. “Money? Land?”
He shakes his head. “Only way I go, is if you go.”
You laugh as though he’s joking, something hot snarled around your ribs.
You imagine it again, land bursting with life, a comfortable house, your belly swollen with his child.
“I’m serious.” He nods to himself as he says it, as if that settles it. He would not leave without you.
It sounds like an offer, and you feel the need to reject it.
“I wouldn’t,” you answer, maybe more harshly than you should. “I can’t.”
A muscle jumps near the hinge of his jaw, a crackle of tension sparking to life between you. The levity slips away, like a swirl of soap down a drain. “Why? What is it that’s keepin’ you here?”
You blink, confused by the question. All your life, up to the moment you were given away at the altar on your wedding day, you’d been told this was your purpose. To marry, to birth children. But you have been terrible at it. You have made a terrible wife. You have been unfaithful to your husband. You have not been able to conceive.
Your husband doesn’t covet you, doesn’t seem to remember you at all outside the space between your legs. You seek pleasure and care in a man you are not married to, an adulteress and harlot by anyone’s measure.
The purpose you’d been born and bred and educated for, has all come to nothing.
“I am nothing,” you murmur aloud. The undulating water suddenly feels cold, despite the soft spill of sunshine over your back.
Joel’s expression creases, the wrinkles in his forehead deepen. “What do you mean nothin’?”
“I mean. . .” you shrug, take his hand in yours, press it to your chest, the hollow beneath your throat.
“Darlin’,” he says, “You hate him. You even want to have his kid?”
You blink. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He raises his brows.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s what I am supposed to do.” You shake your head and bite your lip, an odd anxiety settling on your chest like a stone. “I’ve been such a fool, and I’ve dragged you under with me.”
You want to climb up on the rock and hold onto his shoulders, beg him to put his hand between your legs. You want to stay here, sleep in the long yellow grass, eat fruit, swim naked.
You cannot think for too long about what you want. It will unmake you, unbind you.
He says your name and the affection laced through his voice is almost too much for you to bear. You push away from the rock and climb clumsily to shore. He stands and drapes your dripping body with a light muslin blanket. “You couldn’t have dragged me nowhere I didn’t want to go.”
“But I have failed. On every count, I have failed. I have resented my husband and this life. You,” you accuse suddenly. “All I have wanted is you. I should not have want of anything. I should pray more. Maybe that’s why I can’t conceive. God has not seen fit to give me a child when I have transgressed.”
“If that had anything to do with it, nobody would have kids,” he says, more gently than you deserve.
You pace away from him, tripping over the cloth caught around your ankles, grass whispering dryly around your calves. You feel what you are suddenly, dirty and sinful, naked before a man that you have not made vows to.
“You know he had another wife before you?”
You freeze.
“Joel,” you warn, desperate. “Stop it.”
You hear him move closer, through the grass, stopping just behind you, a couple of feet away. “She never could get pregnant neither. Think it's a coincidence?”
A horrible sound wrenches from your throat. “I know.” You press your hands to your cheeks, feel the panicked warmth beneath your skin and pace back and forth through the long, yellowing grass beneath the swaying branches of the willow tree, the damp muslin sagging around you, slipping off your shoulders.
It does not help that you are nude before him in a way you never could be in front of your husband. That your husband doesn’t look at you at all, let alone with such reverence, such care.
His first wife had not produced a child either. Her broken, empty body had been found at the base of the rocky cliffs that overlooked the river, her dress a bright blur of color against the black, sharp basalt.
Her shame, they said, had been too great and drove her to madness. She’d lept in the dead of night, of course, the wild roar of the falls concealing any wretched cry that might have been torn from her lips.
You hadn’t known until after the wedding. Until after you had remained barren for too long, and the whispers had started. Not that knowing before would have changed anything. The choice to marry, and who, had not ever belonged to you. It is a duty, not a choice. It is your purpose.
“I only need to have a child. That’s it. Then all will be well.”
You say as though it’s that simple. The denial is easier to live in, than the harsh reality that you are running out of time. Maybe that is the reason you’ve been so keen for Joel to leave recently.
“This is all my fault.”
He tucks his hand around your upper arm and pulls you around. “It’s got nothing to do with you. Me and you both know you ain’t the goddamn problem.”
“I don’t know,” you answer. “I’m not. . .I’m nothing, if I can’t do this. What use am I otherwise?”
A disbelieving silence descends between you.
You peel out of his arms, but he doesn’t release you, pulls you back to him and cups your face in his hands. He searches your face, eyes skating over your expression. His thumb traces the scar that arcs across your cheek, something deeply fond in his eyes. “Listen to me,” he says and then shakes his head, jaw gritted. “You ain’t nothin’. You are—Please see sense.”
Your husband never asked how you came to have the scar on your face; you can only assume he knew that your mother had taken a knife to your skin when you were barely a teenager. To preserve you, she said, from men who would covet your beauty.
Your husband hadn't asked, but you'll never forget the look on Joel's face when you told him. The horror, disgust, the soft shell of his hand when he said there were things that could never be taken.
Your skin blazes, sparks careen up your arm and across your chest. You don’t want to know what he means when he says you aren't nothing, when he had said there were things that couldn't be taken.
“You’re miserable here,” he says in the softly approaching sunset, the world around you shimmering off the water behind you in golden arcs. “We can leave. You let me know when you wanna go and we’ll go.”
“I can’t,” you say again. “I can’t.”
“I'll take care of you’.”
You huff, irritated then. “Joel. Be serious.”
His jaw tenses, brows furrow. “I am.”
“No,” you answer sharply, fear allowing cruelty to slip into your voice. Afraid of how much you want to just say yes. “And when the novelty wears off?” Your mouth feels dry, like you’ve swallowed a wad of cotton.
“When I ever give you the idea this was novel?”
“You are only fond of me,” you continue loudly. “Because I am a secret you must keep. You will not like me in the light of day. You will not want me when I’m not forbidden. I can’t take any more chances. I’m broken anyway.”
His shoulders stiffen and the air grows thick again with a different kind of tension. “So that’s all this was?”
You shrug and expect him to say something cruel, hope for it, even, as he’s wont to do when cornered, angry, worried. But he only shakes his head.
Joel releases you, steps back. “We better get goin’,” he snaps. “Get movin’.”
.
.
.
The ride home is silent as a tomb.
The brush of the swaying branches overhead, the call and return of insects, the soft grunt of the horses are the only sounds between you.
Still, when you can just see the estate between the thick trunks of the trees, a massive white shape that steals from the sun from the horizon, Joel slows to a stop and reaches to take your hand.
You let him, because you fear it will be the last time, that your fear has made you go too far this time.
Your skin blazes with his touch, sparks careen up your arm and across your chest. “If you ain’t gonna leave,” he says into the encroaching dark, his attempt at compromise. “Then you need to get pregnant, and you know he,” he jerks his chin toward the house, “isn’t gonna be able to do it.”
You frown at him through the blue shadows, the air sparking with fireflies. “Joel—What are you saying?”
His thumb slides over the back of your hand, and he doesn’t answer. His jaw tightens and then releases. He sighs.
He doesn't need to say it, you know.
Something breaks in your chest, crumbles.
You know how painful it must be for him to offer. He’d only spoken of his daughter to you once, but it was enough to feel the great gulf of grief within him.
“I would not ask you to do that.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he agrees. “That’s why I’m offerin’.”
“Joel—”
“This isn’t the first time I thought of it.” He strokes your hand again. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it for a while.”
Everything in you shivers, trembles. “But it would mean—”
“Pretending it’s his?” He huffs. “Trust me, darlin’, I know.”
“Then why?”
He shakes his head. It goes unspoken, that he could not bear it if something happened to you. He would live with the pain of watching this imagined child from afar, anonymous protector only, in the margins of their life.
It also, you realize, means he trusts you that much. To keep the child safe.
You squeeze his hand and then release him entirely. “That is a sacrifice I will not let you make.”
This, you know then, is the last time.
You will not let him destroy himself.
Especially not for you.
.
.
.
You don’t speak with Joel again, though he is a usual, constant presence, at your back when you venture outside, in the hall outside your rooms, in the shadows of the dining hall and library and drawing room.
You weather the days alone again, with him at your back instead of as a companion.
You avoid the church, and then spend two days inside, from dawn ‘til dusk.
Each night, you lie amongst your sweaty sheets and think of opening the door, asking him in. Saying yes to anything he could ever offer you, seeking shelter in his arms.
But your husband has been unusually needy, and seeks you out each evening, slipping into your bed without a word. You bend over the edge of the bed and listen to him thrust and grunt into the quiet dark of your room.
You hadn’t known anything about sex the first time with your husband. Everything had felt rushed and odd, warm and damp in places that disgusted you. You felt crushed and too panicked to say anything because you were supposed to like it. Let him know it feels good, your mother had said, but not too good and don’t be too loud or he’ll think you wonton. It was as specific about the experience as she would be the night before your wedding. She said if you knew more it might frighten you or make you overthink what was happening.
It had hurt, that first time. He pushed into you from behind and thrust blindly in the darkened room, mostly drunk, until he came inside you. You bled. The sheets were collected the next morning as proof of your virginity, your consummated marriage, and the humiliation of it was so confusing you’d had to lock yourself in a hall closet until your breathing returned to normal.
At least it was done, you’d thought.
The second time he mounted you, the experience was better. It didn’t hurt as much; there was no blood. He still had you from behind, and though you knew nothing about sex, you hadn’t imagined it like that. The third time, you learned that touching yourself helped, hand wedged between your body and the mattress, massaging, as he pushed into you, and thought maybe your imaginings of the act had just been inaccurate.
He groaned in your ear that you felt good, that your pussy was tight. And that made you feel good. Like you had done something right.
You thought maybe you were supposed to do more but when you found a diagram of two people engaging in oral sex in a book in the vast library it disgusted you. You did not want to touch him that way. And you certainly didn’t want his head between your legs.
At least back then he had seemed enamored with you, whispered sweet things to you, even if he did not want to look at you. Now, it was a deadened affair, an obligation fulfilled.
You hadn’t really understood, until that first night with Joel, that you could want to have sex, that it could feel good.
Maybe because he didn’t feel like a stranger. He was someone you knew and cared about first. Who cared for you in turn. Looked you in the face and didn’t flinch.
And when he put his head between your legs you’d felt thrilled rather than disgusted.
Your husband never tried to know you, all your clumsy attempts at closeness had been curtained, shut down. He was busy, he was off somewhere else, his business was too complicated for you to understand, and anyway stressing you by explaining it might affect your womb.
Still, you made promises to him. Your guilt and shame shimmer lowly in the back of your throat. How many vows have you broken? How many failures could one person possibly orchestrate?
Spring wanes into summer. The world outside bursts with life, flowers in bloom, shuddering emerald leaves, bright sunshine that feels like a blight.
The self imposed distance between you and Joel remains. You feel alone, impenetrable and lonely in so many ways. But it frightens you, how much it matters that he is still there, that he offers himself in so many ways, contradicts your accusations quietly by staying. Accusations you only half wish were true.
Would it be easier if he thought of you as a plaything?
You only speak to him once, one bright, horrible morning when you wake once again to blood on your sheets. Your cycle is now arriving early, as if to rub your nose in your humiliation.
For it is humiliating. What use are you to anyone? You sit alone among your books and pens, sequestered from the world. You are nothing; you give nothing. You could shrivel in the corner and no one would notice for days, weeks.
Your chest heaves so hard, you choke on it, only pulled away from the restless scratching at the inside of your mind when a warm hand curls around your wrist.
You had not heard the door open.
For one hopeful moment, you think it might be your husband, finally noticing you outside your marriage bed, noticing your pain, noticing you at all. You long for him to say it’s all right, you’re enough as you are. It doesn’t matter if you cannot give him a son.
But it’s only Joel, looking from your swollen, wet face to your bloody thighs through your thin nightclothes and back. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, your wrist still in his hand. “You’re all right, sweetheart.”
“He will be angry.” The words are involuntary, scattered out of your mouth like pieces of a game you don’t know how to play.
Joel just shakes his head, helps you up, draws a bath for you, knowing better than to call for a maid, even though he could. Rumors would not affect him in the way they affected you.
“He’ll get over it,” Joel snarls, like he could will it so.
“I’m okay, I’m sorry.”
His eyes sweep over you, taking inventory, making sure that’s true, before he confirms it, like you had asked a question. “You’re okay.”
You say nothing, and when you’re in the bath, you squeeze his hand and watch him go away again.
.
.
.
One evening, a few weeks into summer, your husband sends for you.
He wishes to dine together.
You can’t remember the last time you did so where it was not required, where he liked to have you at his side in front of guests. The invitation is unexpected, but you take a moment to tuck yourself into a fresh dress, rife with silk and tulle, a color that makes your skin brighten.
And you have been so alone, these past few weeks. You are hungry for any company.
He stands to greet you when you enter his rooms, his eyes flitting over your efforts without a word.
He holds out your chair for you as you cycle through conversation you could offer. How was it Joel was so easy for you to speak to but your husband made you choke on your tongue? Every word seemed wrong, imprecise, unimpressive and simpering.
“I’ve called for a doctor,” he informs you as soon as you are seated across from him, situating himself in his chair, eyes never quite settling on you. “You can expect him tomorrow afternoon.”
You clear your throat. “Whatever for?”
With that simple question, he finally looks at you, his fidgeting settling. “Whatever—?” He cuts himself off with a chuckle. “Darling. I fear your childbearing years may be coming to a close.” He pushes back from the table again, pacing the length of the dining room, pausing before the glass doors that lead to a small balcony, hands tucked behind his back.
You open your mouth, when he continues.
“And, it pains me to say this, but you have disappointed me greatly.” Your stomach clenches hard, a wide hollow space expanding in your chest. “You and I, we made certain promises. And I made concessions, despite my misgivings about your, ah, aesthetic presentation, in favor of your youth and, despite your disfiguration, your beauty.”
He turns back to you suddenly, blotting out the sun behind him. “You promised me a child. I am owed a son. It has been more than three years, since our union.”
Your husband circles the room, his thick hands grip the back of the dining chair you are perched on.
Strain bleeds between you in the air, a terse rigidity that pulls your spine straight and taut. Though your heart pounds, you maintain your composure, breathing slowly and evenly.
“I am sorry,” you offer. “I can no more control—”
“I was assured of your standing,” he continues over you. “That you were untouched, educated, and proper. But lately, I have. . .heard whispers.”
“Whispers?” You murmur back, lips barely moving, fear coiling in your gut, not for yourself but for Joel. “What do you mean?”
His hands move from the chair to your shoulders, fingers clamping down along your collarbone briefly before he drags the chair next to you closer and sits. He’s so close you have to lean back to meet his eyes. He takes one of your hands in both of his.
“I only want to help you fulfill your purpose, you understand. You are so restless and unhappy. You will mellow and be calm once you are with child. Think of it. How good it will be to fulfill this wish that is both of ours.”
You swallow and shift your gaze down, wondering if the stress of the pressure to conceive was interfering with your body’s willingness to do so. He cups your unmarred cheek in his hand and pulls your gaze to his. “Look at me when I speak to you.” If he were another man, the action might have been sweetly cajoling, a desperation to see your eyes, but with him it is a matter of control.
“You will see the doctor tomorrow. You will follow his directions and recommendations exactly. He will consult with me after, so I will know.”
“Of course. I will do everything to the letter.”
His thumb drifts over the apple of your cheek, then your lips. Once, you would have reveled in the affection, thought it a good thing. Now, it only smarts for it is not the hand you long for. “Good. Maybe you will finally yield.” He releases you, picks up his silverware and clears his throat.
“Yes,” you agree, feeling faint.
You are nothing more than cattle, you think distantly. A placid little cow, dumb and satisfied with being incubator to your husband’s heir. Because it must be a boy, of course.
A daughter would only mean you would have to do it all again. And again and again and again to give him a son. You refuse to imagine the life that might fall on these illusory daughters—married off, sold, confined and capsized in a life they had not asked for.
If you could get pregnant once, let alone more than once.
“As for these whispers,” he continues as the door opens and a few household staff finally sweep in with your dinner. You wonder if one had been listening at the door. “I expect them to cease.” He cocks his head at you. “I will not have a wife with a tarnished reputation.”
The vagueness of the threat tells you that more specific rumors have not yet met his ears. Or, maybe they had, and he simply never cared, until this recent renewed need for an heir.
You slide your limp palms into your lap and try to control the fear gathering at the back of your neck. It feels as though god has reached down to pinch you by the scruff. Something else pulsing in your belly too.
You hate him, you realize, for the control he wields over you. Something cold and mean slithers into your heart. If anything should happen to Joel, you decide then, you shall throw yourself off the roof of the estate and curse your husband to never see a son born to him.
The anger gives you courage, but he isn’t done.
A plate of roasted duck and potatoes is placed before him, while a bowl of broth is sat on the table in front of you.
You frown and he continues. “You will have light soup, broth, and tea until it is done. The physician thinks that heavy food may be contributing to your irregular cycle. And your. . .temperamental moods.”
He cuts into the duck with gusto, not looking at you anymore. “My first wife was prone to certain moods too.” He chews, smiles placidly at you. “Have I ever told you about her?”
You cannot tell malice from the general cruelty of being a woman. Did his wife jump, or was she thrown? It’s impossible for you to know. If you get pregnant under this new regimen about to be installed, you will never know. Or, you may find yourself pushed from a great height, watching from above as another woman swanned into your husband’s life to repeat your mistakes.
One thing you suddenly know, is that you know nothing. Of yourself, the life you want. If you were supposed to desire something beyond what was prescribed at all.
You had only ever wanted to be married, a wife. Maybe naively, you had thought that meant being loved. To be someone’s wife was to be loved and cherished. But your husband clearly doesn’t, not beyond what nested inside you.
Joel, not your husband, not your anything, cared for you, maybe cherished you. At the very least he treats you like a person, considers you.
You feel a jealous rage scrape the inside of your lungs. An envious, covetous rage that he has been there all along, waiting for you, offering impossibilities like they wouldn’t kill him slowly, and you were stuck, trapped, chewing your foot off in a chain you could unlock.
“No,” you smile. “Tell me about her.”
.
.
.
In the days after you dine with your husband, your anger, always repressed, pushed down into the pit of your stomach, curdles. It sours and writhes and twists its way into your lungs.
The indignity of suffering the doctor does not help. He condescends to you about your monthly cycle, the foods you eat or don’t eat, how often and how vigorously you engage in sex. He asks you to lie back and puts his fingers inside you, groping around to feel for god knows what, making you shudder, making the anger double until you’re gritting your jaw so hard your teeth ache.
When he retracts his hand, he says you are unnaturally cold and tense. He prescribes a tea and a warm compress, and suggests laudanum mixed into your wine to help relax and open you to your husband’s ministrations.
In addition to your light diet, you are directed to rest. No walks, no reading, no writing. It simply stressed your body and overtaxed your delicate mind, distracted from energy that could be conserved and put toward conceiving.
A corpse, you think bitterly.
He wants you to play dead until a baby appears.
“And keep your hips raised after your husband has reached completion,” he says as he steps toward the door. “I shall pass on my recommendations to your husband.”
You lie prone for the entire day, restless and miserable, monitored by the household staff. Despite the anger pulsing like a bruise under your ribs, you don’t know what else to do but follow the orders handed down and hope this course works.
The laudanum and something unnamed for your irritable mood is mixed into your wine that first night. The maid mixes it and watches you drink it down. As usual, your husband enters your rooms when the candles are snuffed out and you have passionless, dutiful sex. His hands grip your hips to steady you and don’t trail elsewhere.
You think about pushing him off the roof of the estate. Then feel guilty, because you have no reason to resent him. Not really. He has not been cruel to you.
You think about how much excitement his recent relentless attention would have stirred in you a few years ago. It would have been evidence that he cared for you.
You think about Joel, but can’t imagine sex with him would ever be that way.
On the dawn of the fifth day of drugged lethargy, the maid lets it slip that your husband departed the estate early that morning, and wouldn’t return for several days.
Feeling mischievous and bold, a well of want, need, and pulsing, wretched self-loathing, you sit up and ask for toast and coffee. She hesitates, looking at you in your mountain of sheets, a prison of sorts.
She hesitates and then goes, returning with it a few minutes later. You scarf it down ravenously, starving after so many days of broth and tea, like you were a sickly child.
You wash and dress in a simple day dress without help.
You simply refuse to lie still any longer. Your legs ache from the effort of not moving.
A different guard stands in the hall, and you pull up short, fear tickling the back of your throat. You look him up and down. “Where is J—Captain Miller?”
“Off-duty, Mistress. Weren’t really keen on goin’. But should be back this evenin’.”
“Of course. Come along then.”
He shrugs and follows you.
You walk the grounds, then run until sweat pours down your forehead, your dress thick with sweat. You visit the stables, and saddle a horse yourself, refusing help from the stable boys. Your guard for the day, along with the other staff, all seem at a loss for what to do with you, if there was anything at all they could do.
You ride until your thighs ache, and then send the men in the training yard off, to practice with your little wooden training dagger. Your husband would blanche to see you with it; you think Joel might be amenable to giving you, if you asked, a real blade.
The anger hasn’t abated by the time afternoon pools sticky and sweet on the horizon. The sun is a flaming yellow ball, dripping like honey along the bright blue edges of the sky.
You go directly to the kitchens and raid it for whatever you please. Cheese, bread, honey, figs, a pomegranate that crumbles ruby red in your hands, drips in red rivulets down your wrists. A pit yawns open wide inside you, filled with unanswered questions, uncertainty about everything you’ve been brought up to believe true about the world, and about your place in it.
The walls of the estate seem to have shrunk. You will not lie still again. You will not suffer the doctor again, nor your husband.
There is only one thing you desire.
You will have it.
.
.
.
That evening, you open your door into the slowly cooling hall, hoping Joel will be there now, as he wasn’t that morning. Summer air streaks the flagstones in orange stripes. He glances up, a bead of sweat rolls down the side of his face.
You lick your lips, feeling suddenly nervous, feeling suddenly like your revelations have come all too late.
“Hi,” you say softly, feeling suddenly shy. “Would you come in? Only if you’d like to. I am not making demands.”
He starts forward, eyes flicking over you. “Well, ain’t that unusual?” he asks, like no time has passed since you last opened the door to him, like it hasn’t been weeks.
You glance down the hall and back to him, a smile tugging at your mouth, despite yourself. “Joel.”
His chest brushes your arm as he slips past you into the room, mouth at your ear, “me and you both know I don’t mind demands,” and takes in the little feast you’d cajoled out of the kitchens, citing continued ravenousness while your hand hovered over your stomach, as though a possible pregnancy were the cause for your hunger, the need for so much food.
“What’s all this for?”
“You,” you slip your arm through his, palm braced on his forearm, and guide him to sit at the table. The room is warm, swelteringly so, but you can’t risk having the curtains or the windows open. The setting sun beyond paints the white fabric a soft tangerine. “It’s my way of begging for your forgiveness.”
He shakes his head but sits. “Nothin’ to forgive.”
You linger at his side for a moment, just to be near him, inhale the scent of him close by, among your things. You touch the shell of his ear, the sharp edge of his jaw, tucking a piece of graying hair back, before sitting across from him. “There is.”
His brows lift.
“I said things I shouldn’t have,” you clarify. “I feel as though I am most myself with you. You're very dear to me and we’ve shared so much. I think, more than anything, I am afraid of—” You shake your head, nervous to say it suddenly. “I don’t know.”
His eyes flick over you before he takes up a plate and begins to pile food on it. It’s good, settles something in you, to provide the small bounty, but he pushes the plate in front of you when he’s finished. “Eat.” He sits back. “Then you tell me whatever you need to.”
“Joel—”
“I heard you wasn’t.”
“Well—”
“And you wasn’t goin’ on walks anymore. Thought you were sick or maybe. . .you finally got pregnant.”
“You were worried about me.”
He tilts his head at you, and in the low light you see something you hadn’t before, a yellowing bruise the shape of a crescent moon beneath his eye. “‘Course I was.”
You shake your head. “You shouldn’t have to wait for me like that. For me to come to you. You shouldn’t have to wait at all.”
“I don’t mind.”
You don’t answer, feeling as though your heart is on your tongue, that it will fall out if you open your mouth. He nods to the plate in front of you. “Eat somethin’.”
The sun finally sets beyond your curtained windows. The room goes purple in shadow, then yellow in the lamp Joel lights as you push the food around the plate.
“I’m afraid to be honest,” you admit softly. "But I know I must."
Joel sits back in his chair again, his legs spread wide, hand rubbing over his face as he tilts his head at you. “Yeah.” He nods, like he can see something you can’t. “I know the feelin’.”
You stand and push back from the table, rounding it quickly, pressing yourself into his lap, hand to his jaw. “I need to be honest, Joel.”
He catches you against his chest, rubs your thigh with his open palm. He tilts his head back to keep his eyes on yours, brows lowered, eyes soft.
“Tell me then.”
You shake your head, not sure how to say I want you and not sound like a petulant child demanding a sweet. It’s hard, too, to admit that you’ve been wrong, purposefully blind, willfully obtuse about your life. That you would abandon everything and flee with him.
That even if he won't go with you, you will flee.
“I don’t want to lose you,” you murmur, eventually, not looking away though you want to. “When I think of the future without you, I can’t see anything. I see only miserable hours, alone.”
He considers you, doesn’t answer you for a long moment. “Okay.” He shifts, runs one hand down his face. “You think about what I said?”
Your heart lurches. “That is not what I—”
“I know I upset you, sayin’ it, but I’ll still. . .the offer is there. Whenever you need me, I’m here.”
You shake your head, feeling ill and loved. “I will always have need of you,” you answer. “But not like that.”
He’s frowning at you, the crease in his forehead deepening.
You feel the woolly unraveling of the last few weeks thick on the back of your tongue, and practically spit them into his lap. The humiliation of it, the helplessness of it. How trying to satisfy your husband should have been simple and brought you joy but it only brought you more doubts, and final certainty.
Joel’s expression darkens when you tell him of the laudanum, the days spent in stupor, resting so as not to upset your delicate womb.
“You. . .knew what they were giving you?”
“Yes.”
His brows loosen, but only by a fraction.
“If he meant to give it to me without my knowledge there were better ways than mixing it in front of me.”
You grip his shirt in your hands. “But you are not listening. None of that matters because I will not give him a child. I would not give him your child. I want you. But I am afraid of being alone and unwanted, and I’m afraid that as soon as you have me, I will be nothing again.”
You swallow, your mouth trembles, but you continue. “Being proper. Doing everything as it was prescribed. Has brought me nothing but misery.” Uncertainty laps at your heart, that he would say such offers are long past. “I would go with you,” you finish. “I would leave with you. Despite my fear that you will—I would follow you.” You swallow, "But even if you don't, I cannot stay. I am leaving."
The words have barely passed your lips before his mouth is pressed against yours, swallowing your voice, forcing the doubt back down your throat.
Here you are safe, here you are warm.
Here unreasonable demands will not be made of you.
You curl your fingers into his hair, then the stiff collar of his shirt, breathe the scent of him, so familiar and tender, musk and salt and cedar.
“Tonight,” he says, hands on your hips, urging you up. “Now.”
“Wait.”
He goes still, you can see the hope bleached from his eyes in an instant. “If it is me,” you begin, “if I cannot have children—”
Joel is laughing before you finish, a relieved sort of laugh that makes you frown. “Can’t think of anything that matters less.” He strokes your cheek, thumb running over the scar that was supposed to make you undesirable. “Only thing that matters is you.”
It’s beautiful in its simplicity.
You. Not something from you.
This time, when he urges you up from his lap, you let him.
You take nothing with you.
The halls and stables are empty of staff at that late hour; your husband will not return for three more days.
The air tastes like rain and the crackle of summer heat when you ride out of the stables together and slip near soundlessly between the familiar trees that surround the estate.
If the road ahead is uncertain, that's okay, at least it will be yours.
summary: After a night out lands you on the front page of every tabloid and social media feed, you're in desperate need of a way to show your parents you can settle down and be trusted again. Harry Castillo is simultaneously everything and nothing they’d ever want for you. He's devastatingly rich, well-connected, and older, with a family name that’s always shared space with yours on charity lists and seating charts, but never quite comfortably. He’s perfect for you, and little do you know, you might just be perfect for him. With the tabloids and Gossip Girl circling like sharks, you strike a deal.
harry castillo x you series
|| fake dating, eventual smut, tabloids, Gossip Girl AU, socialite!reader, richgirl!reader, kinda bratty!reader, NYC, reader is in her mid 20s, old money lifestyle, trust fund babies, age gap, rich people problems, more tags to come as I write, potential smut, no spoilers for the movie, reader has a last name for storytelling purposes, no y/n ||
note: This is a Gossip Girl AU using canon characters for their personalities and core dynamics, but not bound by the show’s timeline or events. All characters are aged up and in their 20s. Only canon events that are explicitly referenced in the story are considered part of this universe.
can also be read on ao3
Gossip Girl Crash Course
playlist by the sweet angel @sunshinegirl29
.⋆♱ In the idyllic town of Jackson, the fragile peace Father Miller has spent years clinging to begins to crack the moment the future Mrs. Craven arrives.
You.
He is only looking for a pair of willing hands to help keep his church standing.
You are only searching for a place to breathe, somewhere beyond the gilded cage closing around your life.
But in a town where gossip spreads faster than wildfire, even the smallest kindness can become a scandal.
What begins as a harmless arrangement soon turns into something dangerously sweet; something neither of you should want, and neither of you can ignore.
Because after ten years of trying to bury the man beneath the clerical collar, Father Miller can feel him stirring back to life.
And Joel is beginning to understand that the miracle he’s been praying for all these years… might be the very thing that costs him everything.
Chapter one: The Devil Wears Flannel .⋆♱
.⋆♱ Beautiful dividers from @chrisssiren & @saradika-graphics
summary: even after swapping from nights to days, you just can’t seem to escape the inconveniently attractive night shift attending. then a ptmc night out, a sparkly dress, and a not-so-innocent game of never have i ever leads to dr. jack abbot making sure you can never utter the words “never have i ever finished during sex” ever again.
notes: i really hope you guys enjoiy this! it was so much fun to write and i just feel like jack is a little easier to put into silly situations than robby, so here i am torturing the poor man! i'm sorry in advance if the smut is kind of mid, i was fighting tumblr's block limit rule with this fic so i feel like i didn't get indulge as much as i would have liked, but still! i hope you guys love it, and please, please let me know what you think! (p.s. i think i mentioned the title was originally 'unaffected' but i like this one better)
warnings: swearing, alcohol, blushing, italics, jealousy, implied age gap, jack is a yearner, reader wears a "revealing" dress (but description is very vague and there's zero detail about body-type), mildly uncomfortable male encounters, friend!santos, pittlings chaos, garsantos mention, jack gets a little possessive, reader has long enough hair to sweep off her neck, and SMUT (making out, fingering, "panties", a tiny bit of dirty talk, unprotected piv, "good girl", and jack says sweetheart a lot) 18+ only please, mdni.
word count: 18889
Jack Abbot had never thought of himself as a jealous man.
Possessive, maybe. Protective, definitely. But jealous? Never.
He had never really had anything to be jealous of.
Until now.
Now there are far too many things.
Like the pen between your lips—and the way you bite down just hard enough to leave a little dent in the plastic while you read through Dana’s notes.
Or Dana herself, and the way you’re looking at her—soft, sleepy, warm in a way that twists something tight in Jack’s chest. The same way you used to look at him in the quiet hours at the end of a night shift.
Or your scrubs—God, your scrubs—and the way they fit just a little too well tonight. Too tight in all the right places. Distracting in ways that are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Jack has never needed to be jealous of anything before, but now he finds himself jealous of inanimate objects, coworkers you barely glance at, and your goddamn clothes.
So, yeah. Jack Abbot had never thought of himself as a jealous man—until you came along.
“Dr. Abbot,” Dana calls, peering over the top of her glasses. “You’re early.”
Beside her, you glance up from your tablet, meeting his eyes across the ER with that same soft smile.
“Dr. Abbot,” you say, like you can’t quite help yourself.
Jack squares his shoulders and starts toward the nurses’ station, determined not to let Dana and her all-knowing, all-seeing bullshit clock exactly why he’s at work almost two hours earlier than he needs to be.
“Yeah, I’ve got some stuff I didn’t get to wrap up this morning,” he lies.
Princess pops up from behind the desk. “I thought you said you stayed back this morning to make sure everything was sorted?”
Jack’s gaze cuts to her. “Yes. But I forgot something.”
Dana narrows her eyes. “Mhm. What’d you forget?”
“A few notes from the three a.m. GSW,” he replies quickly—too quickly.
It’s weak and he knows it, but there’s nothing else he could think of with Dana watching him like that and your warm, sleepy gaze still lingering from across the desk.
Dana nods slowly, adjusting the chart in her hands. “Right. Two hours early for a few notes.”
Jack just shrugs, avoiding her gaze as he walks past—and he doesn’t look back until he’s safely around the corner, standing in front of his locker. Only then does he risk a glance, just briefly over his shoulder, quick enough to catch a glimpse of you disappearing down the North hall.
God. It’s ridiculous, really. He’s a grown man.
More than that—he's an old man.
Yet here he is staying late at work and coming in early just to see more of you. Because ever since you swapped from nights to days, Jack doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Sure, he could barely concentrate when you were on shift together, but who knew not having you around would be even worse?
He spends the first half of his shift hating himself for being so hung up on someone so young and so impossibly out of reach—then spends the second half anxiously awaiting your arrival for the day shift.
And it’s only been two weeks.
But the absolute worst part?
He doesn’t even know why you swapped shifts. You never even spoke to him about it. You just told him at four a.m. two Saturdays ago that you were switching to day shift. No reason. No explanation. That was it.
At first he wondered if it was his fault—if maybe you’d simply decided you didn’t like working with him.
But you still greet him every morning and every evening with that same warm smile. You still look to him first whenever someone asks for an attending and he’s still around. You still text him whenever the ER cat shows up outside the ambulance bay—which apparently happens much more often during the day shift.
And Jack still buys a packet of freeze-dried liver treats every Sunday to keep in the cupboard above the break room fridge—because he knows how much you love feeding that cat.
“What’re you doing here?”
Jack’s head whips around at the sound of his friend’s voice.
“I—uh—came in early to fix up a few notes,” he says, turning back to shove his bag into his locker.
Robby’s brows lift. “Two hours for notes?”
Jack sighs, slinging his stethoscope around his neck and shutting his locker before turning to face his fellow attending. “Are you of all people really going to lecture me about not having a life outside of this ER?”
Robby chuckles quietly, lifting both hands out of his pockets in surrender. “I wasn’t judging.”
“Good,” Jack mutters, already starting back toward central. “Anything I need to know?”
Robby falls into step beside him. “North Three’s waiting on a CT for possible appendicitis. Kid in Five came in with chest pain but his labs look clean so far. Dana’s still fighting with bed control about moving the pneumonia admit upstairs.”
They both stop at the nurses’ station, glancing up at the board.
“Otherwise it’s been unusually calm,” Robby adds. “Which probably means you’re about to get slammed.”
Jack gives him a flat look. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” Robby claps him on the shoulder. “Oh—and that R2 you gave me?”
“What about her?”
Robby shrugs. “She’s great.”
“I know,” Jack says, keeping his voice carefully even.
Robby studies him for a second, eyes narrowing just a fraction, the corner of his mouth threatening to lift. The man might be a disaster when it comes to his own feelings, but he has an uncanny talent for spotting everyone else’s.
“We’re alright out here if you want to catch up on your notes,” he says after a moment, already turning away. “Or go make the rounds. Get some very thorough handovers from the residents.”
Jack keeps his eyes fixed on the board. “I hate you.”
Robby huffs out a quiet laugh. “Then why are you here two hours early?”
Jack exhales sharply and steps forward, pulling one of the tablets from the rack.
“Notes,” he says, a little louder than necessary.
Robby just shakes his head, still smiling faintly as he disappears down the North corridor.
For a moment, Jack doesn’t move. He lingers at the nurses’ station, tablet in hand, pretending to analyse the board while ignoring the incredibly unsubtle looks from Perlah and Princess—both of them watching him with the kind of interest that usually means someone’s about to become the subject of a very entertaining conversation.
Then, with a polite nod to each of them, he clears his throat and steps away, turning toward the break room—trying very hard not to hope he runs into you on the way.
And trying not to be disappointed when he doesn’t.
The break room is empty when he steps inside, the noise of the ER dulling as the door falls shut behind him. He sets his tablet on the table—next to someone’s half-eaten lunch and a discarded Lean Cuisine container—and grabs a clean mug from the cupboard, pouring the last of the coffee pot into it.
Then he drops into the seat furthest from the door, his back to the bulletin board, and taps the tablet awake, pulling up the notes for the three a.m. GSW. The same notes he already finished in detail while staying back this morning—before Robby told him to get the hell out of his ER and get some sleep.
He barely makes it through two lines of the chart before the door swings open again.
“Shit, sorry,” you say quickly, stepping toward the table.
Jack’s pulse does the same stupid thing it always does whenever he sees you, making his chest feel hot and his head a little fuzzy.
“What are you sorry for?” he asks, as if it isn’t obvious.
You’ve already stacked the Lean Cuisine container on top of the half-eaten bowl of something grey and mushy-looking and are halfway to the sink with them.
“I only got, like, a five-minute break today and had to run out for a trauma, then completely forgot about my lunch,” you explain, cheeks flushed as you glance down at the bowl. “This is gross. I’m so sorry.”
Jack shifts in his chair. “I’ve seen worse in here, I promise.”
You glance over your shoulder as you turn on the tap, the corner of your mouth lifting just slightly. “Really?”
He nods. “Really.”
He could almost swear your smile lifts a little higher before you turn back to the sink, scrubbing hurriedly at the bowl of slop that probably shouldn’t be going down the drain anyway.
Jack clears his throat. “But—uh—Lean Cuisine? Really?”
You look back at him again, brows drawn. “What’s wrong with Lean Cuisine?”
“Nothing,” he says lightly. “If you’re trying to survive a very stressful twelve-hour shift on only four hundred calories.”
You huff a quiet laugh, turning back to the sink. “I actually managed to eat lunch today. That’s already a win.”
“It’s mostly sodium and sadness,” he adds, almost absently. “Not much protein.”
You finally turn the tap off and spin around, leaning a hip against the counter. “Alright, Dr. Abbot. When I find the spare time to start meal prepping between my very stressful twelve-hour shifts, I’ll let you know.”
Jack opens his mouth—then closes it again. Because what he wants to say is ridiculous.
But it comes out anyway.
“…I cook.”
You blink.
“You cook?”
Jack clears his throat, suddenly very interested in his coffee mug.
“Yeah. Well.” He shrugs. “I’ve been told I’m reasonably good at it.”
You stare at him for a second, brows knitting slightly as you clearly try to figure out where the hell that came from.
“Well,” you say with a quick smile, “I guess your dinner guests are pretty lucky.”
Before he can respond, you grab the Lean Cuisine packet, toss it in the bin, and step toward the door.
“Sorry again for the mess.”
Then you’re gone—leaving Jack alone with his coffee, his notes, and the growing suspicion that there might actually be something seriously wrong with him.
-
“Is that Dr. Abbot in the break room?” Santos asks, falling into step beside you.
You keep your eyes fixed on your tablet.
“Yep.”
She leans closer, steering you out of the way of a gurney.
“But night shift doesn’t start for like two more hours.”
“I’m aware.”
“So, why is he here?”
You exhale sharply and finally look up from your tablet. “I don’t know, Trin. Maybe because the universe hates me.”
She snorts. “Or maybe because he likes you.”
You roll your eyes, turning toward the South corridor. “Please don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything,” she insists. “I seriously think that old man has a thing for you.”
“Don’t call him that,” you mutter.
“Okay, fine. I seriously think that hot, older man has a thing for you,” she says, stopping beside you at the South desks. “And we all know how you feel about him, so—”
“No,” you snap. “We don’t all know how I feel about Ja—Dr. Abbot.”
She presses her lips together to keep from laughing.
“Besides,” you go on, dropping into a chair. “I swapped to day shift so I could stop being distracted by my attending and actually focus on being a good doctor—so could you please stop distracting me?”
She leans a hip against the desk, completely ignoring you. “And don’t you think that’s a little strange? I mean, you swapped to day shift—what, two weeks ago?”
You glance at her from the corner of your eye. “And?”
“And,” she says dramatically, “for the past two weeks Dr. Abbot has been staying back every morning and coming in early every afternoon.”
Your gaze slides back to the computer. “So?”
She sighs, exasperated. “It’s not a coincidence.”
“Actually, I think it is,” you argue.
She stares at you for a second, eyes narrowing. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re annoying.”
She rolls her eyes and pushes off the desk. “Whatever. You’re still coming out tomorrow night, right?”
Your fingers hesitate over the keyboard. “Uh—I’m not sure yet.”
“Dr. Ellis is the only person from night shift that’ll be there,” she says.
You let out a quiet sigh of defeat.
“Fine,” you mutter. “I’ll come.”
“Good.” She grins, already turning away. “Come to my place around six. We can get ready and pregame.”
“Why can’t I get ready at home?” you ask.
“Because,” she calls over her shoulder, “I get to pick what you wear.”
And before you can argue, she slips into a patient room, effectively ending the conversation.
“Great,” you mumble, turning back to the computer. “Can’t wait.”
It’s not like you’re not looking forward to finally joining in on a night out now that you’re no longer on the night shift.
You are. You’re just... nervous.
Nervous, perpetually stressed out, and still adjusting to life as a day-walker. And Santos knows that. She probably knows you better than anyone else at PTMC—even though you’ve spent the better part of ten months working opposite shifts.
Which is exactly why she’s pushing you to join this night out. Because she knows you need it. She knows you need to relax, forget about work, and do something other than obsess over the night shift attending who’s had you completely undone since the day you first met.
God.
Jack Abbot. The single most dangerous man in Pittsburgh.
Not only is he stupidly hot, but he’s also annoyingly competent, irritatingly attentive, and has the starring role in every single one of your most inappropriate fantasies.
He’s also the very reason you’re terrified of having to redo your second year of residency, because that man affects your focus so much you literally can’t function. Like three weeks ago, when you walked straight into the glass door of Trauma One because you were too busy watching him take his jacket off.
His damn jacket.
That was the moment you finally decided you needed to swap shifts—because Dr. Shen couldn’t look at you for the rest of the night without bursting into laughter.
Jack Abbot is a liability to your health and wellbeing—which means he is a liability to your career. And even though asking Dr. Robby to swap to day shift was one of the most ridiculously difficult things you’ve done since starting at PTMC, you stand by the fact that it was the right decision.
The smart decision. The professional decision. Even if… it might not be working yet.
Because now you can’t just glance across central anymore and see Jack leaning against the desk, talking through a case with Lena. You can’t have him step up beside you when you’re unsure about something and quietly walk you through it. He’s not the one across from you in the trauma bays. And there isn’t a coffee cup that magically appears in front of you during the three o’clock lull.
Now you just… think about him instead.
But it’s only temporary. You’re sure of it. You just need to get used to the day shift and figure out how to get Jack Abbot out of your head.
Which… you have a sneaking suspicion is what Santos plans on helping you with this weekend.
You’re pretty sure you overheard her the other day telling Whitaker that the only way to get over someone is by getting under someone else. And maybe that’s exactly what you need to do—get under someone else so you can stop thinking about the maddeningly hot man who’s nearly twice your age and most definitely does not have a thing for you. Regardless of what Santos seems to think.
You spend the rest of your shift catching up on charting and trying very hard not to think about Dr. Abbot.
When someone asks for an attending, you call Dr. Robby. When you hear his voice just around the corner, you change paths as quickly and inconspicuously as you can. And when your notes are up to date and night shift starts rolling in, you find Dr. Ellis and give her—and only her—the rundown on your patients.
By the time you shut your locker and sling your bag over your shoulder, the sky outside is dark and there are only a few day shifters left lingering around the nurses’ station.
“Did you drive today?” Whitaker asks, shutting his locker only a moment after you.
“Yeah,” you reply. “Need a ride?”
He nods sheepishly. “That’d be great. Santos left already, said I was taking too long.”
You roll your eyes. “Yeah, I bet it had nothing to do with whatever she and Garcia were whispering about in the stairwell.”
Whitaker winces. “I just hope they’re at Garcia’s tonight.”
You huff a small laugh and hitch your bag higher. “You ready?”
He nods.
You both turn and start back toward central—but just as you reach the nurses’ station, his steps slow.
“Do you need to…?”
He jerks a thumb over his shoulder.
You frown. “Need to what?”
He hesitates. “Don’t you normally say goodbye to Dr. Abbot?”
Your eyes widen slowly. “Uh—no. Why would you say that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just thought you two were close.”
“We’re not close,” you say, a little too quick.
“Sorry,” he mutters, raising both hands in surrender. “I just—I don’t know. I thought because you were his resident you two were… close.”
“I’m not his resident,” you snap. “I’m just… a resident. I don’t belong to him.”
“Okay,” he says slowly, brows drawing together. “I’m sorry, I just thought—”
“You thought wrong,” you mutter, glancing over your shoulder to make sure no one is listening.
Thankfully, the two nosiest nurses in the ER have already gone home for the day.
“Let’s just go.”
You grab his wrist and walk quickly toward the ambulance bay doors, giving Ellis and Shen a small nod as you pass—completely missing the middle-aged attending who just overheard most of your conversation.
The car ride to Santos and Whitaker’s isn’t long. Whitaker fills most of it anyway—rambling about the shift, about the kid in Five and whether night shift is going to get slammed, about how Dana looked like she was two seconds away from strangling bed control by the end of the day. And every few minutes he circles back around to apologising for making you drive him home.
You wave him off each time.
“It’s fine, Whitaker.”
“Seriously though,” he says as you pull up outside their building. “I really appreciate it.”
He slings his bag over his shoulder and climbs out of the car, pausing on the sidewalk to give you one last wave before heading toward the front door.
The moment the passenger door falls shut, the quiet settles in. You let out a long breath, tipping your head back against the headrest and letting your eyes fall shut for a moment. And immediately—inevitably—your brain drifts straight back to the same place it always does.
Jack Abbot. Of course.
You scrub a hand over your face before shifting the car back into gear and pulling away.
The rest of the night passes the way most nights do—with a quick shower, something vaguely edible scavenged from the fridge, and half-heartedly scrolling through your phone until exhaustion finally drags you to bed.
When your head finally hits the pillow, you tell yourself you’re too tired to think about him. It’s been a long day—long week—and all you need right now is sleep, not fantasies.
But that doesn’t stop your brain from doing it anyway. Because sometime in the early hours of the morning, Jack Abbot shows up in your dreams. Not in the ER. Not standing beside you at the nurses’ station or leaning over a chart.
He’s in a kitchen. Cooking.
Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, moving around the stove with the same quiet confidence he carries through the hospital—like he knows exactly what he’s doing and expects the rest of the world just to trust him.
And in the dream, you do.
You lean against the counter and watch him the way you sometimes watch him in the trauma bays, telling yourself you’re just observing. Just curious. Just learning.
He glances over his shoulder eventually, catching you staring—and says something you can’t quite hear over the soft clatter of the pan. But he’s smiling.
Then the dream shifts the way dreams tend to—logic slipping sideways until suddenly you’re standing much closer than you should be. Close enough to smell whatever he’s cooking. Close enough that when he turns toward you the space between you disappears entirely.
His hand settles at your waist like it belongs there.
Your back meets the edge of the counter.
And when his mouth brushes your neck—
You wake with a sharp inhale, staring up at the ceiling, heart racing.
“Fuck,” you mutter, dragging a hand over your face.
So much for getting him out of your head.
For a while, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, watching the first pale line of sunlight creep across until it touches the wall opposite your window.
At some point you realise you’re still replaying the dream in your head.
The kitchen. The way his hand had felt at your waist. The warmth of his mouth against your neck.
You groan quietly and drag the blanket over your face.
“Get a fucking grip.”
Then you throw the covers back and force yourself out of bed, heading straight into the kitchen in search of coffee.
Your small apartment is always quiet—but this morning it feels too quiet. Too still as you silently sip your coffee, one hip leaned against the kitchen counter. Which, unfortunately, leaves far too much room for your brain to wander right back to its favourite topic.
Jack Abbot.
After coffee, you take yourself for a long walk around the block, hoping the cool morning air might help clear the remnants of the dream from your head.
It doesn’t.
But by the time you make it back to your apartment, your legs feel loose and your mind feels a little quieter, and for the briefest moment you almost manage to convince yourself that you’re excited about tonight. That you’re going to be able to do what Santos is clearly angling for and go home with an attractive stranger so you can stop draining your vibrator battery with inappropriate thoughts of your attending.
The rest of the day drifts past in a slow blur of small, forgettable things. Laundry. Answering a couple of messages in the group chat. Half-heartedly reviewing a few notes from earlier in the week before deciding you absolutely refuse to think about work on your day off.
Eventually the afternoon light begins to soften and stretch across the floor, which means it’s probably time to start getting ready if you’re actually going to make it to Santos’ place before she decides you’re bailing and comes knocking to drag you there herself.
So you shower, change, pack a bag, and throw it over your shoulder on the way out the door—trying very hard not to feel disappointed that Dr. Ellis is the only person from night shift who’s going to be at the bar tonight.
It really is for the best.
You, alcohol, and Jack Abbot in the same room is a terrible idea.
“Alright, I’m ready,” Santos announces, finally stepping out of the bathroom.
You, Javadi, and Whitaker—who have spent the last twenty minutes on the couch chatting and sipping beer—look up.
“Aw, I wish I could do winged eyeliner like that,” Javadi says. “It just doesn’t suit my eye shape.”
“Don’t look too close,” Santos mutters. “It’s super uneven, but I don’t have time. I still have to fix this one before we go.”
She tips her chin toward where you and Whitaker are sitting on the opposite end of the lounge.
Whitaker’s eyes go wide. “Me?”
Santos scoffs. “Not you, Huckleberry. God, I don’t have enough time in the world to fix whatever’s going on there.”
Whitaker frowns, glancing down at his navy-blue button-up shirt. “What’s wrong with this?”
“Everything,” Santos says, already turning away.
Whitaker lifts his head, glancing between you and Javadi. “Is it really that bad?”
Javadi leans forward, lowering her voice. “There’s nothing wrong with it, Whitaker. You look great.”
You pat his shoulder. “It’s fine, really. She’s just—”
The words die on your tongue as Santos reappears, holding what can only be described as a sparkly scrap of fabric on a hanger.
Javadi tilts her head. “What’s that?”
Santos grins. “A dress.”
Whitaker chokes on his beer. “That’s… not a dress. That’s a glittery napkin.”
“Oh my God.” Javadi snorts. “My mom would kill me just for buying that.”
“I didn’t buy it,” Santos says lightly. “A friend in college gave it to me, but it’s never fit quite right.”
She steps forward, extending the hanger toward you.
“But I know you’ll be able to pull it off,” she adds, her grin sharpening.
You stare at it—glinting in the low evening sun spilling through the windows.
“Santos… this is a work thing,” you mutter.
She rolls her eyes. “It’s not a work thing. It’s just an outing with people from work.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Whitaker asks.
Santos sighs. “No, it’s not. And are you forgetting our main objective?”
You blink at her.
“To get you laid.”
Javadi giggles nervously, trying to hide it behind a swig of beer.
“Come on,” Santos says. “Just put it on and if it doesn’t work, we try something else.”
You hesitate, staring at the glittery thing like it might catch fire at any moment. Which, given enough sunlight, it probably could.
“Fine,” you say at last, pushing off the couch. “I’ll try it on, but that does not mean I’m wearing it.”
Santos’ eyes sparkle with excitement. Or maybe it’s just the dress.
“That’s my girl.”
You take the hanger from her and trudge into her room, nudging the door shut behind you. It takes a minute for you to figure out how the glittery napkin is supposed to go on—but once you do, you shed your comfortable clothes and shimmy into the most sparkly piece of fabric you’ve ever worn.
And somehow, the shimmering scrap of nothing turns out to be an actual dress—short, sparkling, and just structured enough to stay where it’s supposed to while still feeling mildly illegal.
With a deep breath, you turn away from the mirror and open the door, stepping back out into the lounge room.
“So?”
For a moment, no one says anything.
Whitaker’s mouth falls open.
Javadi’s eyebrows lift. “Oh.”
Santos, meanwhile, tilts her head appreciatively, one hand on her hip, eyes gleaming as she looks you over from head to toe.
“I knew it,” she says smugly.
Whitaker blinks. “That is not a dress.”
Javadi elbows him. “Stop talking.”
You tug awkwardly at the hem—which doesn’t actually move much because there isn’t very much hem to tug.
“Santos,” you say carefully, “I’m not sure—”
“Relax,” she says. “You look incredible.”
She circles you slowly, like a stylist inspecting her work.
“And you’re definitely going to get laid.”
“I feel like I shouldn’t be here,” Whitaker mutters, his face bright red.
Santos rolls her eyes. “You’re only here because you live here, Huckleberry. Now go grab that bottle of tequila from on top of the fridge—we’re going to need some liquid courage before we head out.”
After two shots of tequila and Santos’ finishing touches to your makeup, you all head out the door. Whitaker calls an Uber, the four of you pile in, and you carefully keep Santos’ leather jacket wrapped around yourself for some semblance of modesty.
You don’t really plan on taking it off for the rest of the night—even if it isn’t that cold.
The ride to the bar isn’t nearly long enough. Javadi spends most of it excitedly talking about how she can finally go out drinking now that she’s twenty-one, which Santos encourages with the enthusiasm of someone who clearly intends to make the most of that milestone.
You mostly just stare out the window. Trying not to think about the dress you shouldn’t have agreed to wear and the night shift attending you definitely shouldn’t be missing right now. Because if someone asked you where you’d rather be tonight—the bar or the ER with Dr. Abbot—your honest answer would be incredibly depressing.
Who would rather be at work than out with their friends on a Saturday night?
“We’re here,” Santos announces, nudging your side a little too hard.
You all thank the driver before climbing out, gathering yourselves on the sidewalk in front of the familiar establishment Santos loves dragging everyone to.
“Relax,” she says, dropping a hand on your shoulder. “You don’t need this.”
She tugs at the leather jacket, pulling it off your shoulders until it’s bunched at your elbows.
“I feel naked,” you mutter. “Like this is some nightmare where I show up to work in my underwear.”
Whitaker snorts. “Not far from it.”
Santos rolls her eyes. “Well, you’re not at work. You’re at a bar. And this is supposed to be fun.”
Right. Fun.
That is the entire point of tonight. Go out. Have a drink. Meet someone who isn’t Jack Abbot. Ideally forget Jack Abbot exists for at least a few hours.
Completely achievable.
Right?
“Fine.”
You draw a deep breath and drop your arms, letting the jacket slide off completely. Santos grins as you sling it over one elbow, trying not to instinctively hold it in front of your body like armour.
“See?” she says. “Much better.”
“Let’s just go inside before I change my mind,” you mutter, already starting toward the door.
Javadi loops her arm through yours. “You look amazing. Seriously.”
You give her a small smile, trying not to feel quite so awkward as Santos leads the way toward the main entrance.
It’s just a bar. Just a normal Saturday night. You’ll be fine after a few more shots of liquid courage.
You glance through the front window as you approach—more out of habit than anything else, your eyes drifting lazily over the crowded room inside.
People. Low lights. Patrons lingering around the bar.
And—
Your brain stalls.
Because there’s a man leaning against the bar with one elbow braced on the countertop, his shoulders broad under a tight black shirt, head tipped slightly as he talks to someone beside him.
A familiar someone.
Dr. Ellis.
And the man—
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Your stomach plummets.
Jack fucking Abbot.
Your feet stop moving, your whole body suddenly forgetting how to function.
Your pulse kicks violently against the inside of your throat as a wave of heat rushes up the back of your neck, sudden and dizzying and sharp enough to make the edges of your vision blur for half a second.
Because he looks—
He looks so good.
Relaxed in a way you’ve never seen at work. One hand curled loosely around a glass as he frowns slightly at something Ellis is saying, that small crease between his brows you know far too well.
And suddenly you are extremely, violently aware that you are standing outside a bar wearing approximately three square inches of glitter.
“Hey,” Javadi says beside you. “What’s—”
“Santos.”
She doesn’t stop.
“Santos,” you say again, your voice almost breaking.
She glances over her shoulder. “Hm?”
“You knew.”
She stops, her hand hovering near the door.
Whitaker glances between the two of you. “What’s happening?”
“Technically,” Santos says slowly, “I didn’t know. I just... suspected.”
“You said Ellis was the only one from night shift who’d be here.”
She winces. “I did, but what I meant is… Ellis is the only one who actually told me she’d be here.”
You stare at her. “So you did know?”
“I knew it was his night off.”
“Santos, I—” You glance back at him through the bar window. “I can’t go in there like this.”
“Like what?” she asks. “Smoking hot?”
“Half naked.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, you can.”
“I will actually die.”
“No, you won’t,” she says firmly. “You’re an adult. You can wear whatever you want, talk to whoever you want, and just because your incredibly inconvenient attending crush happens to be inside does not suddenly revoke your civil liberties.”
She pulls the door open.
“Now stop panicking and get in the bar.”
-
“He swore the chest pain had nothing to do with the seven energy drinks he’d had that night,” Ellis says, still rambling about a patient who pissed her off two nights ago, “which was a bold position to take with a heart rate of one-forty.”
Jack snorts softly. “And did you believe him?”
Ellis’ eyes go wide, and she takes a long drink before continuing her rant about night shift patients and the strange confidence people have when explaining why their terrible decisions definitely have nothing to do with the symptoms they’re currently experiencing.
Jack nods along, offering the occasional comment or question where needed, meeting her gaze now and then—but mostly keeping his attention on the door. Waiting. Because he’s not stupid enough to ask anyone if you’re going to be here tonight, but he is naïve enough to hope you will be.
He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight—his first night off in two weeks.
He was supposed to be at home, cooking something decent for dinner, enjoying the rare luxury of not wearing scrubs, and inevitably indulging in his favourite guilty pleasure—involving nothing but his hand and some very inappropriate thoughts of you.
But he’s not.
He’s here. In a crowded bar, sipping cheap scotch, listening to Ellis complain about the night shift patients and their weird confidence, just… waiting.
For you.
He’d wanted to ask you yesterday if you were coming to the bar tonight—before he agreed to join—but he’d barely seen you before the end of your shift. And you didn’t even say goodbye. Which isn’t unusual, given how chaotic the ER can be, but then he’d overheard your conversation with Whitaker—and something about it made his chest feel too tight.
It wasn’t anger. Not exactly. Not jealousy, either. It was just... wrong. Not because what you said was wrong, but because he hates that it was right. That you don’t belong to him. Even if Robby calls you ‘his R2’ and Whitaker thinks you’re close because you’re his resident—none of it changes the fact that he has no real claim over you.
Which is ridiculous. He knows it.
He shouldn’t feel territorial. He shouldn’t want this. Want you. And yet, his chest still feels too tight—a slow, hot coil of frustration and longing curling up into his throat, and he hates it. Hates hearing it out loud, hates how much it matters, hates that he can’t make it not matter.
“Oh.” Ellis glances over her shoulder. “Looks like Santos and the others are here.”
Jack’s gaze flicks back to the door.
He tries not to react, not to straighten, not to square his shoulders as if he’s bracing for something—but he can already feel his composure slipping.
Santos steps in first, her head turned slightly as she talks to Whitaker, who walks in behind her. Then it’s Javadi, an unusually wide smile on her face as she looks at—
You.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Jack stops breathing.
His chest burns. His stomach flips. His hand tightens dangerously around his scotch glass.
It’s you. Of course it’s you. You’re perfect.
But then—
That dress.
God.
That dress—short, sparkling, clinging just enough to make every nerve in his body snap awake. It shimmers under the low lights as you move, and he hates himself for noticing every subtle curve, every shift of fabric, as if time itself has slowed just to torture him.
It’s all too much.
He can feel his pulse in his throat, heat burning beneath his skin, blood rushing in the one direction it really, really shouldn’t be right now. In public. In front of his coworkers.
He blinks, finally tearing his gaze away from you.
And that’s when he notices the rest of the bar. All staring. All stunned.
He hates them all.
He hates that they can even look at you. Hates that the universe allows it. Hates that they might see even a fraction of what he sees—and feel a fraction of what he feels.
And he hates, more than anything right now, that you’re not his.
“Dr. Abbot,” Robby says, appearing beside him and slinging an arm across his shoulders. “What’s your poison tonight?”
Jack lifts his drink, knuckles still white around the glass. “Scotch.”
Robby claps his shoulder, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. “You might not want to have too many of those.”
Then he slips past both Jack and Ellis and raises a hand to flag down the bartender.
“Alright,” Ellis says, pushing off the bar. “I’m going to go grab a seat before the table gets too crowded.”
Jack nods, but he doesn’t follow. He stays beside the bar, rigid now, eyes fixed on the group of men at a high table just a few feet from the front door. They’re muttering to each other, leaning in, voices low—but nothing about it is subtle. Their gazes are glued to you as you weave through patrons and tables to greet the rest of the PTMC crew gathered in a booth near the back.
One of them—the dumbest looking one, Jack’s already decided—slowly slides off his stool, nodding along while his friends murmur their advice.
Jack glances back at you, now standing beside McKay, sliding your arms into the leather jacket you’d been carrying. Santos grabs your wrist, tilting her head toward the bar as she starts dragging you with her.
And, like a fourteen-year-old boy with a crush, Jack’s pulse starts racing.
“Dr. Abbot,” Santos says, grinning as you both approach the bar. “Fancy seeing you somewhere other than the ER on a Saturday night.”
“I do have a life outside of work, you know,” he says dryly, lifting his drink and looking anywhere but at you.
“Like playing bingo at the senior centre?” Santos asks, resting both forearms on the bar.
You step up on her other side, squinting at the shelves of liquor on the back wall like they’re the most interesting thing in the room.
“Bingo’s on Wednesdays,” he says mildly. “Try to keep up.”
Santos snorts, shaking her head as she reaches for the small leather-bound bar menu. But out of the corner of his eye, Jack sees your head dip—just slightly—and you try to hide a small laugh against your shoulder.
Jack feels it like a punch to the ribs.
Because you’re listening.
And apparently… you think he’s funny.
“Alright,” Santos says, lifting a hand. “I think we need some tequila over here.”
The bartender steps away from where he’d been serving farther down the bar, but his attention quickly drifts past Santos and lands on you. He leans in, resting one palm flat against the bar while he wipes down the counter with a rag that doesn’t really need wiping.
“So,” he says to you, not Santos. “What are you drinking tonight?”
Santos blinks.
“I just told you,” she says flatly. “Tequila.”
The bartender barely glances at her.
Jack’s jaw tightens.
You look briefly confused, glancing between Santos and the bartender.
“Uh—whatever she orders is fine.”
“Yeah. Tequila,” Santos repeats, slower this time.
The bartender laughs like she’s joking—and Jack sets his scotch down slowly. Carefully.
His eyes stay locked on the man now lining up four small glasses in front of you, still completely ignoring Santos. The way he’s watching you is too much. Too close. The faint curl at the corner of his mouth makes Jack want to punch the smirk right off his face.
And by the way you shift a little closer to Santos—pulling your jacket tighter around yourself—he knows you’re uncomfortable.
His hand clenches at his side.
Robby pauses as he walks past, a beer in each hand.
“Easy, tiger,” he mutters. “She can handle herself.”
“I know,” Jack says, voice low. “Doesn’t mean she has to.”
Robby gives him a look—a brief, knowing glance, somewhere between amusement and warning. “Careful.”
Jack doesn’t respond. He just turns back to you and Santos, watching as you each knock back two shots of tequila, your nose scrunching as the burn hits. And he can’t help the small twitch at the corner of his mouth, because the face you make as you set the second glass down is ridiculously cute for someone wearing a dress like that.
“Okay,” Santos says. “I need a vodka soda before I start making bad decisions.”
The bartender nods, already reaching for another glass—and before he can even ask if you’d like another drink, someone else steals your attention.
“Hey,” the guy says, stepping up beside you. “Can I get you another one?”
He leans in, just enough to be heard over the noise—but it’s still too close.
You shift slightly, angling toward him. “Oh. Uh—sure.”
Santos presses her lips together, clearly fighting a smile as she turns back to the bar, suddenly very invested in whatever the bartender is doing. The second he sets the vodka soda in front of her, she scoops it up and drops a few bills on the counter.
She lifts the drink to her lips as she turns away, pausing just long enough to glance at Jack over the rim of the glass.
Her brows lift. “You really gonna let that happen?”
Jack frowns. “What—”
But Santos is already gone, drink in hand, halfway back to the booth where everyone else is.
Where Jack should be headed too—because there’s no reason for him to stay here. No reason for him to linger, to hover, to make sure you’re okay, to stand there glaring at the guy buying you a drink like that’s going to change anything.
It’s not like he can blame him. If Jack thought he had a shot with you, he’d take it too. The difference is, Jack wouldn’t need the dress. Or the drinks. Or the crowd. He’d take that shot with you even when you’re tired and stressed out and covered in blood at the end of a bad shift in the ER. He’d take it any time. Any place.
But Jack doesn’t get that shot.
Because you’re young. You don’t have baggage. And you’re a resident—maybe not his resident, but still a resident.
It’s just too inappropriate.
Jack sets his glass back on the bar a little harder than necessary—and the bartender glances over, brows raised as if silently asking if he’d like another, but Jack just shakes his head.
His eyes flick back to you. To the way you’re smiling now—soft, not uneasy. To the way you seem to have forgotten about keeping your jacket closed, and now the idiot talking to you is looking anywhere but your face.
Then you laugh—light, easy—and something in Jack’s chest tightens again.
He looks away. He can’t keep standing here. He’s not going to stand here and watch you flirt with some idiot at the bar like he has any right to care.
With a deep breath, he forces himself to turn away and start walking back to the table.
Where he should have been five minutes ago. Where he plans on staying for the rest of the night.
Half an hour later, most of PTMC’s day shift staff are gathered in the booth, half still wearing their scrubs after coming straight from the hospital. The volume of conversation builds with the growing collection of empty glasses in the middle of the table, voices overlapping, getting louder with every round—but Jack doesn’t order another scotch. At some point, Ellis sets a beer in front of him, which he nurses until it’s too warm to enjoy.
Every now and then, he makes a point of nodding or laughing or glancing at someone across the table—pretending to follow the conversation, pretending he’s paying attention—when really, all he can focus on is you. You and your smile. And your laugh. And the way your hand settles lightly on a man’s bicep when he says something that makes you blush.
Not the same man as before, either. No—this one is new. This one swooped in when the first one excused himself to take a phone call, and now that one is back at the table with his friends, sulking.
Kind of how Jack is right now, sitting at the table with his friends. Sulking. Glaring. Plotting.
He knows he shouldn’t. He knows it’s none of his business. But he can’t stop himself from trying to come up with an excuse to interrupt you. To get you away from those men and their lingering stares.
Not that he’s any better.
“Abbot.” Robby nudges his side. “Hungry?”
Jack blinks, finally dragging his gaze away from you to where Ellis is standing, looking expectant.
“Hm?”
“Are you hungry?” Ellis asks. “I’m going to order some wings.”
Jack frowns. “Uh—no. I’m good. Thanks.”
Ellis nods once and turns away, heading straight for the bar.
Robby huffs a quiet laugh beside him. “You might want to turn your hearing aids up, old man.”
Jack doesn’t even look at him. “Funny.”
“I’m serious,” Robby says mildly. “You’ve missed, what, three questions in the last five minutes?”
“I heard her,” Jack mutters. “I was just... thinking.”
Robby hums like he doesn’t believe that for a second.
Jack shifts, pushing his chair back as he sets his warm beer on the table. “I’m gonna hit the head.”
Robby’s brows lift, slow and knowing, his gaze flicking briefly toward the bar.
“Mm,” he says. “Sure you are.”
Jack does, in fact, turn toward the bathrooms first—mostly because he needs a second away from all the music and chatter to try and clear his head. To try and stop himself from doing what he really left the booth to do.
He locks himself in the accessible bathroom—not that he needs it, but it’s more private than the men’s—and stands in front of the vanity. He presses his palms into the porcelain sink, shifting his weight forward with a deep, steadying breath.
This is ridiculous, and he knows it.
He’s a grown man. He shouldn’t be acting like this.
This is trivial shit, for God’s sake. Jack is a vet. A seasoned ER doctor.
So why is a goddamn crush undoing him like this?
Why are you undoing him like this?
He lifts his head and stares at his reflection—jaw tight, shoulders rigid—trying to get a grip. Trying to remember that he is a grown ass man, not some idiot who can’t keep his shit together.
His gaze drifts across his face—the day-old stubble, peppered hair—then to the reflection of the bathroom behind him. The graffitied walls, covered in stickers and spray paint, a chaotic collection of late nights and inebriated thoughts. He wonders, briefly, how many people came in here intending to leave something behind.
Then he spots something scrawled in the corner of the mirror in thick black marker.
HESITATE AND SOMEONE ELSE WON’T.
Jack tilts his head.
That’s not exactly... subtle.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
He doesn’t hesitate.
Not in the trauma bay. Not out in the field. Not when it matters. Not when someone’s life is on the line and everyone else is waiting for someone to make the call.
So what the hell is this?
This… standing back. Watching. Letting it happen.
Like he doesn’t know what he wants. Like he hasn’t already made up his mind.
He drags a hand over his mouth, shaking his head once—sharp, annoyed.
“Jesus Christ.”
It’s not caution. It’s avoidance.
With another deep breath, Jack reaches for the tap and braces his hands beneath the stream. He scrubs them together—quick and thorough—then turns off the water, grabs a paper towel, and dries his hands with more focus than necessary. He tosses the towel in the bin on his way out the door, his gaze sharpening as he scans the bar—finding you immediately.
You’re still standing where you were, maybe a few steps closer to the back of the room. There’s a new guy in front of you now, closing you in, crowding your space just enough to make Jack’s eyes narrow.
The man’s hand settles at your waist, a little lower than what could be considered innocent. And anyone else watching might think you’re okay with it—but Jack knows you. He sees the small flicker of discomfort that crosses your face, the subtle drop of your shoulder as you try to angle yourself away without seeming rude.
Good thing Jack doesn’t mind being rude.
He’s already moving before he’s fully decided to. Just a few long strides and he’s there—close enough to cut through the space between you and the guy without touching either of you, his presence alone enough to interrupt whatever the hell this is supposed to be.
He looks at you. Just you.
“Hey.”
Your head turns immediately—and the shift in your expression is instant. Relief.
“Oh—hey,” you say, a little breathless.
And then you step into him. Not too close. Not in a way that draws attention or suggests anything—but enough to make Jack’s pulse jump. Enough for him to feel your warmth and the way it settles under his skin.
“Hey, man,” the guy says, holding out a hand. “I’m Trent.”
Jack ignores him.
“You alright?” he asks you.
You nod slowly. “I am now.”
Your fingers curl into the back of his shirt, just for a second—like you didn’t even think about it. Like you just needed something solid to hold onto.
Jack goes still.
Trent clears his throat. “Sorry—uh—who are you?”
You glance at him with a tight smile. “This is my attending.”
Jack likes being called your attending.
Trent frowns. “What?”
“Remember how I said I was a doctor?”
Trent just stares at you.
“Well, Dr. Abbot is my attending,” you go on anyway. “He’s like my supervisor. I’m his resident.”
His resident.
“Right,” Trent mutters, eyeing Jack. “Cool. So—you’re a doctor?”
Jack doesn’t even look at him. His eyes stay fixed on you.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “Ellis is ordering wings—we can grab a menu.”
“Starving,” you reply, the corner of your mouth lifting slightly as you look up at him.
“Great.” His hand settles at your shoulder, firm but casual. “Let’s get back to the others.”
“Wait,” Trent says. “Are you—”
“It was nice meeting you,” you cut in, flashing him one last tight-lipped smile before Jack steers you away.
He keeps his arm around your shoulders until you’re halfway back to the booth of PTMC doctors and nurses. Only then does he pull back, clasping his hands behind his back like he needs the physical restraint.
“Thanks for that,” you murmur. “He just wouldn’t take a hint.”
Jack nods. “I noticed.”
He doesn’t look at you as he turns back toward the other end of the table, toward his seat beside Robby—because if he did, he might not be able to leave your side. From the corner of his eye, he sees Santos reach for you, already asking what happened as she pulls you into the seat between her and McKay.
And for twenty blissful minutes, Jack feels okay. The most okay he’s felt all night.
Because you’re here, at the table, talking to Santos and McKay—and not some idiot who thinks he deserves a chance with the prettiest girl in the room. In the world, according to Jack.
But only for twenty minutes—because once you finish your drink, Santos drags you back to the bar.
Another shot. Another drink. Another guy.
Jack shifts in his chair, trying to listen to whatever it is Ellis and Mateo are arguing about, but he can’t focus—not when your hand settles lightly on this new guy’s shoulder. And especially not when it slides down his bicep, flirty in a way that makes Jack want to get out of his chair.
He tells himself he’s not going to. That he shouldn’t.
But the second the lights dim and the music gets louder, he pushes out of his seat.
He finds you at the edge of the dancefloor, catching your wrist before you can disappear into the crowd.
“Hey,” he says, voice raised over the music.
Your head whips around, your brows lifting slightly in that soft, expectant way—like you’re waiting for him to say whatever it is that’s so important he had to stop you right here.
Jack clears his throat. “Have you been drinking water?”
You frown. “Um. Not really.”
“You should really drink some water,” he says, tipping his head toward the bar.
You hesitate, glancing back over your shoulder at the man waiting for you to follow him into the crowd.
Then you look back at Jack.
“Uh, yeah. Okay. Water.”
He knows he shouldn’t have done it. He knows it was stupid and petty and jealousy-driven—but he can’t help the flicker of satisfaction when you follow him to the end of the bar with the self-serve water tower.
The music is too loud for conversation—and even if it wasn’t, he’s not sure what he’d say. Not when you’re looking at him like this. A little drunk. A little curious. Your brows drawn, your skin glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, your lips wet from the water.
God. This has the be the finest form of torture.
Because here you are—so young and so sweet, so trusting in Jack that he’s just trying to look after you, when all he can think about is the fact that you’re not his. That they think you’re fair game. That every man in this room thinks he has a chance.
And the fact that he’s not going to let them anywhere near you.
-
The third time Jack Abbot appears at your side, he catches your elbow just as you’re about to step out the door with a man named Leo. Not to leave the bar—just for some air—but then Jack says something about Mateo buying a round of shots and guides you back inside.
You don’t mind. Not really. Especially not when a free drink is involved.
So you line up beside your coworkers and sink another shot of tequila with a grimace before Santos drags you back to the dancefloor.
The fourth time Jack Abbot intercepts you, you’re just about to start dancing with a handsome stranger Santos accidentally made you bump into—but before you can even take the man’s hand, Jack pulls you away, insisting you take a seat for a minute and drink more water.
Which, fine. Whatever.
But by the fifth interruption, you’re starting to notice a pattern.
And you’re getting a little annoyed.
“Oh my God,” Santos says, her eyes going wide as the opening notes to ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! start blaring through the speakers. “We have to dance. Come on!”
You barely have time to scoop your drink up off the bar before she’s dragging you onto the dancefloor—into the throng of warm bodies all moving to the beat beneath the single, sparkling disco ball.
The music pulses through the floor beneath your feet, the bass thrumming in your chest as Santos drags you deeper into the crowd. Somewhere between Mateo’s round of shots and your tenth song on the dancefloor, your jacket disappeared—and now your dress catches the light with every movement, glittering under the shifting colours as bodies press in from all sides.
The bar is still pretty full, even if the PTMC booth has already lost a few soldiers. There are still plenty of prospects—plenty of strangers who might offer to take you home and make you forget all about Jack Abbot. Which is still very much the plan.
If only the man himself would stop interrupting every interaction like he’s doing you a favour.
At some point during the second—or maybe third—chorus, Santos subtly steps away and a guy ends up in front of you. You’re not even entirely sure how. One second you’re dancing and screaming the lyrics, the next he’s there—close enough that you can feel the heat of him, his hands hovering like he’s trying to decide where to put them.
You let it happen. Because this is what you want, right?
This is the plan.
He leans in and says something you don’t quite catch over the music, but you laugh anyway—more out of obligation than anything else.
Then his attention shifts.
His eyes flick past you. And just like that—he falters.
It’s subtle, but you feel it. The hesitation. The way his body pulls back a fraction, like something just snapped him out of it.
“Uh—actually,” he mutters, already stepping away. “I—yeah. Sorry.”
Then he’s gone.
You blink, frowning slightly as you glance over your shoulder and—
Of course.
Jack Abbot, standing just beyond the edge of the dancefloor, drink in hand, eyes locked on you with a look that makes your stomach drop.
Not angry. Not exactly.
But intense. Sharp. Focused in a way that feels… deliberate.
You stare at him for a second—frustration flickering across your face—then turn back to Santos, who is still dancing with her vodka soda lifted in the air.
You lean in, raising your voice just enough to be heard over the music. “Your plan isn’t working!”
She turns to face you, frowning. “What do you mean it’s not working?”
You stare at her. “The plan to get me laid? It’s not working.”
“Why not?”
You huff out a laugh, incredulous.
“Because of him,” you say, nodding toward Jack. “Because I let him save me from one bad interaction and now he’s just—hovering. Interrupting. Scaring people off.”
Santos’ mouth twitches.
“I think he thinks he’s being helpful,” you add, shaking your head. “Like he’s doing me a favour or something, but—God, I’m never going to get a stranger to take me home with a hundred-and-ninety-pound war vet glaring over my shoulder every five minutes.”
Santos just looks at you for a second—then smiles. Slow. Knowing.
“And what part of my plan isn’t working?”
You frown. “Are you even listening to me?”
“I said I was going to get you laid,” she says, lifting her drink to her lips. “I never said anything about going home with a stranger.”
It doesn’t land straight away.
You blink at her, still frowning as you try to follow the logic—because that doesn’t make sense, that’s not the plan. If you’re not going home with a stranger, then who—
And then it clicks.
Your stomach drops.
“Wait—Santos,” you start, eyes widening. “You don’t mean—”
Santos just looks at you over the rim of her glass. Calm. Patient. Smiling faintly, like she’s been waiting for this exact moment all night.
You glance toward the side of the dancefloor again—to the man still focused on you in a way that feels far too intentional now. Arms folded, jaw set. He doesn’t even pretend to look away when you meet his stare.
“Actually,” Santos says, her hand closing around your wrist. “I think my plan is working perfectly. Now, come on—” she nods toward the booth where everyone else is, “let’s play a game.”
A game?
Before you can argue or even question it, Santos is dragging you off the dancefloor toward the booth at the back of the bar. The thrum of the music dulls the further you get from the crowd, and by the time you both slide into empty seats at the table, you no longer feel like you need to yell just to be heard.
The PTMC crew has thinned since you were last sitting here. Robby, Dana, and Donnie are gone, and McKay is holding her purse in her lap like she’d been trying to leave when Mateo cornered her with another rant about how no patient actually seems to understand the pain scale.
“Alright,” Santos announces, picking up someone’s abandoned drink and taking a sip like she owns it, “we’re playing a game.”
Whitaker leans forward. “A game?”
“Yes, Huckleberry. A game.” Santos glances around the table with a lazy half-smile. “It’s called Never Have I Ever.”
Mateo snorts. “That’s a middle school sleepover game.”
“Great,” Santos replies. “Then it should be easy for you.”
There’s a ripple of laughter around the table, but no one else seems to object.
“Can I start?” Mohan pipes up beside Santos. “I’ve got a good one.”
Santos nods. “Be my guest.”
You’re not entirely sure when Jack rejoined the table, since he’d been at the edge of the dancefloor just a few minutes ago, but now you’re suddenly very aware of his presence across from you. Like the few people that called it a night have unintentionally left a smaller, more intimate group behind—and now Jack Abbot is almost directly across from you while you play one of the most notorious, tension-raising middle school games of all time.
“Okay,” Mohan says, sitting up a little straighter. “Never have I ever… called in sick when I wasn’t actually sick.”
McKay laughs. Mateo groans. Almost everyone at the table lifts their drinks.
“Really?” Santos says. “That was your good one?”
Mohan shrugs. “I thought—”
“Never mind,” Santos cuts her off. “My turn.”
Her gaze moves slowly around the table before landing on you, the corner of her mouth lifting just slightly.
“Never have I ever,” she starts slowly, “fantasised about someone else sitting at this table.”
Your pulse jumps.
McKay snorts.
Mateo leans forward. “Like, intentionally. Or…?”
Whitaker frowns. “You’ve accidentally fantasised about someone here?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes the wrong people pop up, you know?”
Santos rolls her eyes. “Oh my God. Whatever. Intentional or not.”
Mateo nods once and lifts his drink. Javadi sinks lower in her chair as she lifts hers—and you try not to look around at the rest of the table as you bring your own up to your lips.
Beside you, McKay drops her purse to the ground and straightens, clearly invested now.
“Alright, I’ve got one,” she says, grinning. “Never have I ever… faked it.”
Javadi chokes, Santos snorts, and across from you, Jack huffs out a quiet laugh.
“Never?” Ellis asks, eyes wide. “So you always—”
“Oh, God, no,” McKay laughs. “Definitely not. I just refuse to fake it.”
Laughter moves through the table again, a little louder this time, and everyone takes a second to decide whether or not to raise their drinks.
You lift yours slowly, looking anywhere but at Jack.
“Okay, my turn,” Ellis announces, shifting in her seat. “Never have I ever… hooked up with someone at work.”
The table reacts around you, a mix of laughter and quiet protest, but it all blurs at the edges when you finally glance up—because Jack is already looking at you.
Not surprised. Not amused.
Just… watching.
He doesn’t laugh or say anything. He just lifts his drink, slow and deliberate.
And something sharp twists in your chest.
“What’ve you got, Langdon?” McKay asks, nodding at him across the table.
Langdon strokes his chin thoughtfully for a moment—then sighs.
“Alright, I already know I’m going to get shit for this, but—” He clears his throat. “Never have I ever… had sex in public.”
McKay laughs, loudly, and lifts her drink to her lips without hesitation. Ellis and Santos drink too, while Mohan laughs into her hand and Javadi sinks even lower in her chair.
Across from you, Jack sips his drink again like it’s nothing.
And that sharp twist in your chest doesn’t ease.
Because of course he has. Of course there are other people. Other women.
And you—
You catch Santos’ gaze from the other end of the table—sharp, knowing, daring.
Your grip tightens slightly around your glass.
And before you can talk yourself out of it—
“Okay, my turn,” you say lightly, sitting up a little straighter.
Everyone turns to you, but you keep your eyes fixed on your glass.
“Never have I ever,” you say slowly, “…finished during sex.”
For a second—nothing.
Then the table erupts.
“What—no—” Mateo is already laughing, leaning forward like he thinks you’re joking. “You’re kidding.”
Javadi chokes on her drink, coughing as she turns toward you. “Wait, seriously?”
“Oh my God,” McKay says, half-laughing, half-staring at you like she’s trying to figure out if you’re lying.
Langdon huffs out a quiet, disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. “Well… that’s unfortunate.”
Whitaker just blinks at you, caught somewhere between surprised and confused, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with that information.
Santos doesn’t say anything. She just leans back in her seat, watching you over the rim of her glass with a slow, satisfied smile.
And across from you—
Jack just goes still.
Completely still.
His expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes does—sharp, dark, focused in a way that makes your stomach flip.
It takes you a minute to remember how to move. How to breathe. How to laugh and sip your drink and keep playing the game that doesn’t stop just because it feels like your heart did.
Eventually, everyone eases off the third-degree on your embarrassingly real confession, and Mateo pipes up next with something ridiculous that makes the table groan. Then Javadi comes out with something surprisingly rebellious—and blushes hard when Mateo flashes her a wink.
And so it goes on.
You know it does.
You can hear it—voices overlapping, laughter breaking out again, someone arguing over what counts, someone else swearing they’re being misrepresented—but it all feels… distant.
Like it’s happening a few steps away from you instead of right here at the table. Because now, all you can focus on is Jack. On the way he’s hardly moved. Hardly spoken. Hardly looked away from you.
At some point, he mutters his own confession with a small smirk and everyone laughs—but you don’t catch the words. You’re too aware of everything else to hear them. Too aware of your pulse pounding in your ears, the thrum of the music beneath your feet, the way Jack’s jaw ticks every time you glance back at him.
Another round starts. Then another.
Someone groans. Someone laughs too loud. Santos says something that earns a chorus of reactions—but it all slips past you, unimportant, forgettable.
Time stretches. Blurs.
Your drink empties, refills, empties again.
People shift in their seats. Someone stands. Someone leaves.
Then suddenly—
“You ready?”
You blink.
Santos is standing beside you, brows raised.
“Ready?” you echo.
She nods toward the door. “Time to go. Most of us have to work tomorrow.”
You glance around at the empty table. “Oh.”
Santos is already halfway to the door by the time you gather your things and catch up to her. You’re still pulling your jacket on as you step outside, bracing against the cool night air that nips at every inch of exposed skin—which, in this dress, is a lot of skin.
“The Uber’s just around the corner,” Whitaker says.
“Great,” Mohan mutters, hugging her jacket tighter. “I’m freezing.”
You’re not sure if it’s the alcohol or just the heat lingering beneath your skin from the way Jack had been watching you earlier, but you’re not nearly as cold as you should be.
“You sure you don’t mind if I stay over tonight?” Javadi asks, glancing between Santos and Whitaker.
Santos shrugs. “As long as you don’t mind the couch—and Dr. Shamsi isn’t going to have us arrested for kidnapping.”
Javadi lets out an awkward laugh. “Uh—no. It’s totally fine. I told my dad.”
“Are you working tomorrow?” Whitaker asks.
Javadi shakes her head. “Day off. You?”
Whitaker sighs. “Yeah.”
“So am I,” Santos adds. “And if I don’t get at least five hours sleep, I cannot be responsible for other people’s lives.”
“That’s reassuring,” Jack mutters, almost startling you as he steps out of the bar.
He buries his hands in his pockets, hardly sparing you a glance as he steps closer to the group. There’s a faint hitch in his step—something you recognise from the waning hours of a night shift, when he’s been on his feet for too long and starts to favour one leg.
“This is us,” Whitaker announces, nodding toward the car pulling up at the curb.
Mohan hurries forward first, yanking the door open and climbing into the back seat—and Javadi is next, flashing you a smile before she ducks in beside her. You step forward—then hesitate. Whitaker is already holding the front passenger door open, and Santos is standing at the curb, about to join the others in the back.
“Wait.” Your pulse jumps. “There’s too many—”
“You’re with Dr. Abbot,” Santos says lightly, her mouth twitching like she’s trying not to smile.
Your stomach drops.
“I—I’m what?”
Santos shrugs. “Javadi’s staying over and Mohan’s place is on the way to ours. Just makes sense.”
Then she climbs into the car, shuts the door, and rolls the window down.
“See you tomorrow!”
There’s a chorus of goodbyes from the others before the car pulls away from the curb—and the cool, quiet night settles in too quickly. The only sound is the dull thrum of music from the bar, and the pounding of your pulse in your ears.
For a second, you don’t turn around. You can’t. Not now that you’re alone with him.
Then—
“I’m this way,” he says, voice low and rough and maddeningly hot.
You nod, but don’t dare look at him as you start following the line of parked cars up the street.
The night air feels sharper now, cooler the further you get from the bar—and it makes you pull into yourself, arms folded tightly while your jacket barely does anything to help.
Jack keeps an easy pace beside you, not crowding you, not touching you, but close enough that you’re aware of him anyway. Of the space he takes up at your side. Of the way he adjusts slightly so you’re walking on the inside of the path, further from the curb, without making a thing of it.
Neither of you says anything.
It’s not awkward. It’s just… quiet in a way that feels heavy, like the silence is holding onto everything that happened inside instead of letting it go.
Your heels click unevenly against the pavement, catching slightly every few steps, and you’re suddenly, painfully aware of everything—the way your dress shifts as you move, the cool air against your skin, the way your pulse hasn’t quite settled.
You feel too sober. Too aware.
When his car finally comes into view, he moves ahead of you just slightly—just enough to reach the passenger door first and hold it open.
God. He’s so annoyingly considerate.
You give him a small, tight smile before climbing into the passenger seat.
The car is still warm, still holding onto the heat from earlier in the day, and it smells like him in a way that’s subtle but unmistakable—clean, familiar, something faintly sharp beneath it that you can’t quite place but instantly recognise. The seat gives slightly beneath you, softer than you expect, and for a second you just sit there, hands hovering like you’re not entirely sure where to put them.
It’s his.
All of it.
The way everything is exactly where it should be, nothing out of place. The faint scuff on the console. A pair of sunglasses tucked neatly into the centre compartment. His backpack thrown into the back seat like he’d discarded it in a hurry and never thought about it again.
The sound of the driver’s side door opening almost startles you.
You drop your hands into your lap, shifting slightly and smoothing your dress down over your thighs like that might ground you somehow.
The car immediately feels smaller when Jack climbs in. More intimate. Closer in a way that’s almost stifling.
You keep your eyes fixed out the windshield.
Waiting.
For the engine to start. For the car to move.
But nothing happens.
The silence stretches, thick and suffocating, settling into every inch of the space between you.
And then—
“You can’t say shit like that around me.”
You blink, finally turning toward him—and regretting it immediately. He’s so irritatingly handsome, so annoyingly gorgeous in a way that makes you want to be stupid and reckless and climb across the console into his lap.
“Say what?” you ask, your voice embarrassingly thin.
He looks at you—not fully, just turning his head slightly.
“You know what,” he says, his voice low and rough with something that sounds a little too close to control slipping.
And you do.
You know exactly what he means.
But before you can say anything else, he turns the key and the engine rumbles to life. The radio crackles a little before some late-night news station fills the silence—and he doesn’t move to turn it off, doesn’t even turn it down. He just drives.
The radio reporter’s voice hums through the car like white noise, talking about something you’re not really listening to as you try to focus on keeping your breathing even.
You can still hear his voice.
You can’t say shit like that around me.
The way he said it. Low. Controlled. Like it cost him something to keep it that way.
Your fingers shift slightly in your lap, smoothing over the fabric of your dress again without thinking, and your mind starts turning his words over before you can stop it—pulling at them, testing them, trying to make them mean something that makes sense.
Because what does that even mean?
You glance at him, quick, like you might catch something you missed—but he’s focused on the road, jaw set, one hand loose on the wheel like nothing happened. Like he didn’t just change everything with eight little words.
You look away again.
No. He didn’t mean it like that.
He’s just—he’s your attending. He’s responsible. Of course he’d say something. Of course he’d—
Except he didn’t say it like that.
Your stomach tightens as your thoughts circle back, slower this time, more deliberate.
The way he kept pulling you away from people tonight. The way he’d been watching you. The way he didn’t laugh, didn’t joke, didn’t let it go.
The way he said it.
Around me.
Not here. Not in front of people.
Around me.
Your breath catches slightly, and you shift in your seat, suddenly very aware of the space between you—of how close he is, of how easy it would be to just turn your head, lean in and—
No.
No, that’s not—
You swallow, gaze fixed stubbornly ahead.
You’re just reading into it. You have to be.
Because the alternative—
Your pulse jumps.
God. The alternative is too much to even consider.
But the thought lingers anyway.
It settles in the back of your mind, quieter now, but heavier—pulling at everything he said, everything he did, everything you might have missed until now. The words circle back, sharper this time—until—
The car stops—and you blink.
For a moment, you don’t move. You can’t.
Then Jack clears his throat.
“Oh—uh—thanks,” you mutter, reaching for your seatbelt buckle.
He nods once. “Anytime.”
You push your door open before you can think too hard about it, stepping out into the cool night air that hits a little harder this time. Your heart is still beating in your throat, your pulse still too loud, your thoughts are still circling those eight words—eight little words that feel like they weigh far more than they should.
You hesitate—one hand on the door, the other gripping your keys in your jacket pocket.
God.
This is stupid.
This is reckless.
This is—
“Do you—” You clear your throat, the words catching slightly before you force them out. “Do you want to come up?”
He stares at you for a second, then lets out a short, disbelieving breath, like he’s not quite sure he heard you right.
“You can’t be serious.”
Heat rushes up your neck, quick and unwelcome, and for a second you just stand there, wishing you could take it back—rewind a few seconds and keep your mouth shut.
What the hell were you thinking?
“Yeah,” you say, a little too quickly. “No, that was—that was stupid.”
You turn away before he can say anything else, pushing the door shut harder than you mean to as you step back onto the sidewalk. You don’t look back. You refuse to. You just keep walking toward the lobby door, drawing your keys from your pocket and fumbling through them to find the right one.
It takes longer than it should, but eventually you find the lobby key and wriggle it into the lock.
This door has never been your friend. It’s old, a little rusted, and the lock has always been janky—but now your hands are shaking, and this stupid old door seems to think that’s funny, because it won’t budge.
You jiggle the key and try again, but nothing changes.
Then—
“Here.”
His voice is low. Close.
Your hand stills as he steps in behind you, not touching, but close enough that you can feel the heat of him at your back—the solid line of his chest just shy of pressing into you as he reaches past your shoulder.
His fingers brush yours as he takes the key—and the lock turns easily this time.
Of course it does. Traitorous fucking door.
His arm lingers there for a second longer than it needs to—then he pushes the door open.
You don’t even glance at him as you step inside, already turning back to grab your key before the door swings shut—but he’s still holding it, barely a step behind you.
He tilts his head slightly, nodding toward the lobby. “Go.”
It’s quiet. Controlled.
Not a suggestion.
Your breath catches, just for a second, and you hesitate—long enough to feel it, whatever this is, tightening between you—
Then you turn and keep walking.
And he follows.
He follows you across the lobby, up the fire stairs, down the corridor, all the way to your apartment door. He stands a little closer than necessary as you unlock it—almost like he doesn’t think you know how doors work now—but the key turns smoothly this time.
You push the door open and step inside.
The apartment is quiet, dim, and you shrug out of your jacket without thinking. You can feel him watching you as you drape it over the arm of the sofa, and it’s a little... thrilling. Dangerous. Because Jack Abbot is in your goddamn apartment right now, looking at you like he’s a man on the edge—
And you’re daring him to jump.
“Drink?” you offer, keeping your voice light—innocent.
He clears his throat. “Water, please.”
You can’t help the small smirk on your lips as you brush past him, a little closer than necessary.
“So polite,” you murmur.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t shift—but you can feel him there, tense just beneath the surface.
You open the fridge and bend over to grab a bottle of water, letting your dress ride up the backs of your thighs in a way that’s totally unnecessary. Jack clears his throat again, just a little too sharp, and when you glance back toward him, he’s turned away completely.
You press your lips together to keep from smiling too wide as you straighten again.
“Here,” you say, stepping toward him and holding the water out.
He turns hesitantly, taking it. “Thank you.”
Your eyes catch his, a slow smile tugging at your lips before you bite the corner gently, just enough for him to notice. He looks away quickly, jaw tightening as he focuses on uncapping the water bottle.
You brush past him again, still a little too close, and move toward the sofa, dropping onto it and leaning forward to take off your shoes.
Jack takes a long swig of water, then clears his throat for the third time.
“Are you working tomorrow?” he asks.
You glance up, still leaned forward, and it’s hard not to notice the way his eyes dip from your face.
“Isn’t that something you should already know?”
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he can’t quite help himself.
“You’re impossible. You know that?”
Heat rushes up your neck at the way he says it—short, sharp, loaded—and you bite back a grin, letting your eyes glint just a little as you straighten.
“Am I?” you murmur, tilting your head just slightly. “Only one way to find out.”
He freezes for a second, shoulders tight, hand curling slightly around the water bottle—and it crackles softly under his grip. His breath hitches, just barely.
“I should go,” he mutters, voice low and clipped.
He takes a step toward the door—and you shoot up from the sofa, heartbeat racing.
“Wait—uh—before you go,” you say, stepping toward him, “could you help me with something?”
He hesitates, turning slowly, as if every second in here is costing him something.
You move until you’re almost between him and the door, looking up at him through your lashes.
“Could you help me out of my dress?”
The second the words leave your lips, you forget how to breathe.
Jack’s jaw tightens, his shoulders coiling ever so slightly. His fingers twitch around the bottle, just a whisper of movement, as if holding himself together by force. His eyes catch yours, dark and sharp, taking in the faint scrunch between your brows, the small pout on your lips, the way you’re offering him something he never thought he’d be allowed to have.
He nods once—careful, controlled—but the tension radiating off him is almost unbearable.
Your stomach flips.
Without a word, you turn, sweeping your hair out of the way while your pulse hammers in your ears.
You feel him shift, his warmth, and the ghost of his touch at the nape of your neck. And that first, tiny contact sends a shock straight through you—hot, sharp, impossible to ignore.
He pauses, just a heartbeat, and you catch the tiniest hitch in his breath.
Then he moves again, slow, deliberate, dragging the zipper down almost painfully slow, his knuckles grazing your skin—warm, rough, controlled, just enough to make your heart pound in your throat.
“How do you do it?” you whisper, voice catching slightly. “How are you always so… unaffected by everything?”
“Unaffected?” he murmurs, almost tasting the word, as if testing it against himself.
His knuckles brush the small of your back, pausing where the zipper ends—but he doesn’t stop. His fingertips graze your skin, deliberate, teasing, tracing the line of your spine upward again, slow enough that it drags your breath with it, sharp enough that heat blooms through every nerve.
“You have no idea,” he whispers, voice low and rough, almost breaking, “how much you affect me.”
Your breath catches, sharp and sudden. Everything in your chest pulls tight, something hot and dizzying blooming low as his words sink in.
You turn before you can stop yourself—and he’s closer now. Close enough that you can feel the warmth of him, the shift of his breath, the space between you narrowing into something fragile and dangerous.
For a second, neither of you move.
And then his hand finds your neck—
Not rough, not rushed—just firm enough to anchor you there, thumb pressing under your jaw like he needs to feel that this is real, that you’re real. His other hand tightens where it still holds the loosened fabric of your dress at your back, fingers curling into it like restraint is slipping through his grip.
He hesitates, just for a breath. Like he’s giving himself one last chance to walk away.
Then he kisses you.
It’s not tentative. There’s nothing careful about it. It lands like something he’s been holding back for too long, all that control finally snapping under the weight of you standing here, asking for him, looking at him like that.
His mouth is warm and certain against yours, a sharp inhale breaking through you as you lean into him without thinking, your hands finding him just as quickly—his stomach, his chest—anything to hold onto as the world tilts. He makes a low sound, barely there, but you feel it more than you hear it, the vibration settling deep in your chest as his grip tightens.
You melt before you can stop yourself.
Your head tilts back, giving him more, and he takes it immediately, deepening the kiss with that same quiet intensity that steals the breath right out of you. His thumb shifts along your jaw, not lingering, just enough to guide you where he wants you, and the control of it—God, the way he still tries to control it after everything, after all that restraint—makes something in your stomach flip hard.
His hand at your back slips under the loosened zipper, fingers pressing into your bare skin now, warm and steady, but there’s tension in it. You can feel it in the way his grip flexes, like he’s still trying—still—to hold the line even as he pulls you closer.
It doesn’t work.
Not when you press into him like this, not when your fingers curl tighter in his shirt, not when you kiss him back without hesitation, without thinking about consequences or lines or anything except how he feels against you.
He exhales against your mouth, sharp, like you’ve just undone him, and for a second the kiss falters—not because he’s pulling away, but because he’s trying to.
You feel it. The conflict. The split second where he almost stops.
Your hand slides up to his jaw, fingers catching there, holding him in place before he can even try.
“Don’t,” you whisper, barely pulling back, your lips brushing his as you speak.
And something in him gives.
You see it in the way his eyes darken, in the way his hand tightens at your back, pulling you flush against him this time, the last inch of space gone like it was never allowed to exist in the first place.
When he kisses you again, it’s deeper.
Less restrained.
Like he’s finally stopped pretending this isn’t exactly what he wants.
It’s different now—harder, hungrier, like something in him has shifted for good. His hand slides from your jaw to your waist, gripping tight as he steps into you, crowding you back without breaking the kiss, without giving you a second to think.
Your back meets the door with a soft thud.
He doesn’t stop.
If anything, it only makes him sharper, more certain, his mouth moving against yours with a kind of urgency that steals the air right out of your lungs. You barely get a breath before he takes it again, and you let him—God, you let him—tilting into him, giving him everything he reaches for.
His hand tightens at your waist, then slips lower, dragging you flush against him again, like he needs to feel exactly how close he can get before he loses control completely.
And you can feel it—how close he is.
It’s in the way his grip flexes, in the way his breath turns uneven against your mouth, in the way the kiss keeps deepening like he can’t quite stop himself from taking more.
Your fingers find his shirt again, pulling him closer, and he breaks the kiss just long enough to drag in a breath, his forehead almost brushing yours, like he’s trying—one last time—to get a handle on this.
He doesn’t.
His hands are on you again, immediate, sliding up your sides, pushing the straps of your dress from your shoulders in one smooth, decisive motion. The fabric gives easily, slipping under his hands like it was never meant to stay there in the first place—and it falls to the floor, pooling at your feet.
His breath catches, and his gaze drops—just for a second, but it’s enough.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, voice low, rough—nothing steady about it now.
You meet his eyes, chest rising and falling fast, heat still sparking under your skin.
“Bedroom,” you murmur.
For a second, he just looks at you.
Something in his expression shifts—tightens—like that word landed exactly where it shouldn’t. His gaze searches yours for a moment, checking for hesitation, for doubt.
But he doesn’t find any.
He nods once—and you turn, already moving toward the bedroom. You can feel him right behind you, close enough that his hand finds your waist again before you’ve even taken two steps, steady, grounding, like he’s not about to let you get too far ahead of him.
It’s barely a walk.
More like being guided—pulled—across the apartment toward your room, your pulse loud in your ears, every step charged with the knowledge of what you’ve just set in motion.
The door barely makes it closed before he’s on you again.
Not rushed—never rushed—but certain, like the decision has already been made and there’s no point pretending otherwise. His hands find you first, steady at your waist, turning you back toward him before you can take another step into the room.
Your breath catches as you look up at him. There’s something in his expression you’ve never seen before. It’s not soft, not gentle—just stripped of whatever distance he’d been holding onto all night.
Gone.
His gaze drags over you, slow and deliberate, and this time there’s nothing in the way of it—nothing to hide behind, nothing to buffer it—and the heat in it settles low in your stomach, heavy and immediate.
“Still want this?” he asks, voice rough, quieter now—but it lands heavier here.
You don’t answer. You just step into him.
And it’s all the permission he needs.
His hand tightens at your waist as he pulls you back into him, and the kiss this time is slower, deeper in a way that feels intentional—like he’s choosing it, not chasing it. His mouth moves against yours with a kind of controlled hunger, every shift measured, every breath deliberate, like he’s letting himself feel it fully instead of fighting it.
Your fingers curl into his shirt, and he exhales against your mouth, something unsteady finally breaking through.
His grip shifts—firmer now—guiding you back a step, then another, not hurried, not careless, but unrelenting all the same. You feel the edge of the bed behind your knees before you fully register moving at all, your focus too caught in the way he’s kissing you, the way his hand anchors you like he’s not about to let this get away from him.
His mouth breaks from yours just long enough to draw in a breath, his forehead pressing briefly to yours.
Not hesitation. Control.
Or what little he has left of it.
“Last chance,” he murmurs, quieter now.
You drop back onto the bed, gaze locked on his, breath still uneven.
“I’m not the one holding back.”
You barely have time to move up the mattress before he’s there, crowding over you, hands braced on either side as he follows you down. The mattress dips under his weight, the space between you gone in an instant—replaced by the solid heat of him, the firm press of his hips against yours.
His mouth finds yours again, hot and insistent, teeth catching your bottom lip just enough to pull a soft sound from you—but it’s different now. Slower. Not restrained, but deliberate. Curious, almost.
Like he’s learning you.
The way you react. The way you move under him. The way you give.
Your hands slide up his chest, fingertips digging in as heat coils low in your stomach—but they don’t stay there long. He shifts his weight slightly, steady, controlled, one hand lifting off the mattress to catch your wrist.
His fingers close around it—not tight, not forceful—just certain, guiding.
He lifts your hand above your head.
“Jack,” you whisper. “I—”
He shushes you.
“Let me do this, okay?” His voice is rough, thick with something unsteady beneath it—something that makes your stomach knot. “I’ve got you.”
And you believe him.
His hand slides down your body, slow and sure, brushing over your chest, your waist, the curve of your hip—each touch deliberate, like he’s taking his time even now, even like this. His fingers hook at the inside of your thigh, grip firm as he nudges your leg wider.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Good girl.”
The words go straight through you.
You can already feel the damp heat between your legs, the slick fabric pressed close, but the way he says it—the way his voice drops—makes your hips shift up instinctively, chasing something you can’t quite reach.
Chasing him.
And he notices. Of course he does.
You only just catch the faint lift at the corner of his mouth before his lips are back on yours, swallowing the breath from you as your back arches, pressing yourself up into him without thinking. Your fingers curl into the sheets above your head, tension pulling tight through your body as everything narrows down to where he’s touching you—where he isn’t touching you.
His hand drags back up your thigh, slower this time. Intentional. And when his fingers finally press against you through the thin fabric, you gasp.
He takes the sound from you immediately, mouth moving against yours, deeper now, like he’s feeding off it, like every reaction just pushes him further. His fingers start to move—slow, circling, testing—while his mouth leaves yours to trail along your jaw, your cheek, the side of your neck.
With your mouth free, the sounds slip out before you can stop them.
Soft. Unsteady. Needy.
And he loves it.
You feel it in the way his breath shifts, in the way his grip tightens just slightly, in the way his hips rock—slow, controlled, a subtle pressure of denim that’s more suggestion than friction.
“Jack—” your voice catches, breaking on his name. “Please. I want—”
“Tell me, sweetheart,” he murmurs, mouth brushing your shoulder, voice low and coaxing.
“More,” you manage, breath shaking. “Need more.”
He groans against your skin, the sound low and rough, his body settling heavier over yours like any space between you is something he can’t stand.
Then his hand shifts.
Your breath catches as his fingers slide beneath the damp fabric, dragging through your wet heat in one slow, deliberate stroke.
Your whole body jolts. “Fuck—Jack—”
The reaction pulls something from him—a sharp inhale against your neck, his mouth pressing there like he needs to ground himself for a second before he loses it completely.
You’ve never felt like this before. Never this hot, this open, this aware of every inch of your own body.
And you’ve never wanted anyone like this before.
“God,” he murmurs, voice thick, lips tracing back up your throat. “You’re so wet for me, sweetheart.”
All you can do is nod, whimpering softly, your hips lifting without permission, chasing him, asking for more without the words—and he gives it to you. Of course he does.
His finger slides inside you, slow at first, letting you feel it—the stretch, the heat—before he pushes deeper, and the sound that breaks from you is swallowed instantly as his mouth finds yours again, your back arching beneath him as he starts to move. Not fast. Never fast. He sets a rhythm instead, steady and controlled, curling his finger just enough to make your breath catch, just enough to make your hips move against him again.
And when you press into it, when your body starts to chase that feeling properly, he adds another finger, the stretch pulling a broken sound from your throat as your hands tighten in the sheets and your body rolls beneath him, helpless to it now, completely caught in the slow, deliberate way he works you open.
Every movement is intentional. Every curl hits deeper, sharper, building something tight and aching low in your stomach that makes your whole body tremble, your breath coming out in uneven gasps as you press into his hand, chasing, needing.
Then his thumb finds your clit, and the contact is immediate—devastating.
You cry out, sharp and breathless, your whole body tightening as he starts slow, deliberate circles that send heat spiralling through you, your hips lifting again, desperate now, unable to stay still under him.
You can’t answer—not when his mouth is everywhere, your throat, your jaw, the corner of your mouth, like he can’t decide where he wants you most before he finds your lips again, and this time the kiss is different again. Hungrier. Messier. His tongue presses into your mouth just as his fingers push deeper, his thumb working harder, more deliberate now, and the moan that tears from you is swallowed whole.
“Please,” you whimper against his mouth, breath breaking. “Please, I—need you.”
He lifts his head, dark eyes searching yours, brows pulling together just slightly.
“You sure?”
You stare at him, trying not to whimper as your whole body clenches around his stilled fingers, the sudden stillness almost worse than anything he was doing before.
“Never have I ever finished during sex, remember?” you manage, breathless but steady enough to land. “You gonna fix that, or what?”
Something feral flickers across his face.
And then it’s gone—replaced by something heavier. Something decided.
He kisses you again before you can catch your breath, all teeth and tongue, the restraint he’s been clinging to snapping clean in half as he groans into your mouth, the sound dragged straight from his chest. You feel the loss of his fingers immediately, your body protesting it, but it’s replaced just as quickly by the slow, deliberate roll of his hips, the friction of denim against your soaked panties making you gasp against him.
“Fuck,” he breathes, like he can’t quite believe it.
He pulls back just enough to shift, bracing himself on one arm while the other moves to his belt, not rushed but far from steady now. There’s a hitch in his breath, a tension in the way his fingers work at it, shoving his jeans and briefs down just enough to free himself, and your gaze drops before you can stop it.
He’s already hard—fully, heavily—flushed and slick at the tip, and the sight of it sends a sharp pulse of heat straight through you, your mouth going dry even as your body reacts in the complete opposite way.
“Fuck—” he chokes, the word breaking out of him. “I haven’t been this hard in—” His eyes flick back up to yours, dark and molten, and whatever he was going to say changes. “—ever.”
It hits you low and deep, twisting something tight in your stomach that makes your hips shift under him without thinking. You finally let go of the sheets, your hands finding him, sliding up to wrap around his neck as you pull him back down, needing him closer, needing him everywhere.
Your legs come up around his waist, drawing him in, urging him forward, and his breath stutters as he presses in, his swollen tip dragging against the damp fabric between you. The contact is just enough to make your head fall back, a broken sound slipping from your throat as he tries—tries—to hold himself up, one arm braced, the other moving between you.
You can feel the strain in him now, the way everything is slipping in real time, in the slight shake of his arm, in the uneven rhythm of his breathing as his hand hooks into the waistband of your panties.
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he murmurs against your mouth, voice rough, almost distracted, like the thought barely registers before it’s gone. “Promise.”
And then the fabric gives.
The sound of it tearing—sharp, sudden—goes straight through you, your breath catching hard as he pulls the fabric out of the way, the last barrier gone in an instant.
It shouldn’t be as hot as it is.
But it is.
Jack Abbot—controlled, composed, always holding the line—losing it enough to rip your panties off you?
Fuck.
He sinks into you in one steady thrust, and both of you gasp at the stretch—the sudden, overwhelming closeness, the way want crashes hot and heavy between you. Your pulse hammers in your ears, that dizzy edge of fear and urgency tangling together until all you can think is him—here, now, inside you.
For a moment, you just breathe—pant, really—eyes squeezed shut, hands locked on his shoulders as your body clenches around him, like you’re trying to keep him right there, like you never want to let him go. He drops his head to your neck, breath hot against your damp skin, and you feel the way it shakes out of him.
“You—fuck—you’re so tight, sweetheart,” he pants, voice rough and muffled where his mouth presses into you. “I’m not gonna last—”
“Then don’t,” you murmur, your voice softer but no less certain. “Just fuck me. Please, Jack.”
A groan tears out of him, low and wrecked, and you feel it through his chest as he shifts above you, hips pulling back, his cock dragging against your walls in a way that makes your stomach coil tight, sparks chasing across your skin. You suck in a sharp breath, your grip tightening on him—and before you can brace, he drives forward again, deeper this time.
“Fuck—” you cry out, the sound breaking loose without warning. “Jack—”
He doesn’t stop. His hips roll back again, slower now, controlled in a way that almost makes it worse, his head lifting so he can look at you, really look at you, like he’s checking, like he needs to see it.
The anticipation coils tighter in your chest, sharp and electric, lighting up every nerve in your body until it almost hurts.
“Mhm,” you manage, breath unsteady, nodding as your arms wind tighter around his neck, pulling him closer, needing him closer, like it still isn’t enough.
For a second—just a second—you’re distracted by something stupid, the feel of his shirt between you, the barrier of it, the way you want it gone, want skin on skin, want to see him, feel him, all of him—
And then he thrusts forward again. Harder again. And the thought disappears completely.
Your body jolts beneath him, every movement knocking the breath from your lungs, and the sound that leaves you is loud—too loud—echoing back off the walls in a way that would make you self-conscious any other time.
But not now.
Right now, you don’t care who hears. Not when it feels like this.
His name spills from your lips in broken gasps, tangled with raw cries, and he answers with a rough sound against your shoulder, biting it back as his hips drive into you at a relentless pace. He’s barely holding himself up now, his weight pressing into you in a way that feels like too much and somehow still not enough, the strain in him obvious in every uneven breath, every sharp exhale against your skin.
His hand drags down your side, back to your thigh, fingers digging in as he pushes your leg wider, and the shift—small as it is—hits something deeper, sharper, your vision flashing white as your head tips back and the knot in your belly pulls tight. His grip slides to your hip, anchoring you there, holding you in place so every thrust lands exactly where it needs to, deep and unrelenting, the sound of it filling the room, wet and rhythmic and impossible to ignore beneath the broken sounds you’re both making.
And then his hand moves between you.
You feel it immediately—the change, the focus—as his fingers find your clit in the slick mess between your bodies, steady despite everything else, despite the way he’s losing himself in every way. Your back arches, breath catching sharp as his touch turns deliberate, circling, pressing, coaxing, sending jolts of sensation straight through you until it’s too much, not enough, everything all at once.
“Jack—” you whine, the sound falling apart as soon as it leaves you. “Fuck, I—”
“I know, sweetheart,” he mutters against your jaw, voice wrecked. “Come on my cock, yeah?”
Your hips lift to meet him without thinking, chasing the rhythm he’s set, chasing the pressure, the friction, the way he’s working you with a precision that feels almost cruel now. His hand doesn’t falter, his fingers moving with intent, building and building, every touch sending sharp bursts of pleasure up your spine as the tension in your stomach pulls tighter, tighter, until it feels like it might snap.
It’s never felt like this before. You’ve never felt like this before.
Your whole body tightens, back arching, legs trembling around him as your hips grind up against his, desperate, chasing something you can’t hold onto. He keeps hitting that same spot, again and again, relentless, his pace rougher now, less controlled, while his fingers stay locked on you, steady, practiced, pushing you right to the edge and holding you there.
You cry out, the sound raw, breaking from your chest as everything finally tips.
The release hits all at once—sharp, overwhelming, tearing through you in a rush that steals your breath and leaves nothing behind but heat and tension snapping loose. Your body locks up around him, tightening, pulsing, your hands gripping at him as your legs shake, your hips still moving against his like you can’t stop, like you don’t want to.
“Fuck,” he groans, burying his face in your neck, his voice wrecked as he keeps moving inside you—slower now, but deeper, like he’s chasing every last pulse of you, like he doesn’t want to miss a second of it. “That’s it. That’s my girl.”
His rhythm falters, hips stuttering, and then he loses it completely—a broken sound tearing from him as he drives into you one last time, deep and hard, spilling inside you as his whole body tenses, shuddering above yours.
You feel it—every part of it—the way he comes undone, the way he clings to you through it, like he needs something to hold onto just as much as you do. Your bodies keep moving together, slower now, instinctive, chasing the last fading edges of it as your breathing stays uneven, your chests rising and falling in sync, skin slick and overheated where you’re pressed together.
It takes a moment to come back down—a long one.
But eventually, the tension drains from him and he collapses almost fully above you, face buried into your shoulder, his weight heavy and grounding as he exhales, slow and spent. It makes it a little harder to breathe—but you don’t mind.
Not when you can feel his heartbeat against your chest, strong and real, still racing like yours.
-
For the first time in two weeks, Jack Abbot isn’t stupidly early for his shift. He couldn’t be, really. Because he’d woken up late this morning, limbs tangled with yours in warm sheets that smelled so much like you it made his head spin—and that had thrown off everything else he needed to get done today.
If it was up to him, he wouldn’t have left at all—but he had to. He had police paperwork to finish, a neighbour’s cat to feed, and sleep he should’ve caught up on before being back in charge of an entire emergency department for twelve hours. But on the bright side? He knows you have a swing shift today, which means he doesn’t need to be early to see you, because you’re going to be stuck at PTMC until at least ten p.m. tonight.
With him.
And he really shouldn’t be looking forward to that as much as he is.
“Afternoon, Dr. Abbot,” Dana says, glancing over the top of her glasses. “Wasn’t sure we’d see you today. Aren’t you usually here by now?”
“I’m on time,” Jack mutters. “I’m a busy man.”
Dana hums, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly as her eyes drop back down to the tablet in her hands.
Jack tries not to appear too conspicuous as he scans the department, glancing toward the trauma bays and South corridor as he passes the nurses’ station. He shouldn’t be this anxious to see you again—not in the apprehensive kind of way, but in the way that makes it feel like his lungs won’t quite fill until you’re near him again.
“She’s not here,” Dana says without looking up from her chart. “Wasn’t feeling well, so Ellis came in early.”
Jack spots Ellis across central, exiting one of the rooms with Santos at her side, and he opens his mouth to say something—defend himself, maybe, lie about what or who he was looking for—but he hesitates, unsure what he could say that wouldn’t incriminate him further.
So instead, he just drops his head and keeps walking, fumbling for his phone in his pocket.
He’d seen you this morning. Just this morning. You were sleepy, had a headache, so he got you water and Tylenol and kissed you before he left—but you hadn’t said anything about feeling so unwell you were going to call in sick.
Jack doesn’t stop until he reaches the lockers, then turns back to survey the ED one last time before leaning a shoulder against the wall and pulling up his text thread with you. He hadn’t texted you today because he knew he’d see you tonight and didn’t want to seem… overbearing. Even now, he’s not sure if he should—but he feels off in a way he hasn’t in years, like he’s waiting on something he can’t control and it’s making him feel sick.
What if last night hadn’t meant what he thought it did? What if you regretted it? What if it was just—
“Hey, kid,” Dana calls from the nurses’ station. “Big night?”
Jack’s head snaps up—and there you are.
The relief hits before he can stop it, sharp and instant, loosening something in his chest he hadn’t realised was wound so tight. He swallows it down just as quickly, his expression settling before anyone can clock it.
“You don’t know the half of it,” you mutter.
Dana huffs a short laugh. “I have a feeling I don’t want to know.”
Jack can’t help but watch as you cross the floor toward him, your backpack hanging from one shoulder while the other hand presses two fingers to your temple, like you could massage the headache away. There’s a smug little smile on your lips when you reach him, slowing your steps until you pause just beside him—not too close, but enough to make his breath catch.
You glance down at his phone, at the open message thread where his thumb is hovering, and your smirk curves a little higher.
“Miss me?”
Jack locks his phone and tucks it back into his pocket.
“Thought you were sick.”
You lift one shoulder. “A little hungover, so Ellis swapped with me.”
For a second, neither of you move. He just looks at you—and you look right back, like you both know exactly what’s changed, even if neither of you is about to say it out loud. Not here. Not now.
“And I missed the night shift attending,” you say finally.
Then—before he can respond, before he’s even fully processed what you said—you lean in and press a quick kiss to his cheek. Only brief. Barely anything.
But it feels like everything.
And just like that, Jack Abbot is done pretending he isn’t yours.
Pairing: Jack Abbot x ex wife!reader Word Count: 5.1k
Description: Years after your separation, life throws you back into Jack Abbot’s orbit in the worst way possible, carrying a devastating diagnosis that could be the reason your marriage fell apart in the first place: a tumor that may had erased the part of you that fell in love with him all those years back. And he’s not ready to lose you twice.
Tags/Warnings: Ex!wife reader, no specific age but they were together many years, ANGST, hurt/comfort (trust), talks about divorce, reader has big ex wifey energy, resulting in a bitter Jack, mentions of a tumor in the head and seizures but the medical aspect is very superficial, bad prognosis, suggestive comments and couple’s banter.
Note: This is the result of angsty thoughts invading my head at 2 am, so enjoy (it gets better trust) 🤍
Part 2 - Masterlist
My hand was the one you reached for all throughout The Great War.
There was a time where you believed you were tied to Jack Abbot by an invisible string.
Despite the crazy life he’d chosen, the long hours, the abrupt calls that took him away from you, the terrors of nightmares and traumas you couldn’t take away from him, you’d managed to love him through it all.
You loved him through the military years, and the consequences he carried home. Through the transition of losing a part of himself, and made sure that what was left wasn’t damaged by it. Loved him through the process of going back to emergency medicine. Through the night shifts and the missed holidays and anniversaries.
You loved him when his haircolor changed like the seasons. You loved the man in uniform and the man in scrubs and the man who sometimes came home too tired to even speak.
You loved and loved and loved him until…something snapped.
You…started calling him out more. For the hours and the absence and for the way he could be right there and still feel a thousand miles away. And Jack, who had spent most of his life learning how to stay calm under pressure, tried to be patient. Tried to love you through the sharpness, just like you’d loved him through his, even if he didn’t understand where yours was coming from.
He tried and tried and tried until…the invisible string between you snapped in pieces he couldn’t tie back together.
Time passed, and none of you survived the war you’d started in your own home. So you left. Sent out divorce papers that you never signed. You didn’t understand why back then, but now…you kind of do.
You take a deep breath as the ambulance bay doors slide open in front of you. People who take this entrance are usually bleeding, or screaming, or being rolled in on a stretcher, but you walk in with your head high and a pep on your step. Cashmere coat on, boots clicking the floor, a purse perched on your shoulder.
Seeing the ED after all these years hits you like a deja vu. From bringing Jack something he forgot in the middle of the night, to showing up at the ass crack of dawn still half asleep but smiling, waiting for him to finish charting so you could eat something together. Your memories are a little fuzzy these days, but there was a time where you knew this place almost as well as he did.
You reach the nurse’s station with a small smile on your face, only for it to widen when the face behind is not the one you expected.
“Well, what do we have here?” You say, coming to stop in front of her.
Dana looks up from the papers she’s holding, and her eyes go wide for a second. The look of surprise gets quickly replaced by one of her signature smirks, placing one hand on her hip.
“Well, I could ask the same damn thing, darling,” she says, amused.
That makes you laugh, and Dana’s face lightens up. Because despite everything, despite the years, despite the absence, you always had a soft spot for each other.
“I thought Lena was on the night shift,” you tease. Dana sets the papers down and huffs, looking at you through her glasses.
“Please. It’s not weird to see me covering someone for the right price,” she says, not being subtle about looking up and down at you. “Now what is strange as hell, is seeing you walk in here after all this time.”
“Why? I’m just here to see my hubby,” you say casually. “Is it a quiet night, or do I have to wait like the good old days?” You ask, feigning innocence with a single shoulder shrug.
“Oh, don’t you start! don’t you jinx my shift like that,” she says, almost offended, making you laugh harder. She narrows her eyes at you playfully, shaking her head. “You evil, evil woman.”
“So I’ve been told,” you snicker, checking something on your nails. “It’s good to see you, Dana,” you add after a moment, and she pretends not to notice the way you pick on the skin of your thumb.
“You too, hun,” she says fondly, trying to search for your eyes. “Now, are you going to tell me what brings you to my ED or do I have to waterboard it out of you?”
Before you can think of a way to evade the question, you hear a voice behind you that makes everything inside you stop.
“Let me know when the labs are back, Mateo.”
You turn to the source, and for a moment you can’t control the look on your face when your eyes land on him. Jack Abbot is walking out of Trauma Two with a nurse, too focused on pulling off his gloves to realize you’re standing frozen by the nurse’s station. You clear your throat and straighten up quickly, putting on that nonchalance mask back on again as Dana just smiles to herself.
Jack’s head finally snaps up and his mouth opens, probably ready to tell something to Dana, but stops dead in his tracks when he sees you there. He doesn't have a good time controlling his emotions either. He blinks a few times to make sure he’s seeing right, and that you’re not a cruel product of his imagination. It’s too early in the shift for that.
But you’re there. You are there. Wait–you’re there?
The confusion quickly gets replaced by anger. It’s been a long time. Three years of nothing, and this is how you show up? Looking polished, composed, infuriatingly beautiful, like you didn’t leave a hole in his chest he was never able to stitch back together.
“Are you lost?” The words coming out his mouth are sharper than he expected, but the coldness is familiar to you.
“Jack,” you say, forcing a plastic smile and tilting your head. “Is that the way to greet your wife?”
“My wife…” Jack mutters with an incredulous laugh.
He looks at Dana all scandalized, offended. She just shrugs unimpressed, not interested in getting involved in whatever messy drama is about to unfold.
She will totally watch, though.
“If you’re here to tell me you finally signed the papers, then you wasted a whole trip. You could've just mailed them,” he says sharply, too blinded to notice the way your smile faltered at that.
“I’m not here for that,” you say, holding tighter to the bag on your shoulder. “There’s-”
“You know you’re not supposed to walk in through the ambulance bay unless you’re dying,” he continues, before giving you a head to toe assessing look that ends with a bitter huff. “And by the looks of it, seems like the devil has taken care of his own.”
You chuckle, because it’s the only thing you can do at this point. Because if anyone in the world has earned the right to call you a devil, it’s Jack.
For the last year of your marriage. For every sharp word, every time you didn’t want to listen, every fight that left him standing there wondering when loving each other had become something exhausting instead of home. For the way you ended things. For how you walked away and never came back.
“Dr.Abbot?” A male voice coming from the trauma room breaks the tense moment between you.
You look at the doctor, one you remember seeing last as a first year resident, trailing behind your husband with a notepad and an iced coffee in hand. You can’t recall his name, but he looks like he got his attending position after all.
Jack turns to him, “I’ll be there in a second, Shen,” he says gently, then back to you, more impatient, “I’m busy. So if you’re done making your little grand entrance, you can leave the same way you came in. You seem to be pretty good at it.”
The way he talks to you shouldn't hurt this much. You deserve it, for how unkind you were with him in the first place. For how badly you hurt him. For how you ran his endless patience thin. Now, in hindsight, there are many things you wish were different.
But wishing won’t make the medical records in your purse change. And even though you’ve earned every blow he throws at you, you still square your shoulders. Shrug it off like it doesn't matter. Because it doesn't matter.
“I’m not leaving until I speak to you…privately,” you say, turning back to Dana with a smile. “Break room’s still the same way, right?”
“Down the hall to the left, sweetheart,” she says, shaking her head with a chuckle.
You blow her a playful kiss as gratitude, one she pretends to dodge, rolling her eyes playfully as she walks away to continue with her duties. You round the nurse’s station, and walk straight past Jack, close enough that the heavy fabric of your coat almost brushes his arm, but it’s your scent that hits him like a punch to the stomach.
Your perfume. The perfume. The one you wore to all your dates, the one you married him with, and the one he had to scrub off his clothes like a toxic chemical when he talked himself into getting you out of his head after you left.
Dammit.
He sees you stroll to the break room with that sway of your hips that used to keep him up at night, trying to gather the courage to invite you out when you first met. Fucking dammit. You ruined his life. You keep doing it.
“Dr. Abbot!” Shen calls again, a little sharper even for him.
Jack sighs deeply, turning defeated to the trauma room, as the same question pounds his head over and over again.
What on earth could you possibly want?
The second you shut the door of the break room and you’re alone again, your shoulders sag and the mask slips right off. The exhaustion in your bones makes you take a seat as soon as you see it, placing your bag on the chair next to you and pulling out the black folder you’ve been carrying around for months. You place it on the table, and look away as if that would change the contents of it.
Your eyes meet your reflection on the microwave sitting on the counter, and you can’t help the sigh that leaves your lips. You did well making yourself look like the ex wife who’s thriving and has her life together.
What a joke.
You slump back into your chair, and wait.
Jack makes you wait a long time. You figure it’s his petty way of getting back at you somehow, or maybe he’s just trying to ease off his anger before he walks in. But hey, at least you were able to reassemble yourself. By the time he walks in, you’re sitting at the table with your legs crossed neatly, coat still on, folder placed in front of you. Composed enough to make him think that this is still some kind of performance.
You hate that your brain keeps telling you to push more. To make him snap. The string has been broken for a while. Why do you still feel the need to pull?
Jack doesn’t sit, even if his leg would thank him for it, he just stands with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at you impatiently.
“What, you’re not joining me?” You tease, pushing open the chair across from you with your boot.
“I’m not staying long,” he says flatly, ignoring the seat. “So whatever this is, start talking.”
You hum in feign amusement, leaning back a little. “Why? Seems like a quiet night for me.”
Jack closes his eyes, shaking his head, thinking about every single self regulation method his therapist had taught him. Five things you can see, four things you can–
“Relax,” you say.
Wow. How didn’t he think of that? Could've saved him thousands in therapy.
He realizes the only way to get this over with, is getting it over with. So he opens his eyes, and this time they land straight on the folder in front of you. Whatever restraint he was trying to hold on to, spills out in a humorless laugh.
“What is that?” He nods to it, “A list of what you want to keep?”
“Jack, that’s not–”
“I already told my lawyer you can keep everything,” he says anyways, letting the words spill, because he’s been bleeding over this for years and he’s sure as hell not stopping now. “The house. The cars. Even the goddamn bedsheets. You can keep it all, I don’t want any of it,” he says calmly, like he isn't still losing sleep over it every day. “I moved out a while ago anyway, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
It gets harder to keep your resolve, especially with the sharp pain throbbing in your head. But of course he doesn’t want it. Why would he want the remnants of a home you poisoned? A marriage you turned sharp and miserable and impossible to hold together?
A lump forms in the back of your throat, but you swallow it down like every bad news you’ve heard over the course of the last months.
“It’s not about the divorce, I already told you that,” you say quietly.
Jack just stares at you, exasperated. Every second you’re in front of him burns his insides. Every second you share the same oxygen he can’t breathe. Every second of your presence is just a reminder of the greatest thing he’s fucked up in his life.
You just pick up the folder and hold it out to him. He hesitates at first, but you have no bitchy remarks left on you. The faster you get it over with, the faster it will all be over, so you shake it for him to take it, until he finally does.
Your gaze stays on him as he flips through the papers inside; lab results, endless consult notes, imaging reports. The annoyance doesn’t disappear right away, but his salt and pepper brows furrow together as his brain catches up with what he’s reading. He digs for the actual CT, and comes across a series of images that back up everything the reports say.
He instinctively steps closer to the chair, eyes still fixed on the papers, sitting down mindlessly as he spreads everything on the table. The only thing he can focus on is your name printed on every paper. Abbot here, Abbot there. When he finally looks up at you, all the color has drained from his face.
“What is this?” He asks. Because what the fuck kind of bad joke is this.
“Well,” you clear your throat, crossing your arms over your chest, “you did say I shouldn’t walk in through the ambulance bay if I wasn’t dying.”
“This isn’t funny,” he says, frustrated. God, you forgot how intense his eye contact was. “What is this? How–when did this happen?”
You play with your fingers on your lap, and sigh, “Ten months ago, I…I had a seizure at work,” you say softly, forcing yourself to keep going. “They did the scans, and it–it didn’t take long to find it.”
It.
Jack stares at it on the CT, then his eyes drift to the reports. Mass. Tumor. Inoperable. Terms that have always been technical to him, medical, now seem like the cruelest words ever written by man.
“I’ve seen a couple of neurosurgeons,” you continue, “and they all came to the same conclusion–”
“No.”
“Jack, they said they can’t take it out–”
“No,” he cuts you off sharply, shaking his head. “That’s not–I don’t agree.”
“You don’t have to agree,” you don’t raise your voice, just smile sadly. It’s something you’ve been telling yourself over and over. “Guess the devil doesn’t look after their own in the end.”
“Stop, don’t…” Jack sighs, dropping the papers just to run his hands roughly across his face. “I didn’t mean that–fuck. I didn’t mean any of that–”
You haven’t even gotten through the worst of it, and you’re already exhausted. God, these timebombs suck your energy right off. You reach for the water bottle on your purse, and drink away the premature grief building in your throat.
Jack watches you carefully, and for the first time since he saw you again, he allows himself to see past the veil of hate he’d tried to see you through. He sees the crack in your smile, the shadows under your eyes, the real strain and exhaustion you can’t quite dress up with a fancy coat.
He sees he wasn’t there to hold you through it.
“Why didn't you call me?” He asks, and you fear it’s the most devastated you’ve ever heard him.
You sigh, and set the bottle down. Because how do you even explain that? What even was it? Pride? Shame? Guilt? Love?
Fear.
How do you tell the man you wrecked that you did think of him first? That even after years apart, even after every awful thing, he was the first person you needed when the ground fell out from under your feet?
“I didn’t want to bother you,” you admit.
I was scared.
“Bother me?”
“After everything that happened, I thought…I thought I should solve it on my own,” you shrug.
I didn’t think I deserved your help.
“You didn’t think that your husband, a doctor, would want to ‘solve it’??” he snaps. Offended, yes. Furious, yes. But underneath all of it…it’s the hurt that speaks.
“You’re not a neurosurgeon,” you laugh bitterly, more defensive than you want to. “Your opinion is not gonna change–”
“It’s not just my opinion!” He says, standing up because his frustration is going to make him burst if he stays still. “It’s–it’s me being there. You went through all of this alone.”
The only sounds in the room are both your heavy breaths. You keep your rigid posture, even if every part inside of you is breaking. Jack runs his hand through his curls, once, twice, then tugs a little on the third time.
“Jack…” you call out softly, but he doesn’t look at you. His gaze darts to other five things he can see, hands on his hips as he grounds himself. “I’m not here to fight. And I’m not here for you to solve it…there’s just something I wanted to talk about.”
He finishes his little exercise and looks at you again, bracing himself for an impact he’s not sure if he can take. You know he can’t. So you take another deep breath before speaking.
“The doctors said the tumor is in an area that affects behavior. Like my moods and personality. They said it may have been growing for years.”
There’s a tremble in Jack’s lower lip that makes you hesitate, you know he already knows what it means, yet you keep going.
“They think it might explain why I was so…particular these last few years,” you let out a broken little laugh, shaking your head quickly to try to fight the tears prickling your eyes. “I know it’s not an excuse, maybe it wasn’t that,” you sniffle, wiping your cheeks angrily. “Maybe I was just a bitch.”
“Hey–no, honey, don’t say that,” he says, the endearment falling out of his lips so naturally.
Jack doesn’t think twice to step closer and drop to one knee in front of you, groaning at this prosthetic but still reaching for your hands on your lap. You try to retreat back so fast your chair screeches against the floor, but he doesn’t let you pull back, instead he interlocks his fingers with yours, almost hissing at how cold you are.
You shake your head, tears flooding your cheeks now. “Don’t–don’t speak to me like that, you can still be mad at me,” you sob, but he keeps his warm grip firm. “You have every right to be, I was so mean to you, Jack. I snapped at you for everything. I made you feel like you were always doing something wrong. I turned our house into somewhere awful and I knew you were trying, and I kept pushing anyway.”
He has tears in his eyes now too, but he lets you get it out of your system. Lets the years of regret spill out of you all at once, god knows his therapist has heard him many times.
“Jack you’d come home exhausted and I’d always find something else to pick apart. Something else to be angry about. And you looked at me like you didn’t recognize me anymore, and I hated it because I thought you were wrong. Even then. I knew I was hurting you and I kept doing it. I made you carry all of it. So maybe now I deserve to carry all of this alone.”
There it is. Jack breaks completely at your confession. His hand comes up to cup your cheek, catching the tears that won’t stop coming.
“Sweetheart…you should’ve called me,” he says again, but he’s not angry this time. He’s grieving. “You should’ve called me.”
“I know.”
“You should not have done this by yourself.”
“I know,” you cry out, he just keeps caressing your cheek with his thumb. “My–my memory is not the best now and I just…I needed to tell you I was sorry while I still could.”
You try to smile through the tears, you really do, but he looks so frightened. So wrecked. Your hands fly to his wrists now, clinging instead of pulling away.
“I’m scared, Jack,” you confess.
He remembers you saying that on a holiday when he hauled you up deep into the sea, just so he could hold you in his arms. He remembers you saying that when he put on a horror movie just so you could hide behind his biceps. He remembers you saying that before trying a new dish at your favorite diner instead of the usual you ordered.
All those times were said with a laugh, or a cheeky smile. But this? This is pure, unadulterated fear. He is scared. He’s terrified. So he does what he always did best: hold you.
He lifts himself up just enough to wrap his arms around you. You let yourself go instinctively, realizing how much you’ve needed this the past few months. He holds you so tight, so desperate, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other rubbing your back. You bury your face in his neck and sob. You feel the way Jack shifts, pressing his lips to your hair while he whispers sweet nothings.
“I’m here. I’m here, honey. I got you.”
“I don’t–”
“Don’t tell me what you deserve right now.”
That makes you cry harder. He rocks you a few times, just like he used to on the worst nights. Just like he always vowed to.
“I loved you through all of it,” he confesses. “Even when I was angry. Even when I thought you hated me. I never stopped. I never stopped.”
“I’m so sorry,” you sniffle.
“I know, honey, I know.”
“I loved you the whole time too, I swear,” you keep going. “That’s why–that’s why I never signed the papers. My heart didn’t want to let you go. It never did.”
“It’s okay–“
“No it’s not.”
“But it is,” he insists. Firm and honest. “You were sick, and I should’ve known. I should’ve seen something–“
“No. Don’t blame yourself for this too,” pulling yourself apart from him enough to look into those beautiful hazel eyes. “Leave the regretting to me.”
“Sweetheart–“
“Jack.” You narrow your eyes at him, and it brings him back to all those times you won even the most pointless of arguments with just one look.
He huffs a teary laugh, dropping his head in defeat. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” he says, lifting his head again. There’s a new spark in his eye trying to make its way past the previous devastation. “Then you leave the rest to me.”
You look at him, eyebrows furrowed, but he just pushes a strand of hair from your face.
“I’m getting you admitted here,” he says, you immediately tense, but he speaks before you can refuse. “No, listen to me. We have some of the best neurosurgeons in the country connected to this hospital. I am going to pull every string I have, call in every favor I can, and get every set of eyes possible on this.”
“I can’t do this again,” you shake your head.
“Yes, you can.”
“I’ve already seen so many people, Jack. I’ve heard it all. I’ve made peace with it.”
“No you haven’t, and that’s okay. You came here because some part of you knew I would never let this go. So don’t ask me to. It’s offensive, honey.”
Well shit. Seems like your husband of years seems to actually know you better than you know yourself.
“I’ve accepted it, Jack. Memento mori.”
Liar liar pants on fire.
He grins. “Then I guess we’re both liars.”
You look at him confused, but he just sighs.
“I told you I moved out…but I didn’t,” he admits. “I still live in the house I built for you. I still sleep in our bed, on my side of course, cause I know you never liked the way I dipped your side of the mattress,” he laughs at the memory, making you smile. “Your books are still on the nightstand. I never moved them.”
You imagine all the things he never brought himself to move. The way time stopped running in a house that was once filled with laughter and love. So much love. Jack just does a helpless shrug.
“You left…but you never really left me.”
Yeah. That’ll do it. You’re crying again before you even realize it. Your hands go to cover your face, but he intercepts them midway.
“No, no, honey. No more hiding from me,” he says, so softly it doesn’t exactly help your situation. “We’re in this together now.”
You nod, his thumbs reach out to dry your tears.
“I know I’m not the type of surgeon you need. I know I can’t fix this with my own hands. But I’m still a doctor,” he explains softly. “And most importantly…I’m still your husband. So I will be damned if I don’t do everything in my power to figure this out. We are going to try. Oh honey we are going to ask questions. We are going to make the smartest people in every room look at this until they are sick of seeing my face.”
That makes you laugh. He delights at the sound.
“Jack…”
“I know you’re tired, my love,” he continues, his voice turning even softer. “I know you’re scared. I know you’ve been carrying this by yourself for too long and the idea of starting over with new doctors makes you want to crawl out of your skin. But you do not get to give up before I even get a chance to fight for you.”
The weight in your chest that has been dragging you down lately eases, if only a little, letting you breathe. Maybe he’s right. Maybe all of this would’ve been easier if he’d known from the start. Maybe it can be easier now. Even if he can’t solve it…you’ll let him try.
“Okay,” you whisper.
“Okay,” he nods. “You’re coming home with me tonight, and we’ll deal with this in the morning. We’ll start here, and if it doesn’t work there’s always New York, I can cash a few favors in Washington too–“
“But your job–“
“Can wait,” he states without hesitation. “Sweetheart, I've been here for a long time, and I’m going to use that to my advantage. Maybe it’s time for my sabbatical, yeah? That way I can take you everywhere you need to be. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“…a sabbatical.”
“Robby took one,” he shrugs. “Three months away and it didn’t kill him. I’m willing to take whatever time they allow me.”
“What about SWAT duty?” You push. He lets out a chuckle.
“I know you might miss the uniform–“
You slap his arm weakly.
“Alright, alright,” he throws his hands up in defeat. “Just–don’t worry about it, okay? I meant it when I said I got you, honey.”
You sigh, but it’s more out of relief than anything. How you needed to hear those words. How you needed him.
“And in the meantime, you can tell me your favorite memories of us…so I can keep them safe for you while we figure this out.”
Jesus Christ. How could you have ever walked away from this man? At this point you’re gonna have to sign the papers just to marry him again.
“Jack…”
“Come on, from the hip, give me one,” he says playfully, and you know he’s not letting this go.
You tap your chin and glance away, pretending to think. Your eyes light up when a very specific memory pops into your head.
“I remember our naked yoga sessions very fondly,” you say, completely serious, but it manages to get a genuine surprised laugh from him.
“Of course you do,” he laughs, throwing his head back at the memory. He still does it, at sunrise when he’s not working, with your mat still next to his. “You always ended up bouncing on me.”
“Jack!!” You say, heat creeping up your face in a way it hasn’t in a long time.
You both laugh about it for a moment, then fall into a quiet that could never be described as awkward. Not between you. Not anymore.
“I missed this,” he says quietly, those intense hazel eyes piercing into yours. You loved those eyes. You still do. “I missed you.”
You smile sadly, cupping his face with your hands. “You missed nice me.”
“I missed my wife.”
Your heart skips a beat at that. So many years he’d called you that, until you threw it all away. Or, well, the thing in your head did? Whatever. It is what it is.
Your eyes travel all over his face. Damp lashes, tension in his jaw even if he tries to hide it with a cheeky grin, all the wrinkles time has carved into him while you were apart.
“I missed my husband,” you finally say, just as soft.
He smiles at that. You loved that smile, you still do.
“Then let me take care of you, honey.”
We can plant a memory garden
Say a solemn prayer, place a poppy in my hair
There's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair
And we will never go back to that bloodshed
Part 2 - Morning Glory.
Thank you so much for reading 🤍 feedback is always appreciated 💋
6.4k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: Dad!Jack; mentions of pregnancy; mention that reader had a rough first pregnancy with a few scary moments but no specifics or real discussion; the quickest second of angst (for me lol) where Jack thinks about losing you during/after a pregnancy; discussion of baby Abbot #2; breeding kink; Jack joking he could remove your IUD; foreplay; allusion to PIV sex; sass; soft moments; silliness; fluff; happy fluffy domestic dad!Jack; no use of y/n.
Summary: Watching each other with your daughter, who inherited Jack's sass, makes you and Jack have the same thought: you guys could have another.
AN: This feels like something so different for me, especially as of late (Quiet Part 6 notwithstanding). I don't know how I feel about it. But what's new there lol. This is just kind of silly. The idea came to me when I was telling a friend a story about an interaction my mom and I had when I was 4-ish that is the most Mich story and behavior. I've always been like this. It involves the word 'peep' and, you know, Peeps, it's the day after Easter. I think I'm so funny. 😂 Anyway more on the story at the end so as not to ruin anything lol. I don't really know where the rest came from, honestly. I didn't question it too hard and kind of just let it flow so hopefully it's okay. Like I said, it's definitely not my usual angsty angst or super emotional stuff, so I hope I've still got that fluff in me lol. Thank you so much for reading and for all of your support! I hope it's enjoyable and that you do enjoy! ♥️
"Daddy!"
Your daughter's voice rings into your bedroom through the monitor on Jack's nightstand. "Mommy!"
You feel Jack take a deep breath, your face buried against his chest as you lay curled into each other on your sides. "This is a dream, right?" he mumbles. "I'm hearing her call for us in a dream and not for the twentieth time tonight."
You nuzzle your face into him and then pull back. "No such luck, Baby," you hum sleepily. It feels like you guys literally got back to bed and comfortable and fell asleep for about a minute before your daughter calling for you again woke you back up.
Jack groans quietly as you slide out of his arms and start to sit up. He's not mad at her, doesn't resent having to go and check on her, he was just so comfy with you and he's tired. "I knew about the four month sleep regression, I didn't realize there was a four year one. I'm tired and want to sleep." It's almost a little dramatically whined and you laugh to yourself.
Your daughter turned four a week ago. Neither of you can believe it. It's so cliché but it feels like just yesterday you were getting home from the hospital with her and curling up in bed with Jack holding you and you holding her in that postpartum newborn haze.
She's been up and down almost all night which is strange for her. Normally she falls asleep and she's out until the morning. But after about two hours tonight she woke up and called for you both, asked for a drink of water. You and Jack happily took her to the kitchen to get one and tucked her back in bed.
Thirty minutes later as you and Jack were just settling in bed she called out for you both again. This time she needed to go to the bathroom. Twenty or so minutes after that she asked if you could read her one more book to help her fall asleep. Thirty-ish minutes after that Greenie, the stuffed green TY bear she didn't go anywhere without, fell under the bed where she couldn't reach. Fifteen minutes later she was cold and asked if you could turn the fan off. Forty minutes later she was hot and asked for it back on.
And now twenty minutes later here you are again.
"You love it," you smirk tiredly at him. "You love that she calls for Daddy first and that she knows Daddy will always come."
"I do, but I'd also be thrilled not to be experiencing it for the fortieth time tonight. Or this morning, whenever it is." He really does love it. He'll always love it, and Jack will always go to her if she calls for him. It's not even that it's testing his patience, or yours for that matter, though yours is closer to being tested than his. It's that he's tired and it's like she knows right when he slips asleep, when both of you do.
Jack grabs the shirt he keeps on the bench at the foot of your bed and throws it on while you slip on and tie the knee length cotton robe you keep next to it over your satiny sleep camisole and shorts. "You know she knows Mommy will always come too."
"I know," you murmur. You stop at the threshold of your bedroom door and turn to push your lips out for a kiss just because you can. Jack gives you the kiss you seek with a smile. He knows how fucking lucky he is that he has you, gets to call you his wife and love you and kiss you and parent your perfect little girl that you made him with you.
"At least we got some us time before she started waking up," you sigh happily.
"Thank fucking God," Jack huffs, shaking his head. "If this had started when she first went to bed and I'd been trying to have sex with you for the last five hours and kept getting interrupted I'd be in fucking tears." You can't help but laugh quietly to yourself at how serious he sounds when he says it in his hushed tone. "She even went to bed late so she could get some of her excess energy out. How is she not exhausted and totally out? She doesn't even sound that sleepy!"
You shrug even though Jack can't see it. But he can hear it in your voice. "Sometimes the girl can just go and go and go."
At this point you both can tell and know that it's become a little bit of a game for her just by the way she's acting and talking with you. It's not at all that she's scared and trying to get you guys to stay without having to say she's scared. You've seen that before. And it's not that she's just having a bad night or that she's not feeling well but can't quite put the words to the feeling. You've seen both of those before too. She's just not tired right now for whatever reason and is getting bored.
Like he always does he pauses outside of her and knocks on it once with the back of one of his index finger’s knuckles and then opens the door. He turns her dimmer light on low, enough to see well but not hurt anyone's eyes, and then crutches into her room toward her bed as you follow.
"What's going on now Energizer Bunny?" he asks her with a good natured teasing in his voice as he calls her a new nickname that makes her beam at him, a hint of knowing sheepishness in her smile.
She's already sitting up in her bed and shrugs deeply. You smile to yourself. You've seen her father give you that same shrug a million times before. "Wanna change jammies."
Jack fights to keep his smile from growing too wide and encouraging her. "You wanna change your jammies?"
"Yeah," she nods at him, like this is a perfectly normal request to make in the middle of the night.
Jack nods at her slowly. "Wh-" Halfway through asking why he changes his mind. It doesn't even matter. His little girl wants to change jammies so jammies will be changed. Plus he doesn't want to end up getting her started on a ten minute story if he can avoid it, as much as he loves indulging her imagination and hearing the ideas she comes up with.
"You wanna pick them out, Honey?" you ask her from where you've moved to kneel by her probably overly well bolted to the wall dresser. Jack wasn't taking any chances.
"Yeah!" she giggles, scrambling out of bed and running over to you. She purses her lips and brings one of her index fingers to them as she hums while surveying her options.
You and Jack share a look as he sits on the floor by her bed, both of you chuckling silently to yourselves. "What do you think Honey? You've got Cars, or princesses, or skateboards, or puppies, or bows." You name a bunch of what's in there but you already know which pair she's going to pick.
"Those ones!" She pulls her index finger from her lips and points to the pair you knew she would.
You click your tongue as you pull them out. "How did I know?" She smiles widely at you and giggles and you set the pajamas on your lap to grab her and bring her into your arms, holding her close while attacking her face with kisses and making her almost shriek with laughter.
Jack swears he can feel his heart warm in his chest and his body start to melt into the floor at the two of you. He can't believe this is real and his life. He'd more or less given up on it before he met you, figured he would be too old for anyone to ever want to do this with him by the time a relationship was ready for kids, not that he would even be that old.
And then he met you at a bar a group of them went out to after work and for reasons he's pretty sure he'll never understand you think he's the most attractive individual to walk the earth physically and in his personality and character. You both fell in love quickly, dated a year and got engaged, married a year later. Then you took some time to just be married and together for a few years before you started trying for a baby. And now here you are, your four year old little girl giggling up a storm in your arms.
You guys could have another.
"Alright," you release her, "go see Daddy and he'll help you change."
As she gets out of her lap and Jack sees the pajamas she's picked out you watch the satisfied smirk pull onto his face and roll your eyes at him affectionately when he looks at you. While your daughter scampers over to Jack you throw the pajamas at him with a playful force, his hands coming up to grab them as he overdramatically ducks and laughs.
Jack turns his attention to your daughter who stands close to him between his outstretched and open legs. "Arms up!" Your daughter listens and Jack pulls her current shirt off and then helps her get her new one on. "Okay pants." She places her hands on his shoulders automatically, already knowing the routine.
Something about it reminds you of the way he knelt between your legs and you rested your hands on his shoulders as you sat on the toilet in the bathroom and he helped you into clean postpartum underwear, effectively a diaper of your own, changed your padcicle for you and helped you stand up and get them pulled up and comfy just because he could and wanted to take care of you. You hadn't even necessarily needed help with it but Jack did it anyway, at the hospital and once you were home. Just like he showered you for weeks simply so you didn't have to expend the energy and move as much and could focus on relaxing in the water and healing. Just like he took care of you your entire pregnancy.
You get misty eyed thinking about it and have to blink rapidly for a second to clear your eyes. By the time you do and focus back in on the present she's all changed and thanking Jack.
"You're welcome, Peanut." He leans in and gives her cheek a big kiss. "You know these are my favorite pajamas." Jack smiles and raises his eyebrows at her to get her to giggle.
"I know Daddy, s'why I pick 'em! They my favite too!" She leans into him and wraps her small arms around his neck in a hug, Jack's legs closing so she can bend her knees and rest them and her shins on his thighs. The pair she chose has a typical scrub green background and a print of different medical instruments and such all over. "They my Daddy jammies!"
Jack could burst into fucking tears, he's pretty sure he'd promise her anything she asked for right now, a pony, a car when she turns 16, a trip to wherever the hell she wants. "Yeah? They're your daddy jammies?" She nods eagerly and Jack chuckles. "Can you tell me what's on them?"
"Mhm! I like this game!" She leans back on her calves a little and pulls her shirt out so she can see it and Jack can point to things better. Her and Jack have been playing this game since you found and bought the pair, a fun surprise that had excited them both. You make a mental note to try and find them again and order another pair in a size up. She's starting to grow out of them and will be devastated when they no longer fit.
"Okay," Jack points. "What's that?"
"Stefoscope!"
"Yeah, that's a stethoscope, very good." He points to something else. "How about that?"
"'Mometer!"
"Yep, that's a thermometer, good job." Jack points again. "And this one?"
"Singe!"
"Correct again, it's a syringe." He pretends to think about which one to point to, letting her excitement build before he points to another. "What about this? It's a tough one."
She looks at it for a few seconds and starts to hum, moves into trying to sound out the word as she remembers more of it, clearly knows what it is and is just struggling with the word. "Sf, sfffff, sfigmomomonmeter."
"Good job! It's a sphygmomanometer." Jack is absolutely beaming at her with pride and you have to laugh to yourself at your daughter being able to identify a fucking sphygmomanometer at four years old. "You are the smartest little peanut!"
"You're so smart Honey, I'm proud of you, that's a big word!" You crawl over so that you're at the opposite end of her bed from Jack and lean against it a little as you watch them.
"Thanks Mommy!"
He tickles her side a little to hear her laugh as she looks at him like he personally hung the moon and stars just for her. "Okay, last one. What's this?"
She sings out each letter. "EKG stip!"
"Mhm, it's an EKG strip," he nods at her encouragingly. "And what does it show?"
"Sinus taf!"
"That's right, sinus tach! You did such a good job! I'm so proud of you!" Jack catches her easily when she lets go of her shirt and launches herself back into his arms with hers around his neck again in a tight hug in the span of a second. "You're so smart, Peanut! You'll be taking over for Uncle Robby and running the whole Pitt before we know it!"
"Thank you Daddy!"
"You're welcome, Peanut."
You laugh softly and shake your head, an amused smile on your face as you watch the two of them.
Jack catches your eye, the biggest self-satisfied smile on his face. "What?"
You shake your head at him and hold your hands up. "I didn't say a word."
His smile easily slips into a smirk. "I can hear you thinking them."
"I can hear you bragging about how she can read an EKG strip before she can read a book," you smirk back at him.
Jack rolls his eyes playfully but you're right. He absolutely will. Yes, he knows it's just picture recognition and association, but still. She knows all of that stuff, all of those words, can recognize an EKG strip and the rhythm it shows.
"You wanna read a couple of books before it's back to bed?" you ask your daughter as she pulls out of her hug with Jack. "We have to start winding down, Honey. It's sleepy time."
"Mmm, okay!" She slides off Jack and goes over to where you keep her books and starts going through them, picking a couple out.
Once she's satisfied with her four selections she pushes them over to you and climbs into your lap and curls up without a word, you and Jack sharing a look and chuckling together at the way she doesn't ask. You take your time reading three of the books she picked out, do different voices for every character how she likes.
Jack can't help but think it again as he watches the two of you, watches your daughter grow sleepier in your arms as you read to her, sometimes laughing loudly and pushing herself back into you. You guys could have another.
It's not a new thought for him. It's actually one he's been having a lot lately. He's sure some of it has to do with her birthday. He's been reminiscing and looking at baby photos and videos, and photos of you pregnant and god he wants to do it again. Sitting here right now he wants to do it again so fucking badly.
By the time you finish the third book your daughter is sleepier than she's looked all night. You pass her off to Jack for the last book because you know his warmth helps lull her to sleep. It helps lull you to sleep too.
Like you, Jack does a different voice for every character, infuses his voice with whatever emotion is called for. She snuggles into him more and more, holds onto his shirt tightly and toward the end Jack starts to rock side to side. You can't quite figure out if it's deliberate or if it's some sort of subconscious soothing dad thing.
You guys could have another.
You'd always kind of talked about at least two. You're not sure why it hasn't come up yet, especially now that she's four, but you have no reason to think Jack wouldn't want to at least try, see if it's in the cards for you guys. You wouldn't be mad if he didn't want to, if he was content with the way your family is now. But god, seeing him with her makes you want to give him twenty right now. You've been looking back at baby photos and videos too and shirtless Jack with your newborn on his chest for skin to skin while you were still in the hospital flickers into your mind.
Your daughter is still awake at the end of the book but not by much. Jack shifts her in his arms and looks down at her. "Alright, Peanut. Do you need some water?" She shakes her head. "Bathroom?" Another head shake. "Temperature okay in here?" Your daughter nods at him with a sleepy smile. "Nightlight is on. We've got comfy jammies. Stories have been read." Jack looks over at her bed. "And all our fuzzy friends are secure in bed."
Jack stays soft with her like he always does but gets a little serious with her at the same time. "Anything else? I need you to think hard about it because we all really need some sleep, Peanut." He raises his eyebrows at her with a little smile so that she knows she's not in trouble.
"No, Daddy." She takes in a deep breath and sighs it out in that dramatic way four year olds do. "I'm sleepy."
Jack laughs through his nose and nods down at her. "I'm sure you are, kid." He transfers her over to her bed gently and gets her tucked in, leans in to give her a hug and a forehead kiss. "I love you Peanut."
Jack moves out of the way and grabs his crutches and gets himself up while you do the same as him, give her a big hug and kiss her cheek. "I love you Honey."
"I love you Mommy! I love you Daddy!" she calls out in her sleepy voice as you get up and the two of you make your way out of her room.
Jack pauses at the doorway with his hand on the dimmer and door half closed and you pause right behind him in the hall. "Alright, not another peep miss ma'am." He says it un-seriously enough and with enough of a smile and his expressive raised eyebrows for her to know she's not in trouble and that, as always, if she really needed something she could call and you'd both come, but with enough seriousness to it for her to know that this game is over.
You watch your daughter make and hold eye contact with her father, look him Jack dead in the eye, and speak in the sleepiest and sweetest and absolutely fucking cheekiest voice.
"Peep."
You start to blurt out a laugh and manage to save it and make it into a cough and fucking scurry back to your bedroom so that you don't laugh in front of her.
Somehow Jack fights back his laugh and after a second's pause with his eyes closed he looks at her and gives her a small, knowing smile as she gives him the biggest, most self-satisfied grin that he recognizes as his own. "I love you," he manages to tell her calmly, watches her close her eyes and then turns the light off and shuts the door the rest of the way before he starts quickly crutching back to your room, laughing more and louder the closer he gets.
You're in a fit of laughter sitting on your side of the bed, robe back on the bench, as he crutches into your room. And when Jack looks at you after closing the door behind him you somehow lose it even harder, Jack joining you as he makes his way over to the bed and sits on his side next to you.
After a few seconds you try to talk. "I could," you laugh, tears streaming down your face, "I could only see half of your face," you're interrupted by laughter again, "and it was so priceless."
Jack's laughing too hard now to even attempt a response, just shakes his head at you as tears start to fall down his face. You have no idea how long you guys sit there laughing, leaning into each other more and more as you grow weaker with the laughter.
"I can't," you laugh, "I can't breathe! It hurts!"
"If you can talk and laugh," Jack laughs, wiping tears that are immediately replaced off his face, "then you can breathe."
"Don't," you try to fake glare at him as you laugh. It doesn't work.
After a little longer your laughter starts to trail off, you and Jack wiping tears and exchanging some last chuckles as you come back down.
"Well, if her being the spitting image of you wasn't enough to prove paternity." You sniffle and wipe at your eyes again. Your daughter inherited all of her father's features so clearly in her face that it's patently obvious looking at her who her father is. "That sure was."
"Paternity?! Me?!" Jack gapes at you. "That was you! That was so you!"
"Oh no," you laugh. "No, no, Sir. That was you. That was some grade A Jack Abbot sass."
Jack playfully scoffs at you as you both climb back under the covers and move closer to each other as you lay down.
"She's so her father's daughter," you smirk at him, or at least try to. Too much genuine adoration for them both seeps into it. "She's so like you. She's a mini-you, Jack. Ask anyone."
Jack can't even find any words to use to mount a fake defense. Nor does he want to. You're right. She is a mini-him and he loves it. And that 'peep' was absolutely him and he's pretty sure the only reason he didn't crack the fuck up in front of her is because he had a moment of pride about it.
"She got at least one thing from you," Jack starts as he moves even closer to you, leaves the low-lit lamp on his nightstand on. You raise your eyebrows in amusement and to ask him what that might be. "She's perfect," Jack shrugs, his love for you in his eyes so clear you can almost physically feel it, "just like her Mom."
"Oh," you laugh, nodding at him amusedly, a softness to your smile that says thank you and you love him too silently. "You really just went for it there."
Jack clicks his tongue and shakes his head. "I'm just saying the truth. You're perfect. "
"Mhm," you hum at him. "Okay."
"Hey." He rolls you onto your back and follows you, props himself up on his arms and lets his hips and lower abdomen rest against yours. "I am."
You give him a half smirked smile. "Your truth."
"The truth." He doesn't let you argue, kisses you instead.
The kisses start as most do, short and sweet. Then they start to linger a little more. And then Jack is kissing you slowly, languid and deep, and he doesn't stop. You'll never understand how he can get you so worked up just by kissing you, but he can and god does he, his tongue swiping along yours just the start. You're glad it's still like this years later, that you're still making out in bed as foreplay, that you have moments where things will just naturally and slowly devolve.
You're moaning softly for Jack before hands even start to truly wander and tease. When he finally lowers himself on top of you all the way and takes a little bit of his weight on his knees so that his hands can finally start to wander and tease it's not long before clothes start to come off. He straddles you momentarily so that he can pull your satin sleep shorts down with a practiced ease that makes you shiver in its own right, your feet taking over for him and kicking them off somewhere in the bed as he settles back between your legs and kisses you again.
"I thought you were tired and wanted to sleep," you pant softly against his lips when you break for some air, your hands playing with the hem of his shirt and starting to drag it up. Jack lifts himself up off you to get his shirt off, movements hurried, like being even just this far away from you is burning him.
"Not anywhere near as much as I want you," he pants as he smiles down at you, the perfect smirked edge to it. Since his hands are already off you and he's sat up a bit he shoves his pajama pants down, works quickly to get them off and joining your shorts somewhere in the bed.
A little tragically in some ways, Jack is so wired for you and moving so quickly to lay back on top of you and feel your skin and the satin of your top against his skin and resume kissing you that you barely get a look at any of him. But you're sure able to feel Jack's hard cock against you, especially when he starts to grind his hips against yours as he kisses you even harder, possessive and claiming and leaving you wondering where this sudden near feral need of his came from, not that you're complaining.
Jack's lips leave yours to let you both breathe but they don't leave your skin completely, moving to kiss along your jaw back below your ear to that spot he knows will get you to keen for him every time. "I love you," he murmurs through heavy, controlled pants against your skin before sucking and teasing that spot.
"Fuck, Jack," you moan, bring a hand up to run through silver curls. "I love you too." Jack's lips start to tease your neck that he knows is deliciously and dangerously sensitive for you and you whine, feel yourself grow wetter for him.
"You are perfect," he mumbles into your skin. "So, so perfect." Jack slowly kisses his way up the other side of your neck, sucking and nipping and scraping his teeth over your skin pulling more soft moans from you that have his cock throbbing and leaking between the two of you.
And then it just slips out. Falls right off his tongue without him even fully realizing it until he finishes saying the last word, though the realization doesn't make him stop teasing your neck. "You wanna make another baby?"
Your brain glitches for a second at the question, a breathless moan escaping you as Jack sucks at your neck perfectly. "Did… I, Jack," you laugh just as breathlessly. "Did you just ask if I want to try for baby number two?"
Jack hums at you as he brings his head down and nibbles at your collarbone. "Yeah," he mumbles against your skin far too casually for what he's confirming, "I did."
"Uh," you laugh, your mind racing at the thought and the feel of Jack's lips and his cock between you and what he just asked. "Like, seriously? Like you're seriously asking me if I want to get pregnant again and have another baby?"
Jack quickly kisses up one side of your neck to your chin and then looks down at you smirking, but with his eyebrows set in just the right way to tell you he's also kind of serious. His hand starts to trail down your side as he speaks. "I could remove your IUD right now."
"Jack!" You playfully swat his shoulder.
He looks at you innocently. "What?!"
"Are you serious or is this some breeding kink thing we're doing right now? I'm not opposed to that, at all, to be clear." You give him a little smirk and flash of your brows, grind your hips up against him for a second and bask in the low groan it pulls from him. "But I just want to know. Are you serious about wanting to have another baby?"
"I mean… You can't get pregnant right now so it's just a breeding kink thing. Unless you want me to take your IUD out right now." He pushes his lips together and makes a face of consideration. "I probably really could do it."
"No!" you drag the word out through a single laugh, voice a little higher pitched than normal as you smile at him. He gives you a little pout and you give him a please look which Jack likes because it reassures him you're not feeling any pressure to let him or to have another baby and that you know he's playing around with you. "Jack removing an IUD is one of the least sexy things in the world. It's terrible foreplay."
"Well we'd do other foreplay! And I think it is sexy because it means I could get you pregnant." You give him another look and make a little noise of disbelief because you doubt it would work that fast but you more or less let him have it. He sighs dramatically and rests his forehead on your chest for a second before looking at you again. "Okay, no IUD removal right now, got it."
You share a soft laugh as you shake your head at him. You look at him a bit more seriously, but just as adoringly, your desire and lust on pause for a moment. "Does that mean you want me to get it removed?" You run your fingers through his now fluffy curls, your voice a bit lower the next time you speak, not a whisper but so saturated with emotion it pulls your voice down. "You want to have another baby?"
Jack pushes his lips together as he smiles down at you and then licks them before rolling off you and leaning against the headboard as he pulls you into his lap, forcing himself to ignore his erection and the soft skin of your thigh pressing against it. The conversation is obviously taking a more serious turn and he wants to hold you for it.
"I've been thinking about it, yeah," he admits with a nod. His hand starts rubbing up and down your back absentmindedly. "Seeing you with her tonight made me think about it more. I was kind of waiting for us to get past her birthday and all of the attendant activities to bring it up."
You bite your bottom lip and smile at him. "I've been thinking about it too. And, yeah, tonight, you with her… I'm ready to give you another twenty babies," you giggle. Jack laughs softly through his nose and while his smile is real and reaches his eyes and you can tell he does want another baby, you watch a little pain seep into it. "Talk to me, Baby," you murmur, bring your hand to the nape of his neck and start to scratch at his scalp and play with his curls there.
Jack shrugs, shallow and quick. "Pregnancy was rough for you," he says simply.
"Yeah." You return his shrug. "More than worth it though."
"Of course," Jack agrees. He lets out a long breath through his nose. "But rough was an understatement. We both know that. It's hard to ask you to go through that again. And then my mind trails off into all the risks and I go back to last time and there were some really scary moments with you when you were pregnant, moments where I thought…” He trails off, shaking his head a little because he can’t finish the sentence right now. He just can’t. “What if I ask you to do this and then something happens? It would be my fault… I can't raise two kids without you. I can't raise one kid without you."
Your heart aches for him. Jack is right. There were some really scary moments, before labor and during it and after it, in the hospital and at home. And Jack knows way too much, he knows way the fuck too much about everything that could go wrong. He knows how quickly it could all go to shit. You know it's exceedingly hard, if not impossible, for him to turn that part of his brain off.
"I know there were some really scary moments and I know it's hard for me to understand what it was like for you." You bring your other hand up to his neck and brush your thumb at his jaw just below his ear, your other fingers resting against the stubble of his neck that you're pretty sure you could worship. "But if you thought it was too risky Jack you wouldn't even be thinking about it. Your mind wouldn't let you, it wouldn't let you think about and want something that you truly thought and believed was more likely to ki-," you catch yourself just in time, "have a poor outcome for me than not. And even if something did happen, it wouldn't be your fault, Jack. I wouldn't be having a baby just for you because you happened to bring it up first." You lean in and kiss his forehead and then give him what you hope is a reassuring smile. "You're going to have to raise zero kids without me." You nod at him when he opens his mouth to interject, already knowing what he's about to say. "I can't promise you that but I just feel it in my heart and soul."
Jack's brain latches onto your words, you can almost see them stop him from slipping any further into his head. He wouldn't be thinking about it if he thought having another baby was truly dangerous for you and had a higher chance of ending in a tragedy he has no idea how he’d survive than ending happily. "That's true, I wouldn't think about or want it if I believed it was too risky."
"If you want to have another baby Jack I'll have another baby with you in a second. But please know it's not you asking, not really. Sure you brought it up, but it's a conversation. It's us coming to a decision together about our family." You lean up in his arms a little and glance at the alarm clock on his nightstand. "It's also not a decision we have to make right now at three in the morning when we're both sleepy."
You'd be happy to keep talking about it with him, but it's not worth the risk of him getting in his head about it now that you've pulled him out before he could get too far in.
"Very true," he murmurs.
You give him a ghost of a smile and bring both of your hands to his neck and run them down to his chest before moving to straddle him as he shifts down a little on instinct. You make sure your pussy is over his still hard cock, lick your lips slowly. "We can still pretend though," you breathe before you pull your camisole off.
"Fuck," Jack groans, his hands flying to your breasts, thumbs and index fingers finding your nipples, pinching and twisting them perfectly. "We can still fucking pretend."
Your eyes flutter closed and your head falls back as Jack's hands squeeze and knead at your breasts while his two fingers continue to play with your nipples. "You want me to get you pregnant again?" Jack asks lowly, voice all gravel and pure sex.
"God, please," you almost whine, your hips canting against him and dragging your cunt over the length of him as your hands slide up the back of his neck and tangle in his curls. You let your eyes flutter back open and look at Jack again and he tilts his head just slightly, raises his eyebrows even more subtly, a silent instruction to keep eye contact with him.
"Yeah?" The word is a little strangled as it falls from his lips at the feeling of your pussy sliding so slickly over his cock. "Does that do it for you?" He carefully lets go of your breasts and brings his hands to your hips, fingertips digging into your skin at a delicious pressure while he helps you glide along him. "The thought of me getting you pregnant again?" Jack can feel your cunt clench around nothing and throb against him and groans. "Thinking about carrying my baby? Our baby?"
"Yeah," you pant, all breathy and dripping with the pleasure Jack's sending racing through your body. "Yes."
Jack hums in approval at how fucked out you already sound for him when you've barely even started. "You love me claiming you like that, don't you?"
You moan at his words, at him just talking about claiming you like that again, getting you pregnant again. You nod, a half-insolent half-playful smirk pulling onto your face as you speak. "Almost as much as you love claiming me like that."
He chuckles darkly, flicking his eyebrows up at you and nodding. The way he suddenly flips the two of you back into the position you were in earlier with him laying on top of you catches you by surprise even though he's done it hundreds of times before, the show of his agility and strength just making you needier for him.
"Mouthy." He starts rutting against you, can't stop the grunts of pleasure that come from his chest.
"You love it," you continue to smirk at him. You wrap your legs around his waist and move your hips in time with his, try raising them a little higher in the hopes that he'll just slip inside of you.
Jack matches your smirk with one of his own, a dangerous edge to it that makes you shiver and tells you he's about to fuck you out of your goddamned mind. "Almost as much as you love the idea of me fucking another baby into you."
I hope it was okay, and fluffy and sweet and silly (and a touch hot), and dad!Jack with his little girl and her jammies was cute or cute-ish!??!!???? Thank you so much for taking the time to read!! I love hearing your thoughts and comments and reactions! ♥️
And yeah, lol when I was four I was being a total pain in the ass for my mom one night, constantly calling for her and getting her to come to my room, and she didn't quite have the patience Jack does in this so she was much firmer with me when she said, "not another peep." But I 100% looked her dead in the eye and said "peep." Very Mich. Very very Mich. She still loves telling that story. I know she shut the door and went back to her room and lost it. 😂
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☤ ─ WAIT FOR ME! ; jack abbot
summ. You saved Abbot’s life once before. Now he fights to repay the debt.
w.count. 7.7k (a doozy!)
tags. Non-linear storytelling , military!Abbot, military!Reader , no y/n , descriptions of active combat , body horror & graphic injuries , potential military & medical inaccuracies , whump galore , Walsh is implied to be military too
a/n. Ding ding! Somebody ordered military!abbot days? Listened to Hadestown 'Wait for me' & Hozier's cover of 'Do I Wanna Know' on repeat as I wrote this, whoops…
“HOW THE HELL are you even back on your feet already?” she censures. “Or should I say foot?”
“Cut the bullshit and just tell me,” Abbot grits out, between the seize of dread around his heart.
And Walsh, like the penetratingly clever woman she is, has the sixth sense to piece that nothing and no one— nor divine intervention itself— will be able to move the soldier standing sentinel in the anteroom of the Surgical Floor.
He’s been awaiting news on you for the past hour.
You’re under the knife, still, with Garcia and the OR team’s finest. He’s been counting down the minutes since he’d awoken.
“Abbot, you know how rare it is for patients to die on the table,” she offers, clinically. “They’re doing an exlap on her last I checked. But you have to remember that her wounds—” Walsh cuts herself off. Sighs. “Look. Say she pulls through. She still has to endure recovery in the ICU, which is where most her actual troubles might come up.”
Abbot inhales stiffly. Runs the data and numbers in his head. Purpose, after all, will sober him into clarity:
Annual medical reports. Case journals he’s read. Statistics from studies regarding perisurgical complications; And on post-operative mortality rates in comparison to intra-operative ones, so that he can calculate the odds of Death; can rationalise and brace himself for if it’d be taking you from him all over again this time aro—
Jack Abbot’s been changed out of his SWAT fatigues into spare civvies and is still, by right, a patient himself.
The medical gauze plastered over his brow and the rebreather loosened at his neck is crude proof of that.
“I promised her,” Abbot finds himself abruptly saying. His voice is thin. “I owe her my fucking life.”
Walsh uncrosses her arms. “Whatever it is that happened on your SWAT mission this morning—”
“No,” he overrides, “Not that.”
She watches as he sinks to lean on an armchair edge in defeat, resting his good leg and the hand he’s been using to prop himself up with on a forearm crutch. From what she could gather, he’d wrecked his prosthesis sometime during the incident that had sent his unit here.
It takes a moment of looking at the empty space where his leg should be, before Walsh realises what he means.
“…Kandahar,” she pieces, dismayed. “That wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s but the damn insurgents that decided to smoke out your outpost.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t there, were you?” he says bitterly. “The PJ’s medevaced us to you waiting out in a field hospital. We were just patients for you to cut and patch up before sending home.”
Walsh may lock horns with Abbot all the time— but she isn’t a heartless enough bastard to argue with a fellow comrade of hers clearly in pain and traumatic stress: She allows the dig to pass without remark.
“PJ’s said that she saved your life first by tying up your blown leg,” Walsh ignores. “What they also told me, is that you packed her wounds and administered ketamine. You saved her life in return; kept her tensive enough to survive the trip over.”
“Yeah, ‘cause she went after my damn medkit,” he mutters, earning him a frown in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
She shifts her head to catch his eyes, watching him go somewhere far away in his head.
“When our convoy got struck returning to base,” he begins slowly, “she patched my leg up behind one of the trucks. After that she— she risked dragging my ass into the nearest building for cover, because the assholes are raining down on us too heavy.”
“We get in, and then she’s asking for the ketamine so she can give it to me.” His voice cracks, but he shakes it off in irritation. “But I fucking— I didn’t take it with me— I’d left my medkit all the way back at the damn truck—”
“Jack, you forgot it because you were in traumatic shock,” Walsh reasons, carefully. She’s not sure if he’s noticed she’s decided to call him by his first name now, let alone the fact he’s been recounting his memory in the present-tense; reliving it. “Nobody can think straight concussed out their minds, you know this.”
“Yeah, but I still fucked up, didn’t I?” he disagrees, sniffing and averting his gaze uncharacteristically towards the ground. “Next thing I know another mortar lands; One moment I’m watching her run off, and the next she’s limp on the open ground, shrapnel to the jugular— Medevac still minutes out.”
The story comes to its end there, much to Walsh’s relief. The rest is what had been allowed unredacted in military reports: that the deployed Surgical Forward Team alongside a unit of PJ’s had extracted Abbot’s team, and flown everyone straight for definitive care.
Walsh makes a noise of assent, then lets out a tense breath. She hadn’t even noticed how reflexively strung up she’d gotten from listening to that tragedy until he’d finished spea—
She frowns, pausing in calculation.
“She never made it to the kit.”
Abbot turns to look up at Walsh. She has her face pinched, appearing to mentally map something together in her cocked head.
“You said she was blasted, what— maybe fifteen yards? From the convoy?”
“Twenty, more like,” he recalls painfully, only to earn a dismissive wave from her and a deeper look of confusion.
“But the PJ’s said she had ketamine in her already.”
“It was the last vial left in the kit. The rest was broken,” Walsh hears him say easily, as if that isn’t another damning, heroic detail. “I gave it to her instead.”
“Jack,” she blinks, incredulously, “how the hell did you get all the way to her while bleeding with a missing fucking leg?”
Abbot meets Walsh’s gaze like the answer is obvious enough— like he would’ve done it a hundred times over.
“I crawled for her.”
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Something beckons you towards it.
Death, perhaps.
It sounds, awfully, like Jack Abbot.
---o, how copy? Ov---
You blink weakly. It’s useless in the pitch dark. Other than the dustmotes floating across the weak slivers of light filtering somewhere faintly beyond you in the distance, you can’t see anything. Can’t reckon where you are, let alone reconcile left to right; or whether you’re even lying rightside up or wrongside down.
How did you get here?
Kilo, d--- you ---py?
There’s construction gravel, you think, in your boots. You can feel granules chafing all over your body. Sense liquid heat trickling down your head. Taste something metallic; pennies in your mouth.
Think. Think. How’d you get here?
You can’t gauge your distance to the light. Somewhere close enough to its surface, you figure, because you can vaguely hear the desperate scratching of paws as Mowgli whines and barks for you through the hole piercing through the vastness of the void.
You try to call out. Or maybe answer the staticy radiochatter you can hear. Can you find me? All that comes out, however, is a dry, broken rasp.
Instantly, something dull protests like an ache in your gut when you cough reflexively, muscles twitching and spasming uncontrollably from your back up into your abdomen when you reach to touch a trembling hand on it.
Metal. Ridged. It comes away sticky with something.
Your heart begins to race.
Synapses fire now. You’re stuck in something— or no, something is stuck in you.
Kilo? K---, I repeat, d--- copy?
You’re getting a sick sense of déjà-vu.
The pieces come together, now. Kandahar? No, you remind yourself sharply. The war is over. You’re back home. Where’s home? Pittsburgh.
Right. You’re part of the Pittsburgh Police Bureau’s SWAT team. A number of units had been mobilised for… for a bomb threat at the Acrisure Stadium at North Shore.
It’d been a false alarm, hadn’t it? You remember that much. They’d barricaded the area regardless, but then somebody must have caught wind before proper evacuation could take place, because all hell broke loose.
A screaming stampede. Crowds pushing and shoving through blockades. The scaffolding supporting the cornerstone arris of an under-construction building suddenly buckling, echoing as it rained down clanging debris: loose bricks and—
Steel, you piece, hand blindly seeking where the throbbing pain in your flesh meets around the metal. A rebar.
Oh, fuck, you choke. The words don’t form. Your breath hitches in a frigid panic as realisation sets into clarity.
K---o, do you read m---?
You’re impaled. You can feel a stiffness from the left of your back, the flat end of the pole only just protruding out to your front side and breaking skin.
---Kilo?---
It’s shallow enough. If you try, you can yank yourself out. Crawl to the light, maybe, and unbury yourself from the rubble.
Abbot, can you? You try one last time. Can you find me?
You cannot die here.
You refuse.
You can’t—
“—fucking give up,” Teddy curses, smacking his cards down in defeat: a Full House, yet trumped by your winning hand. “You’re a goddamn cheat, Kilo, y’know that? How’d you win a third time in a goddamn row?”
On the shin-height, rickety coffee table of the squad’s improvised barracks, another round of makeshift Poker comes to its end. The winning pot (candy and m&m’s) is slid over to your side, where you hoot from where you’re curled up in your seat: A low and squeaky, spring-broken armchair that’s tattered and seen far better days.
“Quit moving, Kilo,” Abbot reminds, hovering over you from the side. He’s gloved up and stood close beside you, busying himself with an open cut on your brow that’s fortunately shallow enough not to require stitches. “Also, I can see her cards from here. She didn’t cheat. I'm a witness.”
Hah! you flip Teddy off with a grin, earning a disapproving click of a tongue from Abbot once more at your shifting. Sorry, Doc, you crane your neck for him again.
“‘Sides,” Diaz snorts, recollecting the scattered deck to reshuffle the cards in that expert flourish he always does with tattooed hands, “Kilo had a royal flush, dumbass. None of us would’ve won either way.”
You turn your palms up with a smile. “Guess I’m just that good, Corporal.”
A shock of red hair ducks into the room. It’s Skinner, returning from sentry patrol, groaning dramatically as he stretches his limbs like a ginger cat. Another hand automatically materialises on the table for him as Diaz dishes out the cards again as Dealer.
“You’re not good,” Skinner narrows, after divesting and dragging himself a spare seat— somebody’s army bed cot, probably Abbot’s— over to join the game. “We just keep your dumbass around because of Duchess.”
You snort, glancing to where she’s sound asleep at the other end of the room. Fair enough.
“We can still throw Kilo out, right, Doc?”
“No promises,” he snorts. “But if she keeps fuckin’ squirming—”
“Alright, alright,” you sheepishly withdraw.
“Oh, Ted’s just a sore fuckin’ loser,” Diaz says, arranging his (chocolate) chips by colour as a new game starts.
The room crumbles away into laughter as Teddy lets out a barrage of insults back at everybody. “Look how defensive he is,” Skinner taunts, idling as he waits for his turn on the round. “He’s worse than my kids back home.”
“Speakin’ of,” Diaz says, sliding a number of m&m’s to raise his bet, “how’s your girl, Teddy?”
Jeanine, you recall. 4-months along the last time you’d heard about her. Teddy, however much of a rough-around-the-edges grunt he likes to behave as, is a family man through-and-through at heart: he’d tucked the ultrasound pictures his wife had mailed to him into his vest no matter where he went like a token; a reminder to get back home safe.
“Still pregnant as hell,” Teddy replies, softened by the topic now that banter has been waylaid. “Yours, Skinner?”
Conversation of family buoys the round. Skinner’s rowdy fraternal twins are climbing up to second grade now; Diaz’s younger sisters are graduating highschool with honors. You recognise them all by name— seen the keepsakes of polaroid pictures shared every now and then.
“Ow,” you flinch, rearing reflexively as Abbot swipes a cottonbud of antibiotic ointment on your cut.
A hum. “Don’t be a baby, Kilo,” he teases, voice a low murmur from how focused he is.
You try not to tarry on the sound of it. Smother the beat of wings taking flight in your chest when he eventually finishes up, and makes an off-hand comment going, Want me to kiss it better for you?
“You mean ‘Don’t be a pussy’,” Teddy amends for Abbot, only to get a back-of-the-head smack from Diaz, like the natural, older protective brother he gets to be again around you.
“Technically, she’s the only actual chick in this damn squad,” comes Skinner’s snide comment. “Wait, no, we forgot about Diaz—”
“Fuck off,” the Sergeant fails to ignore the jab, seemingly soured by his unlucky hand. He knuckles the table for his turn: Check. “What about you, Doc?”
Abbot’s answer is quick now that he’s pulled away from poring his undivided attention on you.
“Mh. No girl waiting on me back home,” he replies indifferently, which makes you snap to look up at him in curiosity. You’ve seen the ring he wears on on his finger; caught the way he’s fidgeted with it more times than you can count before every mission you’re all sent out on.
Nobody asks because he usually dismisses the topic and never tells— until now, that is.
“What?” he muses down at you, meeting your owlish gaze steadily as he slides his gloves off.
(You only just manage to stop yourself from glancing down too obviously at his hands to check for that unmistakable grey band.)
Abbot’s doing that indecipherable thing again he’s been doing since you first met him early on in the year: staring at you with a cocked head, nonchalant and perfectly stonewalling any of your attempts to read him through the bright of his eyes.
You open your mouth, then close it. There’s no point in asking about his personal life if he’d already deliberately kept his answer curt enough.
“You should Fold, by the way.” He nods to your poor hand with a hint of amusement, dimpling at you.
(You wonder if the wisp of affection you’re sensing from him is just a delusion.)
Again, you ignore the treacherous stumble in your chest at the sight; stifle the buzz when he lingers his warm presence over your shoulder to peer into the round.
Dude, wait for the next game, Jack! someone groans, You’re biased, why’d you—
“—help her, c’mon! Keep her head steady,” you hear, the next time you come to. “Careful, careful. Don’t move her too much.”
Something is licking your hand. Mowgli. Your working dog. Good boy, you want to tell him, You must’ve led them to me, huh?
They’re swiping away concrete dust from your face when they set you down, you think, somewhere on asphalt. Your whole body is bristling. The sky above you is a sunless, cloudless blue as you try to understand the muffled, frantic conversation between the faceless figures crowding around. Skinner? You wonder. Diaz? Teddy? A—
“…bbot,” you muster, between shallow breaths. “Abbot.”
From where he’s been laid crippled on the cracked curb twenty yards away from you, Jack Abbot’s ears manage to hone in on your name being shouted in an instant— Despite the shock running rampant through his body; despite the deafening tinnitus ringing in his ears.
It kickstarts him back to consciousness.
“Kilo,” he chokes in reply, wrestling himself up with a rasp. “Agh, fuck—”
Sir, you need to sit back down! Somebody calls out from another far distance, their hands too full with another downed officer in worse condition to physically stop him.
Abbot staggers up. Ignores the protests. Zeros in only on the familiar sight of fatigues, and goes to take a step towards the scattered SWAT unit.
Or tries to.
His right foot drags. For half a step he mistakes it as debris, brain not catching up yet to the situation since he’d first been yanked out the rubble gasping. Abbot tries to plant a foot forward, weight shifting—
His prosthetic gives.
“Fuck!” he seethes, biting through the shrill pain electrifying his leg and up towards his spine. He blinks down to his feet instantly:
The metal of his prosthesis is a mangled twist, crushed and bent out of shape into an impossible angle from the concrete he must’ve been caught under.
His camo pants are seeped with blood, fabric twisted and shredded where the socket of his false leg is now torqued tight and pinching against muscle and skin.
Abbot buckles hard to one knee, gloves scratching.
Something’s wrong. Not just the leg. A throbbing pain comes with each harried breath he takes, radiating from the left across his chest. Blunt force trauma, he triages swiftly, picturing the wound in his mind’s eye: an angry black-and-blue contusion underneath his skin, fractured ribs, maybe?
He looks blearily back at you; your head lulled to your side and facing him. There’s a growing puddle of blood leaking underneath you despite the officers’ efforts to keep pressure. Under half-lidded eyes, you’re looking right at him— but not seeing him.
Arterial, comes his instinct. Catastrophic haemorrhage. Blood on the floor and four more, as the saying goes.
An old, harrowing haunt creeps in his mind. Sickening déjà-vu. Go to her, he recalls the Afghan heat years ago. Crawl to her.
He sucks in through his teeth. Bites back the burning in his lungs.
Then— Abbot unlatches his prosthetic, and abandons the thing entirely. Forces the distance to shrink. A second isn’t spared as gravel crunches and he slides a blood red drag path into a grisly sight: palms digging into crumbling dust, one knee driving forward and then the other, and then again.
Wait for me.
Fighting the pain shooting up at the uncomfortable angle of his crawl, forearms protesting and splitting open in abrasions.
Crawl to her. You’ve done it once before.
Fifteen yards. Ten.
Your eyes are glassy. Breath agonal.
Wait for me.
Mowgli has caught sight of him and begun barking for everyone’s attention.
“Holy shit— Hey, get Doc the fuck over here!”
Doc? You think. Jack.
Abbot’s face comes into view. It’s filthy. Dried blood running down his ear and features ashen with dashed debris as he speaks. There’s alarm in his eyes as he takes you in, and you’re suddenly hit with a shock of memory again: Kandahar, the outpost, a later youth.
When you’d been drowning in your own blood, and he’d stopgapped the laceration in your neck shut as he soothed your gasping, tearful panic; eclipsing you from the glaring sun, sheltering you from the throes of a firefight happening all around you by using his own body as a shield.
And here, now—
“Kilo, heyheyhey, no,” he calms, moving your hand away from where you last remember your wound is. A gaping hole of torn flesh in your side. “Don’t touch it. We’ve packed it, got pressure on it. You’ll be alright. EMS’s on the way, yeah? You copy, Kilo?”
Your back is wet. Somewhere in your head, you know it’s from lying flat in your own blood. I pulled myself off the rebar, you whisper, hoping the words will resound. I’m sorry, Jack. I shouldn’t have, but I did.
“It’s okay. It’s alright,” Abbot hears you, knelt close. His hands, in spite of the adrenaline zipping into his veins, effortlessly work the needle into the vial of Ketamine. That’s pointless, you want to say. You don’t feel the pinprick at your thigh at all. Too out of it to register hardly any pain anymore other than a slow chill washing over you.
“You’re gonna be fine, Kilo,” he rattles, pressing to feel for a carotid. It’s thready. A feather to wind. “We’ve gone through worse, remember? And we survived that, too.”
We have, haven’t we? you want to agree. Abbot bows to touch his forehead with yours in a bid of desperate comfort. Palms cradling your face. You can’t feel him, anymore. Only that you’re cold.
“You’re not dying today. I promise, yeah? I promise.”
Inhale. Exhale.
You’re tired. You want to remind him moribund promises are usually a hail mary; a foregone conclusion to fail. Desperation makes empty promises all the time.
Inhale. Exh…
“Kilo? Hey. No, no, hey, Kilo—?”
Your hand falls—
“—limp?” you repeat, surprised. “Only a limp?”
“Lucky bastard, huh?” Abbot inhales, the embers of his cigarette glowing with an orange hiss. “Any higher through the knee and he might’ve needed to be sent out for amputation. Wouldn’t wanna be him.”
In the freezing chill of the Afghan night, your sticks are a welcome respite between the both of you now that your replacements for changeover from guard duty have come to relieve your post.
The cold escapes from your marrows as you lean, hidden with Abbot, behind one of the many rows of humvees parked south of the perimeter, in the loneliest corner of the entire temporary base. Without a doubt, the pack you’d manage to trade for has been a lifesaver for quiet hours like these.
“Dunno how you deal with it,” you muse, flicking the ash to the ground. “Stitching bloody people up all the time with the other Whiskeys, let alone training them how to.”
“Yeah, someone’s gotta do it,” he laments, leaning his head to the door as he glances up. Incandescent moonlight limns him into an ethereal thing when he blows out a puff of smoke, watching it curl up in thready wisps. You find yourself struggling to look away at the scene.
“I guess ‘cause it puts my mind at work. Triage and treatment have their own steps, and sometimes you gotta work out the diagnosis like a puzzle depending on a hundred different variables while on a time crunch. Kind of like a game.”
“Only the stakes are life or death. I’m guessing you enjoy it?” you ask, still rapt with his profile; still taking the opportunity to etch the features of his face into memory, now that you’re this close to him tonight, trying to suffuse each other’s space in shared warmth. “Serving people, I mean.”
“Well, I’m in the military, aren’t I?” he jerks his head in jest, shooting you a crooked smile that’s boyish and infectious: you find you’re breaking into a small laugh too. “What about you?”
“I do like helping people,” you shrug. “Was thinking I get Duchess come along with me after all this. Continue the same MOS in urban or civilian operations instead together in the future.”
He nods at that, keeps his eyes glued to yours. “Back home, huh? Anybody waiting on you?”
You don’t let yourself take it as a loaded question, though an undeniable instinct in your gut is telling you that it is.
“Family, yeah,” you dismiss, playing around with Skinner’s lucky zippo in your hand in a bid to avoid Abbot’s classic gaze. The eye-contact has you jittering out your skin. You take a drag instead, and excuse the goosebumps as a reaction to the breeze. “But, uh, yeah. No partner.”
“Hm,” he says, noncommittal. He’s still, you can palpably sense, looking at you. (A self-indulgent part of you wonders if he’s etching your moonlit profile into his memory too. If he finds you just as beautiful as you find him.)
“What is it, Kilo?” he asks, suddenly.
A blink. Now you do look at Abbot. “What?”
“You look like you’re dying to ask me something.”
“Am I, Doc?” you counter, but his tilted head of curls is all it takes for you to slowly give in. “…You’re not going to let me off.”
“No promises,” he smiles, dimpling at you— which, again, has you swallowing your saliva out of reflex. Then he narrows his eyes. “Hold on, if Tommy said something stupid—”
“Skinner didn’t say anything,” you refute.
“You sure?” his brows raise, inquisitive. “God. Did he tell you that made up story of how I got ‘Pope’ as my callsign—?”
You make a face. “Well, no, but now I’m curious about that—”
“That’s for me to know and for you to never find out, thank you very much.”
“Boo,” you eyeroll.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“You started it!”
“Kilo,” he drawls humorously, voice low and coarse from the scratch of cigarette smoke. He leans on his shoulder, dipping slightly closer to you and— God, surely he’s aware of the effect he has on you, doesn’t he? That’s the only sensible reason he’d act like this. “Don’t make me pull rank on you.”
“Asshole,” you sniff, turning your nose up in defiance when he cracks a smile. And then, once you’ve gathered the courage: “I just… Remember you said you didn’t have a girl back home.”
You wince at how that sounds like a come-on. Pray he doesn’t get offended; doesn’t take you the wrong way. (You could live with suffocating your affection for him so long as he remained your friend, at the very least. You’d never dared imagine anything further than that; anything delusional.)
“That’s ‘cause I don’t,” Abbot says, truthfully. And it’s only when he lifts his hand to take a drag, lips around the filter, that he notices your eyes lingering on the glint reflecting from one of his fingers.
Ah.
“It is a wedding ring,” he answers, definitively, interrupting you before you can protest and say something along the lines of Forget I ever asked, or It’s none of my business. “From my late wife. We married young. She got sick. It was a long time ago.”
He lets out an easy breath. “There’s not enough salt in the world you can rub into that wound, Kilo, so you can relax. I’ve moved past it.”
A long, pensive beat passes.
“And don’t apologise,” Abbot overrides again, just when you finally open your mouth to speak. “We’re good.”
That silences you again. Your mouth shuts with a comical click, loud enough it makes him break into a laugh; and with it dispels the uneasiness that’s seized you as you shake your head in mild amusement.
“Alright,” you relent, sticking your cigarette between your lips to pocket Skinner’s lighter. “You get to ask me one question too, for fair game, so think on it for now. We gotta head back to the others before they start realising we’ve already done shift handov—”
Abbot grabs you before you round out the humvee, tugging you back close.
You startle at the proximity. Watch as he uses his free hand to toss his cigarette down with a flick. Snuffs it out with his boot. All in efficient motion.
“I’ve, uh, already thought of one,” he says, gently. His fingers reach up to slip the stick out from between your lips. Heavy gaze flickering between the slope of your mouth and the flutter of your flashes. “I’m curious if there’s room for me.”
You’re too stunned to reckon his question. Distracted by the gunpowder and antiseptic scent of him, the light grasp he has over your wrist. An open option for you to pull away, if you wished. There’s a look in his eyes you can only discern as nervous anticipation. Hesitation.
The both of you have dealt in active combat. Been through literal hell and back together.
Never once have you seen him anxious for anything.
“In your future, I mean,” he specifies.
You catch the there-and-away glance at your lips this time.
Oh. Oh.
So it had been a loaded question after all.
In fact, everything has been the past year, hasn’t it? The way his eyes always finds yours first among the squad; the nameless thing that stretches between you both that feels just that tenuously more than trust. Everytime he brushes close to you in briefings; every time he cautions his rank as a slight override whenever a joke about you toes that line too far.
You find yourself nodding before you’re whispering out your answer. “Yeah, Jack,” you say, so softly he wouldn’t’ve heard it had he not been this intimately close to you. “I’ve got room.”
Abbot swallows. You watch the bob of his Adam’s apple.
“For the record,” he informs mildly, “you can punch the shit out of me for this if you want.”
You hardly have time to understand what he means before his palms are sliding up to cradle your face, and he’s ducking his head down to kiss you.
Reciprocation comes quick.
Your hands snake up the kevlar of his vest and coil around his neck. Nails scraping the grown out curls at his nape. Abbot tastes like cigarette ash and something heady; something dizzyingly masculine— all of which are softened by the tenderness in how he’s moving his lips with yours; in how he’s holding you like you’re—
“—the only thing that matters, right now,” Abbot croaks out to them, after they’ve muscled him down onto the gurney beside your own in the ambulance. “No, focus on her. I’m fine. I ditched my prosthetic. I, fuck, I’m, I’m A-and-O. Just— Can you focus on her, please?”
He’s hooked up in an instant regardless. Gets a light shined in his eyes and masked for oxygen when they read the garbage state of his O2 sats after fussing over the ugly purpling contusion across the left side of his chest.
EMS pore over the vitals of your unconscious body, and all Abbot can helplessly do is rattle off whatever he knows from his gurney to attempt to be as useful as possible: mechanism of injury, blood type, medical history.
That when he’d found you you’d already lost too much blood and gone hypotensive; her veins are shot, drill her with an IO instead; run crystalloid and fluids wide, whatever keeps her tensive enough to tide her over for the trip until she gets proper transfusio—
Getting to PTMC is both the fastest and the slowest it’s ever felt.
When the doors of the ambulance bursts open it’s pure chaos. A suffocating traffic jam of wounded civilians being rushed left and right. The stampede and the structural collapse must have triggered an MCI for the trauma centre, because the first thing he sees is Dr. John Shen in blood-streaked PPE’s and a waistbelt of coloured disaster tags at the ready.
“What the f— Jack?!”
“John, listen to me— she, fuck, she needs— blood. She needs an OR right now—”
His mind is scattered from hypoxia, pain and panic; completely forgets his prosthetic is gone. Damn near tumbles when he tries to swing his legs over and off the gurney. To get out of everyone’s way and wheel you into the trauma bay himself.
“Woah, woah, woah, take it easy! Ellis, I need a hand here!” John frazzles, struggling between lying Jack back down and keeping an ear on the report from EMS who’re already halfway into clearing the ambulance free from choking the bay further.
Traumatic crush injuries on both patients from structural collapse. Male has Altered Mental Status, rib fractures, airway non-patent, poor O2 and dropping. Female is unresponsive on-site, penetrative wound through abdomen. Lost her femoral pulse on transit ov…
Shen slaps a pink on Abbot before the words are even done. Ellis is quick to wheel him away. And then Shen is thumbing at your carotid, focusing past the frenzy of sirens and screaming and feels… Nothing.
His fingers are already automatically reaching for a black tag to—
Someone seizes his wrist.
Ellis has no choice but to halt the gurney before she accidentally snaps Abbot’s outreached hand.
“Don’t—!” Abbot chokes, between gasps in his non-rebreather, “No— John, please— Please. Please don’t do it.”
If the pure anguish on his face isn’t heartbreaking enough, the utter raw desperation in his voice is enough to stop anybody cold.
Neither John nor Ellis has never seen the great Jack Abbot look this small.
Appearing child-like, almost; eyes blurred with tears and voice fraught with fear.
“Red. Not a Black tag. She’s a Red,” Abbot begs, words splintering from distress. He’s white-knuckling Shen with an impossibly unmatched strength despite the horrible state he’s in, practically leaning halfway over the railing of his bed to plead for your life. “I promised her. Please, she’s— give her a chance. Tag her Red. She’s a Red.”
“John,” Abbot continues, breath shallower now, eyes flicking to your peaceful face and to the Black tag— the final nail in your coffin— in his fingertips. “Please, I can’t— I can’t lose her. Please.”
His grip slips unwillingly as his body gives out.
Ellis is shooting John a final, disheartened look as she races Abbot towards Trauma-1 herself. Rumbling from the bay and down towards the path of least resistance, calling out for Robby and Dana in a frenzy as medical staff do a double-take in horror: Is that Dr. Abbot—? Holy shit, it’s Jack— Jesus, Ellis, what happened to him—
“You better not die on us, Jack,” she hisses, stricken. “You got that? I’ll kill you myself if you do. Just don’t—”
“—fall asleep, you bastard,” you curse, jostling him back awake. “Keep your eyes open, Abbot. Hey! Don’t doze on me, do you copy?”
Abbot blinks.
Something whizzes past. Bursts at the distant ground and kicks up sand. He can’t hear it past the deafening ringing in his ears.
Live fire, he recognises quickly, remembering the last thing he heard being screamed out. Incoming!
“Shit,” he gasps out, blearily blinking back down at the tourniquet you’ve tightened above the mangled joint where his leg was. “Holy sh— Fuck. My fucking— My leg—!”
Is gone, you don’t deign to tell him, too busy communicating a sitrep amongst the panicked radiochatter from the outpost’s units now scattered and returning fire. You turn frantically back to Abbot, where you’d dragged him from the detonation and behind the closest vehicle for cover.
It’s still too exposed for your taste, but decent enough to protect you both from the ridgeline north of where the hail of mortars must’ve initially rained down an ambush of hellfire on your convoy.
“Doc, tell me where your emergency bandage is,” you distract, instead, already tearing open a Quikclot with your teeth and making quick work with the bloody stump in your hands. “Heyheyhey! Look at me, Jack, focus! Where is it?!”
Purpose sobers him into stuttering clarity. Sharpens his hearing vaguely enough to understand you. Abbot finds himself thinking rapidly through the slow shock rattling his body as he begins to palm blindly at his kevlar. Where’d he put it?
He unclips the medkit from his waistbelt. Unzips it with a frantic hand when it thuds onto the ground.
“Fuck,” he chokes, shakily tugging the bandage out. “Here, here, I need, uh, I need— fuck! Jesus christ—”
“You’re good, Jack, keep going, keep going,” you calm, hurryingly slinging your rifle away to give yourself more space to work; more leeway to tighten the bandage over the hemostatics you’ve choked his wounds shut with. “Stay with me, Doc. Stay w—”
Another fusillade of bullets crack too close. Both of you duck instinctively, your body kneeling closer over where Abbot’s sat leaned against the upended humvee.
Somewhere off in the distance, Skinner howls at you to get the fuck in here, I’ll cover you! and in a last burst of extraordinary strength— you’re snagging Abbot by the crook of his vest and hauling ass towards one of the few buildings still standing, nothing but blind faith and sheer force of will kicking you into action.
By the grace of God, you suppose, both of you make it indoors. Abbot is stuffed to the corner by the open doorframe where Skinner is emptying an entire clip. A jumble of soldiers from multiple other units have convened in here, too: Captain Grant is ordering ranks to positions and barking at their signalman to radio in for back-up between the raucous mess of chatter.
—We need a fucking medic here!— Anyone see where the sons of bitches came from?!— Sandstorm is comin’ in, Cap— PJ’s are two klicks out— Go for Show of Force, Sir— Has anyone seen—
“—Duchess?” you ask aloud, retightening the tourniquet above Abbot’s knee. The drag had only served to agitate the wound and skin the gauze.
“Shit, Kilo. I’m sorry,” comes Diaz’s panting, and it feels like the world has opened up at your feet to swallow you whole from the graveness in his voice, “Fuck. I think— I think she’s gone. I saw her last when I was dragging in Thaddeus—”
“Fuck! Teddy too?” you blanch, craning to follow his sightline: a limp figure on the floor. Eyes devoid of life. Blood gushing from a gaping hole through his skull. You can see the wrinkled corner of a picture peeking out his vest: the ultrasound Jeanine had sent him.
“Oh, God,” you stutter, battering down the horror and the grief with a choked sob before it could subdue you. There’s no time. You have to refocus on the situation: Abbot still needs you. If you stray now, if you crumble now, then he’s next to be sent home with an American Flag over his coffin.
“Fuck, I— Okay,” you sniff, shaking your ringing head, “Okay. Abbot, heyheyhey, look at me. Where’s your morphine?”
Morphine? Abbot blinks. No, ketamine. For the leg. Right. Yes. He needs it before his brain catches up with the pain and knocks him out cold from shock. “Ketamine,” he fumbles, and lands his hand beside him in a red slap.
His palm hits the floor. Empty.
“Abbot, where’s the kit?” you start, going pale. But you know where it is, already, don’t you? Back at the humvee, out in the open. Left behind amidst the crisis. “Fuck! Alright. Hey, it’s okay. Just stay awake, you copy?”
“Kilo, no,” Abbot begins, already calculating your next move. “Leave it. Kilo, that’s an order! Hey, nonono—!”
A thunderous, deafening engine roar of the F16’s low fly-by sent in as Air Support kicks up a hurricane of swirling dust up into the skies: a Show of Force intended to scare off enemy forces into retreating. It chokes everybody’s vision instantly into a muted, pallid grey of dust particles.
Perhaps that must’ve been why you’d missed the whistle of the next incoming mortar.
Only felt the impact radiating through the ground and the shrill reverberation travelling like electricity through your marrows, half from the detonation and half from where your shoulder connects in a sickening crunch with the earth.
Then the dust settles, and the taste of pennies are flooding in your mouth, and you look back with the corner of your eyes, and—
…Abbot is crawling to you.
Between the peripheral blur, it comes down to a brutal math: twenty yards. An entire world away, it feels like, for a man missing a leg and only breathing out of sheer fucking spite and desperation.
Wait for me. He crawls between the thunderdrum of his head and heart and the hellfire around him. Down a lonely road that would only certainly lead him to Death’s hands. Down and across the metaphorical River Styx you’ve gone beyond.
Fifteen yards to you. To Hades.
Don’t, you want to beg. You can hear the choppers in the distance, as the tinnitus peals in and out. It must be the PJ’s; the ground support. They’ll come get you. Evacuate you and Abbot, and the rest of the unit; the rest of the base. Don’t risk it. Jack, don’t come—
“—here!” Robby hurries, clearing a path into the trauma bay for Ellis as a crowd of nurses jump to work. Abbot’s case is presented in a second, and then she’s whizzing back away to deal with triaging again, unable to spare a second glance amid the time crunch.
“Heyhey, take it easy, brother,” Robby greets, between the steady line of medical orders he’s giving. The familiar terminologies fade away into incomprehensiveness now, as Abbot’s cognisance begins to ebb away. “What’d I say about dying on my shift, huh, Jack?”
He musters a defiant huff. It’s hoarse. The drugs they’ve begun running into him are doing their work, little by little. Unmoors him adrift into numbness; Into a liminal space of his mind he can’t reconcile— caught somewhere between the ill-defined margins of reality and fragmented memory.
He’s in Pittsburgh, but on the deck of a Black Hawk helo while strung up with IV’s swaying from the force of the rotors. The Pararescue Jumpers communicating amongst themselves as they stabilise his freshly-blown leg are Robby, Dana and Jesse crowding over him in military fatigues, strangely enough.
His head lulls to avoid the blinding hospital fluorescents, only for his eyes to land on you lying limp beside him on the floor of the helicopter too. “Kilo,” he murmurs, weakly. You’re the only thing he can focus on. The only rational thing he can understand in this delirious, waking dream.
He’s in Kandahar, crawling amid smoke and ash while Skinner lay unconscious at his feet, and then crawling towards you twenty yards away. He’s in Allegheny, crawling out the concrete rubble of Hell with the help of an officer, and then crawling towards you twenty yards aw—
Walsh is here. Has he been medevaced already? She’s in fatigues too. Atleast he thinks so. Perhaps under the sterile PPE’s. She’s looking down at him with utter determination in her eyes and speaking with someone in an undertone too rapid for him to follow.
The diagnoses for his own sustained injuries run through Abbot’s own head. Multiple blunt traumas? Potential tension pneumothorax from a complex rib fracture? Maybe even a hemopneumo if he’s feeling particularly cynical. Perhaps an internal haemorrhage: Bleeding into Morrison’s pouch, depending on where the impact landed. Nipples to navel is no man’s la—
It doesn’t matter.
Should Jack Abbot meet his end, he’d be at peace with that.
Only—
“Walsh,” he rasps, clutching weakly at her hand. I’m here, brother, comes the answered squeeze. A shock of déjà-vu runs through them both. He’d begged this of her once before, in a distant time: “Save Kilo.”
Abbot’s vision tunnels into darkness as he looks into Trauma-2 right across his own bay, where he can see a glimpse of your cut uniform and limp body seizing up, then back down onto your gurney: you’re being shocked, it appears, back from bradycardia and into proper sinus; back to your second shot at Life.
John must have given you that Red tag, after all: he’s personally working on you at Abbot’s behest.
“Please,” he begs Walsh uselessly, again. “I can’t…”
A rebreather is slipped over Abbot’s face.
It feels like he’s floating, again. Back in that Black Hawk, being ferried away by avenging angels.
I can’t lose her.
And then he’s gone— somewhere far, far away.
The military combat outpost you’re going to spend your 12-month deployment in is moreso, in reality, the rubble-strewn vestiges of a modestly-sized local settlement long since left abandoned.
After a bit of fortification, barb-wiring, and sandbagging from the army, however— It does its job with a bit of round-the-clock sentries on patrol, for what it’s worth: temporary shelter; A secure base for multiple active units to roll in or out and safely hunker down.
Upon arrival, you’re directed into the crumbled remnants of an old household, now gutted out and repurposed into a lively, quasi-barracks situation.
“Yo-ho! Lemme pet this funky guy!” the Specialists greet instantly, clamouring to as they light up at the sight of your K-9, whose tail is betraying her calm demeanor while sitting obediently at your side. “Who’s a good boy?”
“Girl, actually. Go ahead. She’s off-duty for now,” you correct with an amused hum, loosening your grip on her leash entirely. “Belgian Malinois. She responds to Dutch, but her name is Duchess.”
“You must be our attached 31-Kilo,” muses a ginger-haired Corporal, regarding you with a nod of assent. “Military dog handler, huh? Tight competition for that MOS. I trust you’ve earned it.”
“Ea–sy now, Teddy,” someone sing-songs in the distance. “Cap’n will skin you alive if y’haze the lady.” It must be the unit’s Designated Marksman— you can see tattooed hands dismantling the scope of his rifle with experienced ease as he jerks a chin your way. “Her dog’ll be the only thing standin’ between you and an IED one of these days. Welcome. S’good to finally have a Kilo with us, what’s your name, Ma’am? I’m Sebastian Diaz, Specialist.”
You don’t get the chance to reply.
“We’ve got ourselves a Kilo?” comes a new voice. It’s strained; sounding exasperated, perhaps, from the sweltering Afghan heat outside as he ducks into the cool shelter of the room and tosses his helmet aside.
“Figured the brass was gonna wait for somebody to get their dick blown off before they sent one up. ‘Bout time they attached a goddamn 31K with…” He trails off as he turns up to face you. “…us.”
It’s a sturdy-looking soldier in his field fatigues, sun-tanned at the collar as he freezes mid-fuss of a flexed hand through his sweaty hair. A curly brunet, with a hard and steady gaze that didn’t quite match the deceptive lightness of his eyes.
You shrewdly glimpse the morale patch on the man’s broad shoulder. SO OTHERS MAY LIVE, it reads, proudly emblazoned.
“And you must be the goddamn 68W,” you parrot, countering easily. You narrow at him with a sharp smile. “Duchess and I assure you no dicks will be blown, Whiskey— Full disclosure to you and everybody in this room.”
The deliberate innuendo and thinly-veiled admonition sends the room dissolving into laughter. Hah, you’ll fit right in, Ma’am! someone hoots.
“Well, I’ve made a shit first impression, haven’t I?” the Combat Medic deflates, letting out a defeated chuckle as you offer him a dismissive wave. No harm no foul.
“Sergeant Jack Abbot,” he greets, shaking your hand after you introduce yourself and rank properly to him. He’s taking you in with a once-over; admiring. “I’m responsible for keeping these shitheads alive.”
Unfortunately! Someone ribs.
“S’nice to meet you, Doc,” you laugh. “And I hope that includes keeping me alive now, too.”
“Yeah?” Abbot dimples at you, the punchline set up for him. “No promises, Kilo.”
Pairing: Jack Abbot x F! Reader, with a sprinkle of Michael "Robby" Robinavich x F! Reader
Summary: Being a doctor is a lot of work, especially when you've got your own slew of health issues. Luckily, you're surrounded by people who are more than happy to help, including your close friend who prefers to go by Robby and his enamoring friend Jack Abbot.
Word Count: ongoing
Warnings: canon language, canon gore, canon medical descriptions and scenarios, will keep it to a minimum, but there will be medical jargon a bit, medical situations, health issues, reader has hip problems cause i have hip problems, jack is an military vet, jack is an amputee, talk of phantom limb syndrome, talk of chronic pain, chronic illness, sexual undertones, flirting, mutual attraction, sexual themes, eventual smut, p in v, protected p in v, more to be added!
A/N: this totally snuck up on me, i woke up and just had to get this down somewhere hehe, should only be a few parts
part i
part ii
part iii
dividers and banners by the lovely @saradika-graphics and @cafekitsune
blurb - It's 1888, and Joel Miller should be happy he's going to get all that comes with being a son of one of Texas's top ranchers, but he isn't. His true happiness is the girl across the stream, everything he wants. You have everything any girl could want. However, what you want most is to inherit your dad's ranching company, but you know that isn't your future. So, you find your trips to the stream enlightening—that and the man whom you know you can't be spotted with. You both know what the consequences of being caught are, but you can't stay away. Not when a life you'd both never known is possible.
warnings - nsfw, mdni 18+, historical AU, rancher au, forbidden romance, established relationship, happy ending, warring families, angst, fluff, yearning, virginity loss, blood, violence, period-typical misogeny (NOT from Joel), toxic purity culture, controlling father, physical abuse, beating till near death, grief over mothers, sneaking around, biting kink, creampie (don’t try this at home), bitter-sweet ending
vignettes of your relationship with jack abbot told through the five love languages.
word count: 13k+ ~ warnings/tags: 18+ only mdni, canon level description of injuries, lack of medical knowledge lol, nurse!reader, some angst, fluff, reader has a workplace stalker, no use of y/n, fem reader, heated kissing and implied smut, every cliche jack abbot trope crammed in one fic, some emotional hurt/comfort, ever so slight sugar daddy vibes but not really, slow burnish until it’s not !
author’s note: wrote this same concept for bucky and adrian too. can’t control myself, clearly. here’s my version for jack! big shoutout to my girl @fru1t4fr0gs for reading this 87 times for me over the course of the last month xoxoxo <3
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Words of Affirmation
“Where the hell is Jack?”
A fellow nurse you had asked moments ago only shrugged in response, and Dr. Walsh barely looked up from her computer to mumble your guess is as good as mine.
If anyone were to ask why you’re curious of his whereabouts, you would spew some excuse about needing to ask him a question about the patient who got her hand stuck in a garbage disposal.
But that wouldn’t be your true reason for asking. No, Mrs. Sawyer is currently snoring after maxing out her morphine drip, so for the time being, she’s not your concern.
Jack is your concern.
He’s been quiet. Withdrawn. Solemn in the way that he gets sometimes, but tonight it’s worse than you’ve seen before. He isn’t exactly the most chipper person even on his best days, but you picked up on the minute change in his demeanor from the moment he greeted you at the beginning of the shift.
No one else seems to have noticed. If they have, they haven’t pointed it out.
But you’re hyperaware of him in a way that you have no business being. It isn’t your place to take such notice of him, and yet you do. Sometimes you think that your job would be easier if you only paid as much attention to him as you do Shen, or Robby, or Whitaker, or Santos.
Quite literally anyone else.
“He asked me to keep an eye on the patient in bay three and then wandered off,” Shen sighs. “Saw him going in the direction of the west stairwell when I was on my way back from the break room if that helps.”
“West stairwell?” You mumble under your breath. There’s only one reason he would be walking in the direction of the west stairwell that you can think of.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone up to the hospital rooftop to clear his mind, though you can’t say you’ve ever known of him to do so in the middle of the night.
Especially not without his coat when it’s 25 degrees outside.
Call it a hunch. Something in your gut telling you that he isn’t in the staff lounge, or bathroom, or an empty on-call room. The grating voice in the back of your mind is telling you he’s on that damn roof.
“Hey, I’ll be right back,” you call to Shen as you grab the black Columbia off the back of Jack’s desk chair, walking away before Shen can ask where you’re going.
Before you can think of grabbing your cardigan. Before you can think of anything, really. You haven’t the vaguest idea what you’ll say if your suspicion is confirmed when you open the stairwell door and find him on the rooftop, but you don’t let that stop you from putting one foot in front of the other until you reach the top of the stairs with his jacket clutched to your chest.
When you start to open the door, you pause with your hand on the knob. It crosses your mind that it isn’t too late for you to turn back - to walk back down the stairs and hang his coat on his chair and resume your job before he can ever know that you came up here to check on him.
That would be the smart thing to do. Then you wouldn’t risk crossing any professional boundaries or potentially blurring the lines between the level of concern you would show towards any random coworker, and one that makes your brain turn to static anytime you find yourself in his general vicinity.
But then you recall the forlorn look on his face as he typed up discharge papers at his desk when he thought no one was watching. The way he kept rubbing the bridge of his nose like he had a headache that just wouldn’t go away. How he hasn’t cracked one sarcastic comment in the last eight hours.
That pesky, persistent voice in the back of your mind tells you that he would do the same for you, though you doubt her reliability. She’s been known to tell you what you want to hear.
You listen anyway, and open the door.
He doesn’t turn around or glance over his shoulder at the sound of the creaking door - he doesn’t even flinch, and you have to wonder if he heard you at all over the low howl of the wind. You step out into the cold, mentally cursing yourself for not taking the time to grab your cardigan.
You stop when you reach the guardrail. He stands just beyond it, several feet from the ledge of the building with his hands in his scrub pockets. Light from the full moon reflects off his salt and pepper curls and even from here, you can see goosebumps on the skin of his neck.
“Beautiful moon tonight,” you muse. “Pretty sure it would look just as nice from behind the rail, though.”
His shoulders lift with a faint, amused chuckle. “I can’t give Mrs. Sawyer anymore morphine,” he says without turning to look at you.
You huff a laugh, crossing your arms over your chest to attempt to shield yourself from the cold night air as you will your teeth not to chatter. “Mrs. Sawyer is sound asleep. I’m here for you.”
He finally glances over his shoulder, an expression that you can’t quite read on his face. “How’d you know I’d be up here?”
“Just a lucky guess.” You shrug, then duck between the railing to come stand beside him. He glances down, noticing the coat in your arms at the same moment you hold it out to him. “Thought you’d be cold.”
He stares at you for a moment before accepting it, but he doesn’t put it on as you expect him to. Instead, he takes a step in your direction, stopping right in front of you, and drapes the coat around your shoulders.
Your breath catches in your throat.
“You’re shaking like a leaf,” he murmurs. He reluctantly drops his hands back down to his sides, but doesn’t step away from you.
“That does tend to happen when it’s below freezing outside, doctor.”
He looks like he’s fighting the urge to smirk, but then he looks away, back to the full moon and city lights in front of you. He’s silent for a moment and then sighs. “Today is the anniversary of losing my leg.”
You exhale, your breath clouding in front of your lips. He continues to watch the night sky before him as you watch him. His jaw tenses and he seems to try to swallow down whatever he’s feeling. “Oh, Jack,” you murmur. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
He never talks about his leg. Never calls any attention to it, if he can help it. Doesn’t let it define him. Hell, you didn’t even learn that he’s an amputee until three months after switching to the night shift, when you walked into the break room to find him adjusting his prosthetic.
This is the same man who didn’t hesitate to use one leg to donate his own blood while actively working on a critically injured patient, while his other is in a prosthetic. Of course he hasn’t mentioned the anniversary of the day he’d lost his leg before.
So for him to confess this to you now…that’s not something you take lightly.
Jack shakes his head, still not meeting your gaze. “Most years, it doesn’t even cross my mind. It’s just another day to me. But tonight, when Mrs. Sawyer wakes up, I have to tell her that she’s going to lose her hand. That it isn’t salvageable. I have to deliver the same news that I received on this same day.”
You glance down at the ground. The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise to you. You had seen Mrs. Sawyer’s mangled hand with your own two eyes when she first arrived earlier tonight. She’d dropped her wedding ring down the disposal, reached in to try to grab it without thinking, and the disposal turned on all its own. A stuck switch, electrical shortage, faulty wiring…who knows. In the blink of an eye, her life is changed by one freak accident.
You don’t know the specifics of how Jack had lost his leg, but you wonder if that’s how he had felt, too, all those years ago.
But you don’t ask. Instead, you grab his hand in yours and give it a tight squeeze. The warmth of his palm against yours offers the smallest reprieve from the cold and his hands are far softer than you would have ever expected, but you force yourself to let go when his gaze snaps back to yours.
“I’m sorry it has to be you,” you murmur. “But for whatever it’s worth…if it were me, I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else.”
He exhales, the cold air turning his breath to fog. His lips part, then press together again like he wants to say something but can’t find his voice. The look on his face says it all, though.
I don’t know if I can do this. Not tonight.
“I mean it,” you implore. “It’s going to suck for you to say and it’s going to suck for her to hear. But she has you, and that’s one thing going right for her tonight. There’s only so many people in this world that can relate to what she’s going through, and she gets to have one of them as her doctor.”
He’s quiet for a moment as your words settle over him. Then, the corners of his mouth turn up ever so slightly. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s something. “You know, I think the world of you as a nurse…but if for some reason you ever decide to change career paths, you should consider motivational speaking.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” you snort, your cheeks warming at the compliment. “But until then…” You trail off, contemplating your next words. Not wanting to come on too strong while also needing him to know that you mean what you’re about to say from the bottom of your heart.
“Until then, you don’t have to do it alone. I’ll be there when she wakes up. I’ll stay with you while you tell her. If you want, that is.”
Not just tonight, you almost add. Any night. Every night. If you’ll let me.
“And as much as I appreciate this—” You glance down at his coat that still hugs you, “I’d appreciate you coming back inside with me a lot more. She’ll be waking up soon. She needs you. I need you.”
He huffs out a quiet laugh and nods. “Alright. You win. Let’s go inside before you get hypothermia and I have to fill out an incident report.”
He starts to turn towards the guardrail behind you when he pauses, placing a tentative hand on your waist. It's barely there, a featherlight kind of touch - the kind you probably wouldn’t even feel if you didn’t glance down for visual confirmation.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “For looking for me.”
You shiver. You tell yourself it’s because of the wind.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “Always.”
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Gift Giving
“What are you doing here?” Cassie muses the second she sees you walk through the emergency department’s doors - just loudly enough to draw the attention of Dana, Santos, Whitaker, and everyone else within twenty feet of the nurse’s station. “You haven’t worked on your birthday once the entire time you’ve been here.”
You glare at her, making a mental note to get her back for that the first chance you get.
She knows exactly why you chose to work tonight - and right now, you’re just relieved that he has yet to arrive for his shift and therefore isn’t here to witness this conversation.
“I didn’t know today’s your birthday,” Santos says, seemingly intrigued by the teasing expression on Cassie’s face and the annoyance on yours.
“It’s not my birthday.”
“It’s not her birthday yet,” Cassie clarifies, glancing down at her watch. “But it will be her birthday in approximately five hours.”
“Jesus,” you sigh, staring up at the screen above you to see what kind of shitshow you have willingly walked into by agreeing to cover a shift for Perlah earlier this week. “I’m a big girl. Sometimes big girls have to work on their birthdays. Perlah needed her shift covered, so here I am.”
You omit the fact that you were more than happy to do so because it meant having an excuse to spend part of your birthday with a certain attending that you knew would be on shift, as per usual on Monday nights/Tuesday mornings.
It’s not as if you had any major birthday plans to begin with. Other than getting dinner with Cassie and Samira tomorrow evening, your only plans include binge-watching and bedrotting. Picking up an extra shift tonight interferes with none of that, but…
You do feel a little silly. You wouldn’t dare ever admit it to Cassie, but she’s right. You don’t normally work on your birthday. Someone else more than likely would have been willing to cover Perlah’s shift. You don’t have to be here right now.
But you want to be. As silly - and maybe even a little bit pathetic - as it may be, you want to be.
Unfortunately for you, by the time the clock strikes midnight and it’s officially your birthday, you’ve barely even had the chance to exchange a handful of words with your entire reason for agreeing to work this shift.
Jack has been in the middle of an emergency splenectomy for the last three hours, and you? Lena assigned you the time-consuming, meticulous task of removing hundreds of bits of gravel from a severe case of road rash.
Isn’t that how everyone dreams of kicking off their birthday?
It succeeded in keeping you occupied for a few hours, at least - even if it is the type of mindless work that allows your thoughts to venture into territory they absolutely fucking shouldn’t when you’re picking tiny rocks out of a bloody crater on someone’s leg.
The feeling of Jack’s fingertips on your waist as he stood mere inches away from you on the rooftop what feels like just yesterday.
Him walking you to your car damn near every morning since even though you’re parked farther from the hospital entrance than he is, and the way he hesitates a little longer to say goodbye each time.
All of the times he has shown up to work with two coffees instead of one, and one just so happens to be your go-to order.
And, most recently, the elevator incident just yesterday - when he had oh so casually asked what your plans for your next day off are.
Friday, you had told him. Your next day off is Friday, and you don’t have any plans other than deep-cleaning your apartment and catching up on laundry. He had leaned back against the elevator wall, looking at you in that way that makes your heart behave erratically.
“That’s too bad,” Jack sighed. “Someone should give you something to actually look forward to on your day off.”
Then the elevator came to a stop, the doors slid open, and he walked out like he hadn’t just made you forget how to string two words together.
It wasn’t until hours later, on the drive home after your shift, that you were able to think of what you should have said instead of staring at him with your mouth agape like a fish out of water.
Oh, yeah? And who is someone?
Is that your professional opinion, or personal one?
Let me know when you think of something that I can actually look forward to, then.
But no. You said none of those things, and then found an excuse to stay for nearly an hour after your shift had technically ended so that you wouldn’t make an even bigger fool out of yourself when he would inevitably offer to walk you to your car.
You replay the interaction over and over again in your head the entire time you’re removing gravel from the wound, but finally, you finish.
You’re pulling the bloody nitrile gloves off of your hands when Jack appears in the doorway, still wearing a scrub cap and looking like he could use a few shots of espresso.
“Hey,” you breathe, unable to stop the smile that blooms across your face as soon as you see him. “How did the splenectomy go?”
“He’s going to be okay,” he exhales, tugging off his cap and revealing tousled salt and pepper curls. “He’s in recovery now.” Then, he glances around, as if making sure no one is paying any mind to either of you. “Do you think you could sneak away for a few?” He asks, voice low. “Meet me in the empty on-call room in about ten minutes?”
Your heart thuds in your chest. He’s smirking, but there’s something in his hazel eyes that makes you think he looks a little nervous.
“Yeah,” you nod without missing a beat. “Yeah, of course. Just let me get him some more pain meds and I’ll be right there.” You nod towards the road rash patient scrolling on his phone behind you. “Is everything okay?”
He takes a step back and winks. “Everything’s just fine, birthday girl.”
And then he turns, walking away and leaving you speechless for the second day in a row.
You haven’t even had a chance to remind him of your birthday tonight. In fact, you don’t recall mentioning your birthday to him at any point recently. A few days ago, you told him that you would be picking up Perlah’s shift tonight, but you hadn’t said a word about it being your birthday.
Did Cassie say something to him? Maybe a playful comment as she was leaving earlier about you deciding to work on your birthday? But even so, why would that result in him asking you to meet him in an empty on-call room?
By the time you give road rash guy a maximum dose of Toradol and blurt out some excuse about needing to use the bathroom as you powerwalk past the nurse’s station, your palms are drenched in sweat and your stomach feels like it’s swinging on a pendulum.
You raise your hand to the knob, hesitate for half a moment - just long enough to recall the lilt in his voice when he practically cooed birthday girl - and then, before you can chicken out, push it open.
The first thing you notice is how dim the small room is. Aside from the pale orange glow of a lamp next to the bed, the room is dark.
But not so dark that you can’t see Jack sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a cupcake in one hand and a pocket lighter in the other.
“I would sing to you, but I don’t want to torture you on your special day.” He ignites the lighter, holding the flame to the singular candle until it catches fire. “Don’t tell Dana,” he murmurs, standing up to walk the few feet to where you stand frozen in shock. “I took her spare lighter from her desk.”
You’re at a loss for words - which is quickly becoming the norm for when you’re near him. The only coherent thought you can manage to formulate is that right now, you’re so grateful that Perlah asked you to cover her shift.
You take a step closer to him now that your brain seems to be remembering to send signals to your limbs to move. “Do you always bring the nurses cupcakes on their birthdays, or is this something new you’re trying out?”
He hums a laugh. “Only my favorites. Now go on,” he encourages gently. “Make a wish.”
You hesitate, pursing your lips as you wait to see if he’s joking.
The look on his face makes it clear that he’s not.
And you’re not about to tell him no, so you close your eyes, lean in closer, and blow out the tiny flame while silently wishing for the only thing you have really wanted since you met him.
He hands you the cupcake as soon as you open your eyes. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could persuade you to tell me what you wished for?”
You huff a breathless laugh. “I don’t think so. Gotta do everything I can to ensure that it comes true.”
“I didn’t take you to be superstitious.”
You shrug, thinking of your wish. Thinking of what he said to you in the elevator yesterday. Thinking of the way he’s looking at you right this second. “I’m usually not.”
It’s true. You’ve never considered yourself to be superstitious. But you aren’t going to take any chances with this wish.
Jack’s gaze lingers on your face for one impossibly long moment before he glances over his shoulder at the bed behind him. It’s only then that you see something that you had been too distracted to notice when you first entered the room and found him holding the cupcake and lighter.
A small gift bag with white tissue paper sticking out of the opening sits on the bed.
“Jack, you really didn’t have to get—”
“I know I didn’t have to,” he laughs lowly, cutting you off before you can finish protesting. “But I wanted to, so I did.”
The already tiny room suddenly feels infinitely smaller. The cupcake alone was thoughtful enough to have your heart performing cartwheels in your chest. Hell, the fact that he even remembered your birthday without you directly mentioning it to him is enough to make you swoon. But all of this?
You’re so fucked. Entirely and irrevocably fucked.
You don’t remember the last time you felt so nervous to open any gift. Not at any childhood birthday party or family Christmas when dozens of eyes were glued to you.
It’s just Jack. There’s no reason to be nervous, you think to yourself as you place the cupcake on the bedside table and take a seat on the edge of the mattress.
Exactly. It’s Jack. Jack, who went out of his way to …bake you a cupcake? Or stop by a bakery on his way to work and buy you a cupcake? And personally pick out a gift for you? And find you the second that he finished performing an emergency splenectomy so that he could give you the aforementioned cupcake and gift in private?
You will your hands not to tremble as you delicately pull the tissue paper from the bag. Jack takes a seat beside you, and even though you don’t meet his gaze, you can feel his stare locked onto your face as he awaits your reaction.
You peek inside the bag, and you see it. Already unboxed. A stethoscope.
But not just any stethoscope. A really fucking pricey stethoscope.
The tubing is your favorite color and your initial is engraved into the bell in cursive lettering.
“Oh,” you breathe, too stunned to remember any of the other hundreds of thousands of words in the English language.
He clears his throat and gives a tiny shrug that does little to conceal how intently he’s watching you. “I know you’ve been using the same one since you first started working here,” he murmurs as you pull the stethoscope from the bag and hold it in your hands as if it’s made of glass. “This one should last you a while.”
You trace the engraved letter with your fingertip. “It’s beautiful,” you whisper, finally looking up at him. “But this…Jack, this is too much. You shouldn’t have spent this much money.”
“It’s not.” He shakes his head, gently shushing you, soft but firm. “I wouldn’t have spent it if I didn’t have it, but I do.”
He smirks, pausing for a second as he takes the stethoscope from you. He leans in, lifting the tubing over your head and looping it around your neck. His knuckles faintly brush your collarbone as the bell settles just over your heart.
“And maybe, selfishly, I’ll enjoy seeing it around your neck knowing that I put it there.”
You exhale a breathless laugh, your skin ablaze at both his words and the timber of his voice. “I’ll wear it every day, then.” Then, feeling brave, you scoot closer to him, closing the remaining distance between you and him until the side of your leg rests against his. “How’d you know my favorite color, anyway?”
Even in the dim lamp lighting, you can see a hint of pink bloom on his cheeks. He grins, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s only the color of your water bottle, your phone case, your lunch box…”
You laugh to play off how it makes your heart swell that he noticed any of those things.
“And I might have asked Cassie,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Just to be one hundred percent sure.”
The look on Cassie’s face and her teasing comments when you’d first arrived for your shift earlier tonight suddenly pop into your head.
Of course she had known. Damn her.
At least she can keep a secret.
“It’s perfect,” you hum. “I love it. Thank you.”
“You deserve it. Especially since you’ve gotta be here on your birthday.”
You chuckle nervously, looking down at your hands in your lap to avoid his stare. “Yeah, about that…”
You hesitate before continuing, briefly considering regurgitating the same excuse you had tried to feed everyone else about only working tonight because Perlah needed her shift covered.
It isn’t a lie. But it also isn’t the truth.
The stethoscope hanging around your neck suddenly feels like it weighs fifty pounds. It serves as tangible proof that you don’t need to hold back, that he cares about you as much as you do him. That he isn’t going to make you feel silly. That, for whatever reason, he wants to be near you as much as you want to be near him.
“I was happy to say yes when Perlah asked me to cover her shift. I wanted to be here on my birthday. Well…wanted to be with you on my birthday,” you quickly amend.
Jack places his hand over yours with a heartfelt laugh. “I wish you had told me. I would have rearranged my shifts so I’d be off tonight,” he sighs. “I’ll remember that next year. But in the meantime…”
Next year. The words seem to ping pong around in your brain. You glance up at him to find he’s already looking at you.
“You said that your next day off is Friday?”
He’s so close that it’s dizzying. All you can manage is a small nod of confirmation.
“Here’s what I propose, then,” he starts, his thumb rubbing slow circles over the top of your hand, “Friday evening, you let me give you a birthday redo. Unless you’re too committed to catching up on your laundry, that is.”
The words you hadn’t said aloud when you made your wish just moments ago echo through your mind.
“I’m off on Saturday as well,” you hum. “I’m sure the world will keep spinning if I put it off for one more day.”
“Then it’s settled,” he says simply. “Friday night. Birthday redo. You and me.”
“Don’t you…always work on Friday nights?” You ask hesitantly. Every part of you wants to say yes, yes, yes, duh, of course - but in the entire time you’ve worked with Jack Abbot, you’ve never known him to be off on Friday nights.
Something about weekend shifts being more exciting than weekday shifts.
He huffs a quiet laugh that you feel the soft vibration of from where his hand rests atop yours and your thigh brushes against his.
“That’s not for you to worry about,” he murmurs. “Just get through these next few shifts and I’ll take care of the rest.”
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Acts of Service
The following seventy-two hours drag.
You would think that twelve hour shifts would make the days go by quickly, but no. Not when your first official date with Jack awaits you at the end of the week, occupying your every waking thought at work, at home, and in your fucking sleep.
It certainly doesn’t help that Jack refuses to tell you what he has planned for said date. You’ve asked, but every time you do, he just smirks and says he doesn’t want to ruin the surprise.
Anticipation alone, you could probably handle. But anticipation and curiosity? You’ve been slowly losing your mind since Tuesday night.
Now, finally, it is officially Friday. It’s just after midnight, which means you just have to finish the remainder of this shift, go home and get some sleep, and when you wake up it’ll be time to get ready for your date with—
“Your admirer is back.”
Your fingers freeze over the keyboard as you’re working on charting for a patient who came in complaining of urinary pain. You glance up to see Lena looking down at you with what can be best described as an amused grimace.
She steps aside, giving you enough space to look over your shoulder to where an annoyingly familiar face is grinning at you from the bed in bay two.
“Jesus,” you sigh, turning back to your computer screen. “This is his third visit this month. What kind of insane health insurance does he have?” You grumble, more to yourself than Lena.
“Small laceration to the left palm,” Lena explains. “Says he cut it cleaning up glass from a broken liquor bottle. Judging by the way he smells, I’d say he’s telling the truth.”
Now it’s your turn to grimace. Trey - your admirer, as Lena had referred to him - has a habit of stumbling into the ER late at night after drinking too much and sustaining minor injuries that hardly justify a trip to the emergency room.
And every time, he asks for you.
He uses the same pick-up lines every time, stares a little too much, and reeks of whatever alcohol he’s been drinking that night, but he’s always been harmless enough.
This isn’t your first day on the job. You’ve had your fair share of Treys throughout your years working in the emergency department.
“It’s small and shallow,” she continues. “Doesn’t need stitches. Should be fine with some steri-strips, but I can ask Mateo to do it if you don’t wanna deal with him.”
“Mateo has his hands full with the lady with the dog bite that came in about ten minutes ago,” you sigh resignedly, pushing your chair back to stand up. “I’ll just get it over with. If I don’t, he’ll find some other way to fuck himself up enough to come right back here.”
You glance down at your watch. 12:36 am. Just six hours and twenty-four minutes left in this shift.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Trey greets you with slurred words and a shit-eating grin as soon as he sees you approaching his bedside. “I had a feeling you’d be here tonight.”
“This is my full time job,” you quip, not caring enough to try to conceal the annoyance from your voice or facial expression. Even from several feet away, you can smell the stout stench of liquor on him. “So, what is it now, Trey? Lena said something about you getting cut when you tried to clean up glass from a broken bottle?”
“Yeah,” he laughs, drawing out the word. “Clumsy me, right? Total accident.”
“Right,” you deadpan, sliding your hands into nitrile gloves. “Well, let me take a look.”
You take his hand as firmly as you can without technically being rough and turn his palm upwards. It’s exactly as Lena had described - short, shallow, already clotting well - and definitely not worth a trip to the fucking ER. He winces anyway, milking it.
“Ow,” he drawls. “Be careful with me, sweetheart.”
You ignore that, because you’ve become a professional at ignoring Trey and other men like him. You lean in slightly, inspecting the wound for any shards of glass.
“Okay,” you say, all business. “I don’t see any glass, so that’s good. I’m just going to clean it and then close it with steri-strips.”
“Whatever you want. I like when you take charge.” His breath wafts into your face in a thick cloud of cheap vodka and something soured - judging by the mystery stain on the neckline of his t-shirt, you wouldn’t be surprised if it were the stench of his own vomit. You purse your lips in a straight line to keep from making the face you really want to make.
You ignore that comment, too. You reach for the saline, starting to irrigate the laceration. He hisses dramatically.
“Oh, come on,” you mutter. You know you aren’t being professional, but you can’t find it in you to really care. “I’ve had cat scratches worse than this.”
“You could kiss it better,” he slurs, head lolling slightly in a poor attempt at a flirtatious grin.
“Not happening.”
You keep your eyes on the cut as you blot it dry, mentally counting down the minutes until you’re away from him. Mentally counting down the minutes your shift is over and you can go home and crawl into your cozy bed and sleep for hours, and then wake up and take a hot shower and put on something cute for Jack. The only issue with that is you don’t know what you should wear, because you don’t know where you’ll be going or what you’ll be doing—
A flash of silvery curls in your peripheral vision catches your attention. You glance over your shoulder and see Jack standing at the nurse’s station, leaning forward on his elbows, his expression unreadable as he watches you work. He must’ve just come out of trauma, or maybe he’s waiting on lab results; but either way, at this moment, he’s focused on you.
Warmth blooms on your cheeks.
“So…” Trey says, his voice dropping low. “What time do you get off?”
“Not soon enough,” you grumble under your breath, applying the first steri-strip.
“Maybe I could swing by your place later,” he continues, completely ignoring your uninterested, bored tone. “Y’know…hang out. You live at—” He pauses, face scrunching together as he tries to piece the thought together, “—at Carriage Park Apartments, right? In South Hills? You’re…what is it…unit 3B?”
Your blood goes cold and your hands stop moving.
“How the fuck do you know that?” You ask sharply, yanking your hands away from his.
Trey just grins. “Lucky guess, baby.”
It’s not a lucky guess. It’s spot on down to the exact unit.
Instinctively, you take a step back, but he immediately reaches toward you, clumsy but quick, grabbing the tubing of your new stethoscope where it’s draped across your chest.
“Hey—” You jerk backwards, but he doesn’t let you, inspecting the engraved initial on the bell of the stethoscope.
“This is nice,” he slurs. “You always wear this one? Or is it new? I saw on your friend Cassie’s Facebook page that it was your birthday the other day. Maybe it was a gift—”
“Let go,” you snap, trying to keep your voice even. You don’t want to draw the attention of any other patients, but you can literally feel your pulse spiking, hot bile churning in your gut—
But Trey doesn’t let go. His grip only tightens, and at that exact moment, Jack moves.
One second he’s watching like a hawk from the nurse’s station, and the next, he’s at your side, stepping in so quickly and decisively that you barely have time to register what’s happening. His hand clamps around Trey’s wrist - not hard enough to seriously injure him, but with enough strength that Trey’s face contorts in discomfort and he attempts to pull away.
“I suggest you take your hand off of her,” Jack’s voice is low but lethal.
Trey’s glassy eyes blink rapidly up at Jack. “Hey - hey, man,” he stammers. “I wasn’t - I wasn’t doing anything. Just talking to her and - and looking at her—”
“She told you to let go.”
You stand frozen as the interaction unfolds in front of you, your heart feeling as if it’s going to beat right out of your chest and onto the hospital floor.
“I was just joking around.” He says the words so quickly that they all run together. “You don’t gotta - hey, seriously, it’s fine. I’ll go—”
“Dr. Abbot, we’ll handle it from here.”
You vaguely register a security guard’s voice cut through the tension. Two officers appear at the entrance to the bay. You aren’t sure who even called them - knowing Lena, she probably had them on stand by when Trey stumbled in here drunk as a skunk and smelling like one, too.
Jack reluctantly releases Trey’s wrist. The moment he does, his hand finds your shoulder and he begins to guide you backwards, away from the bed and out of Trey’s reach.
“What’s going on here?” One of the guards - a new guy who you’ve never spoken to before - asks no one in particular.
Trey slumps back against the pillows, suddenly appearing very small. “I didn’t fuckin’ do anything,” he mutters, but even he doesn’t sound convinced.
The guards look to you and Jack for a legitimate explanation, which Jack quickly provides. “He grabbed her. She told him to let go, and he didn’t.”
The guard nods. “We’ll take care of it.”
Jack doesn’t wait for the rest. He already has his hand at the small of your back, steering you away from the bay and down a hallway until he reaches an empty consult room.
You don’t even realize just how hard your heart is still pounding until the door clicks shut.
Jack takes a step towards you, but doesn’t crowd you. He raises his hands like he’s going to touch you but stops himself, hands flexing awkwardly in front of him before dropping them back down to his sides.
“Are you okay?” He asks softly, his eyes searching for any obvious signs of physical or emotional distress.
You can’t think clearly enough to answer him right away. Instead, you turn away from him and walk the short distance to the loveseat in the corner of the small room. You take a deep breath in and then exhale, wringing your hands together as you normally do when you’re particularly anxious.
“He won’t be back here,” Jack assures you, watching you carefully from where he stands a few feet away. “Not if I have any say in it. He can risk bleeding out while driving to UPMC Mercy or Presbyterian for all I care—”
“He knows where I live,” you say quietly - barely a whisper, but it shuts him up.
“What?” He asks, though his tone of voice indicates he heard you perfectly fine. “He knows where you live? You’re sure?”
You nod, a fresh wave of nausea washing over you as you recall the satisfied smirk on his face when Trey witnessed your reaction to learning he knows your address.
“Positive.” You grimace. “I don’t know if he has followed me home from work before or what, but he knows where I live. Exact apartment number and all.”
Jack doesn’t say anything for a moment. He rakes a hand down his face, perhaps as stunned by this as you initially were. Your thoughts are reeling, thinking of all of the safety measures you’re going to need to take. You already have a doorbell camera, but you should set up some security cameras inside your apartment, too. An extra front door lock and additional window locks, for sure. A restraining order certainly isn’t a bad idea. There may be a way to terminate your lease early if stalking and harassment are involved - you aren’t really sure. You’ve never fucking been stalked before.
“Okay,” he sighs, sitting down next to you and interrupting your trainwreck of thoughts. “You can’t go back there. Not alone, anyway. After work, you can come back to my place. You can stay as long as you need. As long as you want. We’ll both go to your apartment and get some of your things—”
“Jack, don’t be ridiculous,” you say with a humorless laugh, turning to face him. There’s no hint of uncertainty on his face. You know he means every word he says, but you can’t just take up temporary residence in his home - as tempting as that may sound to you, the last thing you want is to be such an inconvenience before you’ve even gone on one date with the man.
“I can’t - won’t ask that of you. I can get a hotel room for the time being, until I figure out the terms of my lease. Hell, I could stay in an on-call room here for a few nights and I’d be perfectly safe. I know Whitaker did that at one point—”
Jack laughs. Not a humorless, half-hearted chuckle, but full, deep belly laugh. “Honey, you don’t know me if you think I’m going to have you sleeping on a cot in an on-call room or at a hotel where that fucker could follow you just as easily as your apartment.”
He shifts slightly on the loveseat, angling his body toward you. “You staying with me isn’t ridiculous,” he says, quieter. No longer laughing, but his expression is still soft. “It’s safe. And you’re not asking anything of me. I’m offering.”
You drop your gaze down to your hands in your lap. “I’d just…feel bad. I don’t want to intrude. We haven’t even gone on one date yet.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not the point. I don’t care if we’ve been on zero dates or a hundred. A drunk asshole grabbing you and telling you he knows where you live isn’t something that you sleep off in an on-call room.”
You swallow hard. “I don’t want to be a burden,” you murmur.
Don’t want to be a burden, but don’t want to stay anywhere else, either.
You can’t deny it, even to yourself. The second that Jack intervened, you felt safe. Sitting here beside him right now, you’re surprisingly calm given what just transpired. And the thought of going home with him, rather than sleeping in an on-call room or the first hotel you can find? Rather than going back to your apartment where Trey could be waiting for you after your shift? The thought of that brings you more comfort than you’re willing to admit.
His eyebrows lift in disbelief. “A burden?” He leans forward, forearms resting on his knees and his face just inches from yours. “Sweetheart, making sure that you’re safe doesn’t burden me. It matters to me.”
Sweetheart. When Trey had called you the petname, it made your skin crawl. But hearing it from Jack…it’s a term of endearment. Instead of making your skin crawl, it makes your stomach flutter with an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies.
It’s that very feeling that gives you the gentle push you need to say yes.
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Jack and Lena each ask upwards of a dozen times if you’re sure that you’re alright to work the remainder of your shift.
Lena tries to insist that you take an extra long break and eat something. Jack offers to leave work long enough to drive you back to his place so that you can decompress in peace, but you refuse. You don’t have an appetite, and you don’t really want to be alone. You’re sure you would be completely safe at Jack’s, but you don’t want to be left alone with your thoughts. You just want to finish out the last few hours of your shift.
The best thing for you right now is to keep yourself busy, so that’s what you do. You take five minutes to freshen up in the employee bathroom, make yourself a coffee, and get back to it.
That is until the police show up and you, Jack, Lena, and the security guards all have to give statements as to what happened with Trey. You explain his multiple ER visits over the last month alone, how he always asks for you by name, and everything he said and did tonight. They take your statement, and ask if you want to press charges for stalking and harassment - to which you say yes, even though part of you is terrified of how Trey could react once he learns of this. You know it’s the right thing to do.
By the time it’s all said and done and seven o’clock rolls around, it feels like one of the longest shifts of your entire career and you’re beyond relieved for it to be over. So relieved, in fact, that you don’t even feel nervous about going to Jack’s condo until you’re literally walking through his front door.
You hadn’t let yourself dwell on it too much as he drove you to your apartment to collect some of your things. You swore that you were fine to drive your own vehicle and let him follow you, but he had insisted on driving you himself, and you were too tired to put up much of a fight.
As quickly as possible, you threw essentials into a duffel bag while Jack waited patiently in your living room. Hair care products, body wash, toothbrush and toothpaste, a few changes of clothes. Skincare and makeup essentials, perfume, and something cute to wear tonight - you do still have a date this evening, after all.
You were in and out in less than ten minutes.
Jack carries your bag up to his condo for you.
To no surprise, it’s significantly nicer than your apartment. Although you make decent money as an emergency department nightshift nurse, Pittsburgh rent prices are astronomical and you live alone, so you took the first apartment you could find that wasn’t going to completely break the bank every month.
You don’t even want to think about how much this place costs.
It’s damn near exactly how you had envisioned his home to be. There’s very little decor, but there’s still touches of him throughout the space. The large windows have thick blackout curtains - a telltale sign that someone who works at night and sleeps during the day lives here. The espresso machine that he’d been bragging about just last week sits on his kitchen counter. His coffee table is littered with random medical journals and books. It’s the perfect balance of clean and simple yet lived-in and domestic.
“Make yourself at home,” Jack murmurs, placing your duffel bag on the large sectional couch that you’re hovering beside awkwardly. Your heart skips a beat at the word home.
That’s just a thing people say. Make yourself at home - make yourself comfortable. He’s not being literal.
“Tell me what you need,” he says, voice low and warm. “Food? Sleep? A shower? I can make you coffee, breakfast, whatever you want. I don’t normally go to sleep until a few hours after I get home.”
Your stomach all but vibrates at the offer of food. You didn’t eat anything your entire shift. After Trey happened, the thought of eating was entirely unappealing. But now that some time has passed, and you’re away from the hospital, the hunger pains in your belly are becoming hard to ignore.
“At the risk of sounding needy…” You start with a breathy laugh. “All three of those things sound incredible right now.”
Shower, food, sleep. Preferably in that order.
“I’ll make us something to eat while you take a shower,” Jack hums, as if reading your mind. Your stomach does that erupts into hundreds of butterflies thing again that cannot be blamed solely on hunger. He takes a step towards you, placing a light, tentative hand on your waist. “How does that sound?”
It’s a simple question but it makes you lightheaded. You aren’t used to this - having someone take care of you in such mundane ways. Driving you around. Carrying your bag for you. Making you food. Getting you thoughtful, personalized gifts.
Part of you wonders if you’re even deserving of it. Any of it. Especially coming from him. But Jack’s a smart man. Rational. Self-assured. The kind of man who knows what he wants and doesn’t settle for less than that. And though you may not fully understand why…you’re the person standing in front of him with his hand on your waist right now.
You give a small nod. “That sounds good. Thank you.” You smile up at him. Then, remembering you don’t actually know your way around this place, you ask, “Where’s the guest room? I’ll take my bag in there.”
He sucks in air through his teeth. “About that…” He trails off with a shy laugh. “My guest room is currently functioning as a storage unit. You’ll be staying in my room. I’ll take the couch.”
“What?” You exclaim, eyes going wide. “No way. I’m not kicking you out of your bed in your own home, Jack.” You look at the giant sectional beside you. “There’s more than enough room for me on the couch. Get me a pillow and a blanket and I’ll be fine.”
“No way,” he snorts. Then, his other hand finds your waist, too. His chest is just inches from yours and you catch a whiff of something musky. You can’t argue back because you’re too busy remembering how to breathe. “Not happening. I end up falling asleep on the couch more than half the time, anyway. You aren’t kicking me out of anywhere.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he interjects, gentle but firm enough to make you close your mouth. “You’re my guest. You’re sleeping in my bed. That’s final.”
Maybe it’s his tone of voice, or maybe it’s the look on his face - his words hit you straight in your core. You’re grateful that he can’t feel your skin through the material of your scrubs, because as soon as the words you’re and sleeping and in my bed left his lips, goosebumps bloomed across your flesh.
You dig your teeth into your bottom lip in an attempt to keep your composure. “You need to be careful,” you exhale, grabbing your duffel bag off of the couch. “You’re going to spoil me rotten.”
He smirks, turning to take you to where you’ll be sleeping. “Would that really be such a bad thing?”
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Physical Touch
As if you needed anything else to add to the ever growing list of reasons that you believe Jack Abbot might be too good to be true, he also makes a killer breakfast sandwich.
You’re not ashamed to admit that you took your sweet time in his walk-in, fancy-pants shower, scrubbing every microscopic trace of hospital off of your skin and letting hot water soothe the aching muscles of your back before rejoining Jack in the kitchen.
When you do, bare-faced and donning the first clean pair of sweatpants and t-shirt you could find during your brief trip to your apartment, Jack is already plating up breakfast for you.
You aren’t even really sure what you had been expecting - cereal, maybe? A protein shake? Instant oatmeal? You were so hungry that you hadn’t been very worried about what, but you were still pleasantly surprised when you entered the kitchen to see what he had managed to put together while you were in the shower.
Bacon, fried egg, Gouda cheese, and avocado slices all piled high on a bagel with hash browns on the side.
He watches in anticipation as you take your first bite. Your eyes flutter shut and he lets out a soft laugh.
“Good?” He slides a cup of coffee across the kitchen island to you (decaf, he said, because he knows you’ll be going to sleep soon).
“That’s an understatement,” you mumble around a mouthful of bagel. “Divine.”
You can’t help but think he looks pleased with himself.
He stands directly across from you, eating his own breakfast that mirrors yours. You’re so hungry, and it’s so delicious, that you barely say a word until you take the very last bite. The silence between you isn’t uncomfortable. It feels natural, easy. Like you’ve sat on this very barstool eating breakfast with him after long shifts dozens of times before.
When you’re both finished, you offer to clean up - which earns you an incredulous look, like he can’t tell if you’re joking or not.
“It’s just a few dishes,” Jack snorts, walking around to where you’re sitting. “I think I can handle it.” He leans with his back against the counter, standing right beside you. “You should go lay down. Get some rest. We’ve got plans tonight, remember?”
“Of course I remember,” you laugh. “Although, I still don’t know what said plans are…” You trail off, looking up at him with raised brows and pursed lips, a silent plea for him to finally tell you what tonight’s agenda is.
He laughs, the lines around his eyes crinkling in the way that always makes you feel fuzzy inside.
“And you’ve been so patient.” He shakes his head and grins down at you. “You’ve made it this far. Why would I ruin the surprise now?”
You suppose he’s right. If you’ve made it all week without knowing, you can wait another eight…ten…twelve hours.
Jack walks you to his bedroom door even though you already know the way. He pauses just at the doorway, one hand braced lightly against the frame like he’s debating whether to stay or go. You hesitate too, your fingers grazing the doorknob but not yet opening it.
“Get some rest,” he murmurs. “And if you need anything - anything at all - I’ll be right in the living room. Just say the word.”
For a split-second, you swear he’s leaning in. Just enough to make your heart stutter and breath catch in your throat at the thought of his lips landing on your temple, your cheek, your mouth.
But then the moment passes. He pulls back instead, offering a gentle, almost apologetic smile. “Sleep well,” he whispers.
All you can manage is a small nod before you open the door and slip inside, closing the door behind you. You hold your breath until you hear his footsteps begin to retreat down the hallway. When the soft thuds fade to silence, you release a shaky exhale.
How the hell are you supposed to fall asleep after that?
The answer to that is you don’t.
Though Jack’s bed is plenty comfortable, you toss and turn for well over half an hour and still find yourself wide awake. You’ve been awake for sixteen plus hours at this point. Those sixteen hours have included working a twelve hour shift, learning that you have a stalker and getting harassed at your place of work, and answering dozens of questions from the police - you should have crashed the second your body hit the soft cotton sheets.
But you find that fucking impossible when his pillow smells so much like him.
You can’t stop yourself from inhaling the light, clean scent of whatever detergent he uses mixed with a faint essence of him - something earthy and masculine like aftershave or remnants of his cologne.
It makes the pitch black room feel like it’s spinning around you, the last words he’d said to you echo in your mind.
If you need anything at all, I’ll be right in the living room. Just say the word.
You can admit that it’s more of a want than a need, but he did say anything.
Before you can overthink what you’re about to do, before you can chicken out, you swing your legs over the side of the bed and stand. Then, putting one foot in front of the other, you ease down the hallway as quietly as you can in case he’s already asleep.
He’s not.
Jack’s profile is illuminated by the glow of the television in the otherwise dark room. He’s changed out of his scrubs, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that mirrors your own attire. His prosthetic is now detached, resting on the floor beside the couch.
“Hey.” He sits up a bit straighter, curiosity and concern etched across his features and in his voice when he notices you stop near the edge of the hallway. “Is everything okay?”
You just nod, and give him a small smile. You can’t bring yourself to speak for fear that you won’t recognize your own voice. You take a few slow steps towards the couch and he glances down to where you twist your hands nervously in front of you. His brows furrow in worry, though his hazel eyes can’t conceal his curiosity.
“C’mere,” he murmurs, patting the empty space right next to him.
But instead of sitting beside him, you stop directly in front of where he’s lounging. His eyes trail upwards, confusion merging into something akin to amusement when you lift one knee onto the couch, and then the other, hovering just over his lap. Your palms land lightly on his shoulders for balance, not yet putting all of your weight against his thighs.
He goes completely still the moment you settle over him, as if the slightest movement from him might send you running back down the hallway. His hands hover at your hips but don’t quite touch. You pause for a heartbeat, giving him the opportunity to stop you if he wants.
But he doesn’t. His normally hazel hues stare up at you, pupils blown so wide that his orbs appear onyx.
That’s all the confirmation you need to close the distance between you.
You lean forward slowly, your nose brushing against his. Your lips ghost over his in the barest tease of a touch that makes wildfire bloom across your neck and down your spine. The anticipation feels like electricity, your pulse thundering in your ears. You can feel his breath fan across your lips, shaky and uneven.
The initial press of your lips against his is feather soft, though his response is anything but. Something between a sigh and groan escapes the back of his throat, kissing you back with a tenderness that makes you melt into him. His hands finally settle against your waist, fingertips gripping the fabric of your t-shirt. Your hands trail from the broad planes of his shoulders to the nape of his neck, tips of your fingers intertwining in the short tufts of silvery curls.
His lips collide with yours in slow yet fervent kisses that could easily get you drunk off him. The faint stubble along his jaw tickles your skin in a way that makes you feel delirious. You think that you would be content to sit here and kiss him all day long, but you also don’t want to seem too eager.
Even if you are.
When you pull back, your lips tingle. Jack follows the movement for a fraction of a second, as if he can’t stop himself from trying to kiss you more. Your forehead rests against his and you exhale a shaky laugh.
“I tried to sleep,” you breathe, voice unsteady. “I really did. But your pillow smells like you and it was driving me fucking crazy.”
Even with only the light pouring from the television, you can tell that he’s blushing. His hands run up and down your sides. “I take it that’s a good thing,” he laughs, voice low.
“Mm-hmm,” you hum. “Indeed. You smell even better up close, though.” You close the distance between you once more. This time it’s the ghost of a kiss, your lips faintly brushing over his just enough to tease.
He peppers light kisses along your jawline. “Is that right?” The words are murmured against the skin of your throat.
Your eyes flutter shut and his name tumbles from your lips.
“Yeah, honey?”
You cup his face in your hands and pull back to look down at him. “Come to bed with me.” It’s intended to be a question, a request - but it comes out more of a breathless command.
His fingertips freeze along your spine. He looks up at you, hesitant. “You sure that’s what you want?”
You nod, the pad of your thumb brushing along his cheekbone. Another small peck to the tip of his nose this time. “I’m sure.”
He seems to search your face for signs of uncertainty. When he doesn’t find any, he exhales a laugh through his nose. “As much as I wish I could sweep you into my arms and carry you down the hallway…” He trails off, wiggling his leg beneath you. “I’m the one who needs a little assistance getting there.”
You follow his gaze to where his prosthetic sits a few feet away. It’s then that you notice a pair of crutches propped against the recliner, undoubtedly for getting around his place when he doesn’t feel like wearing the prosthetic. You ease off of his lap, standing up to retrieve the crutches for him. He pushes himself off the couch as you hand them off to him.
Once he’s balanced, he nods towards the hallway with a small smirk. “Lead the way.”
You do, walking slow enough that he can keep pace with you. Your heart thuds against your ribcage with each step you take, but it’s due to excitement rather than nerves.
Excitement at the prospect of simply listening to his heartbeat and inhaling the scent of his t-shirt as you both drift off to sleep.
Twelve hours ago, you never would have predicted that this would be happening right now. That you’d be in Jack’s condo. That you would shower in his bathroom while he makes you breakfast. That you would sit on his lap and kiss him and crawl into bed together.
It feels surreal. Like you’re dreaming and fully expect to wake up in your own bed at any moment.
When you reach the edge of the bed, you pull the covers back and lie down, scooting towards the middle of the large mattress so there’s plenty of space for Jack to crawl in next to you. He leans the crutches so that they’re within reach of the bed and then lowers himself onto the mattress with practiced ease.
He lies flat on his back, the mattress dipping beneath him. His arm extends outwards in a wordless gesture that opens the space closest to him for you.
“C’mere,” he coaxes, and just like when he’d said that to you minutes ago in the living room, you do. You slip into the space under his arm, tucking yourself into the solid warmth that is his chest. Your cheek settles just over his heart and his arms curl around you, cocooning you against him.
It’s too easy to melt into the embrace that is so new yet already feels so familiar.
You’re both asleep within minutes.
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Quality Time
“All I’m saying is that it would be a lot easier for me to pick an outfit if I know where we’re going.”
Jack’s chest vibrates with laughter against your cheek.
You aren’t sure what time it is. All you know is that you woke up in the exact same spot that you had fallen asleep - in his arms. That, and you feel incredibly well rested.
“How many outfits did you bring with you?” He asks, lips pressed against your temple and voice still raspy with sleep. It’s a sound you could very quickly get used to hearing when you wake up, you think.
“Three.” You lift your shoulder in a small shrug. “Option one is casual. Two is semi-formal. And three is a little bit fancier than two.”
You did the best you could on such short notice and with no knowledge of what tonight’s plans entail.
He hums in contemplation, running a hand up and down the expanse of your arm. “Do you trust me?”
You shift enough to look up at him. He’s smirking down at you. “Of course I trust you.” You roll your eyes. It’s true. You do. Though you can’t say you aren’t suspicious of where he’s going with this.
“How about you show me options two and three and I’ll tell you which I think is the better choice? That way you don’t have to guess what you should wear and you still get to be surprised?”
So that’s exactly what you do.
An hour later, you’re wearing option number two in the passenger seat of his truck. Semi-formal. On the nicer side, but nothing crazy fancy - though you would think it’s the nicest thing Jack’s ever seen by how he’s complimented you no less than a dozen times since you first walked out of the bedroom wearing it.
Just before sunset, he pulls into the parking lot of a cute Italian bistro that you’ve never heard of in a quiet part of town. Osteria del Cuore reads the sign - Tavern of the Heart.
“Ever been here before?” Jack asks, curious lilt to his tone.
“No.” You shake your head. “I haven’t. Have you?” You glance over to him in the driver’s seat to find him already smirking at you with a twinkle in his eyes.
“I have not. No one has, actually.”
You give him a confused look, but before you can question him, he’s opening his truck door and hopping out to walk to the passenger side. Ever the gentleman, he opens your door for you and offers you his hand.
“And that’s because we are the first customers,” he continues when you place your hand in his as you step down.
“First?”
“That’s right. They don’t officially open until tomorrow night, but I called in a small favor.” He opens the front door for you and waits for you to step inside.
Your eyes scan the room. There’s maybe a dozen or so tables in total. Sconces line the brick walls and strings of fairy lights twine around ceiling beams, illuminating the space in a muted amber glow. Each table is adorned with tiny flower bouquets and flickering candles inside glass holders. Bundles of dried herbs hang above an open kitchen window - rosemary, bay, thyme - filling the air with a faint earthy scent in addition to the aroma of fresh baked bread.
It’s warm. Cozy. Homey. Perfect for a first date - but all you can think about is the fact that Jack was not kidding when he said that you’re the first customers. There’s no other patrons to be seen anywhere.
A young woman, presumably the hostess, appears from around the small bar and welcomes you both.
“Dr. Abbot.” She smiles, greeting him by name. “Mr. Moretti is so glad you two could join us tonight. Come with me and I’ll show you to your table.”
Jack motions as if to say after you. You follow her, expecting her to take you to one of the smaller booths for two, but she walks right past them. And then right past all of the tables for larger parties, as well. You glance at Jack in curiosity, but he only places a hand on your lower back in response, giving nothing away.
She leads you both past the bar and down a small hallway, then opens an unmarked door without looking back. You aren’t sure if Jack even knows where she’s taking you, but he makes no objections, so you keep quiet, following her up a short stairwell.
You aren’t entirely sure what you’re expecting - another dining room, maybe. But what you aren’t expecting is the breeze of cool evening air when she opens a door at the top of the stairs.
If you thought the inside was lovely, then the rooftop is something straight out of a fairytale.
It feels like stepping into a secret garden above the city. Like inside, string lights zigzag overhead and candles twinkle on every flat surface. There’s an abundance of lush planters and flowering vines, their leaves rustling in the light breeze. Several tall, outdoor style heaters line the perimeter of the tables, radiating enough warmth to ward off the chilly night air.
In the center of it all, there’s only one table set tonight.
One round, intimate table draped in ivory linen and graced with a small glowing lantern, a mason jar of wildflowers, and two empty wine glasses.
“This is what you consider to be a small favor?” You laugh breathily as he pulls your chair out for you. The hostess places menus on the table before wordlessly departing, leaving the two of you alone momentarily. “A private rooftop dinner at a restaurant that isn’t technically open yet?”
Jack takes his own seat with a small shrug, though there’s a pleased look on his face at the awestruck expression on yours. “I treated the owner’s wife a few months ago. She’d been experiencing on and off again leg pain that her primary care doctor had dismissed as a strained muscle. They came into the ER one night, begging to be taken seriously because she knew something was wrong. Long story short, she wasn’t being dramatic. An ultrasound showed the beginning of a DVT. We got her treated before it turned into anything life threatening.”
Mrs. Moretti - you vaguely recall overhearing Jack tell Robby about the case.
“Her husband was so grateful.” Jack shakes his head with a soft smile. “He told me all about this restaurant that they were in the process of opening - insisted that he owes me a favor and gave me his business card. He made me promise to come by for a free meal as soon as they opened. Which isn’t until tomorrow, but…” He trails off, taking in the scenery around you.
“I suppose saving people’s lives does have its perks sometimes,” you tease, nudging his calf with your foot beneath the table.
A faint dusting of pink appears along his cheekbones. “I wasn’t planning on ever cashing in on that favor, but I drove by here a few days ago and saw the grand opening sign…” Another small shrug, and you can’t help but giggle at how bashful he seems right now. “I’m going to insist on paying for the food, of course. Them letting us have the place to ourselves the day before opening is already more than enough.”
Your entire body is buzzing at the revelation. At all of it - at the thought he put into planning this, at the ambiance, at the romance of it all.
It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. And so much fucking better than spending your Friday night alone doing your laundry.
“I don’t even know what to say,” you breathe, reaching across the table to take his hand in yours, giving it a gentle squeeze. “No one has ever done anything like this for me.”
Not just this, you think. Everything he’s done for you, big and small. The engraved stethoscope he got you for your birthday, and the coffees that he always brings to work for you without asking. Defending you from a creepy jackass and then inviting you into his home without a second thought. Cooking you breakfast, caring for you, making you feel more safe and loved than anyone else has ever made you feel.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he murmurs. “I just thought it might be nice to be on a rooftop together again. Only under much happier circumstances this time.”
The memory replays in your mind instantaneously - the hospital rooftop, much different than the one you’re on right now. It wasn’t all that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, even if it does feel like a lifetime ago.
Like that night on the hospital rooftop, the moon above you now is also bright and full. And like that night, there’s no one else you’d rather be with.
But now, when Jack smiles, it reaches his eyes. And now, as you hold his hand in yours, it isn’t to console him because he’s having a hard night. It’s simply because you can - simply because you want to hold his hand.
Yes, much happier circumstances indeed.
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
Epilogue {….a little more physical touch}
You aren’t quite sure how one night at Jack’s condo turns into two, and then three, then four…but you aren’t complaining.
He certainly doesn’t seem to mind, either.
You’d mentioned going back to your place multiple times. The last thing you want to do is overstay your welcome so early in your relationship, but Jack isn’t having any of that. He has assured you time and time again that the only reason for you to go back to your apartment is to get more of your belongings.
You put very little energy into objecting. You want to be here with him every bit as much as he seems to want you here.
Despite the fact that you’ve been sleeping in his bed for nearly a week, it feels as if you’ve barely seen each other the last few days. Your work schedules normally match up pretty nicely, but due to some people being out on vacation, or sick, or on maternity leave, your shifts have been all over the place this week.
So you’re beyond happy to hear him enter his condo not even ten minutes after your morning alarm wakes you up, knowing that both of you are now off work until tomorrow night.
You’re still laying in bed when he opens the door. Light pours in from the hallway, just enough to illuminate his silhouette.
“Good morning,” you breathe, voice still tinted with sleep. He walks to the edge of the bed and sits down beside where you lay.
“Good morning,” he whispers, leaning over to give you a tender kiss, the faint essence of coffee on his lips. “Did I wake you up?”
“No.” You shake your head, raising a hand to the back of his neck where you lace your fingers through his short curls. “I set an alarm so that I’d be awake when you got home. I missed you.”
You pull him down to you by his neck until his mouth is on yours once more. This kiss isn’t quite as tender as the first - you open to him right away, his tongue slipping between your lips. He braces one hand against the headboard, and the other comes to cup the side of your face, deepening the kiss. You can’t help but release a small moan into his mouth, your thighs clenching together beneath the covers.
He pulls away, as if reading your mind, planting a small kiss to the corner of your mouth with a shaky exhale. “I should probably shower off first, honey.”
You shake your head again like a petulant child being told no. “That can wait.”
Jack doesn’t need any further convincing.
He yanks the comforter away from your body, revealing you to be in only your underwear and an oversized t-shirt. You pull him back to you, crushing your lips to his. His hands grab at your waist, bunching the fabric of your t-shirt around your stomach. He smells sterile, just like the hospital he’s been at all night, but beneath that there’s the familiar scent of his body wash that you’ve quickly become obsessed with.
“Lay down,” you command gently.
He has worked twelve hours while you have been asleep in his bed, after all. You figure taking care of him is the least you can do if you’re going to jump his bones the second he walks through the door.
He looks like he’s about to object, his fingers toying with the waistband of your panties, but you pat the empty space on the mattress beside you and he gives in. Maybe it’s the pleading, eager look on your face or maybe it’s just exhaustion creeping into his bones, but he does as you ask without putting up a fight.
That alone makes you melt. You know that Jack isn’t used to being cared for - in any sense of the word. He’s been alone for a long time. Self-reliant and solitary.
But so have you. And just as it comes naturally to let Jack spoil you, he seems content to let you do the same for him.
He’ll more than make it up to you soon enough, you have no doubt.
He trades places with you, sinking down against the mattress and pillow with a soft exhale. You sit up onto your knees, smoothing a hand down his chest until you reach the hem of his scrub top.
“Can I..?” You ask, tugging lightly at the fabric.
He nods, sitting up slightly and lifting his arms so that you can maneuver both his scrub top and undershirt off in one go. You glance down, noting that he has yet to shed his shoes.
You crawl to the foot of the bed, making quick work of yanking off one, and then the other - leaving one foot and the base of his prosthetic exposed. He shimmies his pants down his thighs, letting you pull them the rest of the way off, tossing them to join his shoes somewhere on the floor.
Your gaze settles where his prosthetic meets flesh. You hesitate, not wanting to assume, not wanting to do something wrong or make him uncomfortable in any way. He notices your hesitation right away.
“I can walk you through it,” he says softly, thumb brushing your cheek. “If you’d like to learn how to remove it.”
The offer hits you square in the chest. It may seem small, but he isn’t just offering to teach you something - he’s showing you that he trusts you enough to let you into a part of his life that most people never see. That he trusts you enough to be vulnerable with you. That you mean enough to him that helping him with something like this could easily become a regular occurrence, so it only makes sense for you to learn how to do it.
You realize, right then and there, that you’re in love with him. And, wholeheartedly, you believe that he’s in love with you, too.
You smile, blinking away happy tears that threaten to spill over.
“Yeah,” you nod. “I’d like that.”
✧˖*°࿐⭒.⋆˖࣪⭑
thank you so much for reading! i love you forever if you comment/reblog <3
summary: After three years of separation, Sarah's birthday offers you and Joel a second chance. But finding trust isn't easy once it's been broken. Luckily, Joel knows exactly what to say to get you to open up your heart to him again. And it certainly helps when he's begging on his knees.
pairing: Joel Miller x ex-wife!f!Reader
warnings: explicit sexual content MDNI, heavy angst with a happy ending, inner feelings of guilt and shame, reader is sarah's mom, separated parents and joint custody, infidelity because joel is with tess (but they're not in a committed relationship and joel is still very much in love with reader), tension between reader and tess that gets somewhat resolved, lots of yearning between both joel and reader, begging, oral f!receiving, edging, dirty talk, fingering, possessive!joel, lots of apologizing, tummy bulge, unprotected piv, body worship, praise, creampie, no outbreak au
note: for @dazed-confused-amused who sent in this as a request months ago and who has been so unbelievably patient with me while i returned to my joel miller roots, love u sm han <3
wc: 11.2k
[masterlist] [AO3]
In the end, all the hard work pays off.
After all the stress of preparation and the last second trips to fill balloons with helium, Joel’s backyard looks nothing short of magical.
Decorated with indigo streamers, plastic strands of white wisteria and silver colored butterflies. All of which you’d spent the last month hand crafting during Joel’s weeks with Sarah. A task to keep your mind occupied in the stretch of bi-weekly loneliness.
The grocery store sheet cake turned out a little funky; the sky blue border uneven, and the sprinkles too heavy in one corner. But the writing is legible, and it’s chocolate with whipped vanilla frosting一Sarah’s favorite一and you know she’ll love it regardless.
You’re clipping the last silver butterfly onto the edge of the cake table when Joel speaks.
He’s standing on the other side of the yard, the sun overhead shining brightly, accentuating the gentle wisps of grey beginning in his dark hair. “You, uh…you did a real good job on those. They look nice.”
You adjust the butterfly, tugging gently on the top of the right wing. “Thanks. You think she’ll like them?”
Joel snorts. “‘Course she will. You kiddin’ me? ‘Specially if she finds out her momma made ‘em for her.”
The sentiment makes you smile. Sarah’s always been thoughtful. Kind and compassionate in the way only a ten year old girl can be, heart pure and untouched by the weight of the world. “Yeah, well—she deserves it. We did a real good job on her,” you say. “Even considering…you know.”
The separation.
It was messy and painful and the worst thing you’ve ever endured. But a necessary evil. Because Joel was a perfect man by all rights, but being perfect and being present were two very different things.
You excused it for a long time. Too long, truthfully. All those nights you’d spent alone when Sarah was having a sleepover, all those school milestones he missed; kindergarten graduation and her last soccer game of the season and the parent teacher conferences that had revealed she’d gotten straight A’s in second grade.
Joel had spent all that time working—building homes for other families while his wife was alone, all but begging him to come to dinner before eight just three days out of the week.
But he never did. Too focused on filling a bank account full of money he would never be home long enough to use.
And one day, he’d gotten off of work well after ten to find your wedding ring on the kitchen table and a duffel bag full of your clothes missing from the closet.
And now, nearly three years after that fateful night, he’s staring at you from across the decorated back yard with too much affection in his eyes. He doesn’t say it, but you can feel it in his gaze. The warmth, the familiarity, the longing. “You ever think about it? ‘Bout…what we had?”
It’s a stupid question. Even after so long apart it’s still all you think about. Because when things were good, they were good. Joel was your best friend. Your protector, your provider, your lover. Everything you’d ever wanted in a man.
Sweet and strong. A terrible cook, but he was the only one who’d ever gotten your coffee just right. The kind of husband who always added your favorite snacks to the grocery cart even if they weren’t on the list. Who kissed your forehead before work whether you were awake to know of it or not. Loyal as a dog, too. The kind of man who’d defend your name in a room you weren’t in, even now, even without the weight of a wedding band on your ring finger.
There were a million and one reasons you loved Joel Miller.
But what you needed was more of him.
“Of course I do,” you admit, pointedly keeping your eyes on the decorations and fixing things that don’t need to be fixed. “Do you?”
You can hear him shift behind you. “I've only ever loved three people my whole life,” he says. And you know what’s coming next before he speaks, because it’s something he’s said for years, long before your marriage. “You’re top of the list.”
It makes your chest pull tight. Because even while you’d made the decision to put the softness of your own heart first, the love between you was never in question.
And you still want him. Of course you do.
But what you deserve is a husband who shows up for you not just when you need him there, but when you want him there, too.
You swallow hard, trying to clear the emotion lodged at the back of your throat like a stone.
The sound of his boots is heavy, even in the plush summer grass. His presence demands to be felt, despite all your efforts to block it out.
With a trembling hand, you adjust the silver butterfly again. “Yeah,” you mutter, voice cracking. And then again, clearer this time. “Yeah, I know. I love you too, Joel. I think that goes without saying, doesn’t it? But I know what I deserve now, too.”
When you finally find the courage to turn and face him, your ears ring and your eyes grow watery. The expression on his face softens, and his hands twitch at his sides. A long-laid instinct to pull you in close, to soothe the ache in your heart in the ways only he could.
But he doesn’t.
And you admit, silently, internally, only to yourself—that you want him to. Want him to press a kiss to the top of your head and wrap his strong arms around you, enveloping you with his warmth. You want him to make you feel whole again, to tell you he’ll be different, that he’ll be better.
“You’ve always deserved the world,” Joel whispers instead. “An’ every single day I regret not givin’ it to you, baby. M’sorry.”
His words are genuine. From an emotional place inside his chest that you used to have to beg for him to allow you to see.
And now here he is, opening himself up to you, completely unprompted.
Hope flickers like a flame in your heart. Bright and beautiful and tempting.
You want to believe him. You do.
You search his face, trying to find a lie. Trying to find anything, anything to pull you back from the edge of this longing.
And then, like a sign from God, the glass door to the backyard slides open.
“Good! I’m glad you’re both here.” Tess strolls onto the deck like she owns the place. As if this house wasn’t yours at one point. As if you hadn’t picked out the color of the backsplash in the kitchen and the lace curtains over the windows or the pale green rug at the front door.
But you remind yourself that Tess is…nice.
And that fact is proven when you notice the multi-colored gift bags draped over each of her arms. Neon yellows and purples and blues, stuffed with pink tissue paper.
Joel leaves your side to help her carry everything. Ever the gentleman.
You try not to roll your eyes. Remind yourself that all the theatrics are for your daughter. That today isn’t about you. It’s about Sarah, and if Tess cares about her enough to remember her birthday and buy her gifts, then maybe she isn’t so bad.
Tess sets all of her things on the ground near the cake table. She runs her hands down the front of her jeans and gives you a tight-lipped smile. “You think I overdid it?”
Yes, you want to say. There’s the smallest bit of pink tulle sticking out of one of the bags, and you want to mention that Sarah hates the way tulle feels and will recoil the moment the plasticky fabric touches her fingertips.
You clear your throat instead. “Uh, no! No. Not at all. Thank you? Yeah, thank you for一uhm…for remembering her birthday. How…thoughtful.”
Joel coughs. And you know it’s an intentional sound, covering up an ill timed laugh. The air feels thick. Awkward and uncomfortable, and you think everything could be solved if only Tess would just leave.
“There’s drinks in the fridge,” Joel tells her. “Soda and beer. A couple of wine coolers. Feel free to help yourself. Tommy’s getting Sarah from her sleepover and pickin’ up pizza on the way here.”
Tess nods and you try not to notice how much warmer her voice is when she speaks to him. “Oh, perfect. It’ll be such a good day, she’ll love it,” she says.
Your eyes narrow and you tilt your head curiously. You hate when she does that一speaks as if she knows Sarah. Like they’re familiar, like she’s anything to your daughter except for her dad’s on-again-off-again girlfriend. “You don’t know that,” you say, masking the venom in your voice. “She might hate it.”
She won’t, but that’s not the point.
“I just meant…well, Sarah’s a really sweet girl. I’m sure she’ll just enjoy everyone being together,” Tess says softly. Reasonably. Actually kind, devoid of the bitter undertone your words possess.
It only makes you hate her more.
“Right.” The word comes out short. Clipped. A little sarcastic.
Silence lingers. Joel stands beside her, scratching the back of his neck, eyes fixed on a strand of white wisteria and adamantly avoiding the altercation you’re encouraging.
Tess sighs, and then stares hard at the side of Joel’s face. “Well. I’m gonna grab a beer, you want one?”
Joel shakes his head. “Later. Thanks, though.”
The moment she slips through the glass door and into the kitchen, leaving the two of you alone once more, you feel yourself deflate. “What if I wanted a beer? Not very considerate of her to offer to grab you one and not—”
A grin stretches across Joel’s face. One of those smiles he can’t help, one that reaches his eyes and has them crinkling around the corners. He shakes his head the moment you start speaking and cuts you off to say, “You hate beer.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that.”
“Yes she does, we talk about you all the time.”
You scoff, the sound coming out both surprised and infuriated. “You talk about me? Why? I’m sure she’s got an awful lot to say about the bitter baby momma, doesn’t she?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“What? I’m just asking! You guys don’t have anything better to talk about?”
“C’mon, now. Don’t get all crazy,” he says. But he still wears that smirk, like he’s enjoying himself, enjoying the show, and doesn’t tell you to relax or be nice. He doesn’t even try to.
“You can’t seriously expect me to like her, Joel. She’s coming to our daughter’s birthday party while shacking up with my ex husband—”
His mirth falls, replaced with an air of seriousness. “I’m not your ex husband,” he insists. “I never signed those papers.”
“Semantics,” you say.
But Joel’s face contorts further, and though he passes it off as irritation you can see the injury behind his eyes. Can see the way your words hurt him. “No,” he says, voice firm. “We might be separated for now but I’m still your husband.”
His gaze feels heavy, piercing.
You don’t want to argue. And it is technically true, anyway. So you turn your attention away from him, unwilling to feel that longing so acutely, wishing the goosebumps on the back of your neck away. “Okay,” you concede, the softness returning to your voice. “I’m sorry.”
Not long after, Tommy pulls up in the driveway. You and Joel stand on the front porch, and Sarah’s launching herself out of the back seat before Tommy fully turns the engine off.
“Momma!” Her hair shifts around her ears as she runs to you, throwing her arms around your waist and burying her face into the softness of your belly.
It was Joel’s week to have her, so you haven’t seen her pretty face since the family dinner Wednesday night, and you swear she’s grown two inches in the last three days.
Everything feels more at ease the moment she’s in your hands. The Earth feels brighter, warmer. “Happy birthday, sweet pea! Did you have a good time with Ellie? You guys get to go swimming like you wanted?”
She nods and takes a step back. “We did! And look, look!” Sarah lifts her arm to show you the blue and white pony bead bracelet on her wrist. “We made friendship bracelets too!”
You run your hands through her hair and sing your praises like you always do, listening intently while she recounts each moment of the sleepover to you.
Tommy carries three pizzas inside, and you and Sarah follow him to the kitchen. She’s flipping open the container and pulling a slice right from the box, still talking animatedly around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni.
You turn to grab a plate from the cupboard, but Joel’s already got one in hand, passing it to you to give to Sarah.
It feels seamless. Routine. The two of you working together, around each other, with each other.
Try as you might to focus on Sarah’s words, all you can think about is the rough texture of Joel’s hand as it brushes yours and lingers a second too long.
You can feel it in that touch. The want. The longing. The despair.
The remnants of your conversation in the backyard lingers in the back of your head. I’m still your husband, he’d said.
And despite how badly you wanted to hate him and allow yourself to be free, he was never an evil man, just an absent one.
Tess speaks behind you. Something about how she knows Ellie’s mom from work. And it reminds you that while you might still be stuck, right where you were three years ago when you left him, Joel already has someone else. Someone to fill the gap you’d left behind.
“Can you get me some water, mom?”
Sarah. The day is about Sarah, you remind yourself. Not about you or Joel or the goddamn mistress he invited to your child’s birthday party.
You smile and shake the tension from your bones. “‘Course I can.”
The five of you eat together at the dinner table, and truth be told Tess’s presence isn’t a bad one. You think, in another life, you might even like her. Sometimes she makes quick quips towards Tommy and you find yourself actually laughing.
But dinner comes to a sudden halt the moment Sarah’s standing to dump her plate in the sink and her eye catches on the glint of a silver butterfly in the back yard.
She’s a gasping, giggling mess of a girl as she takes in all the decorations, running her small fingers over each strand of wisteria. She takes a running leap in an attempt to touch the streamers overhead but is still just a hair too short at ten—now eleven years old.
Joel lifts her onto his shoulders so she can grab at them, and she spends the next five minutes directing him like a train conductor around the back yard.
It makes your chest pull tight, watching it all unfold. Joel’s always been the best father—before and after the separation. Sarah is the one thing the two of you have done right.
When she’s ready to open her gifts, Joel sets her in the center of the folding table and everyone gathers around her. Sarah chooses the gift wrapped in paper decorated with moons and stars first—your gift.
You try not to feel so smug about it, watching her sift through all the glittering bags from Tess to find yours.
She peels the paper back to uncover the collectors edition box set of the Dawn of the Wolf books, and is so excited she’s nearly jumping off the table to throw herself into your arms. “How did you know I wanted this one? I’ve been looking for these!”
“Lucky guess,” you say, but she’s mentioned them half a dozen times since the final movie came out in theaters, and they’ve been sitting in the back of your closet for months.
Sarah chooses one of Tess’s gifts next, unearthing a glittering princess tiara. And though Sarah has never once in her life been much of a princess girl (with the singular exception of Mulan), she smiles anyway and says. “Thank you, Tess. It’s very pretty.”
But then proceeds to turn to you, eyes wide and brows raised. She lowers her tone and asks, “Momma, do I have to wear this?”
You try not to laugh. Really, you do. But a snort comes out anyway and you can feel Joel’s pointed stare as you gently take the tiara from Sarah’s hands. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do, baby.”
An uncomfortable silence settles between everyone, but you don’t care. Not when Sarah’s relief is physical and instantaneous, shoulders dropping as she’s unburdened by the sudden expectation.
“Alright, mine next,” Joel interjects. He hands her a white gift bag that has silver stars on it and she’s tearing into it the moment she can, discarding the tissue paper into the growing pile beside her.
She gasps as she pulls out the Dawn of the Wolf movie set. Blu-ray discs, even. Every one of them all wrapped up in clear cellophane packaging with a limited edition poster inside.
It’s an uncoordinated gift. As much a surprise to you as it is to her.
That feeling of longing rears its persistent head again, because you miss that harmony you once had. The two of you used to exist together not as two separate people but as an extension of each other.
You used to be so close. He used to be more than your husband, more than the father of your child—Joel was your best friend.
And seeing that harmony you once possessed displayed in such a clear, tangible way, completely unprompted? It has emotion welling up in your throat.
Sarah opens the remainder of her gifts. From Tess, all pink princess-themed dresses and skirts and things that will rot at the back of her closet. But Sarah grimaces and says thank you through it all.
Tommy’s gift comes last. And thank god for it—because the moment he pulls it from the back of Joel’s truck, Sarah forgets all about princess tiaras and Dawn of the Wolf.
“Oh my God! Are you serious?! This is mine?! Uncle Tommy!”
Everyone watches with toothy grins as he passes her an electric guitar. The body is glittering teal with an ivory fretboard, child sized to accommodate her eleven year old hands.
It’s the very same one that hangs in the window of the music shop downtown. The one she eyes every time Joel takes her there to pick up a fresh set of strings.
Tommy laughs and kneels down in front of her. “Now, I know your old man ain’t cool enough to rock n’ roll. But he can get you started teachin’ you the basics on his old man guitar, hm?”
Sarah giggles and turns to give Joel the widest smile. “Dad! It’s called an old man guitar? You told me it was called an acoustic!”
It makes everyone laugh, and your heart swells in your chest. So overwhelmingly full with love and affection you fear it might burst. The sun is shining and your baby is safe and happy and healthy and Tommy’s making stupid jokes and Joel has his hand splayed on the small of your back.
The touch is grounding. Not inherently intimate, just…affectionate. Filled with the type of love that warms you but burns around the edges.
You lean into his side out of pure instinct, and when he rests his cheek on the top of your head, you’re suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to kiss him.
And it would be so easy. Just to tilt your head back, to smile and press your lips to his. Quick, but full of all the words left unsaid; I love you, and I always have, and I always will.
But you can feel Tess and her heavy stare from across the yard. And when you meet her eyes, you’re surprised to find no trace of resentment there. No anger, no fury. Just…understanding. And perhaps a bit of sadness, too.
Tess was also newly divorced when she met Joel, you know. A quick friendship that had slowly evolved into more. You wonder now, for the very first time, what it must be like for her. How it felt to watch you interact with Joel, how it felt each and every time your jealousy ran a little wild, how much strength it must have taken her to never respond to your cruelty with the same energy.
Guilt slithers like a python between your ribs as you come to the realization that she’s just trying to figure all this out, too. The same way you are.
Tommy helps Sarah lift the guitar strap over her shoulder. And the moment it’s secure, she’s running up to you and Joel and all but begging him to teach her to play a song.
And Joel obliges, of course. Grabs the acoustic guitar he’d hand-made out of spruce wood years ago and within a few short minutes, they’re sitting side by side on the back porch. The sight of them brings a kind of peace to your heart that feels indescribable.
You slip soundlessly inside to start cleaning up. Picking up the empty dishes and half-filled glasses from the table and carrying them to the sink in the kitchen.
Tess saddles up to your side with a hand towel and an easy smile. “Want some help?”
When your brows furrow, it’s on instinct. A knee-jerk reaction. You think about the words that threaten to spill from behind your teeth. More cruelty, more short words. No, I don’t need your help. I’ve got it handled.
But then you remember the way she’d looked at you and think better of it. Swallow down your dislike and instead say, “Uhm. Yeah…sure. Thank you.”
You turn on the warm water and lather the sponge in that god-awful dollar store dish soap he’s been buying since you left.
Tess doesn’t speak. Not right away. She just takes the washed and rinsed dish from your hand when you offer it to her and dries it in silence. She moves around the kitchen with a familiar sort of ease that would bother you.
Well. It does bother you. Because once this was your kitchen, too. You who decided which cabinet to put the cups in. You who organized the spices. You who picked out the stainless steel stove. Your kitchen. Your house. Your husband.
But you try not to let it show. Because she doesn’t deserve to be punished for what was ultimately a decision you made. And she’s never crossed any boundaries. Has always been good to your daughter. Good to Joel.
“You’re a great mom,” she suddenly says, sticking a dry plate on top of the existing stack in the cupboard. “You’re definitely that girl’s favorite person in the whole world.”
As sweet as the sentiment is, it makes you snort. “I think today it might be Uncle Tommy who’s her favorite.”
Tess smiles, but shakes her head. “Nah. She talks about you like you put the stars in the sky,” she explains. And then her voice gets a little lighter, as she says, “You know, the first time I met her the three of us went out for ice cream. And you wanna know the first thing she said to me?”
You’d known about the ice cream and about Sarah meeting Tess. Joel had introduced the two of you months prior, and refused to even tell Sarah about Tess without your explicit consent. As much as you hated it at the time, it had been handled with respect. But Joel had never given details, just said that it had gone well. That it seemed like Sarah had fun. “What did she say?”
“We sat at that picnic table and she looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘my mommy smells way better than you.’”
A crease forms between your brows and you turn to face Tess with a disbelieving look on your face. “She what?”
There’s a certain amusement in her voice when she responds. “Yep. And she was probably right, anyhow. I was working at a restaurant at the time and probably smelled like garlic aioli.”
“Oh my god.” You can’t help the laughter that bubbles out of you. It truly is unintentional. But imagining those words in Sarah’s pretty, sweet voice sends you over the edge.
But Tess is laughing, too. Which is some small comfort. “And then she proceeded to tell me how much you liked that perfume Joel got you for Christmas and stood up on the bench and gave me a whole run-down about how you spray it. So that I could smell better, too.”
You can just imagine the way Joel’s face would’ve gone tomato red, embarrassed and in public no less. “You’re joking.”
Tess shakes her head. “Nope. I swear. Neck, chest, and the insides of your wrists. Right?”
You hand her the last dish and rinse the soap from the sink. “Uhm, yeah. In that order exactly. She’s…god. I’m so sorry. She’s something else.”
She waves your apology away with a quick hand. “Oh, it’s fine. Kids never have a filter at that age. I thought it was hilarious, actually.” She puts the final dish away and drapes the hand towel over the cabinet door beneath the sink.
There’s more she wants to say, but she hesitates. And this new ease you’ve created feels precarious, so you’re not sure if you should urge her or stay silent.
But after a few moments, she crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against the counter. Her eyes are averted, staring only at the linoleum floor. And then she says, “I only say this because I want you to know even though Tommy got her a guitar and Joel’s going to teach her how to play it, it’s you she keeps a framed photo of on her nightstand when she stays here.”
Emotion chokes you. Pressure builds behind your eyes, but you try your damndest to swallow it down. You don’t want to cry, not here. Not in front of Tess. And not on Sarah’s birthday.
“The only person in the world who even comes close is Joel,” Tess continues. “And Joel and I…we have a lot in common. One of those things being that we’re both still stupidly in love with the person who left us.”
You try to blink away the moisture in your eyes, but it feels useless now. “Tess.”
The word comes out as a warning. One she doesn’t heed.
“Joel’s a good man,” she says. “He’s a good man, and he loves nothing more than you and that little girl. And I can see it in you, too. The love that’s there. The kind that never, ever goes away. I don’t want…” she sighs. Shakes her head and tries again. “You deserve good things. And I’m glad you saw that you deserved more and stood your ground because Sarah is watching everything you do. And one day, when she’s in the same situation, she will look back and know exactly what choice to make. But I think it’s important to show her that love does exist. And sometimes…sometimes all it needs is a second chance.”
Your breaths feel uneven. Thready and labored. You don’t know what to say or what to do or how to react. Your ex husband’s girlfriend is standing here, encouraging you to forgive him. Not for you or for him but for Sarah.
It all feels heavy. Too heavy.
And all you can muster up the courage to say is, “Thank you, Tess. I…I appreciate you.”
“I’m only saying to you what I wish someone would say to my ex husband.” She gives you a soft smile. One that comes from a place of womanhood, of a sameness that can’t be manufactured. And then she clears her throat and squeezes your shoulder and says, “I’m, uh—gonna go ahead and sneak out. Thank you for letting me celebrate with her, too.”
You wait.
Wait until she walks away. Until she grabs her keys from the table. Until you hear the front door shut. Until you hear her car tires groan against the gravel in the driveway.
And then the tears are falling fast down your cheeks. Marring your skin and leaving wet streaks behind.
Because Tess is right. Or at least you want her to be.
You would give anything, anything, to feel whole again. To have that pretty ring on your finger and to fall asleep in the same bed and wake up to Sarah wriggling her way between you. To make coffee in the mornings and hear Joel tease you about the amount of creamer you use. To throw his laundry in with yours and file your taxes together again and hold his hand over the center console on a late night drive.
All it needs is a second chance.
When the sliding glass door opens, you turn towards the sink and frantically wipe the tears away from your face. You don’t want Sarah to see you crying一she always takes longer to recover from your tears than you yourself do.
“What the fuck’s goin’ on?”
Relief floods you when you hear Tommy’s voice. He closes the door behind him and as soon as you turn to face him, he’s crossing the kitchen in four strides. “Sorry,” you say. “I’m fine, I promise.”
“Don’t look fine to me. What happened? Why’re you cryin’?” He holds your shoulders, keeping you at arms length. “And where the fuck is Tess? Did she say somethin’ to you?”
There’s an underlying venom in his voice you know all too well. The kind that slips out when he’s gotten too drunk or when someone gets disrespectful to a woman in front of him. Protective to a fault.
You shake your head. “Tommy, no. It wasn’t like that. She was actually being…” you laugh, but it comes out bitterly. “She was really fucking nice. I’m just…”
His gaze is hard as he asks, “You sure? ‘Cause I don’t care what you and Joel got goin’ on, you’re still my baby sister. Someone made you cry. All you gotta do is say the word. Still talk to this girl from high school an’ she fights mean. I’ll call her up right now.”
This time when you laugh, it's more genuine. “Tommy,” you chastise. “Jesus, no. It wasn’t like that, okay? I swear. Relax.”
He searches your face, but ultimately nods and takes a step back. “Just don’t like seein’ you cry,” he admits.
And it softens your heart, because you get it. Understand what it’s like to love someone like a sibling even without sharing an ounce of blood.
You’d seen Tommy on the worst days and on his best days. You’ve seen him cry and seen him laugh. Made sure he had a good meal every night and socks without holes in them in the mornings. Kept his secrets and gave him dating advice and bailed him out of jail a time or two.
It had been you who’d held his hand the whole way home after he was discharged from the combat zone of Desert Storm.
Tommy has become an integral part of your life. A piece you’d been terrified of losing in the divorce, only to discover your fears had been blessedly in vain.
“It was about Joel,” you admit, sniffling. Quiet and timid, feeling out of step with yourself. Unsure in a way you haven’t been in a long time.
Tommy sighs. “You wanna talk about it?”
He asks carefully. Not pushing, only concerned. And you trust Tommy, maybe more than anyone on the planet, because he has no motivation when it comes to you. So, for once, you say exactly what’s on your mind. “I still love him. I think I always will. But at what point is it disrespectful to myself if I go back? If we just repeat the same old habits, if I spend my days alone again, I…God. What would that look like to Sarah? Would it set this example that it’s okay to accept half-assed love? To go back to someone who you begged for months to just…to just be there. To come home when he promised he would. I deserve that, Tommy.”
“You do,” he agrees easily.
“I just don’t know…I don’t know. How can I tell if things will be different? How do I take that risk and should I? If I go back, wouldn’t this all have been for nothing? I put Sarah through all of this for nothing?”
He sighs heavily, worry on his face. “You want my opinion or you just wanna get it all out?”
“Your opinion,” you say. Because your brain feels all scrambled and chaotic and Tommy has never once lied to you.
“Joel would take the risk on you,” he says with a shrug. Simple. Honest. A clean cut blow straight to your still beating heart.
And the worst part is that you know he’s right.
“You know he went to therapy? That first year.” Tommy laughs. “Joel. Went to therapy. Could hardly believe it. An’ he complained about it every damn week, but he still showed up. I think he tried to be…better. You know? For you.”
It’s the first and only time you and Tommy ever talk about Joel and the things he did right after your divorce. You never wanted to involve him. Never wanted him to get caught in the crossfire.
But you find yourself glad you’re doing it now. Thankful for the honesty, no matter how much it hurts to hear it. “I…I didn’t know that. He never told me. Thank you, Tommy. For always being there for me. And for Sarah, too.”
His lips curl into that same toothy grin that your daughter inherited. “Course,” he says. “S’what I’m here for. And, hey一don’t sweat it so much. Things will turn out the way they’re supposed to. They always do, right?”
You nod, and he wraps a comforting arm around your shoulders. You lean into his embrace and let him pull you to the sliding glass door and back outside. Sarah and Joel are both so occupied in the moment they don’t even look up at you.
Joel’s got one hand on the neck of his guitar while the other is adjusting Sarah’s fingers on the fretboard of hers.
You look up at Tommy and ask, “How long do you think ‘til she’s ready for cake?”
He snorts. “Oh, you’ve got an hour. At least.”
It ends up taking two.
But you don’t mind. You just sit on the porch steps and watch the two of them. Sarah’s eager to learn, and Joel is a patient teacher. He answers all of her questions and gives her tips and pointers and even promises to find a pink guitar pick just for her.
When Joel asks what song she wants to learn first, Sarah smiles excitedly and answers, “We have to play My Girl!”
The moment she says it, Joel casts his eyes to you and your heart pinches tight. And you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’s reliving the same memories you are.
Those late nights right after Sarah was born when she would cry and cry until Joel sang her softly back to sleep. The times he’d sing it to her even when she was older, dancing around the kitchen while she climbed on his back.
The memories that came even before Sarah. The first time he ever sang it to you, after he’d had one too many beers and you’d had to put him to bed. The time it had come on the radio in his truck and he’d pulled over to dance with you in the middle of a field of wheat.
And on your wedding night, where you’d been so painfully in love that you barely registered the small group of family and friends around you.
Because Joel had held you tight and kissed your forehead and sang the lyrics softly in your ear. His beard had ticked your skin, and your face had gone all hot, but you’d never been happier than you were at that very moment. Married to the man you loved, surrounded by people who cared about you, and a beautiful baby growing in your belly.
Of course that’s the song she would choose.
It takes her only forty minutes to learn the first verse.
She quits only when the sun begins to set, and makes Joel pinky swear to practice with her tomorrow.
Tommy lights the candles on her cake, and everyone sings happy birthday around the table. She clings to you the entire time. Arm intertwined with yours, leaning heavily into your side, face pressed to your belly.
Sarah makes a wish and blows out the flame and asks Joel if he can put on a movie while they eat. He suggests Curtis and Viper, but Sarah won’t hear of it.
She’s tearing open her new blu-ray box set of Dawn of the Wolf with vanilla frosting still sticking to her fingers.
And for the entirety of the first movie, she sits between you and Joel on the couch. Her head is in your lap and her feet are in his, and it feels good.
It feels like home.
Tommy leaves when the credits roll. And Sarah jumps up to give him a too-tight bear hug and thanks him a million times for her guitar and swears that she’ll be concert ready by the following weekend.
But when she sees you grabbing your jacket from the rack by the door, her face falls. “Can we please stay here tonight? Just for my birthday!”
It breaks your heart into a million tiny pieces. Not only the request itself but the way she says it. Full of hope and love, like it doesn’t even register to her that the request might be too much for you to handle.
You think about Tess’s words and you think about your tears from earlier and you think about Joel.
When your eyes find his, they’re full of melancholy. He carries this deep, pensive longing that has lingered there for years, and you start to wonder if it’ll ever go away.
He shrugs. “I don’t mind. But it’s your week, so it’s your call.”
“Please, mom! Please, please, please!”
You don’t think you’d be able to say no to her if you tried.
When you sigh, Sarah knows it’s over. She jumps in excitement and spins around the room and requests that Joel make popcorn before you start the second movie, to which he immediately obliges.
Tommy hugs you tight before he goes. Kisses your temple and says, “You’re tough, little sister. Trust your gut. And Christ, girl. Give yourself some credit every now and again. You’re doing great.”
“Thanks for coming, Tommy,” you mutter. “We love you. And text me when you get home safe or I’ll have your ass.”
He chuckles low and you close the door behind him, leaving you in the silence of the living room. In the distance, you can hear Joel and Sarah in the kitchen.
She’s talking excitedly about all the songs she wants to learn. You can hear the smile on Joel’s face as he utters words of encouragement. The kernels pop and the scent of salt and butter begins to drift into the living room, and you’re trying to stay strong.
Really, you are. But it would be so fucking easy to just…to come home.
And not in the sense of moving back into this house and dedicating every Saturday night to movies and popcorn. Home—like coming back to Joel.
You swallow hard and busy yourself setting up the next movie. Ejecting one disc and replacing it with the next. Skipping through all the previews and adjusting the volume, flipping off the overhead light and turning on the wax warmer in the corner that looks like it hasn’t been used since the day you’d left.
When you’re done, you make your way to the kitchen and interject their popcorn process only to tell Sarah, “Why don’t you go upstairs and get your pajamas on before we start?”
“But, mom. I’m not gonna fall asleep. Can’t I do it after?”
You and Joel exchange a look—both fully aware that she’ll be out like a light before the twenty minute mark.
He smiles and nudges Sarah. “G’on. Listen to your momma.”
She does so begrudgingly, her footfalls heavy up the stairs and down the hall to her room.
Joel turns off the heat on the stove and pulls down the big plastic bowl from the top shelf. The one you picked out all those years ago. He glances at you over his shoulder and asks, “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”
You know better than to lie. Not to Joel. Who has always seen right through you. Who knows you better than anyone else on the planet.
And what would you say, anyway? That you’re not sure what you want anymore, that you miss him but you’re terrified of accepting any less than what you deserve? That it hurts to see him with someone else, that it hurts even more that she’s nice?
When you answer, the words come out short and clipped. Not aggressive, just…tired. “Let’s just get through the night, Joel.”
You leave the kitchen and return to the couch, relieved to hear Sarah bounding back down the stairs. She smiles when she sees you and it eases the strain on your heart if only a little.
She climbs up beside you and leans into your embrace when you hug her tight to your side. “Thanks for everything, mommy,” she murmurs, cheek smooshed to your arm. “I had the best day ever.”
You kiss the top of her head and thank the universe or god or whoever’s listening for sending you the most perfect daughter. For giving you a reason to prioritize your own heart. “You’re so welcome, sweet girl. Happy birthday.”
Joel comes to sit on her other side, popcorn bowl in hand. “Ready?”
She’s shoveling popcorn into her mouth before you can even hit play.
And twenty minutes later? She’s got her head on Joel’s shoulder, and there’s a buttery kernel still in her hand, and she’s snoring so loud the sound echoes in the room.
You look at Joel, and he’s wearing this grin that you think you haven’t seen in a while, and you have to cover your mouth to keep yourself from laughing hard enough you wake her.
“Christ,” Joel says. “S’like she’s sawin’ logs in her sleep.”
“Between Ellie’s last night and soccer practice this morning, I knew she’d crash hard. And I think Tommy gave her a bunch of candy on the way over.”
“Oh, he definitely did. Found three bags of peach rings in the trash,” he tells you with a light hearted chuckle. He shifts carefully, tucking one arm beneath her head and the other beneath her knees. “I’ll go tuck her in.”
You nod, and the moment you’re left alone in the silence you’re finding your way back to the kitchen. Cleaning up the scattered mess from the day, trying to busy your hands and quiet the turmoil in your head.
When you collect all the torn wrapping paper and cellophane packaging and discard it, you move on to wiping down the countertops.
Joel doesn’t say anything when he enters the kitchen soundlessly, but you can feel his presence as if he were an extension of your heart.
He leans against the archway and presses his thumb into his palm. “You’ve always done that, you know,” he says.
Without turning to look at him, scrubbing at a stubborn water ring, you ask, “Done what?”
“Start cleanin’ when you’re tryin’ to work somethin’ out in that head of yours.”
You pause, hand freezing, washcloth still clutched tight between your fingers.
“You remember Sarah’s first day of kindergarten?” He huffs. “Spent the whole day cleaning the baseboards with a damn toothbrush.”
The memory comes back to you the moment he says it. Joel had spent that night working lotion into your chemical-dried palms, skin sore and taut from prolonged exposure to the cleaner you’d used.
“And when she sprained her ankle jumpin’ off the swings at the park, you rented one of those big dumpsters that weekend and threw out all that junk in the garage.”
The more he speaks, the more memories surface that serve to validate his claim. You leave the water stain be, and toss the cloth into the empty sink. “I guess you're right,” you say, trying to laugh it off. To keep things as lighthearted as possible.
But then he says, “I should’ve noticed it. That last week, right before…right before you left.”
The anguish in his words makes your gut twist. Because Tess is right, Joel is a good man. Perfect for you in nearly every way. You love him more than you’ve ever loved anyone, and you hate seeing him like this. Hate even more that you’re the cause of it.
“Was comin’ home every night and the entire house was spotless,” he says somberly. “Knew there was somethin’ going on, just…didn’t think it was…that.”
Emotion rises up in you. Thick and hot in the back of your head, making your ears ring. “Can I ask you something?”
He nods, stepping fully into the kitchen now. He lowers himself into a chair at the table and answers easily, “Anything. You know that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to therapy?”
You expect him to sigh. To shift uncomfortably or avoid the question altogether. But he doesn’t do any of that. He just says, “I thought about it. About tellin’ you. But, uh…guess I just supposed that when you came home to me, it had to be because you wanted to. Not ‘cause of somethin’ I was doing.”
The words shatter what remains of your resolve. “Is that what you think? That I haven’t come home because I didn’t want to?”
He shakes his head. “No, I…I know it’s because of…well. Me. An’ workin’ all the time and everything. Not makin’ the time for you an’ Sarah the way a man ought to. The way a dad and a husband ought to. But I haven’t missed anything in the last three years, have I?”
You try to recall all the events that have passed since the separation. All of the parent teacher conferences and birthdays and doctors appointments and soccer games and art shows.
“Even when you put that hole in the wall of your apartment, tryin’ to move furniture around. Scared about gettin’ the deposit back, so you called me,” he says. “An’ I came, baby. Didn’t I?”
Those stubborn tears return again, pooling in the corners of your eyes. Quietly, you admit, “Yeah, you did.”
“There ain’t a day that goes by I don’t regret losin’ you.”
“God, Joel.” Your voice cracks when you say his name.
And that’s all it takes before he’s standing to his feet and closing the distance between you, the instinct to soothe your discomfort deeply ingrained. “Hey,” he says, squeezing your fingers in one hand and tilting your face up with the other. “Why’re you cryin’? Talk to me.”
You shake your head. “I just…I miss this. Having movie nights and making popcorn and carrying Sarah up to bed. I miss coordinating birthday gifts and not just co-parenting but parenting together. I miss being here and I miss you, Joel.”
His eyes soften, and he gently drags the back of his knuckles across your cheek. “Then come home, baby,” Joel says.
As if there isn't a risk of hurting Sarah even further than the damage that’s already been done. As if he doesn’t have a partner who’s kind, who cares about Sarah in the only way she knows how. As if it was simple.
“I wish it were that easy,” you murmur, leaning into the palm of his hand.
“Tell me what you need,” Joel says, voice a little breathy now. “Just tell me. Talk to me. I’ll do anything you want, baby, anything.”
“I love you, Joel. That’s never changed and it never, ever will. But how do I trust you again? How do I know that you’ll be there? How do I know things won’t go back to the way they were? That we’ll settle back into a routine and then you’ll leave me here, raising our little girl alone?” You shake your head. “I can’t do that again. I can’t. I won’t.”
He folds his big arms around you and pulls you close to his chest. Holds you tight enough that it feels like he’s holding you together. “You won’t have to,” he says. “I swear. I’ll spend every day I’ve got left proving it to you. But you gotta let me in, baby. You’ve gotta let me fix it.”
“If I do come home, how confusing is that for Sarah? I mean, God. Haven’t we fucked things up enough? What if I come home and then it still doesn't work and一?”
Joel pulls away just enough to see you and shakes his head. “We’ll go slow, alright? We don’t have to tell her unless you’re ready. No reason to make things more complicated than they have to be,” he says. “And Sarah’s strong. She’s like her mom in that way.”
He’s saying everything you want to hear and you feel yourself unraveling fast. “And what about Tess?”
“She’ll understand, because she knows I’m yours,” Joel answers. “Yours.”
And then, without any warning, he carefully lowers himself to his knees in front of you.
His fingers curl tight around your hips, and everything feels hot and overwhelming and your breath gets caught in your lungs. He presses a kiss to your belly in the same place Sarah rests her head and you feel suddenly like crying again. “Joel.”
“I’ll do anything you want,” he insists. “Anything, baby. Please. Please come home to me.”
And all you can think at that moment is, why haven’t you come home sooner?
You thread your hands through his hair, scratching gently at his scalp. Your tears are falling freely now for the second time today but this time it’s different. Lighter. Like a breath of fresh air, tears of relief instead of turmoil.
“I love you,” Joel says, slipping his hands beneath your top and running his rough palms over your smooth curves. “Please, baby. Please. I need you.”
Your longing has become something else entirely now. A beast in your heart that’s grown teeth and sharpened claws, tearing apart every last defense you’ve so carefully built to keep him at arms length. When you speak, the word is a broken surrender in your mouth. “Okay.”
Joel freezes. “Oh…kay?” His brows furrow and you can feel his hesitance now. Unsure of himself, pulling away but so clearly wanting to touch you more.
You cover his hands with your own, keeping them in place, pressing them more firmly against your ribs. “Okay,” you repeat. “I want to come home.”
In the fifteen years you’ve known Joel Miller, you’ve never once seen him relax as much as he does the moment you say those words. His shoulders slump, the tension in his face dissipates, the tightness bleeds from his limbs.
And then he lets out this long held sigh, shoulders shaking with it. He lifts the hem of your shirt with his hands and presses a wet, open mouthed kiss to your navel. “Thank you,” he says, and you know he means it.
He kisses you again, a little higher this time, and it ignites a flame low in your abdomen. Makes you feel suddenly warm and tingly all over. Makes you miss him in an entirely different way. His hands are rough and his eyes are glassy when he looks up at you through dark lashes.
“I love you,” he says. Soft. Gentle. But real. Not the sentiment you’re always giving him; the half-empty meaning. A way to say you care, but not like you used to.
When Joel says it, it’s different. It’s all consuming. Nothing distant or safe about it.
“I love you so fucking much, baby. Please let me show you. Please.”
You nod without hesitation. Knowing what comes next, knowing the last step in your decision is giving yourself over entirely. Mind and body alike, becoming two souls bound together again, the way you used to be, the way you always should’ve been. You know he needs this, but maybe not as much as you need it.
Joel thumbs open the button on your jeans and carefully一oh, so carefully一tugs down the zipper. He watches you the whole time like you’re going to suddenly change your mind, like you haven’t wanted his touch every moment of every day for three years. Longer, even.
He kisses the satin lining of your panties with a reverent mouth, and then he’s pulling them off with your jeans. Over the swell of your hips and down your thighs. You anchor yourself with your hands on his shoulders and Joel helps you step out of them completely.
With a contented sigh, he presses his forehead to the space between your ribs. Inhales deep and then kisses your pubic bone. “You’re so beautiful,” he mutters, more to himself than to you.
Another kiss, lower this time, right above your clit. Like it’s muscle memory. Like relearning you will take no time at all.
His hands slide up the back of your thighs and palm at the swell of your ass. “Spread your legs for me,” he says. And the moment you do, Joel’s got his head between them and his tongue swiping through the gathering wetness there.
It feels like heaven. His mouth is warm and soft and he knows just where to lick and where to suck and where to bite. He’s hungry for it. Equally as starved. He groans low against you and you can feel the vibration of it down to your toes. “Oh my god.”
His tongue laves over your clit in long, smooth strokes. It’s full of purpose and worship and adoration. When he pulls away to speak, he takes the opportunity to wedge his hand between your thighs. “I’m sorry, baby,” he whispers, gently pressing his middle finger inside of you. He adds another, his ring finger this time, still adorned with the titanium band you’d picked out years ago. “I’m so, so fucking sorry that I hurt you.”
Joel curls his fingers inside of you at the same moment his warm, apologetic tongue finds your clit again. The intensity of it makes you lose your balance, leaning back against the counter, hands scrambling to find purchase. A whimper escapes you, pleasure ratcheting higher and higher with each practiced, wet flick of his tongue between your folds.
“Christ,” he hisses. “Missed you so much, sweetheart. An’ s’okay if you don’t wanna admit it, but I know you missed me, too. Hm?”
Your chest squeezes tight. Because it’s true, it’s true, and you’re starting to feel delirious between the pleasure his sweet mouth brings and the sugar that pours from his tongue. You want it to be real so badly that you tremble. “God, Joel.”
“Shh,” he hums. “Don’t think so hard. Just feel. Feel me, baby. Feel what I do to you. Feel how much you love me.”
Christ. You do. You love him. You always have. And even when you decide to love yourself more, what you feel for Joel has always lived beneath your skin. A fire you’ve spent so long trying to put out, and you’re just now realizing you’ve only been stoking the flames.
Keeping them steady until now, until you return to him. And his mouth is like gasoline to the flames of your heart. Sweet words, sugary tongue. Honey poured in your ear, everything you’ve longed for all these years.
You feel your release approaching fast, but Joel does, too. He pulls away the moment his name leaves your mouth, but it’s only for long for him to lift you onto the counter and to spread your legs far enough to house the width of his hips.
“Wanna feel you, baby,” he mutters, kissing the hollow of your throat. His breath is hot against your prickled skin, his words and lips both desperate. Needier than you’ve ever seen him, and you understand because you feel it, too.
“Promise me,” you say, words breathless, greedily swallowing up his oxygen. “Promise me you mean it. Promise me you’ll never pull this shit again.”
Joel leans back. Cradles your face in his hands like he holds divinity. And maybe, to him, you are divine. His god given solace.
His wife.
“I mean it,” he says, gaze holding firm, eyes locked with yours. “Everything I am, baby. Everything. S’yours. I’m all yours. I promise.” He kisses you hard, and you can taste yourself on his tongue. “Let me in, baby. Let me come home.”
Home. Home, home一yours is here, with him and with Sarah in this house he built for you. And Joel’s home is you. In the confines of your soft heart.
Your hands find the back of his neck, nails scratching against the skin. And then you find yourself nodding, giving into it completely, flames of lust transformed now into a cleansing ritual, burning away all the hurt and resentment. “I love you,” you say, and he presses his forehead to yours with tears in his eyes.
Joel lets out a long sigh, and then unbuckles his belt. Pushes his jeans and boxers down just enough to let his cock spring free. He holds it in his hands and you watch as he strokes it once, and then twice.
You wrap your legs around his waist and lean back just a little, just enough to make it easier for him as he lines himself up with your entrance and pushes inside with a shaky groan.
The stretch aches in the best way, and you focus on each inch as it disappears inside of you while Joel watches you. His beautiful girl.
He fucks you hard. He splays one of his big hands on the small of your back, holding you steady as his hips crash into yours. There’s intent behind each thrust. A deep, satisfying reminder that you belong together. That you’re his and he’s yours.
With his free hand, he rests it over your belly, low enough to gently stroke your clit with his thumb. “You feel me, baby? You feel me right here?”
“Fuck,” you cry out, fingernails leaving indentations on his skin as you cling to him. “God, Joel. Feels so good, so fucking一god.”
“I know, I know,” he soothes. He kisses you gently this time, a stark contrast to the way his cock splits you apart, pressing hard against that sweet spot inside of you. “I’ve got you. Won’t ever let you down again, baby. You’re my girl an’ I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anything.”
It’s all too much. His desperate thrusts, his thumb on your clit, his tongue in your mouth, his sweet words in your ear. You’re unravelling even faster this time, ears ringing, skin heating. “Joel, please. I’m close, I’m so一”
“Give it to me,” he says. “Come for me. Wanna feel just how bad you missed this, sweetheart.”
Release comes fast. Hot and with unexpected strength. Your vision blurs and your limbs tremble around him. Joel slots his wet mouth against yours, swallowing up your moans, taking everything from you that you’re willing to give.
You can feel his pace falter and his brows knit together as he nears the summit. And when you feel the pressure of his hands begin to lighten, you know his intent. But you hold firm, wrapping your legs around his hips, pulling him in even deeper. “Inside me, Joel, please,” you whisper. “I want it. I want you.”
He groans low the moment you say it and buries himself to the hilt, spilling himself deep inside you. Joel stays like that the whole time, only moving the smallest bit, filling you up until he’s spent and twitching. “Christ,” he hisses. “Love you so much, baby. Don’t you ever leave me again.”
The come down is slow. Unhurried. He stays inside you until his cock softens, peppering gentle kisses across your face. He traces the curves of your jaw and your brow bone with his fingertips as if he’d forgotten the way it feels to touch you and wants to remember.
When he does finally pull back, his hands still hold you. Fingers laced through yours while he gathers your jeans from the floor. “C’mon,” he says. “Let’s go on up to bed.”
You don’t argue. You just let him do what he needs to. Let him hold your hand the whole way up. Let him carefully take off your shirt and unclasp your bra once you close the bedroom door behind you. He pulls one of his t-shirts from the closet and tugs it over your head, kissing your forehead right after.
Once he changes out of his clothes, discarding everything but his boxers, Joel crawls into bed beside you and pulls you close to his chest. You kiss his warm skin, right over his heart, and close your eyes.
But you can still feel his gaze as it lingers on the side of your face, and when you open your eyes to look at him, he wears this lovesick smile. You ask playfully, “You gonna stay up all night?”
Joel shrugs. “Maybe,” he admits. “Just like holdin’ you is all. Like seein’ you here. With me.”
You snuggle into him, warming your chilled fingers against his soft belly. “Get some rest, Joel. I’ll still be here in the morning, okay? I promise.”
He kisses you again and buries his nose into the crook of your neck. His voice is soft. The word broken but tender in his mouth as he says, “Okay.”
When you fall asleep, it’s to the sound of Joel’s soft snores beside you and Sarah’s echoed down the hallway.
You rest easy that night, without an ounce of regret. Feeling relieved in a way you weren’t sure you’d ever feel again.
And when you wake up the next morning, the sun streams in through the half-pulled blinds. You carefully sneak out of bed, pull on a clean pair of his boxers, and pad barefoot down the stairs to the kitchen.
Sarah’s already up. She’s got a record spinning at a low volume, and she’s dancing around the kitchen listening to Pearl Jam. There’s pale powder in one of her eyebrows. It’s spilled across the countertop, too. And in her small hands is a metal mixing bowl and a wooden spoon.
She’s trying to make pancakes you realize, and your heart suddenly aches. Because she seems so grown up at this moment. No longer your sweet and silly girl who needs help washing her hands before dinner, more and more independent every day.
The fear crosses your mind that you are the reason she’s so mature for her age. That the separation is what made her take on this too-adult role.
But then she pauses her mixing to pick up the hand towel off the counter. She stares at herself in the distorted reflection of the metal bowl, and sets the towel over her little shoulder.
The exact same way that you do when you’re cooking dinner for her every night.
You suddenly see exactly what Tess was talking about. Sarah’s not trying to be mature or take on an adult role because she feels the need to.
She’s trying to be just like you.
Sarah picks up the bowl again and turns, eyes glowing when she notices your presence. “Mama! Good morning! I’m making pancakes!”
You laugh softly and come to her side. “I see that,” you say. “Want some help?”
“Yes, please. I’m bad at mixing.”
With a shake of your head, you gently take the bowl from her hand and place it on the counter. “You’re doing a great job, sweet girl. Just need to add a little more water, see?” You turn the faucet on and add the smallest bit and hand the bowl back to her. “Now try.”
She does, and her smile grows as the batter begins to come together and smooth out. “There’s coffee, too. Uncle Tommy showed me how to start it.”
You turn to see the pot full, and giggle as you wonder how exactly that conversation had come about. Likely from the times Joel got up too late to start it, leaving Tommy without caffeine for god knows how long. “Thank you, baby girl,” you say. “That’s so sweet of you.”
Sarah beams at the praise. And when you pull two mugs from the cupboard, she stops you. “Dad will only use the owl one,” she says, nodding to the dishwasher.
You follow her gaze, open the dishwasher, and quickly find the exact mug she’s talking about. It’s a poorly-made ceramic project you’d given to him for Christmas years ago. You were taking a pottery class with a friend, and the mug was the one and only thing you’d made that didn’t turn out so wobbly that it was unusable.
The edges were still a little bent and it sat on the table leaning just a little to the left, but Joel had insisted it was perfect.
You hold it gently in your hands, fingers running over the owl you’d spent hours painting into its side. “The only one he’ll use, huh?”
Sarah nods. “He says it’s special to him ‘cause you made it. Maybe you could teach me how to make stuff too! We could make Uncle Tommy one!”
You promise her you will. Tell her you’ll find a place in town that offers classes and that you’ll go to one together. And then you fill the mug with coffee, climb the stairs, and set it on Joel’s nightstand.
You sit on the edge of the bed beside him and gently shake him awake. He smiles when he sees you. Gives you the same crooked smile your daughter inherited, and it makes you feel loved and warm all over.
“Mornin’ baby.”
“You meant it, didn’t you? Your promise?”
Joel reaches for your hand and holds it tight. “I meant it,” he tells you. “An’ I know it’s hard to trust me now, but I’ll spend every day tryin’ to prove it to you.”
“Good,” you say. “‘Cause I think…I think Sarah and I are coming home.”
