it was risky, you knew, but something about him just enthralled you. sitting at the other end of the bar on a saturday night, you spotted a big brute of a man dwarfing a glass of amber liquid. with a mask pulled up onto his crooked nose, it exposed the scarred skin of his chin and jaw, and chapped, rough lips. something about the way his dark eyes scanned the room made your thighs quiver and your belly ache.
simon didn't look your way to know your eyes were on him, burning into the skin of his lower face and thick neck that bobbed with every sip of alcohol. you were a curious little bunny that couldn't help but be captivated by his wolfish appearance, and it was going to get you bitten.
you were sad when the man didn't look your way. he appeared alone and refused to pay mind to anyone except the bartender. you wondered how long he'd linger as the bar started emptying old customers and flooding with new ones. the population never staggered, and in fact, only increased with happy hour. how long was the man going to sit in that very seat?
it was hard for him not to look your way, the knowledge that your attention kept returning to him gnawing at his brain until he couldn't help a glance when he was sure your gaze was fixed elsewhere. god, you were so pretty and completely oblivious to the fact he'd been shadowing you for months, but he'd caught your attention now. how long was it going to take for you to bite?
you weren't sure how much time had passed, but the man downed his drink, left a large bill on the bar, got up and left without a word. this was your charge. mirroring his actions with your own, smaller bill, you left with a fleeting glance to the patrons around you. you didn't dare risk losing sight of your newfound interest, but he wasn't hard to lose.
simon heard you stumble out the door behind him. you were clumsy, didn't bother hiding the loud clacks of your heels against the pavement, but he didn't give away that he knew. he played along, had to make sure his prey felt in control when in reality, he was the one twisting you like the puppet you were. he tugged on his helmet, flung a leg over his sports bike and turned it on. the question was, did he want to lose you, or give you what you wanted?
seeing him wrap his thick thighs around the gas tank only caused the throb in your pussy to intensify, his sharp, dark eyes that lured you in hidden behind the visor. you went to your own car, turning it on in time just as he pulled out of the parking lot. naturally, you followed, keeping what you thought was a non suspicious amount of distance between him and you.
but simon noticed. he had a keen eye when it came to you, and he laughed underneath his helmet that his little rabbit was the one chasing him, not the other way around. regardless, he led you through winding streets and back roads until he can to a stop in front of an isolated cabin. if his bunny had any brain, you'd have realized he led you to the middle of nowhere.
but when you were tunnel visioned on the object of your desire, you lost sight of everything else. you wanted him, or at least to watch him to see what he got up to. an interesting looking man had to have a life that reflected that, right? you parked your car just down the street when you noticed he took a turn into a driveway far between others.
he swiftly turned off the bike, leaving his helmet on for protection—thats what he told himself, but little old you couldn't harm him if you tried. you were a little bunny compared to him. he hid around the side of his house, near one of the big windows that would tempt you to look inside. he was grateful he had remote control lights.
you crept with what felt like light feet, noticing the lights had been switched on. now where was he? you snuck up to that same window he knew you would peer into, standing on your tiptoes and hands curling around the windowsill for one peek.
but a scream fell silent on your lips when a hand tugged your waist into a hard, warm chest with another on your mouth. heavy breaths moved against your back with a shocking hardness pressed to your ass.
summary: now with a baby on the way, you and jack have reconciled and are learning to fall back in love again; when you show up at the ptmc with suddenly severe symptoms that threaten to take you away from him, he proves to you and himself that he'll do anything to keep you here. (6k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!wife!reader, michael robinavitch, the night shift attendings aka the night crawlers™
content: part two to this fic, established relationship, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, cw for medical inaccuracies (everything is for plot convenience atp lol), medical procedures, heavy mentions of pregnancy and pregnancy complications, kinda really sad but it gets happy in the end i promise, smut 18+ (MDNI): pregnant sex, shower sex, in jack's shower chair bc yeah :P
FIC #1 / 20 FOR 20
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Jack Abbot had changed for you in many ways since the day you nearly left him. He seemed to grow alongside your round stomach, surpassing his own emotional milestones while your baby passed its physical ones. (The fetus was roughly the size of a strawberry when Jack finally decided to stop getting shot at for fun as a SWAT physician.)
He was, admittedly, a man carved out of sharp edges. You knew this long before you ever married him. He was fashioned from constant urgency, snap decisions, and a heartbeat that never quite slowed down. He didn’t let quiet exist — not inside his own head, and certainly not inside his own house. The faint crackle of his police scanner always bled gently down the hall, as low voices report chaos from somewhere else; which always meant that he was somewhere else.
If there was ever silence in your shared home, it only meant that something was horribly wrong — that Jack was gone or that you were; that something terrible needed fixing at the PTMC, or that your own world had slipped slightly off its axis. But then you found out that you were pregnant, while divorce papers still idled on the coffee table back home, and Jack learned quickly how to stay.
He removed the scanner from his nightstand. He ended his days as a TEMS provider and learned what it meant to take a real day off. He realized that he didn’t have to spend his mornings memorizing you before running into a burning building, because you’d still be there when the fire died out; he just needed to learn to stop running all the goddamn time.
Now, the silence in your home feels softer than it used to. Changed, almost. Filled not by a strangling tension of what once felt like an inevitable end, but rather by the steady hiss of running water and panted breaths as heavy as the steam swirling between you.
Jack slouches in his shower chair to accommodate your round stomach as you straddle his lap, bracing your hands on his freckled shoulders. His heavy eyes are clouded with a mixture of desire and worry as they dart between your face and the half-hard cock he holds in his fist.
“You sure about this?” he wonders through panted breaths, which make his flushed chest rise and fall at an uneven pace beneath you.
You exhale hard through your nose, annoyed in a flicker. “Are you gonna ask me that the entire time, or…?”
“I just don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Jack hums, lip quirking into a distant half-smile, ‘cause he loves how easily grumpy you get. “That’s all…”
You flash him a glower, and only slightly melt under his touch when his calloused hands trail up your waist and over your back, skin slick from the warm water rushing from the mounted faucet behind you.
“I’ve been hurting all day— This is the only way to not hurt.”
Jack melts for you instantly. ‘Cause he’s been worried about you all day, in truth, unable to find the root of your sudden headaches and stomach pain. He’s been checking your blood pressure every hour since he woke up, and giving you pain meds every two — though nothing seems to help you quite as much as sex, which you’ve been craving more and more in the latter half of your pregnancy (not that Jack is complaining, of course.)
“Sure you can handle it, honey?” the older man hums, teasing now, as the tip of his weeping cock nudges your achingly sensitive clit.
“Don’t I always, baby?” you deadpan, and don’t give him time to breathe before sinking down over him.
A groan rumbles deep in his throat as your pussy swallows him, inch by inch. Your relieved sigh entwines with the humming faucet as you ease yourself onto him. The warmth of him inside of you cuts through the ache that’s been lingering in your body for days now — a dull, persistent pain that only he can cure.
You melt into his slick chest as the aching leaves your body, replaced now by the fuller feeling of him nestled deep inside of you. You bury your head into his corded neck, inhaling the scent of musky soap clinging to his skin there. Jack noses into your damp hair.
“This okay?” he pants against your temple.
You nod lazily against him and murmur something that sounds like “fuck, you feel so good…” into his skin, though the words come out mostly muffled.
You thread your fingers into the damp silver curls at the nape of his neck, and Jack fights back a shiver. He molds you back together when you go lax on his lap, clutching your hip in one hand and cradling the base of your neck with the other, helping you move back and forth over his scruffy thighs.
“Take it then…” Jack mumbles in half-drunken slurs. “Take it for me, honey. C’mon…”
He leans slightly over, straining one arm to reach for the shower head hanging off the nozzle at his feet, left splashing against the tiled wall beside you. He keeps you pressed against his chest with one hand while his other angles the spout between your thighs. The water sprays against your already sensitive clit; you twitch instinctively at the warm pressure there.
“Jack—” you whimper through a gasped breath.
The man moans through gritted teeth when you clench around him. His free hand tightens around the back of your neck. “I know, honey. I know,” he hums in uneven breaths. “It’s okay. Just use me, baby. There you go. Just use me.”
His words cling to you the same way the rolling steam does, softening all the hardened edges of you. And just for a little while, as Jack keeps you together as you fall apart for him on his lap, the pain finally quiets.
The smell hits him about halfway down the hall.
The lingering steam from the bathroom, smelling like a mixture of your sweet-musky shampoos, gives way to something far more bitter as he nears the kitchen — which has become nothing short of your own personal laboratory since your pregnancy cravings hit. You’ve made otherwise unfathomable concoctions within these walls in the meantime. Jack’s just glad you’ve moved past the sardines and lemon juice phase.
“Wow…” the man croons sarcastically from the threshold, stuffing his keys into the pocket of his scrub pants. “It smells absolutely delicious in here, honey. What’s on the menu for today?”
You don’t look up from the counter before you, as you drench a plate in hot sauce. “Pickles and tabasco,” you answer in monotone. “AKA the only thing I can eat without puking.”
“Hm,” Jack hums, closer now, as his wide hands splay along your shoulders. He spots the container of Rocky Road sitting just to the side, slowly weeping until it gets to the consistency you like. “And the ice cream?”
You tilt your head, glancing up at him like it’s obvious. “To help with the burn. Duh.”
His stomach turns at the thought of such a mixture. His nose scrunches as you reach for a pickle slice, which seems to serve purely as a vehicle for the hot sauce that drips onto the side of your thumb and forefinger when you shove the thing into your mouth.
You hum with a slow nod, eyes fluttering shut as you lick the excess from your fingertips — you didn’t even look this gratified when he was fucking you a half-hour ago.
A laugh sputters from his mouth at the thought.
“That’s what makes you less nauseous?”
“Well, you made me eat real food last night, and I spent all morning puking, so…”
“You don’t feel nauseous anymore, though, right?” he asks, more solemn now, as his chest reignites with a red-hot worry.
“Mm-mm,” you hum wordlessly through another bite.
“And the medicine helped your headache?”
You sigh hard through your nose, turning once more to face him. “Yes, Jack— What’s with the third degree?”
His scruffy jaw tightens a fraction as concern flickers behind his eyes. The hands on your shoulders grip you harder, absentmindedly massaging the ache in your back with his thumb. “You just worry me, honey. That’s all…”
You roll your eyes, though there’s no real bite to your annoyance now. “It’s your fault for getting me pregnant…”
“Hey. You were there, too,” he scoffs, watching with a big dumb grin on his face as you shovel a bite of Rocky Road into your mouth to wash down the pickle-tabasco mixture. “You played a pretty big part in the whole getting pregnant thing, if I recall. Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it, either.”
He reaches past you for the plate and steals a sauceless pickle from the pile there, pinching it into his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.
“Hm,” you shrug and swallow down the mouthful. “Jury’s still out on that, I think…”
That earns you a look. Jack’s eyes widen with something sharper and visibly amused, scruffy cheek softly jutted until he downs the bite. “Oh, you are just asking for it, aren’t you?” he hums, leaning forward with clear intent.
You pull back from him at the last second, scrunching your nose in disgust.
“My breath smells.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Jack scoffs, and leans down again to press his mouth to yours anyway — a chaste and smacking kiss, filled with a sort of domesticity that makes your stomach do a back flip. It’s hard to imagine, now, that there was ever a time you didn’t want this; that you didn’t want him.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” he tells you with a huff, parting from you to head to the front door. “Get some sleep while I’m gone— I need you to be well-rested for what I have planned tomorrow.”
Your eyes narrow in his direction, because you thought you’d made it pretty clear that you had zero plans of doing anything until the baby got here. “And what is that exactly?”
“Well, it’s my professional opinion that intercourse is the best way to induce labor,” Jack tells you as he swings open the door, letting in streams of golden hour sunlight and wisps of cool evening air. He picks up his military bag from the entrance and swings it over his shoulder. A slow grin spreads across his face as he says, “And I plan on intercourse-ing the shit out of you when I get home.”
Your chest burns with a giddy feeling. One you haven’t felt in quite some time, a flame burning anew.
“Yay…” you deadpan anyway, rolling your eyes for dramatic effect. “So exciting…”
“Yeah. Keep it up,” Jack squints with a smile as he swings the door shut behind him. “Let’s just hope you can back up that mouth when I get back.”
It starts first with a headache. It always did, even before you were pregnant. That sharp, splitting pressure behind your eyes is all too familiar to you now. You languish in the ache for a while and wait for it to pass with a cold press over your forehead like you always do. It doesn’t start to really scare you until it feels like the room has tilted slightly on its axis; an unwavering dizziness that doesn’t seem to shake off with a few blinks like it normally would.
The panic that gives you makes it suddenly very hard to breathe. Each exhale comes out shorter and tighter, as if your lungs have forgotten how to stretch properly. A cold, leaden weight settles in your chest accordingly, overpowering the pain that curls warm and low in your stomach where the baby kicks and writhes — an alien sort of feeling, like being stretched from the inside.
When it doesn’t pass after five minutes, you fumble for your phone and call the number for the PTMC like Jack had told you to — the best way to reach him while at work. It rings three times and clicks once when it’s answered. Static hums briefly on the other line before a familiar voice comes in, stammering slightly, as if they’d been told to answer.
“Uh— Um, PTMC— This is Mel. I mean, uh, Dr. King.”
“Hey, Mel…” You squeeze your eyes shut when your voice wavers, despite your attempt to steady it. You exhale slowly through your mouth and rub at the right side of your stomach, just below your ribs, where the baby kicks mercilessly at your side. “Is, uh… Is Jack around? He told me to call if I—”
“Honey?” Mel blurts, then turns slightly away from the receiver to call somewhere distantly. “Hey, Robby? Dr. Robby— It’s Honey.”
There’s a beat of silence, filled by distant shuffling as the line shifts again.
“Honey?” Robby calls, immediate and alert. “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t think you’d still be around…” you hum into the receiver, voice taut as you blink away the blur creeping into your vision. “Aren’t you supposed to be on the road by now, Motorcycle Mike?”
He huffs a tired laugh. “Yeah, I-I’m headed that way, actually— Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I— I’m fine,” you lie weakly. “Is Jack there?”
“Uh…” Robby trails off, voice distant as he glances over his shoulder. “He’s in the OR right now, I believe. Do you need something?”
Your clammy grip tightens on the phone. Asking for help feels like choking.
“Do you remember my last check-up? With Dr. Myers?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, she told me that if I had another one of those headaches that feels like I’m being stabbed through the eyeball, that I need to come in, right?” you ramble on bated breath. “But do you think she meant it, like, I need to come in, or was she just, you know, saying that as a… formality?”
Robby’s silence is less than comforting. The static that precedes his response is heavy and ominous.
“Do I need to come get you?” he asks, suddenly very, very serious in a way that makes your aching chest that much tighter.
“Yeah,” you scoff anyway. “Because driving a motorcycle with a pregnant woman on the back is so safe.”
“No, I—” he huffs a breath, a mixture of a laugh and a frustrated sigh. “I meant, do you need someone to come get you?”
The thought of someone picking you up to take you to the ED is just as nerve-wracking as having to call someone for help. So you spend another two minutes convincing Robby that you’re fit enough to drive, and the eight minutes it takes to get to the hospital praying your migraine doesn’t blind you before you can pull into the parking lot.
Robby meets you in the waiting room to escort you the rest of the way inside. The white-blue fluorescent lights overhead feel like daggers in your temples. The sounds of a moderately controlled chaos blur around you — of beeping monitors, rushing footsteps, and distant voices.
He ushers you into the nearest room and dims the lights before he goes, leaving you alone just long enough for you to put on a hospital gown.
You wait for him on the edge of the made bed, with your heart in your throat and your legs swinging off the side. Robby knocks before he enters, flashing you a small smile as he rubs sanitizer between his palms.
“Jack’s finishing up. He’s on his way down now,” he tells you, then tilts his bearded chin in a more concerned look. “How’s your head?”
“Eh,” you shrug. “Haven’t had any complaints.”
“Okay, I’m not even— gonna comment on the sarcasm,” Robby huffs as he descends onto the squeaking stool beside the monitor. He slips his glasses out of his scrub pocket and slides them onto the bridge of his nose. “You being a smart ass is a pretty good sign, actually…”
He slips a blood pressure cuff over your elbow with practiced hands. You try not to focus on the strangling feeling as it tightens around your arm, where you can feel your heart beating as your fingers start to tingle. Robby watches the numbers closely, with a strange sort of attentiveness typically only reserved for less-than-desirable results.
“What?” you blurt when his expression shifts. “What is it?”
He blinks hard for a second, then shakes his head. “Nothing. Sorry. Your— Your blood pressure just a little higher than I’d like…”
The cuff loosens with a mechanical whir. Robby slips it off and slides it back into place on the monitor beside you. You tilt your chin to watch him as he looms suddenly over you.
“Is that bad?”
Robby doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he slips his stethoscope over his ears and presses the cold chest piece against your back.
“Take a deep breath for me,” he murmurs in a distant, gritty voice. You abide and pray silently that he doesn’t notice how the inhale catches somewhere deep in your chest. He listens for a few beats longer than you expect him to, with his brows lowered in a look of concentration.
“Any chest pain?” he wonders suddenly.
“I had some earlier. You know, before I called.” You inhale once more. “But I feel better now.”
“What about any nausea or vomiting in the past week?”
“I had some morning sickness when I woke up, but… Google said it was normal, so…”
“Well,” Robby scoffs a laugh, sliding his stethoscope back over his neck. He keeps his hands wrapped around either end as he walks backward for the door. “If it was Dr. Google, then I guess it’s alright.”
His smile slips off his face the second he’s back outside. His pace hurries as he rushes for the work station down the hall. He makes a beeline for Dana by the overhead monitor, keeping his voice low, though it trembles around the edges with urgency.
“Get a crash cart and a fetal monitor to North 2,” Robby whispers to the woman, who tenses at his direction, because she knows you’re the one in North 2. “Call the NICU, call the OB, and wherever Jack is— tell him to hurry the hell up. Now.”
Robby disappears for no longer than a minute or two. He brings a strange air in with him when he returns, an undeniable tension that makes it suddenly very hard to breathe. He plucks on a pair of blue gloves this time before he steps in — and you’ve known him long enough to tell that the smile he gives you is faker than the one he had before.
“Is everything okay?” you ask, heart pounding against your ribcage. It’s like anxiety times a thousand — the racing pulse you get right before a panic attack, except no amount of breathing can seem to slow it down again.
“Yeah,” Robby says gently, and steps out of the doorway when a team of doctors and grey-scrubbed nurses rush in — machines rolling, wires tangling, voices overlapping with directions.
Robby looms at your side and ducks his head to keep your wandering attention. “Everything’s great, honey— You’re just about to meet a lot of people right now.”
The inhale you take feels shorter than usual as you blink up at him with eyes swimming with worry. “But… I’m okay, right?”
“You’re gonna be,” he tells you, steady and only slightly reassuring, as he reaches for the oxygen tube propped on the monitor at your side. “You and Jack are gonna meet your baby before the night’s over— That’s exciting, right?”
You feel strangled. Like worry’s wrapped a cold hand around your throat and your heart, too — and when you go dizzy again, you can’t tell if it’s from the news or if the migraine is flaring again. You take in a stuttering breath when Robby slips the oxygen tube over your ears, cool air rushing up into your nostrils.
“Where’s Jack?” is the only thing you can think to say.
“He’s on his way,” Robby promises firmly.
Shen lays a cotton blanket over your lap as Crus stands on the other side of the bed, rolling an ultrasound machine with him. “Some jelly on the belly, Ms. Honey,” the R4 tells you with a smile, too soft for all the chaos filling the room. “We’re gonna do a quick ultrasound, okay? Check on little Abbot in there.”
You can’t find the words to speak. You feel like your throat’s too tight for that now. So you just lift the bottom of your hospital gown and drag it over your round stomach, leaving the rest of you concealed beneath the blanket. He squirts gel onto your skin, and a shiver trails up your spine.
Only then do the words on the tip of your tongue seem to gain the courage to spill out.
“What the hell is going on—?”
The door swings open then. You just barely catch sight of Jack over the bustling bodies surrounding you, but his voice is unmistakable. “What the hell is going on?” he announces the same way you had, though his sharper tone cuts through the room like a blade.
Robby leaves your side to intercept the man, pulling him to the corner and debriefing him in a hushed voice. “Her BP’s 170/110. Her symptoms have only gotten worse since she’s been here— I’m worried if she doesn’t deliver this baby right now, she’ll go into cardiac arrest.”
Jack’s face drains of color.
He crosses his strong arms over his chest in a feeble attempt to soothe the sudden tightness there, as his head whips suddenly in your direction. He watches his residents tend to you with a controlled sort of chaos, moving around each other in swift motions usually reserved for when someone’s really in trouble.
He shakes his silver head to himself. “No… No, she was— She was fine this morning, man. I’ve been— I’ve been checking on her all day. She was 130/80 when I left—”
“Well, it’s not anymore,” Robby interjects, firm but not entirely unkind. His dark eyes swim with a similar sternness when he catches Jack’s eye. “If we don’t do something now, something will happen to this, baby— Or to her. So you don’t have to stay and watch, brother, but you cannot get in the way, understand?”
Jack struggles to catch his breath. He feels a little like the room is spinning around him. He blinks hard once, regains his bearings, and rushes immediately to your side. He plucks a handful of tissues from the dispenser on the wall to wipe the gel from your stomach as Crus finishes the ultrasound.
Your pinched look of worry ebbs at the sight of him. Your heavy head lolls on the pillow behind you as your bleary eyes follow his face, though you struggle to blink the haze from them now.
“Jack…” you sigh.
“Hey, honey…” he says, voice soft but still tighter than usual.
“What’s going on?” you tell him, in half-breathless slurs. “I just came in for a headache— I don’t… I don’t understand what’s wrong?”
“Everything’s fine—”
You shake your head, then close your eyes when it makes the room spin harder. “You’re lying…”
“You have severe preeclampsia. It’s a blood pressure disorder. The only cure for it now is to deliver the baby,” Jack explains in a strangely even voice as he leans over the side of your bed, keeping your gaze on him and not the chaos surrounding you. “But your heart’s working a little too hard right now, so we’re gonna have to put you to sleep so we can get you upstairs to the OB—”
“We’re inducing here,” Robby says, as a nurse helps him tie the back of his PPE gown.
Jack’s head snaps over his shoulder. “Here?”
“It’s better than her arresting in the elevator.”
Your breath stutters, and this time, it feels impossible to catch again.
“Am I gonna die?” you hear yourself ask.
“No,” Jack answers immediately. “You’re fine, honey. Between all of us, we’ve seen this procedure done a hundred times, okay? You’re in good hands— The best hands.”
McKay enters your tunnel vision then. The PPE covering her from head to toe feels sort of daunting, but her eyes are still kind behind her safety glasses.
“I’m gonna give you an IV, okay? The medicine’s gonna sedate you— It’ll feel just like falling asleep,” the woman coos to you, as she smooths an alcohol wipe over the inside of your elbow. “A little pinch and some burning…”
You wince when the needle pierces your skin. An icy burning sensation follows quickly, spanning the length of your forearm. You’re grounded only by Jack’s hands on your cheeks, warm and softly calloused, velvet personified.
“I’ll be right here when you wake up,” he tells you, holding your weary gaze with a sterner one. “For you, it’ll feel just like blinking, okay? It’ll be over in a second. You won’t even know it happened—”
His words do little to comfort you. You can hardly hear him now over the heartbeat whoosh, whoosh, whooshing rapidly in your ears.
“Please don’t let me die…” you whimper as burning tears cloud your vision.
It’s not the death part that’s so scary to you exactly, but rather the fact that the nursery isn’t even finished; and that the crib is only halfway done; and that you haven’t even decided on a baby name yet. There’s too much you haven’t done yet — a whole life inside of you that you haven’t gotten to hold between your hands.
“Please, don’t let me die, Jack. Please, don’t…”
You trail off. Your eyes grow glassy and distant, like you’re looking right past him. Your head grows heavy in his hands a second later.
“…Honey?”
“Is it the medicine?” Nazely asks from where she observes in the corner.
“No. It wouldn’t work that fast—”
Your neck jerks back, and your eyes flutter shut, never quite closing as they dance back and forth. The monitor starts beeping first — “She’s seizing!”Shen announces to the room. You begin trembling in his hold a half second later.
“Get her on her side!” Robby calls through the surgical mask being tied around his scruffy jaw.
Jack works with quick, practiced hands despite his racing mind. He cradles the back of your head in one palm, and your jerking shoulder with the other.
“Push another 10 of IV diazepam!” he commands. “Have another on standby!”
“Put the AP pads on in case of cardiac arrest,” Robby says as the crowd parts for him to make his way to your side. He flashes Jack a stern look from the opposite side of the bed. “I love you, brother, but right now, you either need to gown up or get the hell out of the way.”
Jack’s worried eyes snap to his. He inhales sharply through his nose, though the breath tries to hitch in his chest. He nods once to clear his head, then twice more in confirmation.
“Alright. C’mon. Matteo— Help me scrub in,” he commands and stands to full height again, shifting to doctor mode in a blink. He never quite takes his eyes off you as the nurse dresses him in sterile gear.
Please, god, don’t take her, he finds himself praying to a god he’s not entirely sure he believes in. I only just got her back. You can’t take her from me now.
Recusitative hysterotomy in thirty-six seconds. The whole ED is talking about it.
You were V-Fib for two minutes. Your baby wouldn’t cry for five. It took a roomful of doctors to bring you both to life again. But all that havoc is gone now — your baby is in the NICU for more intensive monitoring, and all the doctors have moved on to all their other patients that need saving.
Somehow, the stillness feels more nerve-racking than the chaos.
Maybe because Jack never was the best at waiting. It’s a truth that lives deep in his bones, etched there from decades of sirens and split-second decisions, that hesitation can cost lives. To him, waiting has always felt a little like negligence — like standing still and watching everything else happen around him. But that’s all he can do for you now. Wait. And it feels a little like dying.
He sits at your bedside in a hard plastic chair with his elbows braced on the thin mattress and his trembling hands holding your limp one. He can’t bring himself to take his eyes off of you, scared to miss you for even a faint fraction of a second. The dim lighting of the recovery room casts soft shadows over the edges of your sleeping face. Machines whisper just next to you, in slow and rhythmic beeps that remind him that you’re still here — that your heart’s still beating.
He knows this. He knows sedation, and post-op recovery, and how to read every machine in this room. But none of it matters now. Because he can’t stop thinking about all the cynical what ifs — what if your heart stops beating when no one’s looking; what if your brain was starved for a second too long; what if the last thing you ever said to him was ‘please don’t let me die?’
Jack doesn’t think he could live with himself if that were the case.
When he hears the door swing open and shut behind him — when he hears the noise of the hallway swell and muffle again — he knows it’s Robby entering the room without having to look over his shoulder. Maybe because he knows no one else is brave enough to come talk to him in a state like this.
Jack’s eyes flicker to the monitor.
“BP’s 102/64,” he announces to the silent room. “Hemoglobin’s up to 9.”
“Good,” Robby nods slowly. “Baby Abbot’s stable down the hall— three pounds, seven ounces. Fifteen inches…”
Jack doesn’t say a word.
“You can go hold her if you want,” the older man presses.
Again, Jack stays silent. He doesn’t know how to say that he’s too scared to leave you, too scared to face that he’s a father without having you beside him, too scared to ruin a little life before it’s even begun.
Robby sighs hard through his broad nose and walks to stand at the man’s side.
“You can’t stay in here like this, brother—”
“The hell I can’t,” Jack snaps with a hardened glare.
“You’re not her primary caregiver,” the man reminds him. “So, technically, you shouldn’t even be in the room— Gloria would have a fit if she found out you were treating your wife.”
“Well, good thing she’s not gonna find out, right?” Jack deadpans. “And I couldn’t care less if she did. I’m not leaving my wife.”
“It’s an ethical conflict, and you know it. We have doctors here that are more than capable of tending to her—”
“Robby, I—” Jack inhales sharply through his nose, eyes fluttering shut as a red-hot frustration swells within him. Through gritted teeth, he murmurs. “I love you, man. And I— I owe both my girls’ lives to you, but… Please don’t make me beat your ass on my daughter’s birthday. I really don’t think that’d be a great first start to fatherhood.”
Jack turns slowly to face the man beside him, his eyes glassy with the unshed tears he can’t seem to blink away. There’s less of a bite to his glare now, but it’s no less serious.
Robby knows this, so he nods in response and claps him on the shoulder. “Yeah. Fair enough…”
You wake forty-five minutes after Robby has left for the E.D. Jack knows this because he’s been taking your blood pressure every thirty minutes, and was nearing his hourly check of your IV line. He feels your fingers twitch in his hand first, right before you grumble an unceremonious “ow...” in the back of your gravelly throat.
Jack’s chair scrapes hard against the tile as he rises abruptly, reaching for you before you’ve even managed to open your eyes. He keeps your cold hand clutched in his left one, while his right hand cradles the top of your head — his thumb smooths over your temple without thinking, ‘cause he’s so used to massaging you there during your migraine spells.
“Easy, honey…” he coos, voice rough and frayed around the edges, when you shift on the thin mattress below — as if you’re momentarily confused as to why the bed you’re on now feels unlike your own.
Your lashes flutter when your eyes open. Even the dim lighting feels a little too bright. Your throat feels dry when you try to swallow, and your tongue feels a little heavy in your mouth. There’s a dull ache, too, that spans from your forehead to your ankles — and a burning sensation from your collarbones to your bellybutton.
You remember the headache that sent you in, and the chaos that followed, but nothing after Jack burst into the room.
“Hurts…” you manage weakly.
“I know, honey. I know,” Jack hums sympathetically, and clears his throat when his voice breaks.
“My chest…” you choke out, features twisting in a quiet agony.
“Yeah, you’ve got some burn marks from the defib pads, baby— They should go away in a few days. I’ll put some more medicine on your bandages, okay?”
You don’t say anything in return, and Jack doesn’t totally expect you to. There’s a long beat where neither of you says a word. You just breathe, in slow and even inhale-exhales, and Jack just watches you. He almost thinks you’ve fallen asleep again until you shift once more on the mattress.
A hollow feeling has started to settle in your stomach. It feels empty, wrong, and creeps gradually up on you until it starts to feel like something has been carved out of you entirely. Your brows knit slowly together.
“Where…?” you start, though the whispered question trails before you can finish it.
“She’s in the NICU getting checked out,” Jack tells you, voice trembling as he blinks back burning tears.
It doesn’t truly hit him until then — that he’s a dad now, that he’s got a family with you, the only girl he ever dreamed of having one with. He couldn’t let the thought truly settle until he was sure that you were okay.
“She’s perfect,” he adds, because he knows you need to hear that most of all. “She’s doing real well—”
“She?” you echo, voice small and disbelieving.
You find the strength to open your eyes then. They’re a little swollen from hours of induced sleep, but sparkling with newfound life all the same. Jack feels the look right in his chest, a sparkling red-hot feeling that makes him feel like crying.
“Yeah…” he says on an exhaled breath that’s supposed to be a laugh, though it comes out a little unsteady. “She. Three pounds, seven ounces, fifteen inches… Robby’s been trying to convince me that Robin is a perfectly good girl name ever since she got here.”
Your lip twitches faintly upward. A ghost of a smile breaks through the haze as your thumb smooths over the rough edges of Jack’s knuckles.
“Can I hold her now?” you ask in a fragile voice.
Jack’s expression softens. Something warm and aching floods into his eyes.
“Yeah,” he nods. “Soon. You just… You gotta get your strength back first, alright? She’s a little early, so… They wanna keep an eye on her for a bit.”
You nod against the pillow, head heavy and tired. You blink slowly as you try to piece together what happened to you through the fog still clouding your mind.
“Was it bad?” is the first thing you think to ask.
Jack’s jaw stiffens slightly. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“It wasn’t good…” he answers honestly, greying brows bouncing. He nods to himself and blinks away the unshed tears that burn the backs of his eyes. “But you’re okay now— Both of you. That’s what matters…”
You stare at him for a long moment, blinking slowly, as the words settle heavily upon you.
“Holy shit…” you whisper on barely a breath.
Jack’s chest stings. He exhales through his nose and bends at the waist to press a soft, careful kiss to your temple. “I know, honey—” he murmurs there, mistaking your tone, and preparing to soothe you through whatever wave of panic comes next.
But then you shake your head, just barely, as your brows furrow in an incredulous look.
“We’re parents now…” you murmur to yourself, voice still coated with leftover sleep. “We’re responsible for a whole human…”
Jack huffs a quiet laugh as he stands to full height again. He swipes an eyelash from the apple of your warm cheek and nods. “Yeah. That’s… That’s pretty terrifying, huh?”
“A lot terrifying,” you correct.
“Well…” he starts. “I’ve kept you alive this long, haven’t I?”
You flash him a look, weighed down with fatigue but still obviously playful. “Jury’s still out,” you quip drily.
Jack scoffs a laugh. “So she’s got a fighting chance, at least.”
Your chapped lips curl slowly into a tired, barely-there grin. Your heavy eyes flutter shut as something short of sleep threatens to drag you back under. “You’re gonna be such a good dad…”
“Based on what?” the older man quips. “My stellar bedside manner?”
Your head shakes weakly against the pillow as your fingers just barely tighten around his hand. “Based on the fact that the first thing you ever did for her was fight to keep her here…”
Jack feels his heart swell up into his throat. It makes him feel like crying. He shrugs a lazy shoulder in response, if only to deflect. “That’s kinda the job, honey,” he jokes with a sad sort of laugh.
“That was you…” you argue in sleepy slurs. “She’s lucky… Both of us are…”
Jack’s teary gaze falls to your entwined hands. He nods slowly with his lips pursed to the side of his mouth, until he’s sure he can speak again without his voice shaking. His words come out a little taut, even still.
“No, I’m the lucky one here, honey,” he tells you in a strangled, gravelly voice. “I promise.”
BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, KIN OF MY KIN
─── ormund hightower
summary: a glimpse into the years you and ormund raised daeron before the war took its toll, and all the years after. (10k)
characters: ormund hightower / wife!reader, daeron targaryen, alicent hightower, viserys i targaryen, mentions of rhaenyra and daemon
contents: established relationship, found family, domestic bliss, angst, hurt/comfort, protective!ormund, canon divergent, not proofread, cw for mentions of pregnancy complications and miscarriages, brief mentions of blood and gore, canon typical manipulation and psychosis from ormund towards the end lol
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
115 A.C. / Oldtown
The bed is still warm from your blood on the morning the babe arrives.
It had not been quite two days since the maester had drawn the small, still shape of your daughter from you and told you, gently enough as not to break you further, that she had never drawn breath at all. You had told none of the household that you had been carrying her at all, save for the maesters and your closest of handmaidens — for you had learned, after the second loss, how courtiers feed on grief like vultures to carrion. So while you wept for days longer than your babe would ever live, the rest of Oldtown simply assumed that their lady had taken ill with a woman’s ailment, and kept to her rooms accordingly.
But today the King is coming, and your mother would surely turn in her early grave if she knew the lady she raised up planned to receive a king from a sickbed — pallid, unlaced, and undone.
“There is no harm in resting, my love,” Ormund coos from across the room, watching with attentive eyes as your handmaiden laces you into a gown of Hightower green. You keep yourself braced on the wooden back of a chair and grit your teeth with every tug, pulling carefully to conceal the subtle bump of your stomach.
The man tilts his head and crosses his arms over the chest of his emerald doublet, in a feeble attempt to extinguish the worry searing between his lungs. “Viserys is a king man. He will understand. Alicent, more than anyone, would understand—”
“And what has Alicent lost?” you argue, sharper than you intended. Your head whips hard to the side in time to find Ormund flinching beneath the bite of your words — a small flicker at the edges of his eyes; a brief lowering of his brows.
You soften with a sigh a moment later and remind yourself that Ormund lost something too, even if the loss was not pulled from his body to claim it.
“Forgive me, I… I only meant that… The Queen has four living children. And she carried each one with grace— There is no part of her that could possibly understand how I feel… And I wouldn’t wish it upon her besides.”
Ormund exhales through his nose and takes a step closer, boots scuffing the cobbles. “Then at least let me tell them that you are unwell—”
“No,” you dismiss with a shake of your stubborn head, eyes shutting briefly when the corset tightens again. “I refuse to be spoken of like some frail, ailing thing while the King sups at our table.”
Your gaze is wet with unshed tears when they open again, snapping to Ormund’s pale ones with a glimmering determination. “I am the Lady Hightower,” you tell him, brows raised and eyes firm. “So I will greet them standing. On my own feet. In my own home.”
Ormund’s chest, still heavy with grief, blooms with a distant sort of pride at your words. Perhaps because a part of him had long understood that you did not always dream of being the Lady Hightower. Your marriage was made of meetings and ledgers and alliances rather than any actual tenderness, as was true in most great marriages in Westeros. He knows, had you had it your way, you would’ve wed that gardener’s boy you grew up with — who you attempted to bring with you to Oldtown upon your betrothal, along with many of your household’s servants.
Ormund had the brawny, olive-skinned boy sent away within a fortnight — the moment he understood what kind of feelings the peasant boy had for you, and you for him. It was perhaps the first mad thing he ever did for you and, by Ormund’s later admission, the first time he realized that he might love you truly. (Though he had not thought it mad at the time, or love until many moons later, when he was struck with the sudden realization that the thought of Oldtown with you in it would be entirely unbearable.)
“Then we shall go,” Ormund nods in acquiescence as he plants himself just ahead of you. His gaze fixes into a sterner look a second later, as he tilts his chin to his chest and ducks into your eyeline. “But know I am not happy about this.”
“And yet Oldtown will remain standing anyway,” you joke in a softer coo. “I have faith that we’ll survive one of your unhappy mornings, my lord.”
The walk from your chambers to the gates of Oldtown is not long, but you feel every stone beneath your slippers as if the journey were some great pilgrimage across the whole of Westeros.
You brace Ormund’s strong arm with both your hands, fingers curling into the fine wool of his coat hard enough to blanche your knuckles. He slows his long stride to match your smaller, more careful one without a word shared between you — a wall of green and muscles at your side, shielding you from the curious eyes of courtiers wondering why their lord and lady moved so slowly. So close.
It’s the first time you’ve tasted fresh air in three days. The breeze smells of the sea from the harbor and fish from the markets — mixing with the sweet citrus of the orange and lemon trees blooming in the gardens. Their white petals scatter like snow along the pale stone with every gust off the bay. You breathe in deeply through your nose, trying hopelessly to clear away the metallic tang of your own blood stubbornly clinging to the inside of your nostrils.
“His Grace, Viserys of House Targaryen,” the herald calls as the royal party files in on fine horses and gilded carriages, black banners snapping in the wind. “First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.”
Viserys is the first to exit when the caravan finally stills. He descends the steps a knight places down for him, portlier than you remember from your last journey to King’s Landing, some years before your marriage. His kind face has started to wither from fatigue and age alike. The crown seems heavier upon his head, though perhaps it’s only from where his silver hair has started to thin at the scalp.
Alicent follows out just behind him. She wears a black dress with drooping sleeves and a veil to cover her long auburn curls, fit for a funeral procession. A knight of white armor and long black hair helps her descend the steps as she cradles a small, dark bundle squirming in protest in her arms.
You sink into a curtsy. A white-hot pain swells from the pit of your stomach to the top of your spine — a lightning strike that burns for minutes after. You grip Ormund’s arm until your fingers tremble, though the polite smile on your face remains when you rise again.
“Ormund,” Viserys greets with an easy smile. He clasps your husband’s free arm with a genuine affection while his tired eyes drift along the white stone towers of the city. “My… Oldtown is just as fair as I remember it.”
“I agree, Your Grace, though I confess I am far more partial,” Ormund responds with a dry humor and a knightly smile. “I hear the view improves the longer one is forced to stare at it.”
Viserys laughs while, beside him, Alicent tries and fails to summon her own. Her elegant features are worn from the weeks of travel, many of which you imagine were spent balancing the fussing weight concealed against her chest just now.
“And my lady…” Viserys inclines his silver head towards you, studying your face with a pair of kind eyes. “You look well.”
You feel, in a word, like death dressed in Hightower green. You feel hollowed out and stitched together again, the farthest thing from well. But you nod once and thank the King all the same, profoundly grateful when your voice doesn’t shake.
“Truly. Marriage suits you both well,” Viserys nods. “Though, I admit, I’d hope Daeron might have had a cousin or two near enough in age to grow up beside him here. Once he’s old enough for such things, of course.”
Ormund tenses beside you.
His arm feels very suddenly like holding onto stone. His pale eyes turn glacial in a flicker; a withheld grief that he forces himself to swallow down the second it rises like bile in his throat. You say nothing at all. You just keep smiling and pray to whatever god will hear you that you do not weep in front of the King and all his men.
“But there’s still time— You’ll have one of your own before long, I’m sure of it,” the older man continues, possessing no notion of what had happened behind these walls hardly two days past. If he notices anything amiss, he does not dwell on it, and turns instead to Alicent. “Go on. Let them see the boy.”
Alicent’s arms tighten instinctively around the bundle in her grasp and inhales sharply through her nose. It had been her own decision that Daeron be sent to her family’s ancestral home. Her last child was not quite six months when she counseled her King to send him to ward, far from the chaos of King’s Landing. But she finds herself suddenly plagued by the harsh realization that this will be the last time she will hold this baby as he is now. The next time she’s like to lay eyes on him again, he’ll be an unrecognizable young boy, and not nearly the small thing fussing against her collarbone now.
“He hasn't slept," Alicent warns as she steps closer. Her green eyes are warm and weary when they flit to you. “He didn’t take well to the carriage. Or the ship. He’s cried the whole way from Blackwater, I think. Poor thing…”
“I’m sure we can manage a crying babe, my Queen,” Ormund says gently, though there’s a distant aching in his voice disguised as good humor that only you could recognize. “I grew up with Gwayne, if you remember. I’m more than acquainted with wailing boys by now.”
Alicent musters a small smile and closes the distance between you to settle her son in your arms.
He’s warm — that’s the first thing you notice — he’s a small furnace swaddled in Targaryen black. He stirs briefly at the transfer from one chest to another, round face screwing tight in the prelude to a wail. Your heart clenches to brace yourself for that sound. It never comes.
The babe turns his face into the curve of your throat and settles into stillness with one small fist curled into the fabric of your gown. The tiny sound he makes isn’t a cry, but it isn’t quite a coo either. He sleeps, finally, in your arms — not even two days after you held your daughter between them, who had never awoken at all.
Ormund’s wide hand settles at the small of your back. Even in its steadiness, you feel the subtle tremor of his fingers against your spine. His throat tightens with the sudden urge to cry at the sight — of you, still frail and yet so bravely composed, cradling another woman’s child after laying your own to rest in the sept. He swallows through the hands of grief strangling his throat and feels a warmer feeling settling in its wake.
“Well…” Viserys hums, watching the baby sleep against you with a proud look in his weathered eyes. “It seems the boy’s found his corner of Oldtown already— Isn’t that lovely, Alicent?”
The woman nods, though shock still etches slightly in her pale features and behind the dark green of her eyes. “Of course, Your Grace,” she says and clears her throat, blinking back her tears with a queen’s practiced grace. “Thank you both for taking him.”
“He'll want for nothing here," Ormund swears with a firm nod. “You have my word. We'll raise him as if he were our own trueborn son.”
You pull the blanket gently back to peer at the sleeping baby swaddled within it. He’s practically all cheeks, with his mother’s mouth and nose.
You had been certain, two days past, that your life had surely ended with your daughter’s. That there would be nothing more to life than a hollow, vacant silence. But now, there is warmth — and a babe’s slow breath fanning along your collarbone.
You do not yet have a name for the foreign feeling swelling inside of you. It’s not joy, not yet, but it isn’t grief either. Or, at least, not only grief. And for now, that would have to be enough.
127 A.C. / Training Yard
The sound of clashing steel finds you before the sight of it does. The ring and scrape of blade on blade carries across the bustling courtyard, where you’ve gone to look for a young prince who was, as Maester Yorrick informed you with a palpable impatience, nearly an hour late for his lessons. You find the boy exactly where you imagined he would be — sword-training with his uncle, who has since stripped down to a pale tunic now darkened with sweat from the exercise.
Daeron, now thirteen years of age, is all knees and elbows from a sudden growth spurt that had taken him seemingly overnight. He presses a defensive attack upon his uncle with all the fierceness of a knight, but with the gracelessness of a teenage boy. Even you could tell from where you stood that his swing had no hope of landing. Ormund turns the blow aside with a lazy flick of his wrist, no more troublesome than swatting a fly from the air.
“Awful,” you hear the man scold from afar. When Daeron grits his teeth and presses forward once more, Ormund steps back and lets the boy’s momentum carry him a half stride too far. His blade misses his mark by inches. “Gods, that’s even worse—”
Daeron lunges a third time, fuelled now by a boyish rage that twists his freckled features. Ormund steps inside the overextended reach, hooks a boot around the boy’s ankle, and trips him onto the dirt with his blunted blade pressed to his ribs. Daeron hits the ground with a thud, red-faced and breathing heavy. His long auburn tendrils cling to his sweaty temple when he whips his head to glare up at his uncle.
“Dead,” Ormund proclaims from where he stands over the boy, flat but not totally unkind. He raises his brows and tilts his chin to his chest. “If this were a real sword, I’d have had your head before the thought to swing finished forming in that head of yours.”
Daeron twists himself upward and shoves the faux blade away with a boyish scowl. “You always say that,” he grumbles, refusing the hand Ormund extends to help him up. He rises to full height on his own and swipes dirt from his pale palms.
“Yes. I always say it because it's always true. You're thinking with your temper again— I can see it in your shoulders before you’ve even moved,” the older man lectures as he turns on the heel of his boot and walks off a few paces. “Again. And this time, think before you swing. Not after—”
“I think that’s enough for this morning,” you call to them as you step further into the yard, dress skirts rushing around your ankles in the summer breeze. “Maester Yorrick has been waiting all morning. And his patience, unlike yours, my lord, has its limits.”
Daeron nods once, shoulders sagging with an absent relief. “Yes, ma’am—”
“Give us a few more minutes,” Ormund dismisses simultaneously. “He’s close to getting his footwork right. I can feel it.”
You flash the man a look — one slight lift of your brow, one flicker of dullness behind the eyes. Years of marriage have honed that wordless look to a firm edge, one which finds Ormund like a blade. He nods in concession with a heavy exhale through his nose.
“You heard her, boy. Go on,” Ormund says, jerking his chin toward the tower and extending his hand out for the practice sword.
Daeron obeys without question. He passes the dull blade over and crosses the yard to you. You see the sweat and dirt streaked across his freckled face the closer he gets. “Come here to me,” you sigh and catch his round chin between your thumb and forefinger when he plants himself ahead of you. You swipe the filth from his cheeks with the hem of your sleeve like you’ve done since he was small enough to fit in one arm.
“I’m not a child anymore, you know," Daeron reminds you with a childish grimace as he suffers your motherly affections. “I’m a squire now.”
“Oh, a squire, are you?” you croon in response with an obvious air of sarcasm. You smooth wild auburn hair from his temples before pressing a chaste kiss to his hairline. “Go on now— before Maester Yorrick decides to make you study your histories until sundown.”
Daeron nods and ducks past you towards the tower stair, though you catch the corner of his pink mouth twitching upward into a grin before he’s turned away. You watch him leave with an attentive stare as Ormund discards the training swords at their posts. He approaches you in long, slow strides, allowing you to see the mark that training has left upon him — the way the sweat dampens his dark curls and the collar of his tunic, making the fabric stick to his broad shoulders and toned chest.
He smells of sweet wine, musky bathing oils, and salty sweat when he towers just before you. He tips his chin to his chest and raises his brows to his hairline, pale eyes glimmering with an expectant look.
“…Well?”
You blink up at him with a feigned innocence. “Well, what?”
“My kiss,” he answers with a shrug like it’s obvious, like he were a man coming to collect his debts. “You gave the boy his, and I’ve spent half the morning training him— I should think that I’ve earned at least that much.”
“Oh, really?” you squint. “After you told the boy he’s like to lose his head?”
“I told him the truth,” Ormund argues with an unrepentant laugh and takes a slow step closer to you. “Is the truth unkind merely because it stings a little going down?”
His hands splay along your waist, wide and warm along the edges of your corset. It takes everything in you not to cave for him right there, in the full view of the crowded courtyard. You cross your arms over your chest instead. “If you keep being so hard on him, he’ll grow to hate sword training altogether—”
“May be. But he will go on alive a good deal longer for having learned it the hard way now— instead of on a real field, with real steel, without me there to guide him.” Ormund ducks his head to catch your eye, pale gaze glimmering in time the pink smile tugging at his lips. “Surely you are not truly cross with me, my love…” he croons quietly.
You shrug with a raised chin, unwilling to concede so easily. “Perhaps I am.”
“Well, then, it’s hardly my doing,” he chuckles, a sound far warmer than the silver-gold sunshine sprawling over the courtyard. The pads of his thumbs smooth over your ribs in an absentminded affection. “You've gone so soft on the boy that you can scarcely bear to watch him lose a practice bout, without petting his hair over it after."
“Well, someone in this household has to be soft with him," you argue lightly, more teasing now than truly cross. Your slipper scrapes the dirt as you take a short step closer to him. What little distance remained between you closes now in an instant; each rise and fall of his chest brushes your folded arms. “You spend your mornings convincing the poor boy the world means to kill him, and I spend my nights convincing him that he could rule the world entire if he wished... Perhaps he’ll come out well-balanced for it, in the end.”
“Assuming one of us doesn’t kill the other over the method first,” Ormund quips.
“Precisely,” you nod.
“Well, I think it’s a fine system,” the man agrees gravely, drawing you an impossible inch closer by the hands still on your waist. His breath fans warm across your jaw as he leans in closer, still smelling of the mint leaves he’d chewed after breakfast. “And one I certainly intend to go on employing indefinitely… If my wife forgives me long enough to let me kiss her.”
His low voice glitters somewhere in the center of your chest. Your eyes narrow despite the small smile curling hopelessly at your mouth. “I don’t think I’ve yet decided,” you lilt.
“Well, I have,” he croons quietly, and does not wait for your retort before leaning down to press his lips against yours.
His broad nose flattens into the side of yours under the weight of his kiss, a slow and languid thing — as natural as the white waves ebbing and flowing against the pale stone tower of Oldtown. Your hands twist in his pale tunic billowing in the sea breeze, dissolving into the man like salt in water.
There is nothing you would not forgive this man for, you think distantly to yourself. There is no madness he could not lead you toward, not if he kisses you like this the entire way there.
130 A.C. / Ormund’s Solar
The raven arrives like all the rest — unceremoniously, on a sunless grey morning, from the trembling hands of the weathered maester. You tend to your needlework by the crackling hearth, burning low to fight off the morning chill blowing in from the sea, while Daeron reads in the opposite chair with one leg slung over the arm of it — both of you still waking with the early morning.
Across the room, Ormund sits at his desk and breaks the seal with a dull crack. Your gaze drifts to the man as he unrolls the letter, parchment whispering beneath his ringed fingers. You watch his pale eyes flit across the words once, and his brows lower in confusion a moment later. He shifts in his seat and reads it again, slower this time. His spine straightens with a soldier’s subconscious instinct as he draws a deep breath in and forgets to let it go.
The quiet feels loud as it swells within the solar. The popping fire startles you briefly, as you get lost in Ormund’s wordless dread. You feel his silent panic as if it were your own. You rise from your seat and lay your needlework on the cushion behind you, careful not to trouble Daeron’s reading as you stroll to the man’s side.
“Ormund?” you call quietly to him. “Ormund— What does it say?”
He says nothing in response; he just lifts his ringed hand and passes you the parchment curled between his middle and forefinger. His eyes remained fixed on a negligible chip in the cobblestone wall across the room as you pluck the paper from his hand. His silence is not convincing; his silence, as you’ve learned in years of marriage, is far more frightening than any voice he could raise.
Your eyes dart over the scrawled ink thrice over, just as he had, because your mind refuses to process the words on the first two passes.
“By the time this reaches you, the city has already fallen. Rhaenyra Targaryen holds King’s Landing and names herself Queen upon the Iron Throne. She has taken the Queen Dowager prisoner, as well as the King’s wife and last living heir. Send word of your household’s safety. Guard the boy.”
The letters blur and steady and blur again, swimming before your eyes. Your blood runs cold while the glowing hearth simultaneously fills the room with a near-unbearable heat. As your breaths come faster and shallower to you, you hear a small voice call from behind you.
“Is something wrong?” Daeron wonders aloud as he glances up from the heavy novel in his lap. His auburn brows knit low over his green eyes, casting a faint shadow over his freckled cheeks, which are slowly starting to lose the softness of boyhood.
“Go on to your chambers, Daeron,” you tell him in a voice strangely steady compared to how shaken you feel. “It’s time to break your fast. I’ll have the servants fetch it for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” the boy insists as he rises slowly from his chair, setting his book aside and walking slowly from the hearth. His eyes dart back and forth between your profile and Ormund’s when both of you refuse to look at him. His shoulders straighten with a strangling tension. “What’s happened? What does it say—?”
“Daeron,” Ormund snaps, voice cutting through the quiet room like a blade. His eyes are similarly sharp when they snap finally to the boy’s pleading once. “Listen to your mother, boy. Go.”
Mother, he says. The word lingers and hangs in the air for a long moment. Even in his newfound worry, Ormund’s eyes still flicker with a startled awareness at how easily the slip-up had escaped him, though there is little time to dwell on it now.
Daeron's pink mouth parts with some half-formed protest at the ready. Whatever words he could conjure up on such short notice turn to dust on his tongue at the look his uncle gives him, chiseled features hardening into an unfeeling sort of look. Daeron exhales a held breath, gathers his book from his seat, and heads for the door without further argument.
Ormund’s knowing voice follows him out: “And don’t stand outside the door eavesdropping, either. Straight to your chambers. I'll know if you've stopped on the stair."
Only when the door shuts behind the boy with a soft click do your teary eyes lift from the parchment in your trembling hands. You say nothing for a long moment. The muffled sounds of the bustling castle fill the silence — the sounds of an oblivious world still living, though it feels a little like yours has stopped.
“I know," Ormund says before you’ve spoken, before you’ve needed to speak. “I know.”
“Okay,” you nod once. “So what are you going to do?”
He huffs a not-quite laugh. “I’ve only just found out about this. As have you,” he answers, a little sharper than he means to. “I’ll need a moment to think about the problem before you ask me to solve it, my love.”
“A moment is no longer a luxury we have,” you argue, voice rising despite yourself and wavering on every syllable with a palpable fear. “Rhaenyra has dragons, Ormund— she has Daemon and three new bastard riders sworn to her besides. She does not need a moment to bring any of them to our door.”
Your dress skirt spins around your ankles when you turn suddenly in place. Ormund’s pale eyes follow your form as you storm back towards the hearth, ranting the whole way there.
“She will come for him, Ormund— not if, when. She will stop at nothing to silence any claim that challenges her own,” you continue, voice cracking under the weight of your unshed tears. “Daeron is a threat to her! Simply by breathing, he is a threat to her, and she will not leave him idling here out of some… familial courtesy for some half-brother she’s never met.”
The flame crackles quietly when you toss the letter into it. The wax seal blackens and weeps; the ink turns slowly to ash. You’d hoped that destroying those words might, in turn, settle the uneasy feeling they’ve brought you; but to no avail.
“I know that,” Ormund nods with a jaw clenched tight, ringed fingers curling into fists over his thighs beneath the desk.
“Then think!” Your shout bounces off the cobbled walls as you turn to face him once more. His face blurs behind the burning tears clouding your vision. The swelling emotion thickens your voice as you yell to him, half-wild with a preemptive grief. “I have already buried children who never got to draw breath— I will not bury another who has drawn fifteen years of them under this roof! Do not let them take him, Ormund— I don't care what it costs. Do not let them our boy!”
Ormund’s chair scrapes the cobbles as he rises slowly to full height. He crosses the solar in slow, silent strides. Your glassy eyes stay locked with his as he nears. You peer stubbornly up at him from beneath your lashes, clumped with unshed tears; but you do not protest when his palms smooth over the outsides of your elbows to pull you into his arms.
You melt hopelessly against his chest, fisting the back of his doublet in both hands, and trembling slowly as you choke down a sob. Ormund’s wide hands smooth along your back and feels his chest tighten with a striking, familiar ache. He thought once there was no worse sound in the world than hearing your weeping over a lost child; but he knows, now, that there is something equally as troubling: your weeping over a child you fear you’re about to lose and feeling like there is no time yet to stop it.
“I will not let anyone take him,” Ormunds promises evenly, with a distance that suggests he’s already assembling a plan in the depths of his mind. His arms curl tighter, pressing you harder against him. “I swear it to you. By the gods, they will not have our son.”
You pull back from him, just far enough to search his steady gaze with your wearier one. “But how?” you press weakly, more of a demand than a real question.
Ormund ponders for a long moment. The shadow of his adam’s apple rises and falls in his throat as he swallows. And when he speaks again, the words fall from his tongue flat and even, as if he were testing each one the moment they left his mouth.
“No one at court has laid eyes on the boy since he was a babe in arms…” he answers lowly, brows lifting to his hairline. “Alicent hasn’t seen him in years… There is no one outside these walls who would know what he looks like… So if they come— when they come… I suppose Rhaenryra would presume any silver-haired boy as Viserys’ heir.”
Your brows furrow as confusion twists slowly across your face.
“We’d only need enough lye and patience,” Ormund continues with a shrug. “And a boy willing enough to answer to a name that isn’t his, and to go with Rhaenyra, should her dragons come calling.”
You tense within his hold as the words run through you like ice-cold water. “You mean to… to send a different child in his place?”
“Yes,” Ormund answers instantly and without apology. “It isn’t a kind plan, I know. And I won’t pretend that someone else’s son won’t have to suffer for it, if it comes to pass, but… You did not ask me for a kind plan.”
You grieve the heat of his hands when he lifts them from your back, just to smooth his gently calloused palms over your jaw a moment later. He rubs the rough pads of his thumbs along your burning cheeks. You melt into his touch of warm velvet and peer up at him with teary eyes. Ormund’s gaze softens around the edges as his mouth lifts into a sad sort of smile.
“You asked me not to let them take our boy,” he continues lowly. “And however cruel it may be… this is but the only coin I have to buy that promise with.”
You know that a part of you should be horrified. You know what he is describing is a monstrous thing — an innocent boy’s whole life offered as a shield for another’s. You search deep within yourself to find that terror, but cannot seem to locate it. Instead, you find relief, like a crack of sunlight peeking through storm clouds — the very hint of a promise that your family was not long in the dying just yet.
“Do it,” you hear yourself say, shaking your head between his hands. “Whatever it costs… Whoever it costs… Do it.”
Ormund nods with a deep inhale through his nose, leaning forward to press his mouth to your hairline — to seal his promise with a kiss.
130 A.C. / Tumbleton Sept
Rhaenyra's dragonriders come for Daeron not nearly a fortnight into the army's march. Ormund sends the son of a merchant in his place — a boy of the right age and the right pale coloring, plucked quietly from Oldtown and dressed in borrowed finery before anyone thought to look twice. “Be brave, young prince," Ormund had said to the blanch-haired boy, only for show, though what he really meant was: “I will have your family hanged if you do not play your part.”
Ormund knelt before Daemon Targaryen and swore his fealty to the Queen, but marched on for Tumbleton the second the dragons took flight, all the shame.
The chaos follows them there, too.
Daeron attempts to seek a momentary refuge in the foreign castle’s candlelit sept. A cramped chamber made of brown stone and hazy smoke from the flickering candles, where Tessarion grumbles in protest of captivity. The lack of sunlight has dulled her fluorescent blue scales, and has made her ill-tempered due to the lack of exercise. Daeron alone she allows close, pressing her great head into the boy’s small neck, and momentarily forgetting about the heavy chains around her throat when he pets her stony scales.
Ormund finds him there. Ormund has a way of finding him anywhere. It is a gift and a curse, perhaps — comforting when Daeron was small and frightened of the dark; but less so now, when Daeron’s every attempt at solitude is interrupted by his uncle, constantly watching him as if he were a traitor to be surveilled and not his kin.
“I have warned you against indulging in affections for the best,” Ormund says as he approaches. The man cradles the boy's freckled cheeks in his wide, calloused palms despite Tessarion's low growl of warning.“You are a good boy,” he says, and in the very same breath, without losing the tender smile on his face: “You have a taint in your blood,” and “You must be king.”
Ormund makes less and less sense to him these days — the throes of war, Daeron supposes, though a part of him is frightened that it began long before that.
Sometimes he thinks Ormund only makes sense when you’re near enough to translate his tangled, wild emotions back into something grounded and real. You’ve always had a way of gentling the man; usually with nothing more than a steady hand along his wrist to calm whatever storm had been moving within him.
Daeron has seen you do it a hundred times over without ever quite understanding how. But he prays now for your swift return from the city, so that you might do it again — so that you might soften whatever unfamiliar thing has taken root in his uncle when he commands his soldiers to drag in the peasant man from earlier that afternoon. The one who broke Ser Garrick’s nose defending against his own wife’s assault; an act any decent lord would have called simple justice.
Ormund draws his sword from its sheath at his hip. The hiss of the steel leaving the leather fills the small stone sept, loud enough to echo off the old walls that have likely seen a great many prayers and, Daeron suspects, not so very many murders. The older man turns the blade and offers the embellished hilt to the boy, pale eyes hardening when he hesitates.
“We have risked much and more to raise you up,” Ormund says, strong features twisting into something resembling offense. “Surely, you do not wish to disappoint us now.”
Us. Daeron is pulled into his uncle’s orbit at that single syllable alone; the unbearable thought of failing the only two people in this world who have ever troubled themselves to love him — one standing before him with a blade held out like a peace offering, and the other somewhere in the depths of the dark city but still steady on his mind all the same.
Daeron lays his palms out flat before his brain has fully comprehended the motion. He prays Ormund doesn’t notice how they tremble when he rests the sword upon them — the weight of the blade cold and heavy upon his fingers.
Daeron’s hands tremble around the ornate leather hilt of Ormund’s sword. His misty eyes find the prisoner kneeling just before him on the cold stone — bloodied and chained for a crime any noble man in Westeros would surely commit with honor — before glancing slowly to where his uncle looms behind him. Candlelight flickers in shades of orange-gold upon the man’s chiseled features, pooling a deep black in the hollows of his eyes.
“What would Mother think of this?” Daeron hears himself ask, voice cracking under the weight of the tears burning hot in the backs of his eyes.
It is his last and most desperate attempt to reach for his uncle, just as he has seen you do, and to pull him back from the dangerous ledge he stands upon. But he knows the man has already made up his mind; and he knows that there is no version of him that walks out of this sept without spilling blood.
Ormund’s face softens slightly, though there is little tenderness in what he asks of the boy now. “Alicent would understand,” he coos in a gentle voice. “War asks difficult things of every great house—”
“I didn’t—” Daeron swallows hard, smaller now than moments before. “I did not mean the Lady Alicent…”
Realization flashes across Ormund’s face — a visible recognition of exactly which woman the boy had meant, and has always meant every time the word slipped accidentally from his mouth and was never corrected for it after. Daeron was not yours by blood, but he was yours in every other way that matters. The small, warm weight of him stopped crying the moment he was placed into your arms fifteen years ago, and never truly stopped being yours since.
Still, Ormund does not soften for it. If anything, something in him hardens further as he takes a slow step closer to the boy.
“Your mother would be proud,” he answers, brows lowered as if the answer was the plainest thing in the world. “Don’t you see? Any strike against this army is a strike against her, against everything she’s built to keep you safe… Any man who raises his fist against our men raises it, in the end, against her… And do you not want to protect her, just as she has spent every day protecting you?”
Daeron swallows hard. The weight of Ormund’s words feels heavy in his throat, heavier than the blade in his hands as his trembling fingers tighten around its hilt. His teary green eyes linger on the steel, flickering shades of gold in the candlelight.
“No, please, I beg you,” the battered prisoner rasps, dried blood matting at his curls from whatever rough handling had brought him here. “I have a family, my lord. Please—”
Daeron’s eyes lift to find the man’s pleading gaze and linger upon him for a long while. He sees your face in the very back of his mind, the only real mother he’s ever truly known, and hears Ormund’s disappointed voice layered over it as he draws the heavy blade back.
Then he strikes.
The cut is not clean. The blade lodges at an off angle in the man’s corded neck and sticks somewhere deep between flesh and bone. The man’s pained shout comes out wet and gargled, bouncing off the cobbled walls and in the depths of Daeron’s mind.
The boy’s body flinches from what his own hand has done as bright crimson blood spouts from the gaping wound and splatters along the old stone.
His face crumples as he removes the blade. It takes a world of strength in his thin arms to wrench it out again. A quiet whimper sounds in his throat when the blade drags against bone and stumbles backward when the man’s limp body collapses at his feet with a dull smack. Dark blood spreads slowly across the stone in a widening, glistening pool that catches the candlelight like moonlight on the bay.
Daeron looks down at the crimson dripping off the steel blade. He does not notice his uncle’s approach until his broader hands are gently guiding the sword from his fingers — fingers that no longer feel like his own.
Ormund wipes the steel clean against the dead man's tunic, one side and then the other, with the methodical care of a man cleaning a hunting knife after a kill. He sheaths the blade back into its hilt and closes the remaining distance between him and the boy.
When Daeron’s mind finally returns to his body — ears still ringing, vision still hazy — his wide eyes snap to his uncle’s face and sees a quiet pride swimming in his features once more. It’s as comforting as it is horrifying. And when Ormund's strong arms wrap around the boy’s shoulders and draw him close to his chest, that feels like a dizzying concoction of the two even more so.
“I am proud of you, boy…” Ormund tells him as he leans in close, pressing his mouth to the boy’s hair in a near-kiss, though he whispers to him instead: “Do not tell your mother of this. Understood?"
Daeron does not answer, though Ormund does not ask him for one now.
130 A.C. / Tumbleton Castle
You return to the castle late in the evening, weary down to your bones from the long day.
You had gone into town with what coin and grain the army could spare, and found Lady Kat there among the frightened smallfolk, tending to the smith's wife, whose arm still sat bound in a rough splint. The woman's round face was kind, but you knew that no amount of offered bread or soft words could cure what comfort had been taken from her.
“Do you know where my husband is?” she had asked you before you left, with something desperate in her voice that made you wish you had a better answer than the only truthful one you could give.
“I’m sorry. I do not know," you told her, smiling in what sympathy you could muster, honest in your ignorance if nothing else.
The question sits strangely in your chest on the ride back to the castle, though you struggle to place exactly why.
Dinner is already laid out by the time you arrive. The long table is embellished with more food than Tumbleton's starving smallfolk have likely seen since the war began. The notion sits heavy in your stomach before you’ve even entered the dining hall, where Ormund rises from his seat to greet you.
His warmth is striking, a shade too bright for the late hour. He presses a jeweled chalice of ale into your hand with a tender grin and a pair of soft eyes, asking after the wife and the town's wounded with an attentiveness he doesn’t usually spare for such small domestic accounts.
“Sit,” he tells you with one wide hand along the small of your back to urge you the short distance to the table. “You've had a long day, my love. Eat something before it goes cold."
Confusion floods your face at the emptiness beside your usual seat. “Where's Daeron? He hasn’t missed out on lemon cakes since he was old enough to chew them.”
“He's not feeling well. Best to let him rest,” Ormund answers with a polite smile as he pours himself a goblet of wine. His soft eyes flit between you and the glugging flagon. “Sit with me, love. I’m sure you’re half-starved yourself."
He sits down in his cushioned seat at the head of the long table and gestures for you to take yours. You remain stubbornly in place, because you know him far too well for anything else. Years of marriage have taught you every register of his voice; every flicker behind his eyes; every twitch in his features. And this one, all warm and careful and slightly too eager, is one you’d learned to trust least of all.
“What have you done?” you deadpan.
Ormund scoffs a breathless laugh, bouncing his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Why do you insist I’ve done something?”
“Because I can hear it in your voice.”
Ormund huffs again, though it’s more of a sound of surprise than true laughter this time. “Well, I assure you, dear wife, I have done nothing at all.”
“Is that what will Daeron tell me?” you press. “When I go to his chambers and ask him myself?"
“He will tell you that I'm an excellent uncle and an even better husband," Ormund quips with his elbows propped on the table and his pointer fingers steepled together. “And also that you ought to sit down and eat your supper with your poor husband, before you go making a production out of a boy's upset stomach.”
You leave despite his words, led purely by the intuition swirling in your stomach that drags you directly to Daeron’s chamber door. You knock once and receive no answer — when the silence holds on the third try, you let yourself in and find the boy alone in his room, curled small on the edge of his bed in a way that strikes you deep in the chest; a reminder of that swaddled babe curled against your chest fifteen years past.
He does not look up when you enter, nor when you lower yourself gingerly onto the edge of the mattress beside him without a word. His shoulders shake in small, tight increments as he struggles to choke down his own sobs. He drags each breath in through his nose and holds it for a beat too long until it shudders out of him again.
He freezes when you lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, going rigid against whatever emotion he’s trying not to shake loose.
“What's happened, my love?" you coo to him, gentling your voice the way you might for a much younger child. “Tell me."
He shakes his auburn head against the pillow and sniffles to himself. “He told me I couldn't…"
“Who? Ormund?” you press and feel a preemptive anger kindling hot in your chest before you’ve even heard the whole of it. “Well… Your uncle tells me a great many things that I’ve long since learned to ignore. So I imagine he can spare us the indulgence of a secret or two.”
After another shaky breath, Daeron pushes himself up from the mattress. He snivels wetly and wipes his flushed cheeks with the back of one hand. You smooth down his wild flaming tendrils until he finds the words to speak.
“The blacksmith…” he wavers. “The one who struck Ser Garrick this morning…”
Your stomach swirls with a sick feeling when he trails off. Your blood runs cold with a fear of what he might say next. You think instantly of the woman with the kind face and the splinted arm, asking so gently if you knew where her husband had run off to. You have to remind yourself to breathe again as you ask, “What of him?”
“Ormund made me…” Daeron’s breath catches in his throat with a horror reignited in the pit of his chest. “He said any strike against the army was a strike against the crown. Against me. Against you.” He forces each word out through unshed tears and feels half-furious at himself when his voice shatters. “He told me it would be a king’s justice. That it— that it would make you proud.”
The boy’s eyes lift to yours then, glassy and green and rimmed red. They dart back and forth over your face, searching for an ounce of comfort within it.
“Are you?” he asks in a voice barely above a whisper. “Proud of me, I mean.”
You nod until the words have climbed through the fear swelling in your throat.
“Of course I am,” you answer breathlessly, but with no hesitation at all despite the dread searing in your chest. “I have been proud of you since the day I met you. Nothing you could do— Nothing of what your uncle made you do could change that. And you did it, I have no doubt, because some part of you believed it would keep our family safe. Protecting the people you love, even when doing so costs so much, is no easy feat, my love. I know this better than you might think…”
Your mind drifts to the pale-haired boy — the merchant’s son who was brown of hair before you found him. The boy who was borrowed and dressed up in a prince’s wardrobe and sent off to whatever fate Rhaenyra’s justice had in store for him. The boy who is very likely chained or worse for a crime that was never truly his, simply because you and Ormund decided his captivity was a fair trade for Daeron’s freedom.
Daeron watches your eyes well with tears of your own, and his freckled face crumples further at the thought of hurting you further. “I did not mean to make you sad…" he mutters with a wet gaze that flits between yours.
“You haven't," you tell him firmly, though your voice remains steady. You gather the boy into your arms and press your cheek against his hair, feeling his tear-stained cheeks wet the skin of your chest. “I’m not sad, my love. I promise. I only love you. That's all….”
You sit with him for a long while after that — until his breathing steadies and his shoulders lose their edge. Only then do you rise, with one last kiss to his forehead, and leave him to whatever uneasy slumber he can manage after what the long day had done to him.
You run into Ormund on your way down the long corridor. His broad form towers in the narrow passageway as his wide hands splay before him in confusion. “What’s taken you so long? Your dinner’s already gone cold.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Your shoulder scrapes along his arm as you shove by him with little affection. Ormund huffs and falls easily into step with you on his much longer legs. The two of you move through the stony corridors in a silent tension that grows with every step you take, torchlight guttering along the damp walls as you pass them. The words of an argument well in your throat the whole way to your chambers and refuse to break free until the door has shut finally behind you.
“I cannot believe you!” you shout, features twisted in anger. “How dare you tell my son to lie to me! After everything—"
Ormund shakes his head. “I only told him to spare you a grief that serves no purpose—"
“You told him to kill a man, Ormund! A smith. A husband.” The words come out through a jaw clenched tight. Your eyes glitter in the flickering candlelight with every one that spills from your mouth, hands gesticulating wildly at your sides. “I stood in that town not an hour ago and told his wife I didn't know where he was. And I didn't know, because you hadn't thought to tell me you hadn’t let him go at all! And now I have to carry that too, on top of everything else because you've decided I didn’t need to be troubled with it—”
“It’s war!” Ormund shouts, voice ringing through the cobbled walls. His handsome features harden instantly as he stares you down with emotionless pale eyes. His long fingers curl into fists before relaxing once more in a repeated cycle intended to calm him. “I will not apologize for teaching that boy what war requires of men who mean to survive it. For now, it’s only Ser Garrick’s broken nose, but we will have far worse than that done to us before this war is through. If Daeron doesn’t learn that now, he’s as good as dead—”
“He’s sixteen—”
“He’s the King's last trueborn son, with any righteous claim to the throne!” Ormund thunders over your teary retort, approaching you with long strides. “He is the rider of a dragon that is the only thing standing between this army and total ruin— What don’t you understand about that?”
Ormund towers over you at once. His firm hands close hard around your arms, keeping you close and unmoving before him. He ducks his head to your height, eyes darting wildly between yours.
“Do you think I enjoyed putting that sword in his hand?” he continues, quieter now. “Do you think I've slept easy a single night since we left Oldtown, knowing what I'm shaping him into— why I have to?”
You swallow hard through a tight throat, peering up at him through the tears clouding your vision. “I think you’ve decided his suffering is a fair price for war,” you waver. “And I think you decided that without asking me.”
“Yes,” Ormund nods without reservation. “I have decided a great many things without asking you first— I did not ask you first when I decided to blanch that stranger’s hair and send him off in Daeron’s place, did I? And yet you still thanked me for it with your words and body when it kept our boy breathing.”
His words tear right through your chest. You shake your head in protest of them even though you know that he’s right — that you are no better than Ormund even in his madness; that you would do worse and more for Daeron if the war called for it, if you were brave enough to do it.
“Did I complain, all those years, when grief after grief left this house without an heir of its own blood?” Ormund goes on, quieter now but no less harsh, as his features twist in a stifled sort of anguish. “Did I complain when courtiers wondered in whispers why a man would stay wed to a wife that could not give him an heir?”
You flinch at his words like you can feel them physically, tearing you from the inside out, though his long fingers caging you force you to stomach them.
“I never complained. Because I love you and because I understood it was no fault of your own,” Ormund continues. “So I have earned, I think, the right to make one hard choice without you looking at me as though I’ve become some monster for it.”
Anger pricks your skin beneath your heavy gown like needles.
It is not the unfairness of the blow of his words that sends you reeling, but rather the sheer astonishment at how low he has stooped in his fury — in his grief. It is, perhaps, the cruelest thing he’s ever said to you; made crueler still for how plainly he does not seem to recognize his own cruelty at all.
“Say that again,” you tell him in an emotionless monotone. “Say it plainly, exactly how you mean it— that you think I am some monster—”
“I didn’t mean…” Ormund huffs and hangs his head, tense shoulders dropping as the lingering anger slips from his skin like rain. “I am not saying this to be cruel— Gods know, I’d sooner cut out my own tongue before I meant any cruelty to you.”
His pale eyes are wet and soft again when they lift to meet yours. His hands loosen their grip on your arms as they lift to cradle your cheeks, softly calloused and warm like velvet along your blazing skin.
“Daeron is the only child either of us has been permitted to keep,” the man continues, softer now. “He is not merely a boy I love, though gods know I do, but he is the only proof that we were ever meant to be parents at all… After everything this life took from us in the trying… Do you understand what I’m telling you?"
“So what?” you press, voice breaking. “The only way he gets to stay ours is if he survives long enough to sit a throne? Is that the only way to remove the taint from his blood— that’s what you called it, right?”
Ormund softens further in the face of your anger.
“Without Aemond, without Vhagar, this army has no dragon to answer to whatever Rhaenyra sends against us next… But Daeron has Tessarion, and Daeron has a claim that half this army would follow into the fire itself,” he coos gently to you, as if anything louder might break you entirely. His thumbs smooth gently along your cheekbones, wiping away a tear that clings stubbornly to the burning skin there. “The war is coming here, my love. It is not a thing we can shield him from any longer. He is our only hope of surviving what is coming, and every bit his birthright to lead it."
“Surely…” you trail off in disbelief, wild eyes searching his bluer ones. “Surely you do not mean to make our child fight in this war."
“It is the will of the gods,” Ormund croons as if it were that simple.
Something in you knows, as each word spills from his mouth, that this is not a man reasoning clearly. You can hear it in the smoothness of his voice and in each too-quick answer on his tongue. And yet, you want more than anything for him to be right. You want it so badly it frightens you — for the gods to will this war’s end, for Ormund’s victory, for your son’s survival.
You don’t realize you’re crying until Ormund draws you fully into his chest with one wide hand along your back and another cradling the back of your head. Tears fall from your lashes and wet the front of his emerald doublet.
“Listen to me…” he mutters into your hair. “If he sits that throne, no one in this realm could ever call him anything but ours. He is Viserys’s heir, yes, but he became a Hightower the moment you held him— and if he rules, no man will ever again whisper that he is not truly yours. He will restore ancient order to the throne. That is how we keep him.”
You shake your head in protest as you lean back from him again, just far enough to peer up at him with tear-heavy eyes. “Just bring him back to me,” you plead fiercely to him. “When this battle is done, I don't care what it costs you to manage it. Bring him back—”
“I will," Ormund nods with the same iron certainty that has carried you through every hard year of your marriage. “I swear it to you. I’ll bring him home—”
“And you,” you remind with a stern finger jabbed into the center of his chest. “You come back to me, too— I have buried enough of what I love in this life, Ormund. I will not bury another. You come back to me. Both of you.”
He nods and leans down to press his forehead against yours. Each of his heaving exhales through his nose fans warm across your chin.
“I will,” he breathes against you, thumbs sweeping again along your cheekbone. He shifts against you to brush the smallest of kisses to the bridge of your nose — so gentle that it makes you feel like crying. Your hands curl hard around his wrist to keep him close. “The gods owe us a debt. And we will see it repaid in full before this war is through, I promise you.”
You cling to the certainty in his voice the way a drowning woman clings to driftwood; the way a starving woman clings to the memory of her last full meal — you cling to him the way a grieving woman clings to the gods themselves.
It was not a rare day for Manchester to be cloudy and rainy. Simon had a week off before he was deployed again.
He's wearing only sweatpants on, relaxing on the couch. He's probably watching football while his toddler busy playing car and making "vroom vroom" on Simon's body, substituting him as a race track but he doesn't mind.
You were comfortable resting besides him, nose deep into your favorite book. Him caressing you and kissing on your shoulder or your temple once in a while.
This is perfect for Simon, although sometimes he doesn't think he deserves it.
But everyday you and his toddler proves it wrong to him. He deserved everything including you and what you both have now.
Maybe creating another one before his deployment so his toddler gonna have a sibling they can play with, of course.
summary: in the middle of the worst e.r. shift of your whole career, you catch your not-quite boyfriend, shirtless, in an empty room with another resident. (6.4k)
contents: established relationship/friends with benefits, jealousy (mohabbot take five real quick), angst, hurt/comfort, kinda canon divergent 'cause i wrote this when the spoilers dropped a few weeks ago cw for s2 spoilers, physical assault (a la dana in s1), panic attacks, mentions of blood and medical procedures, mentions of patient death, brief mentions of grief, brief mentions of not eating due to stress n sadness, allusions to smut 18+ (MDNI)
The lamplit room is filled with Jack’s exclusion from it.
You writhe beneath the mussed blankets, still buzzing from the remnants of your orgasm, and watch his shadow move beneath the crack of the bathroom door. You’re still filled by him, still leaking a mixture of him onto the stained sheets below, and yet you find yourself missing him, anyway.
He does not seem as grieved by the distance as you are. He sobered almost instantly from his own orgasm and promptly slid off your body, without another word or a kiss of reassurance shared between you. He’d slipped his prosthetic back on and made a beeline for the adjoining bathroom — where he has been for some minutes now, just pacing, and leaving you to stew in the worry of what you had obviously done so wrong.
“Do you wanna order food?” you call into the quiet, reaching for your phone on the nightstand beside you. You miss once, then twice, with hands still tingling from a soul-ascending pleasure. The screen fills the dim room with a blue-white light that makes you squint until your tired eyes adjust.
“What?!” Jack shouts back, muffled from behind the door. The hissing faucet shuts off to a slow drip.
“I said, do you—” You cut off your yelling when the bathroom door squeaks open. Jack appears in the doorway, now dressed in the t-shirt and jeans he’d arrived in. He’s shadowed momentarily by the light behind him until he switches it off again — then he’s painted a dim golden color as he walks back into the bedroom for his shoe.
You hold the thin sheet to your bare chest and shift further up the headboard, bending your knees to accommodate his body when he sits on the edge of the mattress to tie his laces. Your eyes soften, waiting for him to look back at you.
He never does.
More quietly, you tell him, “I asked if you wanted to order food. ‘Cause I don’t really feel like cooking right now and, depending on what you want, we should probably wait to order ‘cause Love Island doesn’t come on for another hour, and—”
Jack’s scruffy chin brushes the thin fabric of his shirt as he turns his head slowly to look at you. There’s a distance in his eyes that cuts you off, like you’re a quick fuck that doesn’t know when to stop talking, like he’s waiting for you to stop so he can get away.
“I think I’m gonna head out now, actually,” he tells you, then returns to knot his laces.
“Oh…” you hum, half-breathless, and pretend his foreign dismissiveness doesn’t tear your chest in two. “Are you… Are you okay—?”
“Yeah,” he shrugs and rises from the mattress. “I’m fine. I just— Need to get home.”
You follow him with wet eyes as he rounds the bed for the opposite side, where his phone and wallet sit on the nightstand and his branded rucksack rests on the floor. “Well, do you want me to wait to watch it with you? ‘Cause then I have to text Princes and tell her not to spoil it for me in the morning—”
“Go ahead,” Jack shrugs, with a faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, as he slides the camo strap over his broad shoulder. “I think I’ll survive a week without it.”
Your frown deepens at his joke.
“Did I do something?” you wonder in a meek voice that makes his chest ache.
“No,” he scoffs. “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know…” you murmur shyly, shifting on the mattress and grimacing slightly when the sticky sheets cling to your thighs. “You never leave right after we have sex, so I— I didn’t know if, maybe… It wasn’t good for your something, or if I said something—”
“No, it was great—” Jack interjects, but cuts himself off quickly thereafter, like he was about to say something he shouldn’t.
The word ‘honey’ was about to roll off his tongue the way it always does when he’s talking to you, but it feels wrong to say it now, for a reason he still can’t name that threatens to strangle him all the same.
“I just gotta go now. Okay?”
At a loss for what else to do, or what else to say that might make him stay, you just nod with a sad smile. “Sure…”
Jack leaves with a polite nod — like the sex was some sort of mindless transaction he’s thanking you for and not something you’ve done quite regularly for the past several months. He doesn’t speak another word to you when he walks out, and doesn’t look back at you once when he shuts the door behind him.
You stew in his absence and forget to eat.
Your tired body functions the following day on nothing but heartache and half a granola bar.
You drown in the bustling emergency department, and in the void of the white screen ahead of you, where you try and fail to do your charting. You can’t quite garner the strength to use your hands, much less use your brain to put letters on the screen that’ll just look like alphabet soup to you anyway. You’re stuck idling in the emptiness inside of you, where your heart withers along with your stomach.
Robby watches from afar, studying you as he flits between patients and residents requiring his attention. He has, self-admittedly, quite the soft spot for you — because you’re the smartest person on this floor and the most sensitive, too, which makes for a great doctor but very often the saddest person you’ll ever meet. He waits for you to correct yourself before he has to step in, and potentially make your day worse than it’s obviously already going.
You don’t move for six minutes straight.
He timed it.
“What is going on over here?” Robby wonders slowly, leaning over the top of the desk and peering down at you with a pair of stern brown eyes.
You blink rapidly to clear the haze of rumination from your vision and shrink into your cushioned seat like a scolded child. “Charting…” you answer with an unconvincing waver in your voice.
“Looks like it,” Robby scoffs with a hint of a smile that gets lost in his greying beard. He taps the desk with his palm and stands to full height again, nodding his head and urging you to follow him. “C’mon. Walk with me.”
He saunters off in the opposite direction of the work station, taking a tablet that Dana hands to him as he goes. It takes a long moment for his words to compute, and you scramble to your feet when he throws you an expectant look over his shoulder. You fall into step with the older man as he drags his glasses from the shirt pocket of his black scrubs.
Robby sets the black frames on the bridge of his nose and wonders aloud with his gaze turned to the screen in his hand, “What’s going on with you today, kid?”
“It’s nothing,” you shrug dismissively, sticking close to the man’s side as you weave within the crowded hall.
He flashes you an unenthusiastic glare in return. His eyes dart between your furrowed brows, to your anxiety-bitten lips (where your teeth dig into the delicate skin even now), to where you wrench the hem of your long-sleeved undershirt into trembling fists. Whatever it is, it’s very clearly not nothing.
“I’m not asking to be polite, kid,” the older man tells you, firm but not entirely unkind. “I can tell something’s wrong, and it’s affecting your work, so— Just tell me.”
You swallow hard and struggle to find the courage to speak, or to meet the man’s gaze as your eyes dart everywhere but back at him.
“It’s about your friend…” you confess in a sheepish murmur that gets lost in the droning of the bustling E.R.
It takes Robby a moment or more to catch your meaning.
“Jack?” he presses, because he knew the two of you were seeing each other, but not that it was quite so serious to warrant the off-day you’re having now. He makes a mental note to ream Abbot out for it the next time he sees him — ‘cause he can’t have any of his residents upset, least of all you.
You nod with an averted gaze. “He’s just… been off—”
“He’s always off,” Robby scoffs.
“Well, not with me,” you tell him, foreignly firm in your quiet argument. “And now he’s not talking to me, and I have no idea what I did…”
“Well, knowing Jack, you probably didn’t do a damn thing,” Robby concedes with a heavy sigh and flashes you a sympathetic look as you turn the corner. “Just give him some time, alright? He’ll come around. He always does. For now, you’ve got a patient in 8 that’s asking for you—”
Before you can make a guess on who it is — though you think you already know the answer — a strong hand wrenches suddenly around your wrist.
The man’s fingers are warm, calloused, and unwavering against your delicate skin. Your heart lurches into your throat at the sudden panic as your chin snaps towards the man towering over you. He’s tall, bearded, rugged, and so angry he’s red in the face.
“I have been waiting out there…” the man starts, taut voice wavering with a withheld fire. “…For four hours. When the hell am I gonna see somebody?”
“How did you get back here?” is the first thing you think to squeak out, because you vaguely recall McKay sending him back to Chairs after taking his vitals some time ago.
Robby steps in then, cutting between you and the stranger to urge him backward and away from you. You rub at your tender wrist when the man’s brutal touch is gone.
“We’re seeing the sickest patients first, sir. So count yourself lucky you aren’t back here,” Robby explains in an even voice, sounding much calmer than he really feels. “But touch anybody in here like that again, and you won’t be seen at all. Got it?”
The man caves with a heavy breath and with his weathered palms splayed in surrender. “I was just asking a question, man…”
“I’ll handle it, boss,” Ahmad cuts in, rushing towards the three of you after catching sight of the altercation from down the hall. He steps between the two of you and the angry patient and ushers him back toward the waiting room.
“Don’t touch me,” you hear the man spit, but complying anyway.
“Trust me, man,” Ahmad quips. “I don’t want to.”
It takes you a long moment thereafter to catch your breath.
It was certainly not the first time you’ve been grabbed by an unhappy patient, and it would certainly not be the last, but you can never quite get used to the fear. The panic is slow to ebb from your veins, even as the man is escorted back to Chairs. You find him sneering silently at you when you catch his eyes, moments before the door shuts behind him.
Robby steps into your tunnel vision, ducking down to meet your gaze with dark eyes glimmering with worry. “You alright, kid? Did he get you?”
“I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory and muster a smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “I’ve seen my fair share of assholes, Robby. Today, even.”
“Well, yeah,” the man scoffs playfully. “You’re with Abbot— I’m sure you’re an expert at dealing with assholes by now…”
By all accounts, you were not supposed to have favorites at the PTMC. And you didn’t really; everyone who stepped foot into the E.R. got the same level of medical care from you — even the assholes. But Louie Cloverfield was different, special. He was the first patient you ever saw as an R1, and when he kept coming in, and you kept picking up his cases, he became your patient.
If Louie was in, and you were on shift, you were the one tending to him. Always.
So, you stay by his side when he loses his pulse, even when the rest of the E.R. reduces to the inevitable chaos of the afternoon rush — even when you know the rest of your co-workers could probably use your help out there now — even when you know there’s nothing more you can do for Louie to keep him alive.
Sweat beads on your forehead as you kneel at his bedside, pounding firmly at the man’s chest in a feeble attempt to keep his heart beating. You’ve lost feeling in your arms now — they’ve gone from aching, to burning, to utterly numb — but your attempt at resuscitation never stops, not even as dark crimson blood spits from his breathing tube; the clearest sign of blood in his lungs.
Robby watches from the back of the room, keeping a close eye on you and the bodies donned in camo outside the window — as the TEMS unit treats a trauma patient across the way, with Jack Abbot among them. He catches the man glancing around the crowded E.R. for a moment, peering over passing heads for a glimpse of you, before the work inevitably drags him away.
Robby knows you have not yet noticed Jack’s presence.
You’ve got the sort of tunnel vision you always get in a crisis, when you refuse to move on until you’ve helped the person in front of you first — which has undoubtedly made you the very backbone of the PTMC patient satisfaction score, though at a detriment to yourself perhaps. Because you never know when to stop; and then, when you inevitably have to, you’ll always find a way to blame yourself for it.
“Three minutes since the epi,” you hear Perlah say, over the sound of your pounding heartbeat in your ears.
“Hold compressions,” Robby commands.
You stop on instinct, and feel the ache done into your bones. You exhale heavy breaths as you wipe sweat from your brow with the back of your gloved hand, careful to avoid the drops of blood spotted there. You feel like your chest is tearing in two when that same, menacing beeping sound fills the air.
“Aystotle,” Robby sighs. “Resume compressions.”
“Give me another amp of epi— and more suction,” you say through panted breaths, situating your palms back over the older man’s sternum. You look past the rogue flyaways falling over your eyes and the nurses crowded around you, peering at Robby with a determined but no less pleading gaze. “What do we do? Should we— Should we give PCC?”
Robby shakes his head with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, it’s too late for that…” he hums sympathetically. “And he’s not an ECMO candidate, so—”
“Well, can you tell me something that we can do?” you snap, harsher than you mean to.
Robby only softens further, dark eyes going tender around the edges as he tells you, “There’s nothing else we can do for him, kid…”
“Robby,” you whimper, flinching like he’s hurt you, but never once stopping your compressions. “C’mon. Please, we can— We can think of something— We still have two more rounds of epi, maybe it’ll—”
You exhale a punched-out breath, like not being able to save Louie hits you like a fist to the stomach. Your aching arms tingle with numbness when you part from the unconscious man. That wretched beeping fills the air once more, ringing through your ears and pounding skull.
“12:07,” you hear Robby announce the time of death, as Perlah’s soft hands grasp gently at your shoulders.
“C’mon. I’ll clean up,” the woman tells you, sniffling. “You take a second.”
“I’m fine,” you shrug, half-strangled, as you slip the bloodied gloves from your half-numb hands. You blink back burning tears as you walk them to the trash.
“You’re not,” Robby murmurs, head bowed to meet your averted gaze. “And that’s okay. Just take a second.”
You remind yourself to breathe — in for seven beats and out for eight — as the muffled exam room breaks away into the chaotic E.R. The rest of it becomes a blur in your tunnel vision, and the calls for concern turn to inaudible slurs in your ears.
“Whoa… you okay?” you only vaguely hear Trinity ask as you storm past the work station.
“Fine,” you squeak on instinct, despite the obvious.
“Oh, yeah, he totally croaked in there,” Ogilvie murmurs, as though to gossip with her, but forgetting to be subtle about it.
“Do you ever think before you speak?” Santos quips. “Or is the stupidity genetic?”
Your heavy eyes search for an empty room to duck into, to at least muffle your screams before you cry in front of everyone. There is no patient in the bed in Central 15, so you burst into that one, still struggling to catch your breath.
Your much-needed inhale gets caught in your chest at the sight you find in the corner of the room — Jack Abbot, stripped off his shirt and wiping blood from his stomach, with Samira standing just behind him, tending carefully to the scrape on his back.
Your sneaker scuffs the tile as you still suddenly in place.
The sound of your sudden presence makes them freeze, too. Their heads dart in your direction, gaping with wide eyes and parted mouths as if you’d just caught them doing something terrible. In a way, it feels like you have.
It feels like you’ve stumbled upon some achingly tender moment between them, of which you had been deprived for some time now — because even when Jack was with you, he was a thousand miles away. You wonder if, maybe, a part of him wanted to be here — with Samira, perhaps — and if that’s why he had left you so abruptly last night, as if it had only occurred to him then that you were no longer what he wanted.
You wouldn’t have blamed him for it, if that were the case. You just wish he would’ve told you before now, so it would feel like less of a white-hot knife lodged into the center of your sternum to find him this way.
“Sorry,” you just barely manage to choke out, though it gets lost in a whimper as you fight back the urge to cry.
Jack’s scruffy chest pinches with worry at the crack in your fragile voice and the visibly frazzled sight of you, all wild-haired and glassy-eyed. It hurts him far worse than the wounds burning red-hot on his pale skin now.
“What happened?” he asks, greying brows lowered in concern.
Samira stills with her soft fingers on Jack’s broad, freckled shoulder, touching him with a tenderness he hasn’t let you give him in some time.
“Are you okay?” she wonders, soft with a worry that is always sincere coming from here, but finds you more like a slap in the face just now.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory, then sniffle as you shake your head at yourself. “I’m not, actually— I don’t know why I said that— Louie just died. Pulmonary hemorrhage. And I was just looking for an empty room to cry in, I didn’t mean to… to interrupt…”
“You didn’t,” Jack assures you, parting from Samira to take a step closer to you.
It takes quite a lot of strength from you to turn away from him, instead of leering at his shirtless form or cowering at the gentle look in his light eyes. “I-I’ll see myself out,” you stammer hopelessly. “Sorry…”
You just barely hear Jack calling your name before the heavy glass door shuts behind you.
With nowhere else to go, and not willing to face the embarrassment of walking back the way you came, you make a beeline for the ambulance bay. The automatic doors part for you, and the cool air outside takes your breath away a second later.
Your chest hitches as you inhale a sniveling breath, trying and failing to regulate your breathing. You stand at the edge of the curb with one hand balled into a fist and one hand clutching your aching chest. Your heart’s telling you that you’re having an embolism and you’re about to keel over at this very moment; your brain’s telling you that you’re just having a panic attack and you need to suck it the hell up.
“Hey,” a man calls from further down the sidewalk.
Your head snaps in the direction of the familiar voice. You tense at the sight of the man who had grabbed you earlier, and your aching heart forgets to beat when you see him storming over to you. You find he’s wearing a smile on his bearded face when he’s close enough, but it looks more cynical than kind.
“You’re the nurse who got me kicked out earlier, aren’t you?” he asks.
You don’t have the breath or the bravery to correct him now.
“I’m sorry, sir…” you sniffle, wet-eyed, and turn away. “It’s just… It’s been a long day, okay? I didn’t mean for you to get escorted out. You just scared me, that’s all. I’m—”
You turn to face him again when he’s standing ahead of you. But before the words of an apology can spill from your mouth, his weathered fist collides with your nose.
You hear a sharp crack, a wet whoosh, and then the dull slap of your body hitting the pavement. You grimace when the back of your skull meets the concrete, and struggle to blink away the black spots from your vision.
The very first face you see is Langdon’s, though you’re not quite sure how long it’s been since your eyes have closed — a few seconds, maybe, or several minutes. You’re still lying on the rough pavement when you come to, with Frank’s gentle fingers brushing the hair out of your eyes with one hand and shining his penlight into your eyes with the other.
“There you are…” the man coos. “What happened to you out here?”
You hardly hear him, like he’s speaking to you from underwater. You answer him with a question of your own, lifting your trembling fingers to the dull throbbing sensation in your nose.
“Is… Is it bad?” you wonder aloud, half-slurring. You grimace first at the wet feeling on your cupid’s bow, then at the bright scarlet blood staining your fingertips. You whisper, voice breaking. “Ow…”
“Whoa, careful there…” Mel wavers, rushing from behind Langdon to help you when you try to sit up on your own. She crouches down beside him and takes you by the elbows in a pair of gentle hands. She squints behind her glasses when your inhale rattles in your chest. “Did you fall on your back?”
“Did somebody hit you?” Langdon presses from her other side, bushy brows lowered in worry.
“Wow…” you mumble, blinking hard, and wincing when you taste blood in your mouth. “So many questions…”
Mel and Langdon share a panicked look you don’t see.
“Yeah, c’mon. Let’s go,” the older man sighs, urging you up by the elbows and steadying you when you sway softly in place. “Come with me…”
“I can walk,” you protest through your ragged breaths, and through the blood dripping from your cupid’s bow and into your mouth. You pull your arm out of his grasp when the strength to do so returns to you, and stagger the rest of the way to the entrance until you regain your footing. “Just… Be normal, alright?”
“Right…” Langdon scoffs and fights back the urge to laugh — because you obviously have no idea how you look right now, with the lower half of your face all covered in blood, as if you’ve just been rescued from a bar fight. There’s hardly anything normal about that.
You try to be, anyway, as you stroll through the crowded E.R., hoping to be blanketed by the chaos inside. Everyone’s too busy charting or rushing to patients to notice your being there. You’re five or more steps away from making it to the bathroom when Robby’s eagle-eyed stare locks in on you from behind his computer.
“Jesus fucking Christ…” the older man blurts, sliding off his glasses and rising from his chair. He abandons his work without a second thought and rounds the workstation to rush to your side.
“I’m okay,” you tell him with a dismissive wave of your hand, pressing onward even when you hear his footsteps nearing you. He stops you with a gentle hand on your shoulder and steps in front of you to block your path.
“What the hell happened to you?” he wonders aloud, looking past you to Langdon and Mel as he drags a pair of gloves from his scrub pockets.
“We found her like this,” Frank shrugs.
“I told you to take a break, not get into a bar fight.”
“Ha-ha,” you monotone, then flinch when it hurts to smile. “Ow…”
“Who did this, huh?” Robby asks, cupping your bloodied face in his gloved hands. He runs his fingers over the back of your head first, to make sure you have no wounds there, before pressing his thumbs gently to the apples of your cheeks. “It wasn’t that asshole from before, was it?”
“I didn’t see him,” you lie through your teeth.
“Any trouble seeing? Any double vision?”
You shake your head against his hands, then inhale another rattling breath.
“Did you fall on your back?” he asks you then.
You nod once.
“What about a headache?”
“I always have a headache,” you answer. “I’m fine, Robby. I just need to get cleaned up—”
“Look at you— You’re not fine,” the man snaps. “Now, c’mon. You’re coming with me.”
You have no choice but to follow him when he wraps a firm, gentle hand around your arm, ushering you to walk ahead of him. You ignore the looks and calls of concern from the coworkers around you, except for Mel’s voice, which comes from behind you.
“Should I find Dr. Abbot?” she wonders aloud.
Your head snaps over your shoulder to look at her, and it makes your vision swim.
“Absolutely do not do that,” you answer, a little harsher than you mean to.
“O-kay…” she stammers and trails off.
“In here,” Robby urges, swinging open the door to the nearest empty room. He keeps a steady hand on your back to keep you stable and turns back to Mel before he follows you inside. “Find Abbot,” he tells her.
You lie on your back on the hospital bed while Robby does an impromptu exam. He presses the cold chestpiece of his stethoscope to your skin and listens to your breathing until it evens out again, from where the air had rushed out of your lungs after the fall. He finds your pupils both equal and reactive, and your nose free from swelling or cracking — “Nothing that mother nature can’t fix,” he says, and takes to cleaning you up instead.
“These beds are so hard,” you murmur, shifting uncomfortably with an icepack pressed to your nose, which Princess had brought by some minutes ago. “We should really get new ones in here. How are patients supposed to be comfortable in these?”
“Yeah, I’ll go tell Gloria,” Robby scoffs, dabbing at your nose with a wet wipe. “I’m sure she’ll get right on that…”
He parts from you to chuck the red-tinted napkin into the bin at his side and waits for you to laugh at his stupid joke. You stay silent. You don’t even give him a pity giggle, and you always, at the very least, give him a goddamn pity giggle. His brows furrow in a mixture of confusion and concern.
“Can I ask you a stupid question?”
“Better than anyone I know, Dr. Robby…”
“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, reaching for another wipe with a gloved hand. It’s freezing against the burning skin of your neck as it dabs it gently there. “Why didn’t you want me telling Abbot about this, huh?”
“Because he doesn’t care…” you mumble cynically, almost inaudibly so.
“Oh, c’mon,” Robby scoffs. “Even you don’t believe that.”
You don’t. Not really. You know Jack cares, if only because it’s in his blood to do so. His basic human empathy is what made him such a good doctor. You just aren’t sure that he cares about you in the way you thought he did — in the way you wanted him to — and you’re not quite sure how to voice that to Robby now.
“He’s busy right now,” you answer instead, still half-hidden behind the icepack. “Too busy for me, and I don’t wanna bother him, so… Just drop it.”
Robby flashes you a sympathetic smile that you don’t see as he swipes at the last bit of blood from your skin. “I know he may not act like it, kid, but he does care about you.”
“You’re right,” you mumble. “He doesn’t act like it—”
Jack Abbot bursts into the room like a red-hot flame through a burning house. His broad chest heaves with panted breaths beneath the thin navy shirt he wears in place of his tactical gear, though his camo pants still sit heavy on his waist.
His wild eyes scan your form. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he blurts.
You glare at Robby from behind the icepack. “I hate you.”
“Yeah, I know…” the man sighs, dropping the crumpled wipe into the trash beside him.
“What happened?” Jack presses, more firmly this time.
“Nothing,” you murmur shyly, unable to meet his gaze when he towers at your bedside with his hands on his hips. “It’s not the first time someone’s swung at me—”
“Yeah, but it’s the first time it’s been this bad. Bad enough that someone had to come get me,” Jack argues, made a bit harsher with the concern pinching at his chest. His head whips over his shoulder. “Who the hell did this?”
“Some guy from Chairs, I think,” Robby shrugs. “Name’s Driscoll. Ahmad’s already handling it. He’ll deal with the police.”
“Good,” Jack nods, firm in a way you’ve always adored about him. He was inherently resolute where you were perpetually indecisive. It mostly came in handy when you struggled to figure out what to eat for dinner, not usually in situations like this. “‘Cause we’re pressing charges on this asshole, alright?”
“Honestly, Jack, I don’t care what you do…” you sigh. “But my head is really starting to hurt, and I really don’t feel like handling this right now.”
“On it,” Robby nods, taking the hint and stalking out of the room. He shuts the curtains after him and dims the light as he goes. The noise of the Pitt muffles again when the door closes behind him, leaving you and Jack alone in the not-quite-silence and the not-quite-dark.
“Here. C’mon,” the man urges suddenly, motioning with his chin. “Make room for me.”
“What?” you ask, eyes squinted in confusion as the man turns to sit on the edge of the twin-sized bed, adjusting his prosthetic to swing it over the side.
He gives you an expectant look over his shoulder. “Scooch,” is all he says, in a strangely strong voice despite the very silly command.
You shift on the thin mattress despite your better judgment to make room for him. Jack urges his right leg up first, then his left one second. He settles in beside you and urges the railings up to keep him from falling off the side. You try to do the same, though you possess a lot less strength with only one hand than the man beside you.
Your breath catches when he reaches over you with a strong hand, helping you lift the barrier the rest of the way.
“Thanks…” you mumble, half-shy.
“Don’t mention it,” he huffs politely, with one arm on his stomach and the other curled around your shoulders, keeping you close to accommodate both your bodies on the twin-sized bed. He smells of sweat and musky cologne and antiseptic. It takes everything in you not to melt into his warmth. You remain tense beside him, feeling slightly strange in his hold in a way you never have before.
“I’m sorry about, Louie—”
“You don’t have to do this—” you blurt simultaneously.
His head snaps over to you. He has to jerk his scruffy chin back to look at you properly from the dwindling proximity between you. His eyes dart between your averted gaze and the slowly melting icepack you fidget with like a stress ball.
“Do what?” he asks.
“I didn’t mean to walk in on you and Samira, okay?” you confess quietly, ‘cause any octave higher, and your voice will start to shake. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to make it a whole thing, you know? So you don’t have to come in and pretend to be all nice just because you think I’m upset, ‘cause I’m not.”
(Your rambling is hardly convincing in the matter, but he makes no mention of it.)
“Okay. I hear you,” Jack murmurs gently, always so patient with your rambling, even though he can only halfway comprehend it a lot of the time. “But I’m still not sure what Mohan has to do with this—”
Honey, he wants to say, but doesn’t allow himself.
“If you want to be with her, that’s okay— Or if it’s just because you don’t wanna be with me, that’s okay, too,” you explain in a strangely even voice. “But I wish you would’ve just told me, instead of bailing on me last night—”
“I didn’t bail on you—”
“—So then I wouldn’t have to catch you and Samira doing…” you trail off, face screwed. “Whatever the hell you were doing back there.”
“Catching us?” Jack echoes with a laugh you can feel rumbling against your shoulder. “That would imply we were doing something worth getting caught. She just walked in on me while looking for her patient, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well…” you hum, gaze averted to the icepack in your lap. “It seemed pretty intimate…”
“It wasn’t.”
“More intimate than you’ve been with me,” you argue sheepishly.
“Well, not to be crude here, but…” Jack trails off with an audible smile in his voice. “We literally had sex last night.”
“Yeah, and you left,” you spit, turning to look at him for the first time since he stormed in. You wear a wet look in your glassy eyes and a bruise blooming on the bridge of your nose. “And I cried myself to sleep about it. Which means I didn’t get to watch Love Island, which means I forgot to eat, which means I’m running on fumes on what has arguably been the worst shift of my whole life.”
You take a much-needed breath when the words are gone from your mouth.
Jack does not jump immediately to defend himself. He knows he doesn’t deserve it now. He just lets himself stew in your fiery words instead, so you know they’ll have a real impact on him before he responds.
“You’re right,” he sighs after a few long moments. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” you shake your head at his apologetic tone. “Just don’t… Don’t be so mean, you know? If you don’t wanna be with me anymore, why can’t you just say?”
“Because I do want to be with you,” he answers, weathered features screwed in offense. “How would you ask me that?”
“Because you aren’t acting like it—”
“Because I almost told you that I loved you,” Jack blurts suddenly, in a stern tone of voice that snatches the breath from your lungs. He swallows hard and continues. “Last night, I mean, when we… I almost said it… Because I felt it, but then I… I realized I hadn’t said that to anyone since my wife passed, and it freaked me out.”
“But…” you start in a broken whisper. “Why does that have to be such a bad thing?”
“‘Cause it makes me feel guilty,” Jack answers. “The way I love you makes me feel guilty, like I’m abandoning her. And I… I don’t know what to do with all that… grief.”
You feel your heart aching, for the third or hundredth time that day. You notice Jack’s right hand hanging on your shoulder, how his fingers fidget anxiously there, and how his left hand scratches at the rough fabric of his camo pants — made overwrought by his confession, and unsure what to do with it now.
“Why don’t you just give it to me?” you wonder quietly, then shrug at the confused look Jack gives you a second later. “Your grief, I mean. I can take it. You know, make it a little more bearable for you. So you don’t have to carry it all on your own.”
The softness of your words knocks the breath from Jack’s lungs.
The corner of his mouth quirks in a wavering smile as he blinks burning tears out of his eyes. “Jesus, we're a couple of goddamn sad sacks, aren’t we, honey?” he scoffs a sad laugh and runs his free hand down his scruffy face.
Your lips twitch upward, feeling giddy but fighting it. “That’s the first time you called me that in two days…” you observe distantly.
“What?”
“Honey.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I’m sorry for that, too…”
“Don’t be sorry,” you repeat, this time with a smile. “Just— kiss me or somethin’…”
“Gladly,” Jack says with a wider grin.
You tilt your chin up to meet him halfway when he leans down to kiss you. His nose bumps into the side of your bruised one, as your hand reaches for his wounded shoulder. You flinch against each other in tandem.
“Ow,” you whimper.
“Ouch,” Jack winces. “Shit, honey— Sorry.”
“Are you okay?” you ask with a sympathetic scrunch to your features, cupping his scruffy face in your delicate hands. “I haven’t checked in on you yet, I know you’re hurt—”
“I’m fine,” he assures with a shake of his head, leaning instinctively into your touch. “I got a little banged up, but… I’m good now.”
“Promise?” you whisper, swiping an eyelash from his cheek with your thumb.
“I promise. I'll tell you about later,” he nods once and smooths his calloused fingers across your temple, looking at you with a tenderness you’ve been craving all day. “What about you, honey— Are you okay?”
You inhale sharply through your bruised nose and nod on a slower exhale.
“I will be,” you answer honestly for the first time all day.
𐔌՞ ܸ.ˬ.ܸ՞𐦯 summary: in your last relationship aftercare wasn’t even a concept, but with Simon Riley it’s so much more than that.
𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: just Simon giving you aftercare for the first time because what the hell I have free will ALSO 18+ puhlease!! Mdni I’ll boot kick you out.
𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fluff so rotten your teeth will fall out.
Pairings: bf!Simon x gf!Reader
The next best thing to sex with Simon Riley was the aftercare - you thought as your gaze followed him into the bathroom, his frame disappearing behind the doorframe. You were sore, heart hammering and skin slick with sweat as you basked in the aftermath of it all, but a soft smile stretched across your lips.
You felt like you were positively glowing.
It shocked you the first time you both had sex. Not that you expected him to discard you with his back turned. But considering your past relationship, the lack of love after making it was normal for you.
Didn’t make it suck any less though.
So when it came to Simon. A man who practically intimidated every neighbour of yours within a block, muscle and tattoo ridden and who killed for a living - aftercare seemed … overly emotionally strenuous for him. Like it would make things too real? You thought.
But when it came and he held you as though you could crack like strained glass, gently wiping your skin with a lukewarm towel, you couldn’t hide how enamoured you felt.
How did so much care and love come from the same hands that drew blood.
“What’s tha’ look for?” Simon pointed bluntly as he butterflied your hips open to clean your core “nothing just-“ you swallowed thickly, blinking “didn’t expect all this” you breathe. Simon’s brows furrowed in confusion, gaze still tethered to wiping you clean “Christ dove, what kind of men have you been havin’ sex with” his abrasive tone made you huff a laugh “shitty ones” you retorted.
“Fuckin’ clearly” he said, guiding the rough towel over your stomach.
Seconds passed and you were still unable to wipe the adoration off your face, something Simon noticed with a huff of a laugh “ya lookin’ at me like I’ve just bought you a fuckin’ puppy” mirth dripped off of his tone.
You gently pushed him “shut up”
“What kinda man do ya’ take me for” Simon questioned while he moved to soothe the inside of your thighs. You let his words hang in the air before you responded “not a shitty one” he hummed in amusement, his belief of your words wavered thin.
Simon tended to the hickeys and bruises, apologising gruffly for getting carried away. To which you said that you didn’t mind “Good” he said, throwing the towel into the dirty clothes basket before lying down next to you “C’mere” he graveled, arms outstretched.
You complied, draping your arm across his scarred chest. A new found sense of relief flooded through you at the feeling of being so tenderly cared for. Simon heaved a sigh, coiling his arm around your waist to pull you closer “M’fuckin’ girl” he murmured before kissing the crown of your head.
Brendon Park’s wife who can’t stop getting pregnant… you’re a nurse practitioner in the emergency department but has been in so rarely that when you come in after your latest maternity leave, the interns and even some of the residents don’t know who you are, or why all the staff love you?
“Why have we never met her? You all seem to love her,” Whitaker had asked Dana.
“She’s been on maternity leave since you were interns.”
“for two years?” he asked, confused “i’ve never seen her. ever.”
“she’s had three babies,” she expanded, “she’s got a 5 year old, 3 year old, and her one year old.”
Whitaker knew it might be a bit of a misogynist thought, and he was far from that, but what was the point in still working if you were constantly popping out babies? then again, Whitaker hadn’t known you before you were a mom, he’d blindly go off of Dana’s word about you. and he’d be too scared to not believe Dr Park when he’d (rarely) talk about his wife. “wow. three kids.” is all he could reply with.
it became a little bit of a joke amongst the emergency department staff, that you could just look at your husband and get pregnant, but Brendon didn’t like that joke. didn’t like how people said ‘you used to be blah de blah’ used to? if anything, his wife is 10x more capable than the average person. you were so much more than that, and yes, he loved his children and you so so much, he loved that you loved him enough to give him all of these babies.
and he knew it affected you, that when you were pregnant and still working, people would tease and joke but it would upset you; he changed socks as many times as you ran up to Orthopaedics and cried in his office. he couldn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought about him, but when it upset his wife? when they were insinuating that all she was good for was to give him babies and be some trad housewife? it fucked him off.
…and a year and a half later, you got pregnant again.
warnings: explicit sexual content (18+), f!reader, rough sex, spanking (light), panty pulling, unprotected sex (within filming context), clark finishes on reader, overstimulation, nsfw language + themes.
don’t want to see this kind of content? feel free to block these tags: #pornstar!clark #kentwiththegooddick #kwtgd #kwtgd kinks
By the time the video picked up, Clark was already fucking you hard enough to make the bed shake. You were face down on the mattress with your ass pushed up for him, bra still on, panties dragged off to one side. The setup was supposed to sell some rushed little quickie, one of those cheap, overused porno scenarios where nobody bothered getting fully undressed because apparently there just wasn’t time.
Clark didn’t care about any of that.
What he did care about, though, was the way your ass kept meeting his hips.
He stood behind you at the edge of the bed, driving into you over and over while you pushed right back, keeping pace without needing to be told. His hands locked around your hips, pulling you onto his cock as your body bounced against him with every thrust. He felt each impact through his grip, but all of his attention remained fixed on the movement beneath him.
Your panties only made everything impossible to ignore. The lace thong stayed crooked across one side of your ass, stretched tight where it still clung to you and twisted where he’d shoved it aside. Each stroke tugged the fabric a little higher, the thin strip shifting against your skin every time you took him deep again.
And you kept doing it.
Meeting him thrust for thrust. Taking every hard snap of his hips and sending your own back for the next one, making it worse. Better. Harder for him to remember there was a camera pointed at either of you. Clark watched as you arched your back for him, leaning forward until your chest pressed deeper into the mattress, opening yourself up for another hard pass. Then another. Your ass lifted higher beneath his hands like you were giving him more room to fuck you, and something about the sight of it made him sink into the moment completely.
His grip tightened around your hips first, fingers digging in as he pulled you back onto his cock. Then one hand lifted.
The first smack cracked through the room. Your ass jolted beneath his palm while his cock stayed buried inside you, the impact making everything move around him. Clark watched it happen, watched the soft recoil of your body, the way your back dipped a little lower like the sting had only made you want more.
So he did it again.
Another sharp slap landed across the same cheek, louder this time. Your body jumped beneath his hand, but your rhythm never faltered. You only pushed back onto him harder, pulling a groan from his chest. Clark did it again without slowing, his palm coming down as your hips kept working against his.
Every reaction pulled him deeper into it. The louder you got, the harder he fucked you, and the harder he fucked you, the more your body gave back. It built between you, each response feeding the next until the control he usually kept so firmly in place started slipping.
His fingers bit into your hips as he drove into you faster, each motion pulling another sound from you until one hand left and caught the lace bunched across your ass. He wound it around his fist and pulled it taut, drawing your thong higher before using it to pull you back onto him. The next one landed heavier, and so did the one after that, each pull bringing your ass straight into his hips while he pushed forward to meet you.
Your voice climbed with the pace, each sound coming quicker as your back arched farther and your thighs tensed beneath you. Still, you kept pushing back, kept taking him, even as the pressure building inside you started to ruin your rhythm.
Clark could feel how close you were in the way you kept tightening around him, gripping harder every time he yanked you back by the lace and buried himself again. And knowing it only made him lose more of that control. His thrusts got deeper, harsher, each one knocking another sound out of you while his fist stayed twisted tight in your thong. He kept dragging you back and pounding into you without easing up, your body winding tighter around him until every stroke pushed you closer to the edge.
He thought the sight before had been bad enough, damning even, but now he knew better. Clark was so caught up in the way your body met his—the way your ass lifted for him, making the fabric bite into your skin as more of it disappeared into his fist—that he almost missed the way your sounds started changing. They pitched higher, grew messier, breaking apart with every movement between you. Then your back arched differently. Your ass snapped back hard against him once before your rhythm broke, stuttering against him as your thighs went tight and started shaking.
You came around him like that, crying out while your pussy clamped down hard enough to pull a ragged breath from him. Still, he didn’t stop. Didn’t miss a single beat. The lace strained across your hips as your body jerked beneath him. Every time you pushed back or tried to move with the force of your orgasm, he pulled you closer without realizing it, keeping you right there on his cock while he drove into you again. He wasn’t thinking about the fabric anymore. Wasn’t thinking about how far he’d stretched it or how much pressure he was putting on it.
He was thinking about the way you sounded. The way your ass kept trying to meet him even while your legs shook. The way you kept squeezing around him, wet and tight and still taking every hard thrust he gave you. Every pulse around his cock dragged him closer until his own movements started getting rougher, less controlled, his hips slamming into you while your orgasm kept working through your body.
Then he pulled you back onto him again, harder than before.
Snap.
The lace gave in his fist, the sound cutting clean through everything before a little yelp jumped out of you. But even then, you didn’t stop fucking him. Your hips kept working, pushing back onto his cock with the torn fabric hanging loose around you, and that was enough to send him over.
Clark started to come with a rough, broken groan, his fist tightening around what was left of your thong as you kept fucking yourself back onto him. His hips lost whatever rhythm had been left, chasing the feeling instead as your body kept meeting every desperate rut. Somewhere in the middle of it, he swore he apologized. Thought he managed a strained, “Sorry,” but it was hard to tell when the word disappeared beneath your sounds and the relentless movement of your hips.
It nearly took him under completely before he remembered the scene. Remembered what he was supposed to do. More through sheer luck than any real will of his own, he slipped free at the last possible second, one hand keeping you steady while the other wrapped around his cock and stroked him through the rest of it.
His groans came out loud and unrestrained as thick, hot cum spilled over your ass. There was more than either of you expected. Some landed higher across your lower back while the rest gathered over the curve of you and slowly slipped toward the torn lace at your hips. The camera moved in close behind you, catching every filthy trace he’d left on your skin. You stayed arched on the mattress, still trying to catch your breath, while Clark stood over you with his chest heaving, eyes fixed on your ass like even now, after everything, he still hadn’t seen enough.
a/n: it's been so long, guys, i'm so sorry. i'm working through my drafts this weekend, so hopefully i can post some more soon. also, not sure how i feel about this one lol. either way, i hope you guys enjoy <3
A round robin smutty AU crackfic set in the shawn hatosy character multiverse, now dropping on AO3.
FOLLOW POST FOR UPDATES
Synopsis: You’ve unwittingly engineered the technology that’s now being used to erase all variants in the Hatosyverse, and there’s only one way to save them.
“Hey I just met you
And this is crazy!
I’m here to save you-
So fuck me, baby”
Featuring: Stan Rosado, Brett Richards, Sammy Bryant, Charlie Reid, Grant Reilly, Pope Cody, Jack Abbot, fem!reader who has to save them all <3, and Titus Danforth
*_*_*_CHECK AO3 FOR STORY AND CHAPTER TAGS_*_*_*
ALL CHAPTER LINKS
Chapter 1: Prologue (Mad)
Chapter 2: Stan Rosado (The Faculty)*
Chapter 3: Brett Richards (Fire Country)*
Chapter 4: Titus Interlude (Ready Or Not 2) by @dominowaverly
Chapter 5: Sammy Bryant (SouthLAnd)
Chapter 6: Charlie Reid (Chicago PD)
Chapter 7: Grant Reilly (Yes Chef)* by @dominowaverly
Chapter 8: Pope Cody* (Animal Kingdom)
Chapter 9: (unreleased)
Chapter 10: (unreleased) by thedivinegirlyp0p
Chapter 11: (unreleased)
Chapter 12: (unreleased)
i contributed words to chapters marked with an asterisk (*)
Warnings: cursing, some anxiety, use of Y/N, she/her pronouns, Abbot and that damn rooftop, not really proof-read (might not make much sense, I'm tired)
A/N: it seems I am back from my little hiatus (let's see how long that lasts). I've done this before for different characters and decided I wanted to do it for the Pitt universe. Let me know your thoughts, if you guys like it, I was thinking of making some for Langdon and Park the Shark. Anyways, enjoy!
Masterlist
They're not dating but he always waits for her to arrive before starting night shift rounds.
"Are we ready?" Robby asks, rubbing his hands together (his signature move) as the day and night crew stand in a circle around him.
"Not yet." Abbot shakes his head. He doesn't elaborate, but everyone knows what he's referring to.
She's not here yet. Robby nods his head, wordlessly waiting until the woman of the hour arrives. It isn't until five minutes later that she finally rushes in.
"Sorry, I'm here!" She's breathless, clearly having rushed to the hospital in time. And yet, Abbot thought she looked as beautiful as ever. "Have you guys started?"
"Nope, courtesy of Abbot." Robby is trying to hide his amusement, thinking to himself how whipped his best friend is.
"Thanks," she whispers to Abbot, taking her usual spot next to him as she listens to Robby's debrief.
They're not dating but he's always in tune with her - her emotions, her mood, her cases, etc.
"Where's Y/N? I have a cool laceration I want her to see," Shen asks Lena, tapping his fingers on the nurse's desk.
"She's in central five," Abbot pipes up, standing five feet from Shen, eyes dissecting a file on his Ipad.
Shen smirks, knowing full well why Abbot knew the girl's exact location. "Thanks, boss," he pats Abbot on the back as he walks her way.
They're not dating but she stands next to him on the rooftop in silence as long as he needs her to.
There was a chill in the air, the sun rising to wish the citizens of Pittsburgh a good morning. Abbot stood in his usual spot on the rooftop, on the more dangerous side of the railing. He knew she didn't like it, he knew she thought it was unsafe. She didn't think he would jump or anything of the sorts, but it still scared her. He couldn't help it - standing so close to the edge grounded him (ironic, I know). It had become a sort of routine - a stressful case would come in, he would come to the roof, she would follow.
The familiar creak of the door broke him out of his train of thought. She's finally here, he thought. He listened intently as her steps moved her closer to him, as she stepped under the railing - which stressed him out because he worried for her safety - to get to him.
Each moment in the rooftop went the same. They shared little words, they didn't have to speak. She knew how he felt, how much he cared for each patient that ended up on his table. As much as she wishes it were different, she knows that there is nothing she can say to alleviate his pain. So, she stands there with him, showing him she cares and that she is there for him without having to say it. And this fact does little to lessen the massive crush he has on her.
They're not dating but she invites him to play pickleball with her on their mornings off.
"Boom!" Her yell echoes across the pickleball court. "7-4, old man," she brags after scoring yet another point on him.
He laughs, shaking his head. "I'm taking it easy on you," he quips back.
At that comment, she scoffs "yeah right," under her breath.
He can't help but smile, watching as she bends her knees to prepare for the next play. He might be hot and sweaty and disgusting, but he wouldn't trade their pickleball days for anything.
They're not dating but she's the only one who can call him 'old man.'
"Your age is showing, old man," Shen speaks, elbows deep into the chest cavity of a trauma patient.
Abbot scoffs, "Oh, I know you're not talking to me." He knows Shen means no harm, and he knows that he is in fact teetering on the edge of being geriatric, but he can't help but get annoyed at Shen for his comment.
Before he can come up with a snarky retort to Shen's dig, Y/N pipes up from the corner of the room, "hey, I'm the only one that can call him 'old man,' Shen." The edge of Abbot's lips twitch, a smirk fighting its way to his face.
"Yeah, Shen. Only she can call me 'old man'."
They're not dating but, even though she teases him mercilessly for it, she always makes sure to walk into the hospital with both her usual vanilla latte and his black coffee (I could never drink black coffee straight).
"Here ya go," a hot drink cup is placed next to where Abbot sits, charting so Gloria gets off his ass about record-keeping.
He smiles, his heart skipping a beat at the fact that his favorite resident memorized his coffee order. "Kid, I've told you to stop wasting your money on me."
She smiles shyly, eyes shifting to her feet. "I don't see it as a waste of money," is all she says before walking away, her own coffee in hand.
Yeah, safe to say Dr. Jack Abbot is whipped.
They're not dating but he always has a stock of chocolate in his locker because he knows she loves it.
Y/N stands at the nurse's station, chatting away with Lena. He could tell that her mood was dropping slightly, so he made the walk all the way to his locker to grab a Kit-Kat he gets just for her.
Her head turns when he appears in the corner of her eye, holding out the candy bar. His heart swells as her eyes light up, a beaming smile taking place on her face.
"This is why you're my favorite." She grabs the bar from his hands, fingers working to undo the wrapper until she suddenly stops and says, "thank you," in the most earnest tone he has ever heard.
"Anything for you, kid."
They're not dating, but he is the first to reassure her whenever she gets nervous or anxious.
She feels her hands begin to shake as she sutures up the bullet wound adorning the guy on the table's stomach. There was too much blood, too much liquid spilling out, too much paleness taking over the man's body.
"Hey," his voice tore through her mind, "you're doing good. Breathe." His words soothed her, grounded her. If he wasn't freaking out, then she shouldn't either. If she royally fucks it up, it's technically on him as the attending. And if he believes in her, then she will do everything in her power to deserve his praise.
After the patient is stabilized, after the nurses and the doctors clear out of the trauma room, leaving her and Abbot alone, she can't help it.
"You okay?" He asks. Her answer comes in the form of a hug. She squeezes him tight, arms wrapped around his torso as if he is her lifeline. It doesn't take more than a second before he is squeezing her back just as tight.
"Yeah," she sighs, "I'm okay now."
They're not dating but there is a betting pool on when they're going to get together.
$30 they're already secretly dating - Garcia, Whitaker, Mohan, Princess
$25 they're hooking up - Matteo, Santos, Shen
$50 they're madly in love with each other but refuse to confess - Robby, Dana, Langdon, Mel, Javadi, McKay, Perlah, Abbot
^ has nobody noticed that Abbot himself literally bet on this - Javadi
summary: the three times jack abbot compared you to someone else vs. the one time you were exactly who he wanted but couldn't have anymore.
tags: jack abbot x reader, angst, deep insecurities, jack compares you to samira, robby, and his late-wife (I named her alice), a few scene changes but it's for the plot, trying out [name] but if I don't like it, it's back to y/n for all of you, jack is lowkey an asshole on accident (thinks he's meaning well by complimenting others, but tears you apart in the process), medical inaccuracies, hurt/no comfort (at least for jack), eventual breakup, special end scene guest star, age gape (28-32/50), heavily inspired by lacy by olivia rodrigo (which I suggest listening to while you read) and all the feels that come with that, 18+ MDNI
notes: this hurt to write, and this better hurt y'all in the best angsty way possible! just a reminder that my requests for the hatosyverse are open, and that I'm doing smutty blurbs to build my writing abilities, enjoy!
word count: 7.4k
You didn't understand how you'd been able to score Jack Abbot.
Somehow, the universe decided that you'd be his match, the one he chose to go home to at the end of a bad shift, the one who'd been able to give him the most comfort during his darkest days. You knew what you'd be getting into: the PTSD, the depression, shifts where he felt more like your boss than your partner. But you believed you could get through it; Jack was older, and you liked to think you were mature enough to handle anything thrown your way.
For almost a year, your relationship bloomed in stolen glances across the Pitt, hidden moments in supply closets, and late-night baths spent at his house trying to bury yourself next to his heart. Jack was it for you, and you let yourself dream about a future, ring on your finger, possible children running around the house you shared. The two of you rarely fought, often choosing to apologize for anything under the sun before arguments grew too large for your feelings.
Never once did Jack make you feel inadequate, even if you had voiced early on that you truly didn't understand why he picked you. Compared to his gorgeous salt-and-pepper curls and freckled skin and large stature, you felt plain. Your hair was always pulled into a slick ponytail, makeup caused acne breakouts after 12-hour shifts, and what little time you had to yourself, you spent it at home, reading a book, instead of going out with friends and colleagues. People looked at you without so much as a second glance. Jack, on the other hand, made heads turn and nurses blush if they somehow caught his attention long enough for him to send a look their way. You couldn't remember the last time you went through a shift where a female (or sometimes male) patient failed to make a comment about the sexy, silver fox doctor.
You never made it more than it was: harmless flirting from people Jack would never think about again once they got discharged.
After, you and he had gone through the HR meetings, the contract signings, and the swearing that your relationship wouldn't get in the way of saving lives or have Jack start playing favorites. To further this, around the 9-month mark of being Jack's, they plucked you from the safety of the nightshift and dropped you right into Robby's hands. But this was how it was going to be from now on; there was no point in arguing as long as you got to keep Jack.
For three months, you persevered. Finding a groove with an already well-oiled shift proved to be harder than it looked. People talked. Nurses gossiped. Doctors speculated. You, through it all, kept your chin high. Their words didn't get to dictate your relationship. During handoffs, Jack still swept you into his arms and kissed you like a man coming back from war. He still told you that dinner was in the fridge once you got home and napped. He still continued to send updates during his shift, text messages from the separate night-shift group chat made after your departure chiming loudly while you ate. And most important of all, he still loved you.
However, nothing could have prepared you for the three times you felt the most unloved.
I care, I care, I care, like perfume that you wear, I linger all the time, watchin', hidden in plain sight, ooh, I try, I try, I try, but it takes over my life, I see you everywhere, the sweetest torture one could bear
"Hey, Dana," you called out while swimming through the chaos only brought on by a 4th of July shift.
At her name, Dana looked up over the thin frames of her glasses, pausing momentarily to look your way before going back to her board. "Please don't tell me that the 36 hot dog guy is back."
You shook your head, hands coming to rest on top of the vinyl counter. "Not that I'm aware of."
"Thank heavens. What can I do for ya, hun?"
Leaning in, you did a quick glance around the department. "I heard Jack was here early?"
Her eyebrows almost rose to her hairline. "Yeah; he came in with one of his SWAT buddies. GSW to the man's neck, but it looks like he's going to be okay." She reached over and grabbed a tablet. "Actually, can you find Jack for me? He wanted an update ASAP."
Your fingers drummed against the counter anxiously before you took the tablet from her. "I was just about to ask if you'd seen him."
Dana glanced over your shoulder and stuck out her chin in the same direction. "Saw him duck into Room 15. Might be taking a breather; Lord knows he needs one after that raid." She gave you a knowing look, eyes twinkling with mischief. "Maybe you're exactly what he needs."
A rush of heat flooded your face, eyes darting away from hers. "I'll see if I can find him."
You turned away before she could say anything more, hands desperately holding the tablet to your chest. Your shoes squeaked against the tile floor, steps bringing you closer to the room Jack was supposedly in. Once at the door, you raised a hand to draw the curtain away, but the sound of voices—plural—had you stopping. Saliva pooled between your teeth as you listened closely.
"—is the hospital going to pay for it?"
There was a pause before Jack clearly grumbled, "I'll pay for it."
You slowly moved to the side next to the wall where the curtain didn't completely cut the room off. Through the slot, your eyes widened at the sight of a Jack, shirt off, pale chest, wound-care swab twirling in his fingers with Samira sitting in one of the chairs. In the next beat, she stood and walked right past the curtain slot, completely oblivious that you were right behind it. She stopped near the wall and grabbed a pair of gloves before snapping them on.
His brows furrowed. "What are you doing?"
She smiled before rounding to stand behind him. "What you clearly can't."
Begrudgingly, he handed over the swab.
"Did you make a chart?" she asked while dipping the cotton end into a wound cream.
Jack crossed his arms, and his shoulders rolled and dipped. "No. This can stay off the books. Don't need the paperwork from the hospital or police department."
Samira paused. "Would you rather me go get Dr. [Name]? I'm sure she could do this much better than I could."
"No," Jack responded, shaking his head. "She'd just panic about this. There's no need to throw her off her game."
Your stomach flipped. He thought you'd panic? Sure, you'd be worried, but it wasn't like you hadn't seem him hurt before. Whatever wound he had on his back wouldn't be the worst thing he'd come home with after a SWAT shift.
"Isn't she your girlfriend?" She began dabbing at his back, the swab coming back bloodied.
"Yeah, but it's different with you. I don't have to worry about you taking your time or being indifferent about this." He winced at a deeper brush into the graze. "She's not like you, Dr. Mohan. She wears everything on her sleeve. Really, she could learn how to be more level headed like you, Dr. Mohan. I've seen the way you handle traumas. We wouldn't be so in the low if we had about 10 more of you."
He ended with a chuckle like what he just said didn't feel like a knives to your stomach.
Is that what he really thought about you? That you should be more like Samira and her ability to stay cool through anything thrown at her? With a blink, your eyes glossed over.
Jack turned his head, neck twisting to he could meet Samira's eyes. "You won't tell her about this, right? Our little secret?"
You didn't stay to hear what she said, choosing to turn around before you could watch any longer. It was incredible that you were able to stay for so long, submitting yourself to a new kind of torture. Walking back to the nurses station, your steps slowed as if molasses coated the floor, its stickiness clinging to your shoes.
At your oncoming presence, Dana looked over. "Did you find him, hun?"
You forced yourself to not look back at the closed curtain. "Yeah, but he's in the middle of something right now. I'll just catch up with him later."
The tablet gave a small thud as you placed it back into the holder, and you desperately tried to find another patient to busy yourself with, specifically one furthest from Room 15. However, before you could grab one, a hand wrapped around your elbow and tugged.
"Hey, I need you for the incoming trauma," Langdon said as he dragged you with him. "Twenty-year-old female, unconscious for an unknown matter of time."
You nodded silently, allowing him to keep walking you like a dog on a leash until he stopped in front of the ambulance bay sliding doors. Your lungs expanded in a deep, wavering breath.
Now was not the time to panic. You could do this. You could be like Samira. You could show Jack that you could handle a trauma.
During your internal pep talk, the doors slid open, giving way for the gurney and two paramedics.
"BP is 140-over-92 and climbing. No relevant medical history. She woke up once on the way over and vomited before passing out again."
You quickly followed Langdon into the first trauma room and helped transfer her over onto the bed. Immediately, numbers started being shouted while you started your initial exam.
When nothing seemed to blare any red flags, Langdon started impatient as the woman kept deteriorating. Through it all, you willed your hands to stay steady, your mind calm while you mentally went through what could be the matter. You took a step forward, body positioning near her head so you could look at her pupils one more time, and that's when you smelled it: the acrid, fruity smell puffing out of her mouth as she struggled to breath.
You jerked back quickly. "Dr. Langdon, is there a history of diabetes or hyperglycemia? Her breath smells like rotting fruit."
Langdon looked over at you before leaning toward her face. He hissed a curse before barking for a blood sugar test. Your eyes widened when the screen flashed a 450 mg/dL.
"She's experiencing diabetic ketoacidosis," you breathed.
"Let's get her on an insulin drip, now," Langdon hissed, face pinched until he looked over at you with a softer expression. "Great job catching that and staying calm." He chuckled slightly. "Never seen you like this but keep it up."
You knew his words were meant to be encouraging, but all they did was send bile up your throat. Without saying anything more, you tore off the gloves and shoved them deep into a biohazard bin. You wanted to cry, wanted to find the nearest restroom and tug at your hair.
But that's not what Samira would do your mind provided; the thought ugly and green. She'd shrug it all off and keep working like nothing was the matter.
Your teeth ground together, shoulders squaring in tandem. If everyone would rather have you calm, you'd be calm. You'd tuck your heart away rather than show it to the patients who needed someone that wore it on their sleeve. You picked up another tablet at the nurses station and got back to work.
The rest of the fourth went by in a tornado. Systems went down after a cyberattack; fireworks boomed off in the distance; you stayed busy. Each of your patients were in and out at a lightning speed, and by the start of the night shift, you were ready to go home and cry your heart out into a pillow.
You'd seen Samira every so often in between patients and a small lunch break. Like always, she smiled at you and waved and chatted when she could, but her actions made you want to wither up like a dead flower. You couldn't help but stare at her, thinking that you should be more like the woman in front of you, mind comparing your features to hers at a rapid speed you couldn't stop. She somehow looked like an angel in the middle of a place jokingly nicknamed one of the seven layers of hell, skin clear and hair somehow perfectly put in a bun. You tried your best to match her enthusiasm, but the poison had already been drank.
On the contrary, the only time you really saw Jack was at the start of handoffs. He had helped with one trauma before going to the on-call room for a needed nap, and you hadn't wanted to talk to him then, scared of how he'd act around you.
"There you are, sweetheart," you heard him say as you finished up converting with Lena about the man in Room 5. "I've been looking for you. Thought you might have left without saying goodbye."
You winced slightly. "No; I've just been busy."
Jack hummed and smiled warmly at you, but the expression was tainted by his words earlier. "I heard. Langdon's been nothing but praising you for earlier. I'm proud of you."
"Sure you are," you muttered too lowly for him to catch. Your lips thinly stretched into a smile that didn't meet your tired eyes. "Thank you, Jack," you settled on instead.
His hazel eyes scanned over your face, and his smile slightly dropped. "Are you okay, though? You look a little down."
"I'm fine," you shot out. "Today's just been long, and I'm ready to get home."
Jack nodded. "I left food in the fridge for you, so make sure you eat it after you sleep for a bit."
"Got it."
He looked at you expectantly before rolling his eyes. "Come here."
Like it had been etched into your DNA, you listened and fell into his open arms, face tucking into his chest. He squeezed you tightly before placing a kiss to your temple.
"Proud of you," he said. "You do such a good job. We need so many doctors like you, my perfect girl."
Perfect felt like a twist of the knife, because if you were so perfect, why had he told Samira that he wished you were more like her?
I feel your compliments like bullets on skin. Dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnate, well, aren't you the greatest thing to ever exist?
As the weeks went on, Jack's words never left your soul, the damage irreparable in everything that you did.
Second guessing yourself had been a struggle you'd dealt with since an earlier age. Normally, Jack would be able to quiet all those thoughts; he had chosen you; he loved you. But now, as you second guessed everything you did, you also second guessed everything Jack said. You picked apart every encouragement, every compliment, every sweet promise he whispered in your ear.
What he said now couldn't be taken at face value, and you wondered if that feeling would ever go away. You'd asked him about the bullet graze a few days after the 4th, acting completely oblivious to what you knew. Like you thought, Jack assured you that he got it handled and for you to not worry about it, like that did anything to settle the rolling feelings in your stomach.
You tried your best to move on, knowing you'd only bring yourself down more if you dwelled too long about really how much Jack's words had affected you while he never said anything directly to your face. The idea that he wanted you to be like someone else made your heart clench tightly to the point you often wanted to call off work, hoping that you could just wallow in self pity for hours and hours.
But the Pitt did not care for you like that; it demanded twelve hour shifts and grueling doubles. So every day, you rolled out of bed before Jack got home and pulled up your big girl pants.
You worked through it. You'd learned how to stay calm, how to not panic under duress, and it killed you to admit that you'd become a better doctor because of it. You hardly ever hiccuped during a trauma, gaining compliments from the surgeons and Robby for your techniques that were close to flawless. For the smallest second, you would preen under their words before the ugly, repulsive reminder that they might not be real swallowed you down in a nasty gulp.
"Dr. [Name] follow me please," Robby called as he brushed past the nurses station where you were currently typing away at a chart, hands clutching a chart out in front of him to read. "Quickly."
You pushed up from the desk, chair rolling far behind you from the force of your legs. Not wanting to lose him, you rounded the counter and jumped into his long stride.
"Yes, Dr. Robby?" you asked.
As far as you knew, there weren't any incoming traumas and it was too late in the day for him to have questions about your patients that were currently waiting for a room.
Robby paused in front of an empty trauma room. "Jack just let me know that he found a man in need of medical attention and is bringing him in before handoffs, and I thought you could help him out." He handed you the tablet, already ready to go with updated information.
You took a quick glance over this. "Um, Dr. Robby, it looks like he'll need a pericardiocentesis."
"It's good that you know exactly what he'll need. What's the issue?"
Your eyes looked from the screen to his brown eyes. "I've never done one before."
He simply smiled at you and patted your shoulder. "That's why Jack's going to lead you through it. I would stay, but since he's coming in early, I'm going to head out."
You tried to quirk a smile. "Got a hot date waiting for you?"
A low chuckle shook his shoulders. "You got jokes. My bike needs some repairs, and today's the only day I can get it into the shop. But I know you'll be just fine. Your improvement in traumas will only grow if you step out of your comfort zone."
The automatic sliding doors slid open, and Jack plus a nurse wheeled a man through on a gurney. Jack's eyes lit up at the sight of you, but his brows pinched when he noticed Robby's bag slung over the taller man's shoulder.
"You leaving early, brother?" Jack questioned as he stepped past the two of you.
Robby's hand gently rested on your shoulder. "Yeah, but you two will have this handled."
You inhaled deeply, the weight of his hand and words pushing down on your chest.
Robby was counting on you. Don't fuck this up. Don't panic.
With the tablet tucked under your arm, you walked into the trauma room before pulling on a pair of gloves. Jack had already cut through the man's shirt.
"I need two 18-gage needles, one 9cm and one 15cm, a guidewire, dilator, and 8Fr pigtail catheter." He looked up toward Jesse. "Let's give him 10ml lignocaine 1%."
You quickly gather what he needed and placed him on the dressing that covered the side tray.
"Okay, Dr. [Name]," Jack said, lips twitching upwards at using your official name, "I need you to place an ECG electrode on the pericardiocentesis needle with a crocodile clip and insert. Once the tip touches the myocardium, the trace should show immediate ST elevation. Once that comes up, insert the wire to aspirate the fluid."
His words tumbled through your mind much too fast to the point that you wondered if he didn't know you'd never done this before. You pursed your lips as you tried to remember everything. In the grand scheme of things, your training provided everything that needed to be done.
Yet, there was a big difference between studying and actually doing the procedure.
You kept your breath steady as you readied the needle, clamping on a clip before turning the pointed end toward the man's chest. The first part went smoothly, and the needle went right through. However, instead of the consistent beeping that should have followed if the needle was in properly, an onslaught of alarms sounded through your ears.
You had missed something.
Jack whipped his head toward you and sneered. "You went too deep. I told you that the needle needed to touch the myocardium not go all the way through. Give it here."
He didn't even wait for you to transfer the needle over, hands already grabbing at it. His head bent down so he could see what was happening. With a practiced ease, he maneuvered the needle exactly where it should have been.
"Fuck," he whispered, "Robby wouldn't have done that. I don't know why he handed this off to you if he knew the patient would need a pericardiocentesis for tamponade."
You thickly swallowed pooling saliva to clear your throat. "Sorry."
"Just—" He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. "I'll finish up here. You go home."
You jolted just a bit. Go home?
"Jack, I can still assist. You're going to need—"
"We have it covered. Catheter is in place, and you'd just be standing around. You're good."
Suddenly, a wave of anguish flowed through your body. It was happening again. Jack had just added fuel to the ever growing fire of jealousy and self-loathing. The feeling sized your chest, and you stepped back from the bed, shaky hands ripping off the nitrile gloves.
You couldn't help the stressed wheeze that pushed from your lungs.
Don't panic. Don't panic. He didn't mean it. He was just stressed. He didn't know that you'd never done that before.
Numbly, you walked back to the nurses station and sat back down in front of the computer, but your hands didn't raise to the keyboard. Your mind had already taken over, spewing rotten things about yourself that you could fix.
Be like Samira. Be like Robby. Jack won't keep wanting you if you aren't like them.
Your tongue ran across your dry lips in an attempt to wet them, but even your mouth had gone parched.
"Is charting really that bad?" you heard Dennis ask you as she sat down at a computer to your left. "You look like someone just told you they flushed your fish down the drain."
In a jerky motion, you turned towards him and did your best to compose yourself. "Oh no. I, uh, I didn't do well on a procedure with Dr. Abbot, and he asked me to leave."
Dennis at least had the decency to look sorry for you. "I bet you didn't do too bad. What was the procedure?"
"A pericardiocentesis," you said shyly.
He nodded slowly. " Shit, that's like one of the first things Robby let us do." He turned towards his own chart. "I could probably do them in my sleep by now."
Because he wasn't looking at you, Dennis missed the way your shoulders dropped and tears welled in your lash line. Jack's comment had been bad, but he just completely shattered any confidence you had left for the day.
"Right," you muttered. "Of course it'd be that easy if Robby taught you."
And you'd be right. On the night shift, patients like that rarely if not ever needed such a complex procedure. You could only think to one time that a woman came through almost needing one before they were able to use a different method to get her stable enough to be transferred to the OR.
With keys clacking loudly, you quickly finished up the chart before turning the whole thing off. You didn't even try to find Jack before you left, choosing to slip out before he even noticed you'd left without saying goodbye.
Once you were home, you stormed past the fridge and went straight to yours and Jack's shared room. Your scrubs hit the floor, and you didn't even bother to put on pajamas. The bed dipped under your weight as you pulled the duvet up over your body in a sad attempt at being comforted by its weight.
Sleep came quickly, only being interrupted by the door opening, a signal that Jack had gotten home. Blearily, you listened to him walk around the room before his edge of the bed sunk after he sat. The familiar hiss and pop of his prosthesis preceded him turning to lie down. You kept still as he scooted closer before wrapping an arm around your middle and molding your back to his chest.
"Sorry if I woke you up," he muttered sleepily. "Tried to find you before you left, but I guess I missed you. Wanted to say good job for that trauma. You helped so much."
You clamped your eyes shut, squeezing a fresh round of tears that dripped down your cheeks to puddle on your pillowcase.
After Samira, you had done your best to convince yourself it had been a slip of his tongue. But now after Robby, you weren't too sure that Jack would keep you around for much longer before finding someone better. Because there was no way you could ever amount to someone like Robby.
It was impossible.
I care, I care, I care, like ribbons in your hair, my stomach's all in knots, you got the one thing that I want. Ooh, I try, I try, I try, try to rationalize people are people, but it's like you're made of angel dust.
You were trying but failing to pretend Jack's words and comparisons hadn't left a giant, bleeding gap in your heart. Before everything happened, you never ever wondered if Jack loved you. Except now, you waited with bated breath for him to just drop the bucket and break up with you. You walked on eggshells around him.
Don't panic. Be put together. Keep your heart to yourself. Be calm like Samira. Don't fuck up. Know how to do your job. Be confident like Robby.
Those thought became your mantra and lifeline. No one seemed to think twice about your recent personality change. They loved the way they could count on you, the way you had an answer ready for everything. To the day and night shift, you were the epitome of composure. But behind closed doors, you were falling apart and into a pit you didn't think you'd be able to climb out of.
Jack didn't help with that either. You guessed he didn't even know what he had done to you, going on with his life like he hadn't given yours so many potholes that you couldn't continue on without falling behind. Everything you did was carefully thought out, every patient you talked to met a version of you that didn't reflect what you felt inside or outside.
You avoided mirrors the most, their reflections showing you exactly what you weren't. You weren't Samira with her lovely thick hair and clear skin. And you weren't Robby who carried years of trauma like it was apart of his body.
You were you, and you loathed it entirely.
You hated the glances you caught between Jack and Samira across the department. You hated the way they looked like they knew what the other was thinking before they spoke. You hated how you felt like on onlooker to a relationship that wasn't even happening.
You also hated the way Robby changed from a mentor to an idol. He had soon morphed into someone you wanted to so desperately be to the point you lost yourself in ambition.
And the worst part? You held nothing against them personally.
They didn't know what Jack had said. They didn't know that you were dying on the inside every time they raised you up during shifts. Bits of you crumbled away while they continued to glow.
Every morning you woke up, you wondered if the day would provide the straw that broke the camel's back with the way you felt like a stretched out rubber band waiting to fly.
A soft, savory aroma wafted through your kitchen. You absentmindedly stirred the spatula through the sauce, eyes glancing back and forth from the pan to the recipe. The instructions were written in beautiful, slanted cursive with curled letters that danced together. You'd found the card mixed in with a bunch of recipes Jack kept in his drawer. With a quick read told you that the owner of this one was his late wife, and the heart next to the title had you guessing if this was a favorite for the two of them.
Without thinking, you plucked it from the drawer and started working. After a week of back to back cases that ended in more loss than wins, a homemade meal was exactly what you and Jack needed after a day off. He was currently out getting his truck washed, and you wanted to be finished by the time he came home.
Quickly, the separate parts of the recipe—the chicken and veggies basting in the oven, the sauce on the stove top, and the wine chilling in the fridge—all came together right as Jack walked through the door.
"Hi, baby!" you called out as you pulled the pan from the oven. "Dinner's almost ready!"
You picked up on Jack's slightly clompy gate as he got farther into the house.
"Smells good," he said, walking over to stand behind you. "What did you make?"
Suddenly, you got nervous. What if it didn't taste correct? What if Jack didn't want you to make something so special between him and his wife. What if you ruined everything.
You didn't meet his eyes and poured the sauce over the top of the chicken. "Uh, a recipe from the drawer. It looked good, and we already had the ingredients."
He grabbed the card and held it up to his face, and you held your breath. When he didn't seem to get angry or sad, you counted it at a win.
"There's a bottle of white in the fridge if you want to get it out," you offered.
Jack stayed quiet. You didn't dare look even as the sound of a cork popping echoed in the room. While his immediate lack of response didn't cause concern to rise, your stomach still churned. To mirror him, you also didn't speak while you set the table.
He sat down, and so did you, your chairs facing the other like you'd done so many times in the past. Your heart pounded against your sternum as he took the first bite.
Loudly, he smacked his lips, setting his fork down at he chewed. The noise felt like nails on a chalkboard in the silence.
After a minute, he finally spoke. "Did you change anything in this?"
Your racing heart plummeted to your feet. "No. I kept it just like the card had it."
His brows furrowed. "Really? It tastes different than how I remembered it last."
You dug your nails into the fabric of the table running. "Does it not taste good?"
Jack looked up from his plate with wide, hazel eyes. "No, no, it's just different."
"But not good," you scoffed.
"I'm just trying to say that maybe you missed something. I know Alice's handwriting isn't the easiest to read."
"I know how to read cursive, Jack," you spat lowly. "I followed every single instruction on the card. It's the exact same recipe."
"It's not that big of a deal, sweetheart," he tried. "Maybe if you had a bit more practice like her, it might have come out the same. You're a good cook, don't get me wrong, but—"
Your hands slammed on the table in frustration, causing Jack's eyebrows to pinch as his words died in his mouth. He went to keep talking but stopped when he noticed the frustrated tears fall from your eyes.
"I'm done," you breathed, eyes darting around the room.
"Done?" Jack echoed. "What are you done with?"
"Everything," you hissed. "I'm done with this—" You gestured to the food with a wave of your hand. "I'm done with-with you. I'm done with it all."
You pushed up from the table and walked away, leaving Jack to scramble out of his chair and follow you.
"Sweetheart, what's going on?" he loudly asked, but you ignored him.
By the time he made it into the bedroom, you had already ripped out a suitcase from the closet and were pushing clothes into it without making them neat.
"Hey," Jack said gently. "Look, I'm sorry for saying that. I didn't think it'd upset you this much, but you don't have to leave."
You paused in a mid-throw of your shirts and spun to face him. A disbelieving laugh bubbled wetly through your throat. "That's the problem," you muttered, "you don't think."
He crossed his arms, biceps resting against his chest. A need to defend himself bloomed in his stomach. "What's that supposed to fucking mean."
You threw your arms up with an exasperated scoff. "Oh, so now you're concerned for what I'm saying. Maybe you should be concerned more with your words." You sucked in a deep breath. "Just go on and say it."
Jack took a step forward. "Say what?"
"That you'd rather me be someone else!" you screamed. "That-that I'm not enough by myself for you anymore." Pants heaved in your chest. "I'm sick and tired of standing here stuck listening to you compare me and wish that I'd be like or act like someone else."
Your words stole the breath from Jack's lungs as confusion and dread washed over him. "What?"
You closed your eyes and dropped your shoulders. "I heard you; I keep hearing you."
In another step forward, Jack was within two feet of you. He swallowed thickly, but you beat him to more words.
"On the fourth," you began to explain through tears, "I saw Samira patch you up, and I heard the way you told her that I could learn how to be more level headed like her."
A chill crept up Jack's spine. "Sweetheart—"
"Don't," you ordered. "Don't do that where you try to make it all better. I heard you loud and clear, Jack. And that's fine. I knew I could be more calm during traumas, so that's exactly what I did, but apparently—" You chocked out a laugh. "That wasn't enough for you."
He shook his head, hazel eyes swimming with guilt already.
"And I really thought that if I could be anything like Samira, your words wouldn't hurt as much. But then you had to go and tell me that you wished Robby had been there instead of me to do a pericardiocentesis." Your breath shuddered in the next exhale. "Did you even know that was the first time I'd ever been asked to do one? And instead of teaching at a teaching hospital, you threw me to the side saying Robby—the fucking chief attending—could have done the job. No fucking duh, Jack."
You threw a hand in the direction of the kitchen. "And now this? I thought that maybe I could be like Samira or study enough to be like Robby, but h-how am I supposed to compare to the woman who had your love first." You turned back toward the bed and haphazardly packed suitcase. "That's unfair to me. So, like I said, I'm done."
A pleading sound ripped from Jack's throat at the sound of your suitcase zipper closing.
"No, sweetheart, please. Let me fix this; tell me how to fix this," he begged.
"That's just it, Jack. I don't think this can be fixed. I've spent weeks with your words in my head wondering how I can be the perfect person for you. And I don't know if I can keep going on pretending."
Jack's body shook under a small sob as everything came crashing down. He absolutely had no clue what he had done to you, but thinking back, he understood that his careless words wracked irreparable damage to you and your personality.
"I'm sorry," he managed, voice breaking in a whisper.
"I know you are,' you responded, "and somehow that makes it hurt worse. Because while you were trying to compliment everyone else, you made me feel inadequate in every aspect of my life." Your fingers wrapped around the suitcase handle and tugged it off the bed. "I can't stay with someone who keeps hoping I'll be a conglomeration of all the best parts of others; that's not me. And I'll be honest, I don't even really know who me is anymore."
He inhaled sharply, eyes tearing from your face to look down at the floor. "So this is it? You're leaving?"
Another round of tears spilled down your cheeks as you choked on a sob of your own. "I don't want to, but I need to."
"But I love you," he croaked, eyes coming back up to meet yours.
"You love the best parts of me, Jack," you said, already moving to walk past him. "And that's never going to be enough to make me stay."
Your shoulder lightly brushed by his as you walked out of the room and all the way out the front door, leaving Jack behind in a house he realized he didn't want empty.
You poison every little thing that I do, Lacy, oh, Lacy, I just loathe you lately, and I despise my jealous eyes and how hard they fell for you, yeah, I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you
Jack didn't truly realize what he'd done until almost six months after you left him crying in his bedroom.
Your absence in his life gave him a lot to think about, and the only conclusion he could come up with was that you were absolutely right. It didn't matter if he'd compared you to others unconsciously; he made you feel like that: worthless, in need of self change, inadequate; the list went on.
He'd seen the small changes too late.
The next shift he worked with you, Jack tracked every minuscule thing you did, and it felt like one big punch to the gut. He saw the way you constantly checked your hair, ponytail pulled tight enough to give you a headache, skin, and scrubs and the way you straightened your stethoscope so it rested perfectly across your collarbones.
His stomach dropped when he watched you pause before a trauma and gulp down air before heading inside like someone who needed to take control before it could get out of hand. Before him, you weren't like that. Yes, you could be nervous to mess up, but you didn't act like you had to be the smartest person in the room.
He did that to you. He made you feel the need to change. And it killed him. It killed him once he learned you transferred over to a specialty in orthopedics, and his mind made him think you did it just to get away from him.
He was slightly correct, but not entirely.
You needed a fresh start, somewhere where you knew no on had any high expectation of you. And somehow, orthopedics gave you just that. And you thrived in the environment, only coming down to the Pitt when they needed a transfer or second opinion. Sure, you had to accompany Park the Shark more than you'd liked to, but through your time there, the old you was coming back, the one who worked through her panic instead of shutting it down, the one who only got frazzled when she cared about patients and their needs.
It was never weakness you showed, and you had to learn that all over again.
Someone helped you see that along the way as well.
"What do got here?" Park asked while snapping on a pair of gloves, eyes predatory as he walked into Trauma Room 1.
Jack looked up with pinched brows when he realized that you didn't walk in behind the larger man. "Where's Dr. [Name]?"
Park didn't even acknowledge his question. "For fucks sake man, you didn't even pack this right."
"You should know how to put a detached leg together even if I missed the pressure of the wrapping by an inch," Jack shot back.
"Abbot, you should know that I can't fucking put your patient back together after you decided to play Barbies. It's not as easy as popping a joint back in place."
"Dr. [Name] could do it."
Except for the monitors, everyone went quiet. Jack tore his eyes away from Park and looked back down at his blood soaked gloves. Reality crashed down on him as he realized he just did to Park what he'd done to you. Even if he knew he probably didn't hurt Park's feelings at all, it sucked to know that he was still so quit to throw out words like that.
Park's shoulders rose in a shrug. "She could, but she isn't here right now. She switched shifts and won't be in until 7." He smirked. "Think she said she had plans with someone."
An ugly roar of jealousy clawed at Jack's insides, nails sinking deep in his gut.
You were with someone?
He went through the motions of his shift, mind still on the fact that you weren't on call because someone had taken your time and attention away from the hospital. His knuckles turned white around the tablet he held while going through handoffs. He didn't know if his body was still trained to look for you, forever waiting for your soft lips against his, but Jack couldn't help but keep his head on a swivel and ears open to catch the sound of your voice.
Like a laugh in his face from the universe, your laugh fluttered through the ER, and his head whipped hard enough that his neck hurt in order to find you. When he finally saw you walking in, his heart dropped to his feet, because there you were, smiling brighter than he'd seen in a long while, hand enclasped with a man's.
Jack swallowed thickly. He instantly hated the way his blood boiled at the sight. He looked back down at the tablet after your voice seemed to draw closer to where he was standing.
"Andy," you sighed wistfully, "you didn't have to walk me all the way in here. I know you're weary of the germs."
"I know," the man—Andy (you gave him a fucking nickname?)—muttered back, wide, hazel eyes looking down at you like you hung the moon. "But I wanted to."
You pouted playfully. "You're so sweet. Am I going to see you tomorrow morning, or are you working again?"
He hummed. "My morning's yours if you want it."
"You know I always do."
Jack watched the corner of the man's mouth twitch into an almost-there smile, and he had to look away when his head started leaning in toward yours.
The small smack of your lips on his made bile gurgle in Jack's stomach.
"Okay, you gotta go save lives."
You giggled again. "I just put people back together, and technically, Park's the one doing all the procedures. You know my hands start shaking."
From the corner of his eye, Jack watched him lift your hands to his lips and kiss the tops of your knuckles.
"Just breathe and know that you alone can do this. You were the one to get into the program, so they want you, shaky hands and all."
Jack's heart clenched to the point of a physical reaction to the pain. He should have been the one saying that to you, standing in your corner and building you up one compliment at a time.
But now, he had to stand on the sideline and watch a man (someone who scarily looked a bit like him) give you all the praise and love you deserved. And while Jack could do everything in his power to let people know how good of a doctor you were, it wouldn't ever be the same, forever stuck loathing the moment he lost you without knowing.
Couldn't stop thinking about Simon Riley and having his babies :((
Simon Riley who loves his pregnant wife so much, that he will do anything for you and your hormones.
You're craving something greasy in the middle of night? He's ready with his keys.
You're mad because he didn't get your snack that must come from a specific brand? He's returning to the store right this instant.
You are uncomfortable and feet is swollen? He's getting the lavender oil you love, just sit back, luvie.
The house is a mess and you're tired? It's okay he will cleaned it up.
"Don' ya worry your pretty little head, just relax and take care of our baby, sweetheart"
Simon Riley is head over heels for you, you don't have to do anything because it will be done by him.
Ughh and don't even think when you're needy, he's not complaining if you craving him and his cock 24/7 because hormones am i right? Doesn't matter if you both are watching tv, you pawing his chest, looking at him with your doe eyes, swollen belly pressed against him, hands wandering all over his body slithering inside his sweatpants to play with his tip.
He gave in, of course but he's doesn't want to hurt you and the baby. He lets you take control on top, pretty little pussy swallowing him whole as you bounce up and down on your husband, sighing everytime his cock hit the spot in you.
Him singing you praises sharing sweet kisses in between until you both come down from the high. You nuzzled into him, happy and filled to the brim as you both continue watching tv. Simon occasionally caressed you and kiss your temple.
Happy wife, happy life.
a/n: Wrote this before I went to sleep, excuse any grammatical error lol
It happened only one time and now here you are. Having gotten tired of your sweet, yet very nosy and persistent neighbor that kept trying to pair you up with one of her sons, trying to stage "accidental" meetings and always inviting you for dinner, one day you just had enough. So when she stops you again outside, gushing about her lawyer son and how cute the two of you would look together, you politely tell her you have a boyfriend. At first she doesn't believe it and asks to see a picture of him so you pull out the photo you secretly took of a slightly drunk Ghost, head slumped over your shoulder and his mask halfway off.
The picture has the desired effect, the image of that behemoth of a man whose biceps don't even fit into frame and mean look on his face are enough to make anyone back off. The problem is that news travel fast in small towns and now somehow everybody and their mother knows about your military boyfriend and can't wait to see him around.
Because fate has a twisted kind of humour, your lieutenant ends up temporarily living in your home after his apartment gets flooded. You only made the offer because he saved your ass during the last mission, not expecting him to actually accept it. And it's just your luck that the same neighbor happens to see him was spying through the blinds and decides to say hello and how good is to finally meet him.
It's just your luck that Ghost's taciturn demeanour cuts the conversation short, but the look he gives you is not encouraging. You try explaining the situation to him, apologizing every three seconds until he finally stops you and tells you that he's willing to pretend to be your boyfriend until his apartment gets fixed. You're so happy and thankful that don't even notice when he steps out on the balcony to make a call and break the lease for his old apartment, already planning to move the rest of his meager possessions here.
Ghost that gets very comfortable into his role as your fake boyfriend and maybe leans a bit too much into it under the pretense of "having to sell the picture". Suddenly he calls you "luvie", getting a special kind of satisfaction from seeing your embarassed expression when he does it that around other people. He pulls you into his lap while on a picnic, a hand on the small of your back when walking down the stree, even stealing a kiss or two after asking for permission of course.
You're not safe even inside your own home, finding Ghost only in a pair of boxers with a beer in his hand while watching a game on TV. The little patting motion he does on the spot next to him having your body moving on its own. It's him getting out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around him, watching that one drop of water falling down his neck, over his Adam's apple and then down his chest. He watches you back with a smirk curling on his lips. He sits too close behind you while looking for something in the upper cupboard, his body pressing flatly against yours, staying there for a moment too long to be accidental. It's only when the contact is over that you finally remember how to breath properly.
Ghost that enjoys teasing you so much, had his eyes on you for a while now and couldn't believe his luck when the opportunity to insert himself into your life came from you. He wonders just how much he can get away with and how much longer will it be until you'll let him be your boyfriend for real.
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