Star Dust and Roses

Call me Ari. Bi sexual mess. 18+ Ocassionally NSFW. Ocassional  Kink.  ko-fi.com/fictive_frolic

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Casual Reminders:

We are pro choice and Anti-TERF here. Always have been and will continue to be.

I make liberal use of my block button :)

And I will block any and all minors that I find interacting with my content.

I do not have a masterlist. I have tags.

And I do not do tag lists.

During Drabble Events I will write almost anything you send to me in the order that I get it unless it involves pedophilia, scat, piss, vomit, rape, or incest, Yandere

The rest of the time, I'll pick and choose what I write and when. And I still won't write ANYTHING on my nope list.

Fandoms I will write for:

Marvel

DC

The Mercedes Thompson Mysteries

Dresden Files

Tags for specific drabbles: Teddy!verse, rabies!verse, Thirst Trap Thursdays, BFF!reader, Disabled!reader, hotmess!Jason, Neighbor!Jason, sugarbaby!reader, apprentice!reader, batmom!reader, scruffy!verse, teacher!reader, softdom!Jason, softdom!Bruce, amnesia!verse, arranged!verse, sweetie!reader, gentle giant!Jason, assistant!reader, sister!reader, night nurse!reader, secret!reader, the regulars, odd duck!reader, Internet friend!reader, softdom!Diana,disowned!verse,librarian!reader,agegap!reader, cowboy!jason,sexworker!reader,selkie!reader,Arranged!verse2.0,batmom!reader2.0, *Struck through drabble tags are dead *Remember. I write everything out of order and upon request... sometimes it takes me a while to get around to things. I'm just one dummy with a lap top and a dream.

A list of synopses and first drabbles can be found here. Courtesy of @rev-wrath

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

I might be back on my wolverine bullshit

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Not me at a baseball game for work and writing fic in my head about it

[feminist-space]

The above is a video shared by smrchildsadness on Twitter, showing a person participating in a pride parade exchanging a pride flag with a person standing on his (am using his pronoun based on the TikToks/Tweets of what happened) doorway who had a Portuguese flag. There are sounds of cheers and crying and the two people hug each other as they exchange the flags. The man at the doorway then waved kisses to the crowd within the pride parade.

The Tweet says: "NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HE WAS WAVING THE PORTUGUESE FLAG BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HAVE A PRIDE FLAG AND THEY TRADED FLAGS AND HE'S SO EMOTIONAL TO GET HIS OWN PRIDE FLAG I'M EMOTIONALLY RUINED"

For context, apparently they were worried that maybe he's a nationalist because he was waving the Portuguese flag and some nationalists opposing the pride march were waving that flag. But upon interacting with him, it turns out he didn't have have a pride flag and he wanted to wave *a* flag in support of the pride march. So they had an exchange and now he has his own pride flag 😭🥹.

The image above is a Tweet by kunwara_ladkaa that says "I'm crying so much right now (Image taken by Manuel Fernando Araújo/Lusa)". The image shows the same man from the pride parade crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

The above image is a Tweet by dudz_zZzz that says "ainda não parei de pensar nele," which according to Google translate from Portuguese to English is "I still haven't stopped thinking about him." The image is a drawing of the person from the pride parade, crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

Posts were made on July 1, 2024.

[feminist-space]

One of the most joyful moments of 2024 during a Pride Parade in Portugal.

[ozarkthedog]

"You've been acting for more than two decades. I remember you as a younger man."

[frownyalfred]

I know that the appeal of the Brucie Wayne identity is shameless incompetence covering up extreme hypercompetence, but another interesting aspect of Bruce's in-between persona (not quite public, but not Batman, explicitly) are the large/significant changes he makes and has to go to great lengths to keep subtle or easily dismissed by the public. Reducing something massive and complex to what amounts to a "happy accident" or forgettable coincidence on paper.

Examples:

Buying the Kent Farm. He couldn't buy the house outright, it would draw far too much attention and link his and Clark's identies, even with several steps in between. So Bruce bought the bank, then the Farm.

In Batman Begins, he buys certain gear in bulk to avoid suspicion. He gets thousands/millions of cowl prototype bases because buying ten would be strange.

All of the journalistic manuvering. It's very look here, don't look there. It's artistic. It's sleight of hand with the media. "Brucie falls into a fountain the same night Batman needs to take a night off" no, even better. Bruce, as Brucie, captures attention in a way that doesn't let you even realize that you should be paying attention to something else. He isn't taking away your attention. He has it, and that's the point.

The painstaking and painful steps he takes to fund and oversee the Justice League while maintaining credible distance. The fact that he's able to spin it as CSR without anyone putting the pieces together is impressive.

Tech/behaviors he employs to ensure the government thinks Batman is a low-level vigilante with limited access to complex resources.

Doubling up missions/priorities for events. If he can get intel and a a JL target out of a stuffy Gotham event, he can and will. And on the other side, doubling up patrol/investigations as Batman to benefit Bruce Wayne. None of that intel is a coincidence. Keeping those two lives completely separate only harms him in the long run.

[honeysucklewatr]

big ol’ freak.

smut | beefy jason | bulking season continues

jason is about to start going on his diet to reveal the muscles he’d been meticulously building for months. just hiding beneath a layer of delicious pudge you loved dearly.

but secretly, you don’t want him to.

you’d miss the warmth that his body radiates off of him and how secure you felt in his arms at night. how soft his chest was with the extra cushion he’d had, though you loved how strong he felt beneath it all too. or how good he looked in the morning when he’d stretch, and his shirt would raise enough for you to get a look of his abdomen and the happy trail leading to—

“you’re staring again,” he says, snapping you out of it.

“sorry, can’t help it,” sighing as you sit up on your bed, comforter gripped tight in your hands. “i am enjoying the show.”

he makes the same face he always makes, the one that pretends that he’s annoyed but you both know he’s not.

slowly, his resolve crumbles and a smirk emerges as he walks back towards the bed. his hand extends towards you to catch your wrist, fingers wrapping effortlessly around and tugging it up toward his lips. he kisses the back of your hand and stares at you through his half lidded eyes, the whole time.

when you decide you wanted to go to the gym with him, you end up gawking at him the whole time. jason’s got the barbell over his head and benching at least six plates on either side. groaning at the last couple reps while you stand by the mirror ahead of him, dumbbell in your hand doing the worlds slowest bulgarian split squats.

after he wiped his sweat, you notice his gaze on you this time. he moves towards you with some of his own dumbbells and his presence looms over you like a protective shield. it wasn’t even leg day for him, but he always stays near you like a human barrier. jason starts to work in with you, the weight in his arms a ridiculous size and amount that it looked difficult to carry. but jason didn’t look like he was struggling at all.

“hmm, like this baby.” he coos from behind you. one of his hands slipping to your thigh and the other beneath your elbow. “breathe a little deeper and drive your knees out.”

then he sets up the smith machine with no hesitation, lifting up the plates and putting them on the bar for you. he encourages you to lift heavier, says he knows you can do a little more than that. from behind you, his hard body was unmistakable, pressing against your ass. he groans when you make a movement. his warm breath by your ear was entirely distracting but you did your reps, finished your sets, and stole glances at him through the mirror only to find him already staring. you bite your lip to contain yourself, but what the fuck is the use anyway?

“see something you like?” he asks when he catches you for the nth time, shit eating grin plastered on his perfect face.

you barely make it to the change room.

tugging on the drawstrings of his sweatpants while he moans lowly into your mouth. he shuts the door with one arm while the other holds you up against him. he knows you don’t like to touch communal spaces, no matter how clean your gym may be. so jason holds you up against him, pulling your weight back into him over and over. moving your hips until you’re grinding back against him while his hands on your hips keep you firmly planted there. though he second guesses himself still and he watches you intensely.

“are you sure you’re good ma? we can go home.”

you shake your head vigorously, tugging at the hair on the nape of his neck to bring his mouth closer to yours. “i’m not waiting jay.”

when you fucked like this, it was an out of body experience.

mostly because jason held your weight and his own like no problem and there was nothing to dwell on but how it felt. he places a large palm over your mouth when he guides his length through your soaked folds. dragging it up and teasing before pushing inside like he belonged. he let you moan into his hand and watched your eyes roll back in your skull. he shushes you by your ear.

“i know baby, i know.” groaning out quietly as he prods to fit himself in. “fuck— you’re so tight.”

tears prickling at your eyes already, you shake your head slowly while his hips make slow circling movements. “it’s cause you’re so big.”

jason smiles wide, hips thrusting in a little meaner as he watches you try grind back against him, but still not to the hilt yet. “yeah? i’m big? but you like that shit don’t you?”

you’re nodding through the haze of pleasure, nails gripping his back as he continue fucking you slowly through it. not even fully inside but giving you half just to pull it away. it was like being manhandled in the gentlest way possible. his strength unmatched and his body intentional, grinding his hips back into you over and over just feeding a few inches before taking it away. waiting to see you whisper in his ear that you need more, desperation evident.

then he waits until he sees the tears by your eyes start to dissipate before he gives you anymore. feeding another inch inside you, his eyes dropping to watch him splitting you open. but even after taking him before this, you weren’t use to his size.

“jay, it’s too much.” you gasp out, the feeling overwhelming. “it won’t fit.” too much and not enough at the same time.

“you’ve done this before ma.” jason tsks, “and said you could handle it. so you can take it yeah baby?”

his voice deliciously sensual already. you cave immediately. your lip trembles and you nod to let him continue. immediately you moan out loud enough for someone to hear and jason clasps his palm right over your mouth again. but he doesn’t coo you through it, his eyes stay piercing yourself and his rhythm picks up and pushes himself deeper. choking on his own spit at how you felt around around him but his hold on you remained tight. he stays buried for a minute to stare at you, watch you catch your breath and adjust to his size.

“can you move please?” you’ll ask breathlessly and he’ll shake his head.

“remember what i said baby. deep breaths.” mimicking what he meant, he watches you. breathing deep and letting it out harshly. when you copy him he smiles. “there you go ma.”

then he shifts his hips again and you lose your train of thought. more intense than it usually is, every movement he makes feels like it drags drags you. like you’re pulsating around him and he purposefully continues. but his hands still on your mouth when he realizes that you’re close and he pushes further like he could reach the depths of you. kissing your cervix effortlessly while he moves you head to bite at his shoulder. cause it only felt like the good kind of pain, he’d say.

jason would feel his high approaching and whisper sweet nothings in your ear, reminding you how much he loves you like he wasn’t taking you apart without breaking a sweat. his flush top with the perfect curve, hitting sweet spots everytime. it was a good idea to make you bite down on something.

groaning into your hair, he lifts you sloppily up and down on him, creating the perfect friction. he almost whines when you clamp around him and whisper that you can’t hold on.

he pants by your ear and his voice is huskier than when he’s not like this. “gonna fuck you so full. take you again when we’re home.”

entirely feral just as you are for him, jason caves and sputters when you wrap your legs around him tighter. he’s just as gone as you and you’re practically begging him to follow through on his words. when you finally let go, that’s when he does too. shooting rope after rope and painting you deep from the inside. like the most beautiful and precious thing he’d ever held, he holds you through it.

his hips with a mind of his own, continuing to thrust up into even when your legs wobble around him. he keeps one arm around your waist, firm and stable while the other rests on the wall to keep him upright as he loses himself completely. still sloppily pushing back into you when you whimper and drop your head against his. that’s when he finally stills and pulls your hair gently, just enough to see your face again.

then he kisses you with all the sweetness the world has to offer. he deepens it as he eases you with both arms now, and keeps your legs around him so you don’t fall. letting lips trail down to your neck to leave gentle bites.

when the door gets knocked on hard, the voice that followed made both of your faces burn. suddenly it occurs to both of you that anyone could’ve heard you. roy’s voice is whisper yelling but you’re sure anyone could’ve heard him with how thin the walls are.

“please stop fucking so i can change outta my trunks. i’m chafing over here.”

[grumpyduckie]

Happy pride 🦾🖤🏹

[thatfanficstuff]

Horrible Day - Jack Abbot

Jack Abbot x Reader

synopsis: you have a horrible day and Jack just makes it worse.

warnings/notes: written to fulfill a request from @orphanbird95. was not intending to write this yet, but here we are. Flangst, my favorite. My language in this one is worse than usual. Sorry.

wc: 3.1k

It had been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

You could blame the heat you supposed. The fact you were working days for the week when you were used to nights. Or perhaps, it was just the simple fact you seemed to encounter every asshole in the city of Pittsburgh throughout the day.

You hadn’t even made it through chairs before someone grabbed your ass. One ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ later, and he’d been escorted out by security. Every patient you dealt with was short tempered, half of your co-workers as well. You thought some of the snappy words sent your way had been teasing, but you couldn’t be sure. You weren’t used to these people that lived in the daytime. They were weird. By the time noon came around, you wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with Jack and forget about the rest of the world.

You were more than aware that part of the problem came from the fact you’d barely seen your boyfriend all week. You were used to working with him, spending your time outside of the hospital with him. For the last five days you’d only gotten to see him for a few minutes at work during shift change. You were never agreeing to cover days again no matter how much Dana and Robby both begged.

You headed to the hub to check on some lab results Langdon had asked you to keep an eye out for. You’d checked half an hour ago then got pulled into taking care of patients.

“Hey!” someone called out as you walked past a room. You stopped and stepped backward. “Finally,” the man in the bed said when you met his eye. “Get me some water.”

“I’ll have someone get right back to you, sir,” you said. He wasn’t your patient and you didn’t have time to look up if he was NPO or not.

“No, you get it, you fucking bitch!” he practically screamed.

Your brows rose as you just stared at him. “Okay.” You walked off, leaving him shouting behind you.

Dana stood a short distance away looking between you and the room you’d never entered. She stepped into the doorway. “Sir, you need to stop right now or I will have you escorted out of the hospital. Do you understand?”

“You can’t just fucking—”

“Hey,” she snapped, cutting him off. “Shut it. You’re NPO anyway. No water, no food.”

With that she left the room, her eyes searching for you. She knew you’d been having a horrible day and that you were missing Jack on top of it. She found you talking to Emma and smiled softly. The young nurse had taken a liking to you. Emma smiled at whatever you’d said and nodded before hurrying off. Dana headed toward you but before she could reach you, Langdon suddenly appeared, a scowl on his face. “I thought I told you to keep an eye out for the labs on Reynolds. This says they’ve been back for twenty minutes.”

You sighed and turned to face the resident. “I was just going to check. I do have other tasks to see to, Dr. Langdon.”

Frank stepped closer, trying to make himself look taller. “When I tell you to do something, you do it.”

Dana was ready to intervene but realized she didn’t need to. Not with you.

You scoffed and crossed your arms over your chest. “Who do you think you are? I’m a nurse and a damn good one. I am not your lackey or your slave. You want something done? You ask. Nicely. If that’s all, I’ve got shit to do.”

Her gaze trailed you as you walked over to the hub. Jesse walked by and Dana reached out and grasped his wrist to halt his steps. “Langdon’s on the list.”

Jesse’s brows shot up in surprise. “How long?”

Dana shrugged. “Rest of the day at least. We’ll see if he learns his lesson.”

He turned to eye the doctor in question then followed Dana’s gaze to you. “What’d he do?”

“When I tell you to do something, you do it,” she said mimicking Frank.

Jesse blew out a breath. “God, he’s an idiot. I’ll spread the word. You gonna tell Robby?”

She hummed in agreement and nodded. “Abbot, too. Kid will be on triage for a week.”

Knowing things would be taken care of, Dana finally got the chance to make her way to you. She rubbed your shoulder. “How you doing, sweetheart?”

You glanced at her and leaned back in your chair. “This has been the absolute worst day, Dana.”

She smiled. “Yeah. It has. Why don’t you take a break and call Jack?”

You shook your head. “No. He hasn’t been sleeping well with us on opposite shifts.” You shrugged. “He manages just fine when we sleep at our own places so I don’t know what the problem is.”

“Uh huh. And before this week when was the last time you did that?”

The longer it took you to answer, the bigger Dana’s smile got.

“Oh, shut up,” you finally said before heading to check on a patient.

Robby appeared at the hub, grabbing a tablet. “I’m gonna be sorry to see her go back to nights, but I will be thrilled to not have to listen to Jack bitch about it anymore.”

Dana chuckled as she slipped on her glasses to look at something on the computer. “Oh, by the way,” she said casually. “Langdon’s on the list.”

Robby blinked several times. “Who did he piss off?”

She looked pointedly in the direction where you had just disappeared.

“He didn’t.”

Dana nodded.

Robby ran a hand down his face and sighed. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t think he was that stupid.”

Hours passed and with them came more bitchy patients and cranky coworkers. Frank was half losing his mind as none of the nurses would do anything for him that he was fully capable of doing himself. Patient care was never compromised, but if he wanted labs checked on or a sandwich fetched, all the nurses were suddenly otherwise occupied. It made you chuckle every time you saw it. Idiot.

When he’d tried to complain to Robby, he found himself redirected to triage to ‘consider his life choices’. He kept walking through the department to see if there were any cases he could jump on, which turned out to be fortunate for you.

“When am I going to get something else for my pain?” Leonard Smith grumbled from the bed. He was in for abdominal pain and waiting on test results.

You checked his chart then the time. “You’re not due for another dose quite yet. I’ll check with the doctor and see if there’s something else we can give you.”

He huffed and rolled his eyes. You frowned as his blood pressure displayed then you realized the cuff was out of place. You moved over to fix it so you could get an accurate reading. As soon as you’d finished, a hand wrapped around your wrist. His hold wasn’t tight. Not yet.

“Let go of me.”

“Get me some more pain meds. This fucking hurts.”

You tried to pull your hand from his grip but he only tightened it.

“Hul—” was all you managed to get out before he jerked you forward with all of his considerable strength and your side collided with the bed rail, forcing all the air from your lungs with a grunt.

Pain flared through you and before you could suck in a good breath, Frank ran into the room shouting, “Hula hoop in five” over his shoulder.

“Release her. Right now,” he demanded as he grabbed both of the man’s wrists, but the patient only seemed to hold onto you more tightly. People poured into the room as your eyes flooded with tears. You jerked your arm just as Langdon got Smith to let go and your elbow flew back and hit the asshole in the nose. His howl of pain cut through the air but you ignored it.

Hands found your arms and steered you from the room. It took a moment for you to realize Dana and Robby were talking to you as they led you into a different room. You sucked in a breath and willed yourself to focus, to calm down.

“You’re okay,” Robby said as he helped you sit on the edge of the bed. “Breathe for me, sweetheart.”

You followed the breathing pattern he was doing, shaky but better than you had been. Seeing you’d calmed somewhat, Robby looked at Dana. “Call Jack.”

“No,” you said instantly.

Both of them looked at you with lifted brows and wide eyes.

You shook your head. “He’s slept like shit all week, Robby. I’m not bleeding. No head injury. It can wait.”

Robby huffed as he pressed his lips together. “He would want to know about this.”

“And I’ll tell him. Later.”

Robby shook his head and you could tell he wanted to argue but thankfully he didn’t. “What exactly happened?”

You went through the story as quickly and precisely as you could. When you finished he looked first at your already bruising wrist then at your ribs. He pressed gently and you hissed as pain flared. “Get the portable x-ray in here for these ribs. Might as well do the wrist just to be sure,” he instructed.

“That’s not necessary, Robby. My wrist is fine and even if the ribs are broken, it’s minor. The treatment will be the same.”

He straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “If they’re broken, you’re going to need more than the three days I’m already making you take.”

“Robby—”

“You can get the scans or I can call Jack. Your choice.”

You said nothing, just gave him a disgruntled expression which you supposed was answer enough. He left after telling Dana to let him know when the x-rays were done. Dana shook her head as she typed on the computer. “You’re as stubborn as that man of yours. You know he’s gonna be pissed you didn’t call.”

“I’ll handle it. I’m just ready for this day to be over.”

“Well, you’re in luck because once your workup is finished you’re going home,” Dana said turning to you.

“No, Dana,” you pleaded. “If Robby’s making me take three days off, I need the money. I’ll work on admin stuff or something. Please.”

She sighed. “Let’s see what the scans say first.”

Jack was in a mood when he arrived three hours early for his shift. He knew it, but there didn’t seem much he could do about it. He hadn’t seen you for more than a few minutes at a time all week and it was driving him insane. On top of that, he was only catching a couple hours of sleep at a time. He’d come in early just to get a chance to spend some time with you, even if you were working.

He didn’t even have the opportunity to find you before he was pulled into a trauma, passing his bag off to a nurse. His gaze kept finding the door as he worked to save a middle schooler that had been hit by a car. He was used to working with you, to the rhythm the two of you had when you worked together. As everything he tried failed, he couldn’t help but think maybe, just maybe, things would have been different if you were there with him.

They spent forty-five minutes working on the boy before they called it. Jack stripped his PPE and tossed it in the bin before walking out of the room. His ear immediately picked up the sound of your quiet laughter as you sat at a computer at the hub, Perlah leaning on the counter in front of you telling you something.

He’d been trying to save the life of a child and you’d been here just…what? Gossiping? Irritation slithered up Jack’s spine and as soon as Perlah stepped away, he strode straight to you. He ignored the way your eyes lit up when you saw him as he took in the granola bar in your hand and the juice box at your elbow. Were you fucking serious?

“Jack—”

He cut you off with a scowl. “I’m glad you have time to sit on your fucking ass and have a snack while patients are fucking dying. We could have used your help in there. I could have used your help in there, but don’t let me fucking interrupt.”

As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to take them back. When he saw the tears in your eyes and the tremble in your bottom lip, he wanted to fall at your feet and beg forgiveness. “Honey—”

“Don’t you honey her, you asshole. Fuck off, Abbot,” Dana snapped, resting a hand on your shoulder. When he hesitated, she pointed down the hallway. “You heard me. Go.”

He did as ordered, shoulders slumped and head bowed. God, he was a fucking idiot.

He waited for an hour before circling back to the hub, hoping he could find you or Dana would at least not bite his head off for looking for you. Robby arrived at the same time, glancing around before looking at Dana and asking where you were. Jack grabbed a tablet and pretended he wasn’t listening. “Did you finally get her to go home?”

At that, Jack’s head snapped up. “Why would she need to go home?”

Robby’s brow furrowed as he frowned. “She didn’t tell you?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly give her the chance, did you, Jack?” Dana said, turning to face him.

Robby looked between the two of them. “What did I miss?”

“Abbot here decided to yell at her for taking a break as soon as he saw her.” Dana’s voice was flat and distinctly unimpressed.

Robby ran a hand down his face. “Of all the days…”

“Okay, I fucked up. I get it. Now can someone please tell me what the hell is going on with my girlfriend?”

So, Dana filled him in on your day, starting with the asshole groping you in chairs, to the bitchy patients, to Frank, Robby adding in his two cents occasionally.

And Jack hated that you’d had such an awful day, more that he’d added to it, but it still didn’t answer his question. “That doesn’t explain why she went home.”

Robby and Dana exchanged a look before Robby sighed. “There was an incident with a patient. He grabbed her, pulled her into the bedrail.” Jack froze. “She sprained her wrist and bruised three, maybe four, ribs on her right side.”

“Why the fuck didn’t someone call me?” he asked, feeling nauseous as he pulled out his phone to text Shen.

Dana stared at him with an arched brow. “Because she begged us not to. Said you needed your sleep.”

Jesus, he was an asshole.

You laid on your side on your couch, stretched out due to your ribs when normally you’d curl into a ball. One of your softest blankets was wrapped around your shoulders as you cried. You wiped at your cheeks and sniffed into your tissue. You’d cry for a while then think you were finished, only to start up all over again. And the sobbing hurt your sore ribs. Which only made you cry more.

You didn’t hear your front door opening though it must have because the next thing you knew, Jack was kneeling on the floor in front of you. “Oh, baby.” His hand rested on your cheek and you jerked backward, biting back a wince.

Your hands hastily wiped at your cheeks as you pushed yourself upright. You cleared your throat but didn’t look at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Shen’s covering for me.” He moved closer, only for you to press yourself into the corner of the couch. He stopped and sighed. “Baby, I am so sorry. I came to work early so I could see you. Instead, I got pulled into a trauma and the whole time I just kept thinking if you were there maybe we could save him. Then we lost him and I heard you laughing with Perlah and…I’m a dick”

“Why are you here, Jack?” You were so done with this day and didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to reassure your boyfriend that you didn’t hate him.

“Because I love you and I’m sorry. I went to find you to apologize and found out you’d gone home. Dana and Robby filled me in on everything that happened today.”

“Are you actually sorry or do you just feel guilty?”

He pushed himself up to sit on the couch beside you, leaving just enough space between you that he wasn’t touching you. “I am so fucking sorry. I was in a foul mood and took it out on you, the absolute last person I should be doing that to. Please forgive me?”

You could see the sincerity in his eyes and hear it in his tone. And frankly, you just wanted to cuddle with your boyfriend and forget this day ever happened. “How are you going to make it up to me?”

Tension visibly flowed from him as he scooted closer taking your hands in his. He kissed the back of each one before kissing the bruises ringing your wrist. “First, we’re going to get changed into more comfortable clothing and while we do that, I’m going to look at those ribs.”

“They’re fine, Jack. Robby cleared me,” you insisted.

“Yeah, well, Robby’s not me.” He leaned forward to kiss first one cheek, then the other before kissing your forehead and taking a deep breath. He pulled back to look at you again. “I’m going to check your ribs, then we’ll order food and curl up on the couch together while we watch whatever you want. Sound good?”

“That sounds kind of perfect actually.”

“I really am sorry, baby. It kills me that I made you cry.”

You cupped the side of his face with your hand, tracing your thumb across his skin. “It wasn’t just you. It was the whole day. All I wanted was you and then…” You sucked in a breath as a sob threatened. You did not want to cry anymore than you already had.

Jack shushed you and shifted the two of you so he could wrap an arm around you. “It’s okay, baby. I’m here. I won’t be an asshole anymore.”

You huffed a laugh. “I find that hard to believe.”

“If you weren’t hurt, I would pinch your side for that one. I won’t be an asshole anymore today. How’s that?”

“That I’ll believe.” You nuzzled into his side. “I love you, Jack.”

“I love you too, baby. So fucking much.”

[autumnleaves1991-blog]

Oh to change into comfy clothes, order whatever I wanted and curl up with Jack *sigh*

[pencil-n-pen]

—i’m always on my own

fake boyfriend! jack x eldest daughter! reader

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

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

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

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

a/n: how are we all feeling about the latest noah kahan album. Doors is great. i do NOT repeat timestamp 2:14-2:21 of All Them Horses. i’m normal and can be trusted with noah kahan’s discography. this fic was supposed to be crossposted on ao3 at the time of post but ao3 crashed and i lost all of my tagging and uploading process so im saving that. for later. when it is POSTED it will be linked below :)

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

masterlist

“Your family’s in town?”

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

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

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

“Dinner circuit?”

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

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

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

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

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

“So your fucked, basically.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m saying I can’t hide a body.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mom?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s this Friday and Saturday.”

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

“Can I help you, ma’am?” 

Jack. 

Jack fucking Abbot. 

Hottest man in the ED. Probably in the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You work with my daughter?”

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

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

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

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

Proud of the money I send home, maybe. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are those desired outcomes?”

“Mostly.”

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

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

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

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

“You could.”

“Wipe out my entire family?”

“Take me to dinner with you.”

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

“Are you joking?”

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

“No.”

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

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

What. The. Fuck. 

“No.” You gape, incredulous. 

“No?” He raises an eyebrow. 

“No, I mean— fuck. Dr. Abbot—“

“Jack.” 

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

“Why not?”

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

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

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

“In the ED, obviously.”

“How long have we been together?”

“Month and a half.”

“Why are we even dating?”

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

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

“Have you… thought about this?” 

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

“Are you rich?” 

There’s that devilish, pants dropping smile. 

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

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

“But you do?”

“They’re my family.” 

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

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

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

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

“Beats drinking beer in the park.”

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

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

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

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

“Flowers?”

“Naturally.”

“You pay?” 

“For every meal.”

“What’s my favorite color?”

“Navy blue. Mine?” 

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

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

“Will she really be that upset about it?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Deal.”

—

Holy fucking shit. Jack Abbot is your boyfriend. 

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

In a way. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your smile is definitely coming across as panicked. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You could swap me with someone else?”

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

“Touché.” 

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

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

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

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

“I’ll just. Finish up. Sorry again.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re aware that I’m fifty?”

Right. That's probably an unhinged question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You smell good.” 

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

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

“It’s nice. Suits you.” 

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

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

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

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

“Fair point.”)

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

At least, that’s what he says. 

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

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

“Singing your praises, of course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re my daughter’s plus one?”

Jack nods. “Her boyfriend, yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’d I do?”

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

“Looking forward to it.” 

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

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

“Do you really wanna do this right now?”

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

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

“So. Dr. Abbot—”

“Just Jack is fine.”

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

“A month and a half.”

“Why’d you start dating?”

You take a generous gulp of your wine. 

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

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

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

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

That’s going in the mental folder. 

“Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”

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

“Why’d you leave?” 

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

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

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

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

“Mr. Abbot—“

“Either Doctor or Jack works.” 

Ooo. There was some bite in that one. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’s perfect. 

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

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

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

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

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

“Jack?” 

“They didn’t even talk to you.”

You blink. 

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. 

“How do you know that?”

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

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

“You hardly ate anything during lunch.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course I remember.” 

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

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

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

Jack just keeps looking at you. 

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

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

“You’re so much more than them.” 

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

“What?”

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

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

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

“No.”

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

An old habit. 

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

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

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

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

“Jack—“

“Please.”

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

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

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

You shrug uselessly. “Is there another option?” 

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

“I’ll walk you to your door.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have that look on your face.”

You frown. “What look?” 

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

“I wasn’t going to.”

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

“It’s freaky when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“You always know what I’m thinking.”

Jack just huffs; shoves his hands in his pockets. 

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

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

“Oh.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe I‘ll—“

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

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

Sometimes it feels like he balances you out. 

“Goodnight.”

He gives you a little smile of his own. 

“Goodnight.”

—

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

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

“This really isn’t a good time—“

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

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

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

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

“She fight back at all?”

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

“Christ.”

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

“Fuck. Do you think—“

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That bad?” 

“Yeah.” 

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

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

“It’s different.” 

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

“You lost me on that last one.” 

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

“Is there a difference?”

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

“Are you sure you want to get involved?”

“Bit late for that.”

“You could pull back.”

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

“She is a grown woman.”

“Who happens to look like a kicked puppy.”

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

“You finally realize how ridiculous you sound?”

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

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

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

“I don’t know, Robby. It’s just…”

“Worse than you expected?”

“Yeah.”

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

“Fuck no.”

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

“I save lives too.”

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

“I would never fall asleep behind the wheel.”

“That’s what they all say.” 

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

And: 

“What’s Jack like on a date?” 

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

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

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

(“…I like layering scents.”

“It’s nice. Suits you.”)

It’s all too much.

Hence the avoiding.

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

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

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

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

It’s how they treat you. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not hiding from you.”

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

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

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

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

He raises an eyebrow. “Normal how?”

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

“Nothing has changed.”

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

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

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

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

“Nothing.”

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

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

“I’m just worried.” 

“You? Worried? No.” 

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

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

“And how do you know that?”

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

You sigh, scrubbing a hand across your face. 

“Why do you care?” 

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

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

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

Nothing about Jack Abbot makes sense. 

“Why do I care about what?”

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

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

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

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

“But why?” 

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

You snort. “Guilty as charged.” 

Now it’s his turn to sigh. 

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

You frown. “It is.” 

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

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

He shrugs. “Amongst other things.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“They are.” 

“Other people have it worse.”

“It’s not a competition.” 

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

“Because it’s a big deal to you.” 

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

It’s Jack who speaks first though. 

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

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

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

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

“We will?” 

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

“If you’re sure.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He would. He totally would. 

The thought is equal parts haunting and reassuring. 

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

–

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

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

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

It’s as frustrating as it is hot. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He smiles thinly. “None taken.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your blood runs cold. 

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

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

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

“Christopher,” You answer hollowly, stomach churning. 

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

Your family laughs, but Jack doesn’t. 

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

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

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

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

“He cheated on me with my best friend.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. That was nice of you.” 

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

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

“That’s my girl.” 

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

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

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

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

“It’s not stupid.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And what about me?” 

Oh. Well. That’s a loaded question.

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

“Oh really?” 

“Mmm. Nope.” 

“How come?” 

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

“You think you’re wrong?”

“Still can’t figure you out.” 

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

That’s. Hmm.

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

His lips twitch. “Oh, does it now?” 

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

“If you say so.” 

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

“Competent?” 

“That’s the word.”

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

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

“Are you like Bob the Builder?”

“I’m a doctor, so no.” 

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

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

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

“No.” 

‘Then yes.” 

“You sure? I wasn’t lying.” 

“I know. But I like your cooking.”

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

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

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

His gigantic apartment. 

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

“Its not that big.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Only if you don’t mind.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Looking at the sparkles.” 

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

“You made vodka pasta?” 

He shrugs. “You said you liked it.” 

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

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

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

“M’ not fallin’ asleep.” 

“Mhm. Sure.” 

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

“What’re’you’ making?”

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

“Oh. How come?” 

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

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

“You drink often?” 

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

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

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

“I see.” 

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

“Really?” 

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

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It won’t be when you wake up.”

You whine, curling away from him. 

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

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

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

“Why? Is your couch uncomfortable?”

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

“I like sleeping on couches.”

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

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

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

“It’d be weird to wake up here.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my boss.”

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

“What would we even do in the morning?” 

“Sleep.”

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

“You’re my guest–” 

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

Jack glowers for a bit, then sighs. 

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

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

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

“You okay there?” 

“Mhm,” You hum, “Just thinkin’.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do I?”

“Yeah. Good. Like man.” 

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

“Why do you call me sweetheart?” 

“Because you’re a sweetheart.” 

“I am?” 

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

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

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

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

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

And you love it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay. No need to rub it in.” 

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

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

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

“...Yes?” 

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

You’d nodded. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You ignore him, chewing on an already stinging cuticle. 

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

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

“True. But what if?”

“I’m not going to help you spiral.” 

“Why not?” You whine. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why don’t you go and change, huh?”

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

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

“But–”

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

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

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

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“So it is.” 

“Guess I owe you big time, huh?” 

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

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

You lapse into silence. 

Jack sighs. “Sweetheart–”

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

It never felt fake. It never felt like pretending. 

It felt real.

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

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

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

“What do you think?” 

“I don’t know.” 

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

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

“What if I’m wrong?” 

“You won’t be.”

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

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

“You do.” 

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

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

“You think,” He drawls, “I might.” 

“I don’t want to be wrong!” You cry. 

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

“Come here.” 

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

Jack does love to prove you wrong.

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

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

“More than a little?” 

“Yes.” 

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

“Use your words.” 

“The flirting.” You clarify, ears burning. 

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

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

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

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

You frown. 

Wait. 

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

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

He’s known since the second week?

“Oh my god.” 

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

“Oh my god.”

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

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

“Can you take a compliment?” 

“No.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“I have been told I’m kind.” 

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

It’s just like your dream. 

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

And you’re not alone anymore. 

[rollerskategirl]

Beyond the Sunrise

Summary: Robby quickly grows fond of his new next door neighbour, through shared mornings and casual companionship.

Pairing: michael “robby” robinavitch x fem!reader

Contains: sexual content (smut, pwp), explicit language, fluff, age gap, meet cute, semi-domesticity, bar fight mention (injuries, but not heavily described), pet names, drinking, smoking, jealousy, st denis med sneak, reader works nights, referred to as "girl", referred to with she/her pronouns, no use of y/n

Word Count: 11.4k

Note: i’ve been working on this for awhile and i just needed to get it out of my drafts. it gets a little bit sappy in the worst way possible (/j). this is my first time properly writing smut so… take it lightly. lol can you guess my favourite pet name?

The first time he spotted you was on a Sunday afternoon. 

Sunlight streamed down the canopies on his street as you stomped up your new front steps with a box in your arms. A cool breeze blew your dress to one side, hair following suit. Arms glowed in the warm light, damp with sweat from the heat and from the exercise. You dropped the box by the door, then hurried back outside.

He was coming back from a late lunch with Jake, catching up and all. You don’t see him yet, but he’s frozen on the sidewalk, looking at the moving truck parked in the street. It’s you and his next door neighbour standing by the truck, assessing the situation.

Your friend spotted him first, raising an arm up to wave. “Robby.” 

You turned, eyes squinting. The first thing you saw was his beard, then the crinkle between his eyebrows when he was looking at you, trying to figure you out. Your friend hopped down from the truck to meet him in the middle. You followed.

“Hey, Serena.” He greeted her, voice all gruff. He crossed one arm over the other, the glint of his watch facing you. After trailing the cotton of your dress up, his eyes met yours. Golden hour was doing wonders for you.

“This is my friend,” Serena introduced you, “she’s taking over my lease while I’m gone.” 

Robby nodded, “Nice to meet you.”

“You must be the doctor.” You smiled, mouth wider than intended. Serena had mentioned him to you once or twice. Emergency doctor, barely home, but shut-in when he was. Grumpy old man, she had joked, but she never mentioned he was… attractive. 

Robby gave a bashful nod, and Serena must’ve caught you staring because she nudged you on the shoulder. You recoiled, rubbing your arm dramatically.

“Hey, play nice.” She warned you teasingly. Her eyes darted to him, leaning towards Robby like she was telling a secret, “This one bites.” 

“Serena…” You scolded as she headed back to the truck with a laugh and a skip. Face burnt in embarrassment, you cursed her out in your head. You exhaled, looking at Robby’s amusement, an eyebrow quirked by intrigue and a subtle rise of his lip. Meekly, you attempted to smile, “Sorry… Nice meeting you.” You trekked back to Serena quickly. 

Robby let out a breathy laugh to himself, before shaking his head and walking to the door. From over his shoulder, he heard you and Serena laughing to each other. 

“You didn’t tell me that Grumpy Old Man was hot.” He heard you say to Serena. She cackled with an eww attached to it.

The second time you saw him, you were coming home from work. 

It was early in the morning, six o’clock or so. You were approaching the steps to your front door, and he was just emerging from his. Rubbing your eyelids, you couldn’t help but look over. He had on a brown hooded jacket over his scrubs and dark brown boots. His hair was dishevelled, like he didn’t even look in the mirror before leaving. 

When he reached for his keys in his pocket, you realized you had been staring. His head turned and, all of a sudden, you weren’t.

“Morning,” Robby said your name as he gave a sleepy grin.

With a yawn, you nodded, “Headed to work, Dr. Robby?”

He laughed softly, “Uh, huh.” He noticed that you had a bag full of your things and were dressed in sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt, leaning against the rail. “Just got back from somewhere, or…”

“Work,” You nodded, “You know how it is.” He gave a slow nod. You grabbed your keys from your purse and reached for the door. Before opening, you turned over your shoulder, “Have a good work day, Dr. Robby.”

The third time, Robby came home from a night shift.

His sleep schedule hadn’t gotten the memo, but the caffeine in his system told him otherwise. Finishing his shift, he was absolutely exhausted yet alert. The night was college students getting their stomach pumped, babies with too-high fevers, a diner chef with third-degree burns, and sleep deprived parents pacing in the waiting room. Nothing extreme, nothing unusual, but, then again, it was an emergency department.

The sun had been peeking above the buildings that sprawled past his street, and the brisk morning temperature held steady on his way home. Medium blues and lilacs coated the sky and clouds moved so slowly. 

From your stoop, he spotted a puff of smoke flying into the air. Drowning in a dark hoodie, you were perched on your steps, cigarette in one hand and phone in the other. Your knees were pulled to your chest and you were peeking over the railing to see him. He might’ve decided he was too tired to say hello if you hadn’t waved. 

“Robby.” You called, not bothering to stand from your seated position.

“Hi.” He passed his own door, approaching you.

Your eyes glazed over his tired face and rolled up sleeves as he stopped in front of you. Putting your phone down, you patted the brick beside you, sit, like he was a dog. And he obeyed, the smell of coffee, faint pine, and hand sanitizer lingering from one place to the next.

You offered him the cigarette wordlessly, then immediately caught yourself, “Oh, sorry.” You gestured at him, “Doctor. I know.”

With slow hesitation, he shook his head slightly, “Uh, uh.” His fingers traced yours, reaching for the cigarette. He was all wound up anyway, he probably needed it. You gave it to him graciously.

In between his lips, he felt the grain of your glitter lip gloss and tasted the flavour of bubble gum on the filter. You leaned back on your hands, watching him puff. It would be a disservice to not recognize how attractive it was: the suck of his cheeks, lines on his face flattening and reshaping, the pull, then the release. He held the cigarette in between his index and middle, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Work was rough?” You asked quietly, more interested in the way the smoke played by his face than his answer.

“Just tired. I don’t usually work nights.” 

You gave a hum of affirmation, taking the cigarette back from him and puffing yourself. 

“How was work for you?” He nudged his knee against your bare legs, which were now stretched into the sidewalk landing.

“Same old, same old.” You exhaled, facing away from him and crossing one of your legs over the other. Passing the cigarette back, you caught his eye. He had been looking over his shoulder at you, expressionless and observant. Not realizing he was so close, you almost bumped him doing so. 

“What do you do? For work, I mean.” He asked quietly, then took a puff.

You weren’t really listening, scanning his figure instead. The crows feet by his eye, the tired wrinkles on the side of his neck, and the bend of his arm as he rested it against his thigh. You couldn’t even feel guilty because the sight had been that good. Eyes landed on his badge that dangled from his hip. You smiled, tapping it.

“Michael Robinavitch, MD.” You read, looking back up to him. His head turned back to you, the tired look still overshadowing whatever emotion he wanted to convey. “Cute photo.” You teased, grabbing the cigarette back from him.

“Thanks,” he chuckled softly, shaking his head to himself. He watched you take another hit, then stamp it out on the ground. “How do you like the neighbourhood?”

“It’s nice. Very…” you hummed, “Geriatric.”

“Hey…” He scolded playfully. 

You gestured to an old couple across the street, who had been emerging from their front door with a huge greyhound. Waving, you caught their attention and they returned the wave.

“The Robinsons are sweet.” You told him, nudging his shoulder, “I’ve talked to them a few times on their morning walk. Susie’s getting cataract surgery next month.”

“Right.” He nodded mockingly at you.

“But my next door neighbour…” You started, a coquettish grin growing on your face. “He’s another story.”

“Really?” He tilted his head at you and raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, he’s up at ungodly hours of the day, throwing parties and doing God-knows-what.” You exaggerated, watching the Robinsons make their way down the street. “I can barely sleep with all that noise.”

“He sounds terrible.” Robby played along with a smile.

Raising an eyebrow at him, you warned, “He’s lucky we don’t have an HOA.” 

“Okay,” he rolled his eyes. You smiled, watching as his eyes landed back on yours.

Truthfully, you nodded, “The neighbourhood’s nice, much nicer than my last one. Not noisy at all, even when I’m asleep.”

“And your next door neighbour?” He raised an eyebrow at you.

“Haven’t decided yet.” You pursed your lips. His eyes held yours, and your breath caught. He tilted his head at you, goading more of a definitive answer from you. Then, you nudged his arm again, “You do shut the door like a maniac, though.”

Half-laugh, half-yawn, he smiled anyway, “Uh, huh.”

You looked at the sun, which was breaking between the buildings at the end of the street. The cool morning air had dissipated into something slightly warmer, and you took that as your cue. 

“Should probably get some rest.” You said, meant more for him than you.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He nodded, starting to stand from his sitting position. He slowly made his way back to his door. You stood, watching as he walked down the sidewalk.

“Goodnight,” He called your name from his stoop, looking at you until you said it back.

“Goodnight, Dr. Robinavitch.” You smiled sweetly before escorting yourself into your apartment.

Then, it became a common thing.

Usually, it was a quick hello in the morning— an acknowledgement of his scrubs and ruffled hair and a cheeky goodnight as the sun came up. Sometimes, you’d ask for some miscellaneous ingredient you probably had at the back of your pantry (but wanted to see him). Then, it evolved into something more, like coming over for coffee in the morning.

You’d bring pastries from the bakery a few blocks down. Robby would make some comment about you “spoiling him.” You’d pat his belly playfully after he ate, like you knew him for ages. He’d smile warmly, leaning into your touch. There’d be a moment where maybe you got too close and your eye caught his with a hitch of the breath. Then, you two would go on your neighbourhood walk as if nothing had happened. 

Or Robby found himself tagging along on your grocery trips. You’d be halfway out the door with your reusable bags in tow and he’d catch you from his window. He’d insist on driving, nudging his head to where his car was parked down the street. You’d take aux, playing some modern music he didn’t really know. 

“Learn a thing or two, old man.” You’d smile, nudging him before singing along again. 

At the grocery store, an old lady would make comments about what a sweet couple you were— how you two reminded her of her late husband. Robby would stay quiet, watching your reaction, if any. Then you’d smile and thank them without a hassle. 

Or it was simply a text. Not that he expected to see you everyday, but it was nice to have some kind of reassurance that you wouldn’t evaporate into thin air one day. Some days, you had been out on the town and texting Robby about some nice-looking restaurants or cafes. He’d reply with a “Let’s do it”, secretively smiling at his phone like a teenage girl. 

If an ambulance drove by, you’d snap a picture and send it to him, knowing he was waiting for it. Thinking of you. Wink emoji. 

This became routine, and you had memorized his schedule around yours. It was domestic without the strings. It was lighthearted companionship. You liked the arrangement, and he seemed to too. Especially since work felt lonely, it was nice to come home and have a constant.

On very rare occasions, you invited Robby over for dinner, when he had come home from work and you had a day off, or when you both had a day off. 

“You probably don’t eat much in that hospital, huh?” You teased, passing him a beer from the fridge. You had been stirring the pot of pasta on your stove, while he was leaning against your counter, watching you intently. 

“I manage.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled at you. He was in his “normal person” clothes, a simple t-shirt with a forest green collared jacket on top and some blue jeans. You two had decided to try that new bar down the street after dinner.

You watched the way he fit into the kitchen. So casually, he stood beside you like that’s where he belonged. He had taken the San Diego magnet bottle opener from the side of the fridge, exactly where he knew it was. He even took his shoes off at the door, just as you requested. His hand around the cold glass of the beer bottle was so unconcerned, just as his face was. You’d never seen him so relaxed. 

On mornings where you caught him on the way to work, it was like his shoulders were infinitely tense, automatically flinching at an alarm that wasn’t there. The times you did see him return from work, there was a weariness on his face and a slight droop of the eyes. He looked like he needed a big nap, or a cigarette. You wanted to be the one he fell into at the end of the day, and you were.

You hadn’t considered it too much, since his presence became a habit, but you realized you liked Robby more than you let on. Not only did you want him there, in your house, around all the time, but you wanted him. 

“What?” Robby’s voice and chuckle cut through that thought. His eyes scattered like he’d done something wrong.

Voice weak, mouth gone dry, your eyes darted back up to his face and you asked, “Can you pass the Parmesan next to you?”

He nodded as he obeyed, “You were staring.”

“Yeah, I just had a mini stroke, I think.” You said unseriously, sprinkling cheese over the pasta like you hadn’t said that. 

“What?” He repeated, now more alert. He had shifted forward, arms flexed and hands ready, like you needed them. 

“No, I’m kidding.” You laughed, stirring the pot again.

He settled back into his former position, “Geez, kid. You can’t just say that, ‘specially not to a doctor.”

You sucked in a breath, reaching to turn off the stove, “Dinner’s ready.”

After dinner, you two had ended up at the bar, just as intended. It was far more hip than you thought, falling into a neighbourhood of elderly people. It had a stupid name, The Orca, after the boat in Jaws. The name had nothing to do with the interior.

It was just as dark as it was on the street. The only few lights coming from very dim green glass lamps hanging from the ceiling and the purple, turquoise, green, and warm yellow spotlights that coated a dance floor. Tipsy adults had been dancing— genuinely dancing— to whatever music the DJ was playing. It was packed, expected for a Friday night. 

“I don’t think I’ve danced at a bar since I was in med school.” Robby noted with a chuckle. You were leading him towards the bar, which was busy all around.

Sliding between full stools, you got the attention of one of the bartenders. You turned to Robby, who was just inches behind you.

“What’re you drinking?” You asked, nudging your head towards the bar. 

“Gin and tonic?” He shrugged, surveying the area for some seats. 

You ordered his drink, along with a Rum and Coke for yourself, and requested an open tab. The bartender nodded and trailed off to do so. 

As a group had come and gone from your section of the bar, some guy slid by next to you, “Busy, huh?”

You had been watching your bartender, then realized he was talking to you. Turning over, you squinted your eyes, “Huh?”

Absolutely focused on you, he was probably around your age, nursing a pint. He was fairly attractive, maybe on any other night you’d care. You weren’t a stranger to getting hit on at a bar, but you had just been so disinterested, mind on something else— someone.

“The bar,” He nodded, gesturing around, “It’s busy.”

“Oh,” you shrugged indifferently, “Yeah, well, it’s Friday.”

“Yeah,” He nodded with a smile, leaning towards you, “What brings you here tonight?”

The bartender had finished up with your drinks, placing two glasses in front of you. After a quick thanks, you looked back to the guy and repeated, slightly irritated, “It’s Friday.”

Reaching out for the glasses, you felt Robby tap on your shoulder, “Seats over there.” He nudged his head to the other side of the room, then to the drinks,  “I’ll grab ‘em.” You nodded, moving aside for him. 

Slipping past you, he glared over, spotting the guy who had been speaking to you. The guy’s mouth had fallen slightly ajar as Robby pointedly asked, “Did you need somethin’?”

The guy narrowed his eyes at Robby, who towered over him, and mumbled some “Jesus” under his breath with the roll of his eyes. He walked away and Robby had followed you.

“Seems like you got some fans.” Robby said, sliding into the U-shaped booth beside you and placing the drinks on the table. The red vinyl was sticky under your palms as you scooted closer to him.

You smiled bashfully and shook your head, “Nah, he was just bored.” Robby gestured to him and his friends by the bar, who had been mumbling to each other and looking in your direction.

“A lot of attention for someone so bored.” He mocked, seemingly ticked off.

“Are you jealous, doctor?” You sang, nudging his arm with your elbow. A smile grew on your face as you took a sip of your drink.

The blush on his face and his avoidant eye contact made you settle in closer to him. You watched his hands grasp around his glass, bringing it up to his lips and completely disregarding that there had been a straw in it.

“Well, how about you?” You insisted with a nod, folding one hand over the other on the table. “I’m sure girls are all over you at the bars.”

“Honey,” he chuckled, causing you to cock an eyebrow, “I haven’t properly been to a bar in months.”

“Why not?”

“Well, work… for one.” He shrugged. “And—“

“Okay, how about work?” You interjected, leaning in. “Is it Grey’s Anatomy up in there or what?”

Robby leaned back, a smile playing at his lips and a laugh stuck in his throat, “Excuse me?”

“Oh, c’mon, are you the hospital hussy?” You sipped on your drink, teasing him with a playful grin. 

He tilted his head to the side and squinted his eyes at you as he pursed his lips. You stared right back, as if there had been some competition. That was the thing about you and Robby— you acted like he was your age, not some deadbeat old man whose job ruled his life. He felt like he was still young with you, or at least virile. You acted like it wasn’t ridiculous you two were at the bar together, squeezed into a booth all romantic-like.

“You’re somethin’ else, you know that?” He furrowed his eyebrows, but his lips upturned.

You liked the element of surprise you put in Robby. Picking up on his tired eyes, the could’ve-been life that sat wistfully inside of him, you saw the dead end that he thought he met. You felt it too, so mixing it up, saying whatever was on your mind, made it less sad and less lonely. The light at the end of the tunnel, or whatever.

Finishing up your own drink, you noticed that he was running dry as well. His eyes wandered around the swarm of bodies that moved in sync. It was that wistfulness again, a sparkle of nostalgia in his eyes. A smile grew on your face as you recognized the song change.

You nodded your head at him, “You wanna dance?”

Taken aback, Robby gave a surprised smile, “Dancing? Am I in my twenties again?”

“That wasn’t a no.” You sang, smiling as you coaxed his arm to the dance floor.

“I don’t know how to dance.” He protested, reluctantly following you out of the booth.

“Does anyone?” 

You yanked him close by his forearms, having him crowd you, making sure it was obvious who was whose. He smiled like it was ridiculous, saying so under his breath as well. 

You started swaying to the music, finding a rhythm with him. He did the same, slowly trying to break the barrier between awkwardness and euphoria. You smiled, watching him do so. There was something so charming about his meeting you in the middle. 

You leaned your head towards his ear and said, “I was staring, by the way.” Pulling back, you saw the grin on his face grow wider.

“Were you?” He tilted his head teasingly.

“You knew I was.” 

“I wasn’t sure if you had a mini stroke or not.” He shrugged and you rolled your eyes. 

You placed your forearms to rest on his shoulders, beckoning him to slide in closer to you. He did so, hands finding your hips. Becoming one unit, your moves glued to each other’s, just as your eyes did. Your face neared his and you smelled the gin on his lips and felt the heat of him overtake you.

“Hey,” you called, practically into his beard. He nodded wordlessly, completely entranced by his view. You leaned forward but waited for a sign of reciprocity. He smiled again before following suit.

Slowly, you exhaled, surveying his face one more time before pulling yourself up to him. Lips grazed his beard before anything and the tip of his nose touched your cheek. You felt his hands press into your lower back, grasping like he was about to slip. You could’ve sworn he made a sound when you kissed him. 

Music reverbed off the walls and the lights went out on you. The contact of his lips felt like a crashing shock. It was one press— the surface area finding yours as if he needed to memorize it. When his body pressed against yours, your shoulders heighted and your body pushed against him. More. It felt greedy. 

He started pulling back but immediately caught you again. Your lips desperately trailed him, kisses turning sloppier, faster, needier. Every press felt like you found an oasis, sipping water like you had been dehydrated for months, yet you hadn’t even tasted his tongue. 

Your hands found his hair, fingers grazing the soft texture at the base of his skull. The sensation of the skin on his lips, the graze of his beard, the hair between your fingers, the texture of his jacket on your arms all felt like too much but also too little. 

“Robby,” you mumbled, cut off by his teeth nibbling on your bottom lip. 

He hummed in return, “Yeah, baby?” He left a kiss on the corner of your lips, like he was starting a trail to return to. His head moved to the right side of your neck, soft kisses along the bone behind your ear, then your jaw, then lower and lower…

“Robby,” You repeated, more as an exhale than a proper word, like it was the only thing blinding your thoughts. His lips lifted from your neck, but his hands stayed stable on your waist. You gulped and opened your eyes slowly, afraid you had imagined it all. 

When your eyes did open fully, you saw Robby, who was staring at you with a certain hunger in his eyes. The purple lights from the club surfaced over his face and you remembered where you were. He was so patient, eyes scanning around your face, ready whenever you finished that thought. Your mouth stayed ajar, dumbfounded.

Your breath desperately caught up with your heart. The sound of the music was white noise, indistinguishable from a breeze in the wind. Your eyes widened and you blinked like you couldn’t believe it. Your senses both shut down and tensed, all at once, as you zeroed in on Robby, who had grown a smile on his face. It was a movie kiss, you identified, a perfect release that could have only been rehearsed trillions of times but happened to fall into you like a shooting star.

“Honey,” he whispered, “You’re staring again.”

You snapped out of it, looking away from Robby sheepishly. It definitely wasn’t the first time you’ve been kissed, but it definitely was the first time you’ve been kissed like that. There was something so sure about Robby; maybe it was the slowburn but you assumed it was the way he guided you, like you didn’t have to worry about anything but being with him.

He squeezed his hands around your waist to get your attention and said, “Use your words.”

“Home, Robby. Please.” You inhaled sharply, “Take me home.”

The walk back was quiet. The orange of the street lights guided you home and strangers slinking around the streets reminded you just how eager you were to leave the club. Robby had slipped his jacket around your shoulders and his hand in yours. He pressed kisses into your temple while you walked, mumbling sweet little reassurance as you leaned into him. 

Your knees felt weak when you approached his door and you wanted nothing more than to feel him again and again. On his stoop, your hands and your back found stability on the cold, steel railing. You felt drunk, not from the drink, but from the buzz and possibility of Robby wanting you too.

Your bottom lip slipped between your own teeth as he looked at you. You were wide-eyed and awestruck, so desperate to know what happens next. His eyes glazed over you in his jacket and he slipped an arm between the jacket and your back, pulling you closer. 

You let out a satisfied hum, watching him unlock his door. Robby smiled down at you as he pushed it open, taking you with him. Your head reached up to his while he shut the door behind you. 

Swiftly, his face met yours and his lips enveloped you again. You sighed into it, drawing closer to him. Your hands eagerly found his chest, running your fingers and palms up and down on the cotton of his shirt. You drew your head back against the door in ecstasy, so relieved and self-indulgent.

This time, his tongue found your bottom lip and eventually the inside of your mouth in three-fourths time. It all happened so slowly, and you drank up every painful millisecond. He relaxed against you, attempting to ease your heart’s tempo. God, he knew you wanted more, but he exhibited such good self control. You whined into it, feeling lightheaded from the taste of him. 

Lips felt wet and messy all of a sudden, but he was taking his time with every kiss, both giving and taking. His mouth worked on you, like tuning a piano to perfection, with controlled movements and an ear for perfect tune. While his hands ran up and down your sides, you felt yourself shudder against him. His bottom half pressed against you as your back pressed up against the door. 

With a groan, you bit down on his bottom lip, begging for more. Your leg hiked up around his hip, craving to feel him closer against you. His right hand found the back of your thigh, running up to grab onto your ass. Perching you on him for just a moment, his lips left yours then his head dipped to your neck.

“You really want me to fuck you against the door?” He mumbled into your skin sarcastically, heat against it causing you to gravitate closer to him. You felt his nose against your pulse and his beard grazing the skin on your collarbone, overwhelming you in the best way.

“Uh, uh.” You gulped, shaking your head as he planted soft, wet kisses up the column of your throat. His hands latched onto you more firmly and he pulled you in. Face moving up from your neck, his eyes found yours and his arm slipped around your back again.

“Good.”

With a yelp, you followed as he began to drag you down the hall with him. You giggled, quick and giddy, causing him to let out a chuckle as well. Your face pressed into his shoulder, warm with excitement and anticipation— so much so, you didn’t realize both of your shoes had been checked at the door. It was silly, the way he made you blush, like you were living some life you only knew before your alarm went off.

Reaching his room, it was barely lit by the warm street lights through the window. The glow surfaced on his face and you could tell he was smiling too. You pushed his jacket off of your shoulders, dropping it to the floor recklessly. He pulled you in close again, and your mouth reached for his lips. He tilted his head up before you could meet them.

“Robby,” you scolded playfully. His beard tickled your fingers as you ran them through. 

He smiled down at you, “I just wanna look at you.”

“I’ll be here all night.” You teased, voice breathy as your hands found the scruff of his jaw. When you kissed him again, his arms went around you and lifted you up, carrying you towards the bed. You wrapped your arms around his neck and your head tucked into his shoulder.

Your back hit the mattress and it felt like the perfect fit. The plush of his comforter molded around your arms and the smell of eucalyptus, wood, and man overtook you. He had a huge, cozy bed, expected of a doctor in his department— you could wonder why he was always so exhausted. You’d trade your cheap queen mattress for the memories you’d have on this foam any day.

Robby settled between your legs, bodies pressed together. You felt him above your jeans, slowly rutting into you just like you wanted. Your legs dangled around his hips automatically, allowing him to get as close to your core as possible. Eagerly, you giggled again as he placed his hands on your hips.

“What’s so funny?” He teased, reaching his head down to nip at your neck again. 

You sighed, throwing your head back to give him room, “Need you to touch me.”

Your hands found his sides, grasping at the tense muscles on his back then finding the hem near his hips to slide your hands in. Your fingertips pressed on the soft flesh of him, feeling as he moved against you.

“Where, sweetheart?” His breath made you press up closer to him. 

Your breath caught in your throat as his head slowly made its way down. First, the space between your shirt’s neckline and the base of your neck, then the valley between your chest. His right hand ruched up your shirt, the warmth from his hand meeting the chill in your skin. Each beat of your heart sped up as his lips pressed against you.

While doing so, he kneeled against you, keeping his body a distance away from yours. His eyes made their way up you dangerously slow. The space between you felt agonizing as the fabric of his shirt teased your bare stomach.

Attempting to find release for the ache in your core, you pushed yourself down to feel him against you. When his knee dipped into the mattress, your hips bucked upwards on his thigh, like a reflex. A soft sound coming from your mouth, you felt Robby grin against your skin.

He hummed, “I’ll take that as an answer.” 

As he drew his head up, you urged him to come closer, pulling him by his back. Your eyes found him in the dim light, pulling his shirt over his head. He seemed to shiver at your touch, fingers finding the surface of his chest before tossing his shirt onto the floor.

Robby followed suit, hands going under your top and pulling it over your head. Humming, you smiled as he sat back, running his hands up and down your torso. He squeezed at your chest and smiled.

You groaned, “Robby,” more annoyed than intended.

“Yeah, baby?” He leaned his head down, body hovering over you once again.

“Taking your sweet ass time, huh?” You mumbled, hands finding the sides of his neck. He shook his head and you could practically feel him roll his eyes.

His hand lightly pushed down on your bare stomach as his fingers searched for the button on your pants. Legs still surrounding his thigh, you squeezed against him as he skimmed your bare waist under the denim.

“Sweetheart, you’re gonna have to move your legs if you want me to touch you.” He chuckled roughly, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

You obliged, staring up at him while he focused on getting your pants off. When he slipped them off, his fingers skimmed over your lace-clad hipbone, causing you to shudder against him. His head was tilted down, zeroed in on your core.

The wet between your legs gathered when he looked at your face, burning to be acknowledged. There was also a tingling sensation that had been playing on your lips. Desperate to find his, you reached your chin up. Through your underwear, you felt two of his fingers press against you and you pressed up with a quiet moan, taking his mouth to yours. His tongue met yours with a hum and an exhale. 

Robby was still on his knees, and his fingers found their way into your panties. Pushing the gusset aside, he slid the wet up and down your folds, causing you to buck your hips up to him. He hadn’t even put any fingers in you yet, but you were so sensitive that anything was enough.

His lips turned sloppy against yours, saliva mixed with whines. Your breath was jagged too, chasing the high he was giving. Your hands splayed around his head, so eager you had no clue if you wanted to push his head closer to yours or hold the nape of this neck, intertwining fingers with his short pieces of hair. 

Body attempted to push towards him, only failing when his other hand forced your hips down. Whining, you buried your face into him like you needed everything— lips, tongue, beard, nose, wrinkles and all. Yeah, he was hungry, but you were starving.

His fingers hooked on your panties without disconnecting his face from yours. He pushed them off with the help of your elevated hips, and you kicked them off your legs.

Moaning into his mouth, your hips met his fingers against your entrance. You whined as he stalled just outside. Face pulling away, he smiled at you.

“Eager, are we?” He teased, fingers meeting your puffy clit. He rubbed up and down, gliding around and on it. It was enough pressure for you to grasp at his shoulders.

“Need it so bad, Dr. Robby.” You whined, pushing your hips into the mattress as he went to tease your entrance.

“Fuck,” he groaned quietly, fingers ghosting over you, “Wow.”

Your head fell back and mouth into an O-shape as his fingers slid into you. The gush had you moving your hips into his still fingers. He watched your face as you did so, bringing himself closer to you.

His mouth moved with yours as he rocked his fingers into you. You could gauge his eagerness by how his fingers curled in you, like he wanted to feel all of you. You really squealed when he moved to rub on your clit again, eliciting a chuckle from him.

“Are you gonna finish on my fingers, sweetheart?” Robby teased before you kissed him again with a whine. When his fingers slipped back inside of you, your body met him in the middle with each movement, desperate to get off.

Fingers pumping into you, his thumb found your clit and drove you close to the edge. You threw your head back again as he lifted his. Breaths turned shorter and you clung to his shoulders, one hand making its way to the side of his head.

“Oh, fuck.” You mumbled, hips raising off the bed to meet him. You looked back at him and he had been staring at your face the whole time. The determination in his eyes made you lightheaded. He nodded as he felt you pulse around him, only to speed up. 

Your breath hurried as you felt heat bubbling in your core. Your hips locked and sweat grew on your skin, all over your body. Biting down on your lip, you hummed as your hands pressed down on Robby. You grew tight around his fingers and felt yourself gush.

Rutting your hips up to his fingers again, you moaned and exhaled. Hips stalling against him with his eyes on yours. You vibrated under him without proper release, riding the high of his pressure on you. He kept his fingers in you, causing you to pulse with an ah-ah-ah noise leaving your mouth. 

Dropping your hips, you felt the wave of release crash over you, sighing with a whine as his fingers slipped out of you. You panted as you watched a smile grow on his face. 

Gulping, you pushed your fingers through his short hair and he placed his hand on the outside of your thigh. He squeezed as he dipped his head towards you.

You kissed him slowly this time, fire inside you still burning, skin heated with sweat. Lips moved in sync and it was his turn to groan when your hand reached surfaced over the bulge growing in his pants. 

You tugged at his belt buckle, yanking it off and going for the button on his jeans. At the glimpse of his dark blue boxers, you bit your lip. He helped you, pulling his pants and boxers away altogether.

Robby was… Fuck, he was exactly what you expected. Thick, strong, filling… The length of him had already been dripping. He had fallen against your lower abdomen, painting you giddy. You didn’t mean to, but you smiled far too wide as you stared.

“Mmm, I’m excited.” You joked, looking up at him as he squeezed at the plush of your thighs.

“You’re somethin’ else.” He mumbled, shaking his head as he leaned in to kiss you again.

Reaching your hands around his neck, you pressed your hips up to him as he fell between you. Grinding against the wet gathered at your entrance, he groaned into your mouth as he met you in the middle. You felt the friction against your clit as you squeezed your legs around him.

After humming into a kiss, you tilted your head away, “You’re clean, right?” He stalled against you, about to speak, but you cut him off. “Oh, doctor, right. I know…”

“You?” He nodded once, raising himself on his elbows.

“Mhmm,” you ran a hand over his beard and rested it on his shoulder, grinding over the length of him with a heavy breath, “Birth control too. You wanna fuck me raw, Dr. Robby?” You purred, chin tilting up with a smirk.

“Jesus,” he shook his head at you with a smile. 

His hand ran up and down the surface of your thigh, coaxing you closer to him. An arm caged around the side of your neck, fingers pushing hair behind your ear. Your knees locking around his waist, he slowly worked his way inside. You reached up for his lips again, smooth surface pressing softly. 

His lips felt like silk against yours, smooth sheets against your skin. The roughness of his beard only tickled you, balancing out delicately. The pads of his fingers barely squeezed on you, rather rubbing circles to ease you in.

As he slowly started to fill you in, your breath synced with his. Mouth suddenly still against yours, he panted, peeling himself off your face hesitantly. The wince in his eyes told you everything, crows feet growing beautifully in ecstasy. Fuck was the word, right, but he had started so gentle that maybe there should’ve been a word more lush, tender even. 

As he bottomed out, you inhaled sharply, eyes grazing over his face. He stared at you and ran his hand up to your side. Clenching around him, you stayed as still as he did, anticipating, waiting. 

He was deliberately slow with it, inching out of you like he was holding himself back. Rocking into you, each drag made you more eager, made you insatiable. His eyes burned into yours, watching your breath catch each slow two-seconds his pelvic bone met yours.

“Robby,” you whispered, his bottom lip hanging off of yours. 

Squeezing at your ribs, he sighed, “Yes, sweetheart?”

“C’mon, honey, I’m not gonna break.” You cooed as his forehead rested against yours.

“Yeah?” He mumbled, giving a small kiss to your lips. 

You lifted your hips off the bed, begging to meet him in the middle. Hands grasping at his back, you rocked your hips onto him. His breath turned heavy against you as his hand found your waist. Pushes turned to shoves while you prodded him to go harder on you. 

“Don’t even need to move, you’ll fuck yourself on me, won’t you?” He rasped into your lips before giving you a bruising kiss.

His hand went heavy on you, pushing your hips down on the bed. You squealed against the kiss as you felt him drive further, faster. Slipping in and out, he huffed as he met your cervix, legs pushing open more for him.

Quickening the pace, he locked you under him. He was more heavy pants and hums than he was grunts or moans. Hips snapping against each other, sweat brewing over your skin, the sound was absurd. Still, his face hung over yours, staring at you in awe.

Blissed out, you panted a mess of noises as he thrusted into you, the bed rocking slightly beneath you. You arched your back, bringing your stomach to meet his and trying to get somewhat closer to his body. Throwing your head back, you shut your eyes as the pressure wound up in you.

Legs reaching up, you locked your ankles behind his back, pulling him further in and earning a heavy shit, sweetheart from him. Chasing your high, you swore you saw stars, pressing your closed eyes tighter.

“C’mon, baby, look at me.” He croaked, muscles tightening. His hand that was on the side of your head moved to grasp your hand, which was intertwined with the sheet. 

“Feel so good,” you murmured. Your eyes fluttered open, fingers grasping as they met his hand. Your other hand found the side of his face. “Kiss me. Please.” You nodded your head up, eager to meet his lips in yours.

With the shift of his hips, his mouth caught against yours, a groan falling in between. His pace changed, harder and sloppier, skin meeting with a slap. Tongue intertwined in yours, muffed moans filled the room. Breaths were forgone for the sweetness of his saliva.

Robby noticed the way you squirmed against him, like you were just there. He reached down between you and pressed his fingers to your sweet spot. You started to writhe into him, whining and bucking your hips.

“Oh, my God.” Your hands grasped his as you let out a muffled noise. 

“God, if you keep squeezing like that, sweetheart—“ His hips stuttered, feeling you gush around him. 

The overwhelming and enduring fire in you reached its crescendo. All of a sudden, the press of his body against you, his hands on you, the light feathering of his body hair over your stomach, and, of course, the absolute jackhammer of him blended like static on your senses. Ringing grew in your ears and with another snap:

“Oh, fuck!” You choked out, throwing your head back on the pillow. 

The aftershocks of your climax still rode out as he found his. Your whines and moans filled the room as you let him use you up. Your walls clenching and contracting around him was enough to send him reeling. Hips shuddering, he plunged all the way back in. Everything in him buckled as he twitched and spasmed. 

With a few deep jerks, Robby growled into you, “Oh, shit, so fuck–ing perfect. So beautiful, baby. You’re so good for me. Fuck, yes!” Filling you warmly, he went limp with a big exhale.

Panting against him, you kept your fingers intertwined and let him fall onto you. His forehead pressed into the crook of your neck, sweat against sweat. The deadweight of his body felt perfect, trailing the overstimulation of it all. With him still inside of you, you pressed your hand to his back.

Lightheaded, you attempted to catch your own breath, inhaling deeply but lazily. You ran your fingers up and down the slick skin on his back. Mind going numb, you allowed yourself to doze a little, eyes half-lidded.

Huffing, he tilted his head to you, softly pressing a kiss to your temple, “Sorry, sweetheart. Must be crushing you.” He began raising himself on his elbows, ready to roll over to the side of you.

Whining disapprovingly, you pulled him back in, making him rest back on top of you. He followed hesitantly, allowing himself to relax. Your legs stayed wrapped around him, tightly holding him in as he softened.

“M’so sweaty, honey.” He said, face buried into the pillows. “Should clean up.”

“Tired,” you whined again. Sighing, he lifted his head to pepper kisses on your face, cheek, forehead, nose.

“C’mon, don’t want to see you in the emergency room with a UTI.” He mumbled into your skin.

“So dramatic, Dr. Robby.” You rolled your eyes, slipping your hand out of his to wrap around his back. Embracing him, you tucked your head into the opposite crook of his neck. “Let me hold you for a little, please?” You pleaded softly. “Then, we can go clean up.”

Exhaling, Robby collapsed back onto you. He couldn’t even try to fight it if he wanted. He continued pressing tiny pecks into your skin, nipping at your neck and up your jaw.

Eventually, you would get up, but for now, Robby was yours.

The morning slipped in like it had been attached to the night. The sun was hushed behind his curtains and you had woken up slowly and effortlessly. Over the rays that slipped in, you were in one of Robby’s worn shirts— he made some comment that it was definitely older than you. He remained shirtless, chest hair free under the morning light.

You had been facing Robby and his fingers were hanging off your ribs. Head tucked into his chest, you had an arm around the plush of his stomach by default. The snores he let out made you softly chuckle, unaware of how you possibly slept through it.

Turning away from Robby, you rolled onto your stomach, checking your phone for any morning notifications. You heard him shift next to you, the bed dipping slightly behind you.

He rolled over with a rasped “Morning, sweetheart.”

His hand surfaced over your back, under the shirt, like he was searching for something. With a tired sigh, his lips found your spine, kissing from the base of your neck slowly to the dip in your waist. The touch made you shiver against the sheets and gravitated you towards him. 

“You’re addicted to that thing.” He mumbled, his breath and the movement of his lips causing you to flinch a little. He tapped your hip with his hand, as if trying to catch your attention. The ghost of his mouth faded on your back as he fell back into his former position.

Dropping your phone back on the nightstand, you rolled over to meet him in the middle of the bed. With a smile, you pressed your hands against his bare chest and found his lips to meet yours. It felt nicer in the daylight somehow, the sunrays peeking through the window to coat the lines on his face. The plush on his lips were somehow rougher, waiting to be broken in for the day.

“Happy?” You said, running your hand over the side of his beard. Your face was only a distance away from his and your body had leaned off his side. He hummed as you pressed another delicate kiss on his lips.

You pulled yourself onto his hips, so you could feel your body flush against his. He let out a slight hum at the feeling of your skin pressed together. His hands went to your lower back, grasping to feel you closer.

“Do you wanna go to that diner for breakfast?” You pressed another kiss on his lips as you rested your arms around his head. You shifted yourself on his hips, feeling the morning greet you.

“Mhmm,” Robby nodded, but it seemed like he hadn’t really heard you. He ran his hand over your hair, letting you lazily grind over him.

You hummed, “Found out I have to go to work tonight.”

“Leavin’ me on my day off?” He mumbled, hands resting on the underside of your thighs as he pressed a kiss onto your cheek.

“It’s just later tonight. You’ll survive.” You teased, fingers playing with his hair. 

“Better make the rest of the day, then.” He said before reaching his head up to sweep you into a deeper kiss. You giggled as his hands went under your (his) shirt to pull it off.

The next morning, Jack had called Robby into the ED, although he wasn’t meant to work at all that day. With Shen on vacation, he assumed he could handle it. Apparently, patients started piling up, and there was a crisis downtown— something about a bar fight, Robby wasn’t exactly sure.

As Robby made his way in around four, Jack patted him on the back, “God, am I glad to see you, brother.”

They walked towards central, Robby looking around at the chaos flooding into the walkways. “Jesus, what’s going on?”

“Huge bar fight from the Strip District. Mostly bruises, cuts, and fractured bones, but we have one in trauma with a stab wound, about to be transferred to the OR.” Jack explained. “Everyone got in around three-thirty, so all of the beds are full now.”

“When are they not?” They approached central and Robby nodded at Lena.

Jack nudged his head over to Trauma One, and Robby followed. Peeking inside, he saw a larger man on the table with an ice pick sticking out of his side and a gash across his arm. Walsh and Donnie were over him, observing and checking his vitals.

“What happened there?” Robby asked, folding his arms.

“Someone at the bar got creative. We don’t have a full story yet.” Jack continued walking down, towards the other rooms and beds. “The police are on their way, but I don’t think anyone will get arrested.”

“Why?” 

“Ever seen Coyote Ugly?” Jack raised an eyebrow.

“Yes…” Robby nodded slowly as Jack gestured down the walkway. 

Robby looked to the curtains that were crowded with girls in sequins, glitter, leather party clothes, some with blood staining them.

“You chipped my fuckin’ tooth!” One of the girls in a wheelchair, who had a towel over her mouth, yelled across the way.

“It was an accident, bitch!” The other girl was on a bed, her foot elevated and a bruise on her cheek. 

The area was overflowing. Girls chattering and girls half-asleep, there was even a couple arguing in one of the rooms. Robby had experienced bar fights coming in before, but it was always a bunch of beer-bellied guys or boyfriends defending their masculinity. He toed his way over, eyes roaming the area for a quick survey. 

“Fuck, boss, do you think we’ll get fired?” One of the girls, who had some cuts on her legs and a black eye, called from one of the beds. She was being treated by Mateo.

“No way,” That was your voice, one that Robby had to second guess because why the hell would you be here?, “If Gustav wants to fire you guys, he’s gonna have to go through me first. Besides, though, you guys gotta stop bringing boyfriends into the bar.”

Swiftly, Robby turned on his heel, spotting you slumped over in a chair. By one of the beds, you had a bruise on your cheekbone, one on your knee, and a gauze wrapped around your right hand. You were in knee-high boots and possibly the most revealing outfit he’d ever seen you in. You leaned on your non-gauzed hand with a furrow in your brow. He called your name, rushing over.

Alarmed, you sat up with your eyes wide, “Robby.”

“Sweetheart,” his voice turned soft, concerned. He came to your side, kneeling next to the chair, and, immediately, you felt your face burn up.

“Fuck.” You pressed your left hand to your forehead, shutting your eyes. “This is so embarrassing.”

The girls who had been arguing across from you chirped up:

“Damn,” Kelly, a broken ankle propped on the bed, cursed your name, “Is this your man?” 

“Who else would she be cooking all that food for?” Chris responded, lowering the towel from her bleeding mouth.

“In such a good mood. No wonder she started tipping out.” Jenna, in the bed beside you, joked with a shake of her head. “Been getting it good, huh, boss?” She pinched your elbow teasingly, which made you wince.

“Ignore them.” You rolled your eyes, flitting your hand at them. You looked at him, “I thought you weren’t working today.”

“I got called in. What the hell happened?” Robby took your gauzed hand in his, examining where your palm had been cut. What he couldn’t see was Jack, who had been peering over from across the hallway. A soft eyebrow raised in interest, and a sharp inhale, this is why Robby had been so nice and calm and easygoing.

“Uh,” you looked around, and all eyes were on you, “Can we talk… privately?” He nodded slowly, standing and helping you up. You winced at his action and mumbled, “I’m fine.”

Making your way a distance from the curtains, the girls resumed their chatter, now diminished to hushed whispers. Robby walked beside you, hand still holding yours. Landing somewhere by Pedes, Robby folded his arms in front of you.

He furrowed his eyebrows concernedly, “I heard the police got involved? What’s going on, sweetheart?”

“A bunch of tourists came in tonight and got fucking sloshed.” You sighed, “I had it under control until one of them thought it was a good idea to try to grab Kelly off the bar—”

“Why was she on the bar?” He jutted his head out, now even more worried.

“Nevermind that.” You shook your head. “His group thought it was funny to harass the other girls as well.” You gestured to the curtains. “Bella was getting felt up by some asshole, and, for some reason, her stupid fucking boyfriend showed up. 

“He got crazy possessive about her and broke out into some animalistic aggression? I don’t know,” you spoke frantically and defensively, like you were in trouble with your parents, “he started howling and swinging at the tourists. Long story short, it gave everyone else an excuse to fight.”

“Okay…” He nodded slowly, then tapped at the gauze on your hand. “Doesn’t explain this.” You shook your head as your eyes caught the man who was being wheeled out of Trauma. His eyes softened, “Oh.”

“His stupid friends fled before the cops came.” You turned back to Robby, “I just wanted to protect my girls.”

“Uh, huh.” He saw the panic in your eyes settle when he nodded.

“I had it under control. We didn’t need to come here.” You reasoned with an exhale. 

“But I’m glad you did.” He placed a hand on your bicep, attempting to be supportive. You dropped your shoulders when he did, unaware you had been anxious.

“There’s, uh… Something else.” You mumbled, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear out of stress.

“Tell me.” Robby spoke softly, hand rubbing up and down your arm. 

“Half these girls don’t have health insurance, the other half are still on their parents’.” You exhaled, like you had been holding a weight in your chest. “I really didn’t wanna take them to the ER, but someone called the cops.” You explained to Robby with a hand pressed to your forehead. 

“Okay,” he sighed, “You can talk to our case manager, Noelle Hastings, and she’ll discuss some options with you.”

“She’s not gonna tell me anything I don’t already know. Can we wipe this from the record, call it a… write-off or something?” You neared Robby, able to lean towards him.

He mumbled your name, “I… Since there’s probably been a police report, it’s already on the record. Please, just talk to Noelle. She can help.” You shut your eyes with an exhale and let out a soft okay. “I’ll have them send her down.” He patted your arm, taking you closer to him.

“Thanks,” you whispered, although you weren’t really sure what for. He pressed a kiss onto your forehead before leading you back to the curtains.

After having talked to the cops, the woman identified as Noelle made her way over to you. She was long legs, shiny black heels, a proper navy pantsuit, and luscious black hair in a half up-half down. An older lady, her wrinkles were a testament to her grooming, beautiful around her eyes and complimenting her smile.

“Hi, I’m Noelle Hastings, the case manager here at PTMC.” She greeted as you stood up, one hand clutching a tablet. Her eyes glazed over your outfit as she chuckled, “Looks like someone had quite the night.”

Following her off to Central, you realized you felt silly around her. She had been so professional, and half the surface of your skin met the cold air conditioning of the emergency department, hair slightly messy from the fight. You never shivered, though, standing up straight in front of Noelle.

You laughed awkwardly, attempting to pull down the little fabric you had around your hips, “Um, I assume you’re caught up on the circumstances.” 

“Yes,” She nodded once, her eyes crinkling as she exhaled. “Some of these are quite a hefty bill for those uninsured. They are all technically work-related injuries, so I suggest talking to your boss about worker’s comp when you can.”

“Okay,” you shrugged, then looked away, “Shit, I don’t know if my boss will go for that.”

“Well, another option is financial assistance from the hospital. If some of them fall under certain income limits, they could qualify for Charity Care and PTMC will cover it.” She explained delicately, like she knew you were on edge. 

“How can we…” You looked back at her, who had a concerned look for you. “How can we check?”

“I can talk to the girls about their income, if that’s okay with them,” she offered supportively, "Then, we can move forward with some forms and things.”

“Everything okay here?” You heard Robby’s voice trickle in, coming to stand beside you. He looked to Noelle for an answer, who had made dreamy-eyes at him when he stepped forward. If she hadn’t calmed your nerves, you wouldn’t have noticed. 

You recognized the glint in her eye, a narrow like there was a secret you weren’t in on and a smirk on her face. The friendly smile on her face only grew into something more… suggestive?

“Yes, I briefed her on our options.” Noelle nodded. With you still there, girlish youth grew on her face, suddenly lit up and hopeful with a little bit of desperation. She took a step forward, “Dr. Robby, if I could just—“

“Great,” Robby nodded like he hadn’t heard her. You looked between them, inquisitive and a little entertained. Ready to walk away, his hand skimmed over yours as he looked at you, “Did you need anything from me?”

Receptive, your hand wrapped around his and gave a squeeze, “No. Thanks, honey.” 

He nodded again, a bashful smile playing at his lips before he trailed off. You watched him walk away, biting at the inside of your cheek to stop a proud smile from coming about. 

Turning back, you nodded at Noelle, “Thank you again.” 

You began to walk away, then her voice stopped you.

“Do you, uh,” she started, the veil of professionalism faltering for just a moment through her curious eyes, “Do you know Dr. Robinavitch?”

“We’re…” You stopped yourself, then cleared your throat, “Why?”

She looked away and exhaled a little, “Oh, nothing… Just—”

“We’re neighbours.” You grinned with the tilt of your head, unintentionally fishing for more information. It wasn’t technically a lie, but it definitely wasn’t what she was asking. 

“He just, uh,” She shook her head, then looked back up, “Kinda dropped out a few months ago.”

“You mean he… ghosted you?” You slowly nodded understandingly. 

Could’ve been. That’s what Noelle was. In all her polished and experienced beauty, Robby had led her on. Why he let such a woman get away was beyond you. And maybe it was self-centred to think so, but the timeline had lined up to when you landed on Robby’s front steps. 

She was older than you, more mature, no doubt. You were practically in shiny underwear in front of her with big lashes and glittery lip gloss, looking like some little aspiring cosmetologist’s fucked up Barbie doll. 

“God, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.” She muttered, more to herself than to you. Her hand moved to cover her face slightly, embarrassment blooming on her cheeks. In this state, she was another girl just like you, confidence faltering over this old man. 

“No,” you shook your head supportively, then offered playfully, “didn’t really know a 50 year old man could have a situationship.”

“Stupid, right?” Noelle shrugged, rolling her eyes. Removing her hand from her face while flicking her hair away, she scoffed, “Guess I just thought we had something real. Jokes on me for trying something with a man so lonely.”

You chuckled at her honesty, “Happens to the best of us.”

With a pressed smile, she nodded, “I’ll go speak to the girls now.”

“Of course,” You affirmed as she trailed off. 

A few hours after the whole bar fight party had been discharged and everyone was slowly getting caught up, Jack stopped by at Central, where Robby had been finishing up some charts. 

Knocking on the counter, Jack nodded, “How’s it going?”

“About ready to head home.” Robby sighed, tilting his glasses down to look at Jack.

“What, uh…” Jack leaned over the surface, an amused smile growing on his face, “What’s going on with the fighter from earlier?”

Robby laughed to himself, leaning over the desk like he and Jack were two girls at a sleepover, “The fighter?” He mocked, raising an eyebrow innocently.

“You know, the leader in that tiny skirt…” Jack teased, watching Robby’s expression soften, “What’s going on there?”

“Uh, she moved in next door a few months ago,” Robby shook his head bashfully, “We became friends pretty quickly, and, uh… you know.”

“I know? What are you, a teenager?” Jack scoffed playfully.

“I don’t know what you want from me, man.” Robby smiled, tilting his head, “It’s new.” 

“That’s where all your free time has been going, then?”

“Sorry I don’t want to play pickleball on my Sundays.” Robby joked, logging out and rolling his eyes. He stood from his chair, reaching for his jacket, which rested on the back of it.

“Young thing.” Jack commented, standing up straight. “Is this the one packing your lunches?”

Sighing, Robby slipped on his jacket, “Leftovers from dinner.”

“I’m happy for you, man.” With the pat of his back, he tilted his head up and joked, “Careful with that one, though. She’s feisty.”

“Yeah, I should get home, check on her.” Robby laughed with the shake of his head. “Shouldn’t even be working right now.”

Jack rolled his eyes, “Alright, Chief.”

Upon coming home, Robby saw you where he usually did, on your stoop with a cigarette and your cell phone. You had swapped your sequined halter for your big hoodie, and your legs stayed bare on the stairs, pulled to your chest and feet in slippers. Your nails tapped on your screen frantically, but your face stayed straight, eyes drooping tiredly.

“Hey, killer.” He said, making his way over to you. 

You tried to laugh but it came out as a small huff, “Hey, Hospital Heartbreaker.”

He chuckled as he sat beside you, shaking his head, “That’s a new one.”

“That, uh,” you gestured the cigarette to him, which he declined, “case manager…” You raised an eyebrow playfully as he nodded. “I was right about you.” 

“Yeah.” He exhaled, sitting back. He was close enough that his scrub bottoms were flush against the skin of your thigh. “Wasn’t serious. It was before… you.”

“Does she know that?” You chuckled with a draw of the cigarette. 

Robby tilted his chin at you, “How are you doing?”

“Seen worse days.” You tilted your head at him with a lopsided smile. “Should’ve seen the other guy.”

He nodded his head slowly, “I did.”

“Is he gonna be okay?” You asked, more out of curiosity than concern, eyes trailing to the street..

“I… don’t know.” He exhaled.

“Hope not, that bastard deserves jail time.” You hissed half-jokingly, taking another drag of your cigarette and blowing it in the opposite direction.

Robby cleared his throat, shifting in his seat, “I didn’t know your job was so… dangerous.”

“Yeah.” You shrugged, like it was the most simple thing in the world.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” His eyebrows knit together, genuine concern brewing in him. He looked at you in confusion, eyes uneasy as he waited patiently for a response.

“I don’t know…” You offered hesitantly, “I thought you’d…”

“Care?”

“I don’t know what I thought. I’m just a private person, I guess.” You shrugged dismissively, turned away from him at this point. “Working at a club isn’t uncommon.”

You didn’t mean to be so defensive, but you never thought your worlds would collide the way it did. You never intended to take Robby seriously until you realized how much you actually liked him. 

With a final puff of the cigarette, you said, “My last boyfriend was a detective. He kinda… had a thing for being invasive about my job, then our relationship turned into a sting operation. It was a whole thing.” You swatted your hand in the air tiredly.

“Didn’t take you for one with crazy exes.” He joked, but you couldn’t even smile.

“Sammy’s not crazy… he’s just,” you shook your head, unsure why you even bothered to bring it up, “Whatever. Doesn’t matter anymore.”

Robby watched as you tapped the ashes off the cigarette and reached to put it out on the ground. His eyes softened when you looked at him.

“Well, I’d like you to stay safe.” He said, like it was a suggestion, medicine for whatever illness the night gave you. “And I want to know what’s going on with you. I don’t want to hover, just want you to come home in one piece.” His hand found the side of your face, urging you to lean into him.

“Home.” You repeated with a nod, like it was an epiphany. 

“Yeah.” He smiled. 

“What, are you my boyfriend now?” You teased, nudging his knee with yours.

“Boyfriend,” he repeated, like he was trying it on for size, running a thumb over your cheekbone, “Yeah…”

crossposted to ao3

[spikedfearn]

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

ONE-SHOT

pairing: dr. jack abbot x younger resident!reader summary: You’re used to handling things alone, even if handling them means skipping meals, ignoring problems, and laughing before anyone can see where it stings. Then Jack Abbot starts noticing too much. He pays attention in that quiet, maddening way of his, all dry comments and practical solutions, until calling him your sugar daddy stops feeling like a joke and starts feeling like the only safe label for something you’re too terrified to name.

Because the problem with Jack Abbot isn’t that he wants to take care of you. It’s that you want to let him.

wc: 12.9k

a/n: and here it is, the accidental sugar daddy abbot fic i started over a month ago!! was initially toying with the idea to turn this into a multi-chaptered story but eventually settled on a one-shot instead because i have way too many ongoing fics i need to finish at some point lmao. i really wanted to take the sugar daddy trope and make it feel more grounded and in-character for jack, less flashy billionaire fantasy, more quiet practical care that gets way too intimate before either of you knows what to do with it. not beta read.

warnings: age gap, workplace power imbalance, attending/resident turned sd/sb dynamic, class/money insecurity, possessive/soft dom!jack, semi-public sex, piv, car sex, unprotected sex, creampie, dirty talk, praise kink, mild degradation, biting/marking, daddy kink adjacent, public humiliation, no use of y/n

MASTERLIST

By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.

And for what it was worth, you finally believed you were.

[pope-codys]

I LOOOOOVE

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

I wrote a thing

Rabbot Fic on A03 Here

It's not done but. It's up

[valtsv]

i hate it when people ask me to "explain my thought process" like hell if i know

[valtsv]

"what's going on in that head of yours?" nothing i want to be a part of

[shitpostingkats]

I'm so sorry Dick Grayson but the period of time where Bruce was dead is literally peak Dick Grayson era. Dad is dead. One brother threw himself off a cliff to avoid going to therapy. The other one is having a genuine mental breakdown in europe and blowing up warehouses. There's a body double of his dead dad running around threatening to destroy the carefully constructed house of lies. He has to look after a murderous ten year old with a sword. People keep asking him about how to run a multibillion dollar company. He's trying his best even though this is literally the thing he's been most afraid of since he was ten years old. He's not good enough and everyone can tell. On top of all that he's getting sensory issues from having to wear a cape.

Man having every single bad day a person can possibly have happen to him simultaneously.

[fic-dumpster]

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Ariiii i missed you! I havent checked my tumblr post notifs for a while so i just binged everything youve written since you came back from break. I hope youre doing well!!! Feel free to treat this as an ask for whatever you may currently be thinking about :D

💜💜💜💜 I'm glad that I'm trying to be back. I've been feeling not like myself so I'm trying to get back to it. Glad to see you in my asks!

Jack looked up from his phone and took a deep breath before shaking his head at Robby's hopeful look, "She came home looking shell-shocked, refused to talk about it, took a shower, and then cried herself to sleep-"

"And you let-"

"Well, it's not like she wanted me to hear it."

Robby exhaled roughly and rubbed his hands over his face. "Is it against my Hippocratic oath to WANT those people to die somehow?"

"As long as it's not in our catchment area, at this point I don't care," Jack said bitterly.

The other man snorted and started to lumber towards the bathroom, going to shower the day off, grunting an acknowledgment when Jack called after him that there was food in the kitchen.

Neither of them had wanted you to go today. To see the people who "raised you". Raised you by inflicting as much damage as possible. Forcing the responsibility of holding your broken family together in your little hands even as the shards shredded your tender flesh to ribbons.

A father who spent most of your childhood in jail. A mother who had boyfriends while he was in and kicked you out when they started to look at you with too much interest, only letting you move back in when dad asked too many questions about why you were gone.

Robby stopped at the side of the bed, re-dressed in sweats, and sat on his side of the bed. Brushing hair out of your face, he winced when he peeled it away from the dried tear tracks, and you stirred. "Shh," he soothed, "You're home, sweetheart."

"Can heat up dinner," you manage, voice thick with sleep, starting to push yourself up.

"Jack's got it for me baby," he murmured. "You feel okay?"

"I'm fine-"

"Come have dinner with me? Jack said you went straight to bed." He wasn't going to call you out for lying. Not when your pillow was still damp under your right hand.

You shake your head, "I just. Today was long. I was tired."

Tired. It covered a multitude of ills.

His lips twitched and he leaned up to kiss your forehead, "Then come sit in Jack's lap. Then we can watch some TV until you go back to sleep."

"Robby-"

"He needs some Sweetheart cuddles," Robby coaxes. "He got a little lonely with us both gone today."