the love drug
Jack Abbot x Resident!Reader
Summary: After an unfortunate mixup of pain medication and your friend's party substances at Pitt Fest, you're rushed to the Pitt and placed in the care of Jack Abbot. As he oversees your care, you get a little too touchy, and a little too honest.
Word Count: 6.6k
Content: accidental drug use (MDMA), mention of alcohol consumption, age gap (reader is mid 20s), fluff, comfort, a hint of smut (18+ MDNI) - literally like two seconds of thigh riding, mention of ovulation
A/N: listen… I’ve never done MDMA. I did a lot of research, but I had to fudge some stuff for plot. don’t do drugs kids
Pitt Fest was not your idea. When your friend Beth offered you her spare ticket, you waffled at first. You're not really a crowds person, or a partying person. Beth was always the partier in college. But you do like live music, and she pointed out that your top Spotify artist from last year is in the concert lineup.
So you’d caved.
That decision is coming back to bite you in the ass, and bite hard.
It’s hot as balls outside. You’re covered in sweat, which mingles in a sticky and unpleasant mix with the sunscreen you’ve been dutifully applying since the afternoon to avoid frying like an egg. When the sun finally set, you no longer had to worry about the burgeoning threat of skin cancer, but the heat doesn’t break. In fact, it almost seems to get worse, because more and more people arrive to crowd you as night descends and the bigger names with larger fanbases grace the stage.
You’re waiting for Beth outside of the bathroom facilities. She's been ingesting a steady stream of margaritas since sundown, so she leaves you holding the bag, literally. At least it's a nice excuse to separate yourself from the throng of jumping, sweaty bodies gathered by the stage.
It’s nearly two in the morning. You’re hungry. Your feet are killing you. You have a headache from the festival’s sugary cocktails. You’re sweating through the top Beth lent you. And on top of everything else, your ovulation cramps are kicking in like a motherfucker.
Growing desperate, you dig through Beth's bag, searching for the little Altoid tin that she always keeps her pain meds in. At long last, your hands make contact with the metal tin at the bottom of her tote. Nearly crying with relief, you pop an aspirin in your mouth and wash it down with the tepid bottled water you’ve been clutching for the last hour.
Beth's voice rings out from behind you, talking over the din of the nearby DJ set. “What are you doing?”
You turn towards her, and see Beth staring at the tin in your hand. “I have cramps,” you explain, and just as you’re about to shove the tin back in her bag and hand it to her, she grabs your wrist.
“…please tell me you didn’t just take one of those,” she says urgently.
You raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because those are not aspirin, babe.”
Your blood runs cold. Your brain quickly does the math — Beth had told you how much she’s looking forward to meeting up with her rave friends tomorrow for the second night of Pitt Fest. Beth has always been quite the partier. And she often partied with her good friend Molly.
Your eyes widen in horror. “Oh no.”
Pitt Fest, as always, is a huge pain in the ass for the night shift.
Handoff gets messy. There's a shit ton of substance cases, even more of heatstroke. Robby stays longer than he should and snaps at everyone, clearly in his feelings remembering last year’s Pitt Fest. Understandable, yes, but it also makes everyone’s life that much harder when they’re within sniping distance of him.
Needless to say, Jack is already over this shift, and it’s not even halfway done. It doesn't help that his favorite resident happens to have the night off, which deposits his mood firmly in the hospital basement. Which, coincidentally, happens to be the location of the morgue.
Now that Robby has been politely ordered to go the fuck home, Jack feels like he can finally focus on his job instead of doing damage control with the med students. As he walks down the hall, Lena catches his attention from the hub desk.
“We have an ambulance two minutes out with a mid-20s female, collapsed at Pitt Fest,” she informs him. “Probable dehydration, likely drug-related, because, well… Pitt Fest.”
This festival truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Jack cracks his knuckles and eyes the ambulance bay doors. “All right. Let's get ready to receive the party girl.”
A few minutes later, the gurney is wheeled in by two paramedics and received by Lena and Parker. Parker shoots an alarmed and confused look over her shoulder at Jack, who steps forward to supervise.
“Dr. Abbot!"
Of all the things Jack expected to see tonight, this is at the bottom of the list. You're strapped to the gurney, scantily clad and gleaming with sweat, a goofy smile on your face and your pupils blown so wide they nearly swallow your irises.
Jack scrubs a hand through his hair. “You're shitting me.”
This is quite the surprising turn of events.
After Lena sets you up in South 16, Jack discreetly shoos away Parker so he can handle your examination himself. He doubts you would be comfortable with one of your fellow residents seeing you like this, considering your condition and your current state of dress.
Jack closes the door behind him and saunters over to you. His eyes snag on your tight, strappy top, and the strategically placed cutouts baring sections of your midriff and chest. He’s holding onto his professionalism by a thread, especially with the way you’re shifting around on the exam table, causing the hem of your miniskirt to ride up.
He has no choice but to focus up. You need medical attention, not the kind of attention his brain and body really want to give you right now. First, Lena takes your temperature and shows him the number on the display. 100.2 degrees F. It's coming down from what the paramedics recorded in the ambulance, and not so high that he’s still worried about heat stroke. But you’ll need cooling down regardless.
“That’s quite the outfit you got on,” he mutters as he gently raises your chin and shines his penlight into your pupils.
“Do you like it?” you ask, beaming up at him even as you squint. “I borrowed it from my friend. She’s so nice.”
Your pupils are so dilated that your eyes are almost completely black.
“Yup.” Jack clicks off the light and sighs, turning to Lena. “She’s rolling, all right. Let’s get a tox to make sure there’s nothing else to be worried about.”
You don’t seem to even register the pain of the needle prick, but you let out a delighted little hum when Lena smooths a bandage over your arm and adds gentle pressure over top of it.
“That feels good,” you murmur with a lazy smile.
“I bet.” Jack crosses his arms and tries to give you a stern look. “Can I ask what my best resident is doing taking ecstasy at a music festival?”
“I didn’t take it on purpose, I swear,” you protest, your eyes widening in a brief panic. “It was my friend’s. I thought it was aspirin, for my cramps.”
“You’re menstruating?” he asks, picking up his tablet and sitting in the edge of the exam table next to you to amend your chart.
You shake your head and say matter-of-factly, “Ovulation cramps.”
His eyebrows shoot up towards the ceiling in surprise.
You continue babbling, unaware of the grenade you just lobbed at Jack. “She tried to get me to throw it up, but I couldn’t because I don’t really have a gag reflex.”
Jack takes a deep breath to prevent his brain from completely short-circuiting.
Your face breaks into a sheepish smile, and you giggle, “Oops. Sorry, that was probably too much information.” Leaning forward on the exam table, you bring your face inches away from his and observe with a sigh, “Your eyes are really pretty.”
From behind him, Jack hears Lena snickering under her breath. He clears his throat and straightens up to standing.
Avoiding Lena's eyes, he instructs her, “Let’s, uh, get her some fluids and cooling packs, huh? Maybe a Saf-T-Pop, too. Keep her mouth occupied, so she won’t say any more nonsense she’ll regret in the morning.”
Lena just shoots him an amused look and heads off to gather supplies. Nurses, he thinks ruefully to himself. They see everything.
Movement and sound draw his attention back to you. You're laid back on the exam table, eyes fluttering closed. And you’re running your hands through your hair, letting out a pleased little noise like the sensation is better than sex.
Jack breathes carefully through his nose. He needs out of this room with you, before this becomes mortifying for everyone involved. His phone buzzes in his pocket, giving him the perfect excuse for escape.
His voice is thin when he speaks, and for a moment, he’s glad you’re too high to notice. “You sit tight, sunshine.”
As he turns to leave the room, your hand catches the edge of his scrubs.
“You’re leaving?” your mouth turns down into a pout, those huge eyes shining up at him. He very nearly gives in, very nearly reaches out a hand to stroke a thumb across your cheek just to hear the kind of sound it would pull from you. But his phone buzzes insistently, so he briefly pats your knee instead.
“I have other patients to see. But I'll be back before you know it,” he assures you, pulling open the door and diving headfirst back into the glorious chaos.
At least it’ll be a convenient distraction from the thought of you, eagerly waiting in south fifteen for him to return.
He shakes his head in disbelief. Ovulation cramps. You’re gonna be the death of him.
An MVA, a ketamine overdose, and a cardiac event later, the Pitt finally slows down enough for Jack to breathe. Enough to check your tox screen and sigh with relief that the MDMA you mistakenly took wasn’t cut with anything. Alcohol is the only other thing in your system, in levels not high enough to be concerning. Although, combined with the ecstasy, it means you probably won’t remember much of this exciting little escapade.
At long last, he manages to find some time to check on you.
In his absence, Lena had set you up with a gown to preserve a little more of your modesty. You’re laying on the exam table amongst the cooling packs, an IV attached to your arm and a Saf-T-Pop in your mouth that’s turning your tongue red.
A smile breaks like sunrise over your face as soon as you see him.
“Hey there, sunshine,” he greets you, approaching you with a little more warmth now that Lena's sharp eyes aren’t here to observe.
“Hi. I missed you,” you sigh.
Jack smirks. “Did you now?”
You nod happily. “Mm-hmm.”
“How are you feeling?” he asks, his gaze attentive, checking you over.
“Cold,” you answer, wrapping your arms around yourself.
He reaches up a hand to feel your forehead. Still warm, but still steadily coming down over time. He’s satisfied enough with your progress. You'll be out of here in no time.
The prospect disappoints him just a little.
“Yeah, your body is having trouble regulating its temperature,” he explains, his thumb stroking delicately along your hairline. “We’ll need to keep these cool packs on you a little while longer.”
Just as his hand retreats, your hand catches his wrist. You press his palm to your cheek, almost nuzzling into it like an affectionate kitten.
“Your hands are so warm,” you murmur, eyelids slipping shut as you revel in the sensation.
The gesture catches him off guard, but he doesn’t pull away. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, and he certainly doesn’t want to.
“Easy there, gorgeous,” he chuckles softly. “I need that hand for doctoring.”
Your eyelids flutter halfway open, and you look up at him with a lazy grin, clearly pleased as punch. “You think I'm gorgeous?”
Jack freezes for a moment. The word had slipped out without him even registering it, familiar and endeared and entirely too revealing.
“I plead the fifth,” he replies, warmth creeping up his neck.
You giggle again. God, that sound does things to his heart that are medically concerning.
“I think you’re gorgeous,” you mumble dreamily.
Jack blinks in surprise.
He’s been a little too fond of you for a while now, been staring a little too long when you brush past him in the halls. And he’s suspected before that it might not be completely one-sided. He sees how you receive his attention and praise differently than the other attendings, how you look at him with more than just the admiration of a mentor. But suspecting it and having it be confirmed are two different things. Especially since you wouldn’t be saying any of this if you were sober.
He tries to laugh it off before his ego can run away with the compliment. “I think you’re high.”
You shrug. “Maybe. But I always think you’re gorgeous.”
Removing his palm from your cheek, you examine it with fascination, running a finger along the deep set lines. “I think about these,” you say thoughtfully. “All the time.”
Jack is a little ashamed at how quickly that comment goes straight to his cock. His favorite resident, fantasizing about his hands, maybe even touching yourself to the thought of them, wishing your own fingers were his—
He drags his free hand over his face and mutters, "Jesus Christ."
“Can I tell you a secret?” You peer up at him again, that goofy, starstruck smile returning. “I’ve got, like, the biggest crush on you.”
Unfortunately for Jack, there is very little time to process this very interesting information before his phone buzzes again. Just beyond the doors, he can hear the familiar sound of what is likely a high-priority trauma heading into the bay. Voices overlapping in urgent tones, gurney wheels on tile floor, grunts and yelps of pain from a patient.
Jack crosses to the door in two steps, and speaks over his shoulder to you. “Hey, baby, I gotta handle something. Stay out of trouble, okay?”
As the door swings shut behind him, he just manages to catch the sound of you happily mumbling to yourself, “He called me baby.”
Which is how he heads into Trauma 1 with a smile on his face, entirely too cheerful for a man facing down a compound femur fracture.
The shift that would never fucking end is almost fucking over. And all Jack can think about is you. You and your moony, lovey-dovey eyes and your wide, childlike smile. You gazing up at him and crooning I have the biggest crush on you. You giggling and telling him point-blank that you’re ovulating.
As he rolls out of yet another demanding trauma, Lena updates him on your condition. You’re rehydrated and back to a normal temperature, pretty much ready for discharge if you can be released to someone who will take care of you. He returns to your room, finding you unhooked from your IV and cold-pack-free, happily set up with another lollipop.
“Jack, you’re back!” you exclaim, and then laugh at your accidental rhyme.
Still rolling, he thinks. He checks his watch. According to your best guess of when you took the ‘aspirin’ in your friend’s purse, it’s been about four hours. You'll be due to start coming down anytime in the next two hours or so. He's due to head out, but he can’t bring himself to go home until he knows you’re leaving in capable hands.
“Hey, sunshine.” He offers you a tired but warm smile. “Seems like you’re in pretty good shape here, and you should be tapering off pretty soon. You got anybody to take you home, keep an eye on you?”
A little crease forms between your brows as you think hard. “I don’t know where my friend went when the ambulance came. And I think my phone died,” you add pathetically, gesturing to the device in your lap and its terminally black screen.
Jack pinches the bridge of his nose. He can’t in good conscience leave you to your own devices, especially when you’ve never taken ecstasy before. At worst, there’s still a chance you could have some kind of reaction. At best, the comedown is sure to knock you on your ass.
He can only think of one thing to do. It's not the best idea. It might not even be a good idea. But his brain is too addled from the long shift to come up with anything better. And you need someone to take care of you.
“Jesus. Okay,” he mutters to himself, then sits on the edge of the exam table, bringing his face level to yours. “Listen up, sunshine.”
You gaze at him intently, attention vacillating occasionally between his eyes and his mouth. Jack has a feeling that what he’s about to say will go in one ear and right out the other. But there’s a chance you’ll retain it, so he says it anyway.
“You're gonna have a pretty serious crash when you come down. All those happy little chemicals that are making you feel good right now?” He gives you a soft little tap against your temple, and you giggle softly. He continues, “They’re gonna go on vacation for a day or two. I don't want you dealing with that on your own. So I'm gonna take you to my place, just to watch out for you until you’re feeling a little more like yourself.”
You’re quiet for a minute, your brain catching up and computing the meaning of what he just said. When it finishes, the lightbulb goes off behind your eyes, and you ask excitedly, “We’re having a sleepover?”
Of course that would be your takeaway.
He chuckles as he helps you to your feet. “That's right. You got it.”
When Jack drapes his hoodie over your shoulders and guides you out of the Pitt to his car, he’s reminded of all the reasons that this is probably a terrible idea.
He sees the watchful eyes and the knowing smirks of the nurses. He sees Parker and Crus snickering behind their hands. He sees Shen counting up his winnings from the betting pool, because he wrote down molly and tripsitter Abbot.
And he feels your hand clinging to his bicep, sees how you gaze up at him with a dreamy expression as he walks you out to his car. He’s knows he’s really going to need to behave himself for a few hours, because there’s a very good chance that you won’t, and Jack doesn’t want to accidentally take advantage of your… impaired judgement.
You spend most of the ride with your face by the cracked car window, feeling the wind on your face, eyes blissfully closed. Jack thanks his lucky stars that he thought to give the apartment a once-over before shift, so he isn’t bringing you into a total mess.
He walks you into his bedroom and gestures to the en-suite. “Bathroom’s there, if you want to take a shower. I'll find you something a little more… comfortable to wear,” he adds, peeling his eyes away from your tiny little shirt and how you’re already fussing with the straps.
As he turns to his bureau to find you a t-shirt, he feels arms wrapping around his middle, your body molding to his back as you embrace him with a sigh. “Thank you for being so nice to me.”
Jack swallows and delicately removes your hands, stepping out of your embrace and ushering you in the direction of the bathroom.
“Go on, then,” he instructs you. “While you’re still upright.”
You barely even register it as rejection, heading towards the shower and wiggling out of your top before Jack even has the chance to close the door behind you. Which he does, quickly and with his eyes glued to the floor.
His instincts were right. He will very much need to behave himself while you’re here.
He busies himself while you shower by changing out of his scrubs and assembling a meal. It's a humble offering — just a couple of sandwiches and frozen french fries heated up in the oven, but it’s better than nothing.
After about twenty minutes, you emerge from the bedroom with damp hair and your face scrubbed clean, clad in one of his t-shirts and a pair of his boxers, smelling like his soap. You lean on his kitchen island with a contented little sigh.
Jack repeats it to himself like a mantra — behave yourself.
“Time to eat something,” he says, sliding one of the plates toward you.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I know. But I'm trying to set you up for success here, so you don’t feel as awful when this is out of your system. When's the last time you ate?” he asks.
You rest your chin on your hand as you think back. “I had… lunch.”
“Thought so.” He puts the plate into your hands and steers you in the direction of the couch with a hand on your lower back. “You and I are gonna eat these sandwiches, drink some water, and watch Planet Earth.”
You gasp in delight and plop down onto the couch. “I love Planet Earth!”
He knows you do. You'd gushed about it being your favorite docuseries at work, and he’d bragged about owning the box set. It had been the first day you and he had really started to bond.
Once the tv is on, it thankfully keeps you occupied. You chew your food slowly, enraptured with the beautiful imagery on the screen. Managing a decent effort with the meal, you eat half the sandwich and most of the fries before you start to lose a little steam.
You abandon your plate on the coffee table, then take Jack completely by surprise as you lean over to lay your head in his lap.
He goes still for a moment, unsure if he should be allowing this. But he doesn’t have the heart to push you away, so he puts his plate aside and lets a hand come to rest on your shoulder.
You sigh happily and snuggle closer.
It's been so long since Jack has taken care of someone like this that he’d almost forgotten what it feels like. How good it feels to be needed. The easy intimacy of sharing a space, sharing a meal, of letting someone melt against you after a long night.
Affectionately, he brushes a stray lock of hair out of your face, and you practically purr in response, leaning into his hand. So Jack keeps doing it, keeps gently stroking his fingers through your hair, preferring to watch your relaxing form instead of the polar bears on screen.
The two of you spend nearly an hour like that, until your breath starts to take on that even, drowsy quality and Jack’s own brain starts calling for rest. He gently eases you off his lap to sit up, takes you by the hand and leads you to bed, already resigning himself to the aching back that a couch nap is going to earn him.
Jack sets you up with a glass of water and the best blankets in the linen closet. As he turns to head back to the living room, your hand grabs his arm, pulling him back.
“Stay.”
Your voice is low and warm. You're sitting up in his bed, his sheets pooled around your knees. Your eyes are dark, tempting, pleading.
Jack knows dangerous territory when he sees it.
Still, your serotonin is due to start dropping any time now, and hurt feelings are only going to be worsened once it does. Jack sits carefully on the edge of the bed, maintaining a few inches of distance, his other hand gently cradling your cheek.
“Sorry, sunshine. Not a good idea.”
You move closer, your gaze fixed firmly on his mouth. “Why?”
Best behavior, Jack.
“Because you’re still tapering off. Plus, I just worked a long shift and I need to sleep.” He takes in a deep breath as he feels your hand slide across his shoulders. “And I've got a feeling I won't be getting much rest next to you.”
In a move so surprising that Jack is momentarily powerless to stop it, you rise up onto your knees and shift to straddle one of his thighs.
“What if I promise to be really, really good?” you murmur sweetly.
Jack knows he should stop you, and he almost does. But then you rock your hips on his thigh, the tiniest little life-ruining movement, and you let out the softest, neediest little sound. Suddenly, Jack is hanging onto his sanity and self control-by a thread. And that thread is fraying rapidly.
“Baby,” he whispers, half warning and half plea. His hands come to your hips, torn between stopping you and spurring you on.
Your hips rock again, more purposeful this time. “Please,” you beg quietly, so close now that your lips just barely brush against his.
For a few shameful moments, Jack forgets about his fatigue and the ache in his leg and he wonders… how morally reprehensible would it really be to just let you get off on his thigh? You’d said yourself that you’re ovulating, probably making you even needier. Fuck, he can feel how badly you want it, wetness soaking through the boxers you’re wearing and Jack’s sweatpants. Would it really be so awful of him to sit passively as you hump his leg to get the relief you’re clearly so desperate for? To take pity on you and let you use him for your pleasure?
But he knows it would be wrong, because he’d be getting off on it even if you didn’t touch him. You're not in your right mind, and he doesn’t want to make you come for the first time when you’re whacked out on MDMA.
Summoning the will from deep inside himself, he stills your hips and eases you off of his thigh, ignoring your whines as he nudges you back onto the pillows.
“It wouldn’t be right. I'm not touching you until you’re sober,” he says firmly.
Jack gets to his feet and tucks the blankets around you. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Wake me if you need anything.” He laughs softly at the pointed pouting look you shoot his way. “Other than that.”
“You’re no fun,” you call after him as he retreats into the living room.
Once the bedroom door is shut behind him, he collapses on the couch and wrestles off his prosthetic, punching a throw pillow a few times to soften it before going horizontal. Even after what felt like the longest shift he’s had in months, he’s unsure how much sleep he’ll actually manage to get knowing you’re in the next room. Probably snuggling one of his pillows as if it’s him, probably squeezing your thighs together until the last of the drugs leave your system.
He groans and rolls over, willing his body and his still half-hard cock to go to sleep.
You wake feeling like death warmed over.
You’re in a bed that doesn’t belong to you, but smells familiar and comforting. Same with your clothes. A few memories make it through the fog, blurry and out of order. Planet Earth. Jack’s hand, warm and pleasant on your cheek. An ambulance ride. Lena ruffling your hair and handing you a lollipop. A shower with a chair and a grab bar and soap that smells like Jack.
You’re at Jack's apartment, you realize with a start.
Checking the time groggily, you observe that you've slept from the early morning until late afternoon. Thank god you’d asked for tonight off as well, anticipating you’d need recovery time after Pitt Fest.
You can vaguely recall the warm, fuzzy feelings you’d experienced last night. In the abstract, at least. Now, you feel mostly guilt and shame and embarrassment and anxiety. How could you have been so stupid?
Sounds of life echo from the kitchen, which means Jack has woken up ahead of you. Your guilt sharpens. Jack is spending his hard-earned downtime taking care of you, because of your own carelessness.
Fatigue clings to your bones as you shuffle to the bathroom. The reflection in the mirror is less than kind. Dark shadows frame your eyes, worse than the usual bags worn by the night shift crew. Your hair is a mess, and you sigh as you comb your fingers through to tame it.
Time to face the music.
You trudge out into the kitchen, where Jack is wearing an apron over a t-shirt and sweats and cooking an omelette, looking awfully chipper for having slept seven hours on the couch. He looks so good that it briefly makes you angry. Fuck him for looking so good, while you look and feel like utter dogshit.
Of course, that annoyance turns to guilt again when he looks up and smiles.
“Hey, lover girl,” he greets you warmly as you lean on the kitchen island. “How are you feeling?”
You rub your eyes and groan, “Like I got hit by a Mack truck.”
He squeezes your shoulder fondly and grabs a plate from an overhead cabinet. “Let’s get some food and water in you.”
“Thank you,” you mutter sheepishly. “I’m sorry about… all this.”
“Don't even worry about it, sunshine.”
Jack hands you a glass of water and starts making you a plate. You accept it with a grimace. “I'm not feeling very sunshine-y right about now. I can't remember half of what happened after I went down at the concert.”
“I hope we’ve learned not to go digging for meds in that particular friend’s purse.” He smirks and sets a plate in front of you. A vegetable omelette and buttered toast. Your appetite hasn’t yet returned to its normal levels, but your doctor brain knows that you really need to eat, so you reach for the toast first.
“Never again,” you vow as you take a bite.
In the light of day and out from under the influence of Beth's ‘aspirin,’ you get a good look at Jack's apartment for the first time as he assembles his own plate. It's not spotless, but it’s generally tidy, and it’s a very nice place. Good furniture, great windows with better blackout shades, a nice floor plan. Its niceness only makes you feel smaller.
You poke at your omelette, stewing. “Jack?”
“Yes?”
“Don't take this the wrong way, but…why am I here?”
He plates his own omelette and leans a hip against the kitchen island. “You’d never taken MDMA before, and I knew you’d be in for a hell of a drop. I didn't want you to be on your own.”
You resist the urge to frown. This whole saga is doing nothing to remedy your tragic crush on him. Did he have to be so nice and caring on top of everything else? It feels a little unfair at the moment.
“That’s… very considerate,” you mumble.
“What can I say? I'm a considerate guy.” He pops a bite of omelette into his mouth with a wink.
A thought occurs to you that briefly makes your stomach turn. “Does the whole Pitt know?”
Jack's expression tells you everything you need to know before he even speaks. “There… might have been a betting pool on the subject. Shen cleaned up.”
You drop your face into your hands. “Awesome. That's really awesome.”
Every single one of your coworkers knows that you spent the night rolling. Tears prick at your eyes beneath your palms, which only worsens your humiliation. The last thing you need right now is to cry in front of Jack Abbot. Even if it’s just because the chemicals in your brain are out of whack, it doesn't make it any less embarrassing.
“Hey.” Jack's hand finds your shoulder again. “Don’t worry about it. They're good people, no one is judging you.”
Despite your best efforts, a mortifying little sniffle slips out at the kindness in his voice.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Come here.”
You can’t bear to look up, but your breath hitches in surprise when Jack pulls you into his arms. Instantly, your brain begins to quiet, focusing on the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek, the reassuring weight of his arms around you, the slow arc of his thumb rhythmically stroking your shoulder blade.
It's medicine. Oxytocin and dopamine, feel-good chemicals produced by physical touch, bolstering your brain against the sapped well of serotonin the ecstasy left in its wake. It also makes your heart flutter pathetically in your chest.
He holds you for a long moment, his grip tightening when you finally loop your arms around his waist and return the embrace.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” you whisper, allowing the comfort to sink into your skin and fill your lungs.
“Of course.”
Jack only pulls away when you do, gently swiping a calloused thumb underneath your eye to banish the straggling tear that managed to escape.
“Let’s get comfortable on the couch,” he says, a hand settling on your back to guide you. “You’re still on the comedown.”
You worry you might be overstaying your welcome. But Jack seems to be in no rush to get you out of his apartment, content to let you rot on his couch as long as you need to. Surely he must have better things to do on his night off than take care of you, but he sits sentry at your side without complaint.
After some consideration, Planet Earth is tabled for the time being — even if you’ve seen it before, animal death is sure to bring back the waterworks in your current state. Flipping through channels, you settle on a cheesy mid-2000s rom-com that you’ve seen before and snuggle back into the couch cushions.
Through it all, you feel the comfort of his steady presence, his hand rubbing idle circles on your back, like an IV drip of Vitamin Jack straight to your brain. You give into the feeling, too worn out to fight it, curling into his side. Eventually, you feel a gentle graze at your scalp as he idly plays with your hair. It surprises you for a moment, but you’re not complaining in the slightest. You melt into it, eyes fluttering closed until you’re slipping in and out of a light doze.
Afternoon fades to evening, to dinnertime, to nighttime, to bedtime. Even after your intermittent sleep, your fatigue is still bone deep, and Jack insists you can stay the night. You really try to convince him to let you take the couch, but he refuses, insisting that your body needs proper rest to return to baseline. At the end of the night, he sends you off to bed with a smirk.
When you wake up in Jack's bed for the second time, it’s much less disorienting. It helps that you’re much clearer than you were seventeen hours ago. The clock reads 9:05 am — you have the whole day ahead of you to shower, change, and steel yourself for the humiliation ritual that is bound to be your shift tonight.
You stumble into the living room, bleary-eyed. Jack is reclined on the couch with a laptop and readers perched on the end of his nose. Ugh, fuck him again for looking so good.
His eyes find yours over the edge of the screen. “Hey there. You sleep good?”
“Mm-hmm,” you reply, stretching. “I'm feeling much better, I think.”
His mouth curves at the corner. “Good.”
Leaning on the edge of the couch, you sigh and glance at the clock on the wall. “I should probably head home soon, get my life together before shift tonight. Would you be able to drive me home?”
“Sure thing, sunshine.”
After you eat breakfast and shower off the cast of bedrotting from the day before, you change back into the clothes you arrived in, which Jack took the liberty of washing for you. As much as you appreciate the gesture, you blanch at the idea of Jack handling your underwear, and try very hard not to think about that mental image.
As the quiet car ride progresses, you ponder your looming fate, mentally preparing yourself for the teasing you’ll get from the nurses and other residents. It's disorienting to not know what you’re walking into, to have been mentally absent for most of it.
You can’t resist the urge to ask anymore. “Was I a total mess?”
He nods, amused. “Yes. But a very cute mess.”
“God, this is so embarrassing,” you groan. “What did I say?”
“Are you sure you wanna know?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
That makes you pause, glancing at him warily. “…was it bad?”
“You got a little fixated on hands for a while.” Jack pauses, like he isn’t sure how much to reveal, if you’re ready to handle it. “Said you think about mine all the time.”
Suddenly, you feel a bit sick, even though the car is headed in a straight line down the road. If that's just where it starts… if that’s not the worst of it, then what is?
“Oh god,” you whisper in horror.
“You said you think I'm gorgeous,” he continues, voice thick with amusement. “And that you have a big ol’ crush on me. And… you might’ve tried to seduce me a little at bedtime.”
Your cheeks flare hot. This is quite possibly the worst outcome of the situation aside from death. At the moment, death feels preferable.
You stare straight ahead, sinking in your seat and pressing your hands to your forehead to try and keep your brain from exploding. “Excuse me, I'm just gonna open the door and go lay down in traffic.”
He laughs, the sound warm and fond and doing absolutely nothing to temper your embarrassment. “It's okay.”
“It is completely not okay, Jack,” you protest, turning your body away from him and towards the passenger side door, like that will save you from this conversation.
Jack places a hand on your thigh.
All the systems in your brain go down simultaneously.
His palm rests just above your knee, not high enough to be too inappropriate, but it’s intimate. Especially because your choice of garment for Pitt Fest leaves your leg bare and exposed to his touch. Never once does he take his eyes off the road.
“It was flattering,” he says coolly, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over your knee. “And extremely cute.”
He lets the assertion hang in the silence, and he doesn’t move his hand, letting it rest warm and comfortable against the soft skin of your thigh.
After some considerable effort, you remember how to breathe. Once the oxygen makes it to your brain, you manage to peel your hands away from your face and peek sideways at him.
“…really?” you ask, because you need the confirmation. Does Jack Abbot — your mentor, the object of all your desires, and the man who just babysat you through an unwitting MDMA trip — really think you’re cute?
He gives your thigh a gentle squeeze. “Really.”
There isn’t much else to say for the rest of the car ride. Jack keeps his hand on your thigh until he turns down your street and throws the car in park. You try and fail to suppress a smile the whole way, and allow him to walk you up to your building’s front step, palms tingling with anticipation.
“I’d like to do this again sometime,” he says as you unlock the main entrance. “Minus the party drugs.”
You grin up at him, slightly emboldened by the revelations that occurred in the car. “You wanna have another sleepover?”
“Very much.” His eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles back. “See you tonight?”
“See you tonight.”
You turn to head inside, but Jack catches your elbow. “Hey. One last thing.”
Before you have time to register his closeness, a hand slides along your waist, another cupping your jaw, and Jack is kissing you.
A warm, pleasant feeling floods you from top to toe, a high rivalling the chemical one you’d experienced twenty-eight hours ago. He kisses you like he’s been thinking about it that entire twenty-eight hours. It's tender and hungry at the same time. By the time he pulls away, your lips follow after his and you almost stumble forward into his arms.
You open your eyes and blink up at him, feeling a little dazed and starstruck again.
“Had to wait until you were level,” Jack murmurs. He gives you a lingering peck at the corner of your mouth and descends down the front steps to his car.
You beam after him.
