Literally A Fangirl Til The Day I Die

Jack walks in for the night shift and checks the docket. Everyone scheduled is present and accounted for except —

He looks up. Lena is already watching him. She sets her hand flat over the tablet, drawing his attention to her.

"She's here."

His eyes move across the floor. A sweep, automatic. Nothing flags.

"What do you mean."

"She's here." A subtle tilt of her head toward the far end — bay marked empty, curtain drawn, lights off behind it. Something cold settles in him. His grip on the tablet adjusts without his permission.

"She doesn't want anyone knowing," Lena adds quietly.

He shifts his weight. "What—"

"She'll want to tell you herself." Her hand finds his arm for a moment and then releases it. She holds his gaze long enough that he understands the rest of it without her having to say it: it's bad.

He doesn't look for him. He doesn't need to. The man who's supposed to show up when something goes wrong — the one who goes home to you every night and apparently cannot manage even that one thing — his absence is already a fact, already filed. Of course he isn't here. That stopped surprising Jack a long time ago.

He sets the tablet down on the counter. Walks toward the bay at the far end of the floor at the pace of a man with no particular destination. Nothing worth noting. Nothing that would draw attention.

The curtain gives under his hand.

The light from the corridor falls across you in a thin strip. His eyes take a moment to adjust, and then they don't need any more time at all.

The bruise runs along your cheekbone. Not fresh...no. A day old at least, maybe two, already settling into that yellow-green at the edges that means the body is doing what it's supposed to, healing whether or not the person inside it is ready to. You're sitting slightly angled on the edge of the bed, one arm held close to your ribs in the prideful way people hold themselves when breathing has become a calculation. He reads all of it in under four seconds.

Then you look up.

And then you look away.

That is the thing that finishes him. Not the bruise. Not the careful architecture of how you're holding yourself together. The looking away...because you have never looked away from him. Never once in all the years he has known you. Not when he was telling you something you didn't want to hear, or when you were exhausted and half-wrong and arguing with him anyway, not even in the moments that should have made it impossible to hold his gaze. You always looked straight at him. And now you don't, and the absence of that one ordinary thing lands in his chest like a finding he does not want to have made.

He lets the curtain fall closed behind him. Pulls the chair from the corner. Sits close enough that you could reach him if you wanted to, not so close that you'd have to, and waits.

"I didn't—" Your voice breaks on the second word. You cover your face with your hands. "Shit."

He starts to move and then stops himself. Whether you want to be touched right now is a question he cannot answer for you, and getting it wrong in either direction would cost something neither of you could afford. The restraint itself costs him something he doesn't want to name.

"I feel so stupid." Into your palms. "I feel so fucking stupid."

"Don't." He looks down at his own hands. He doesn't trust his face right now. "Please don't do that."

A long breath. You lower your hands but don't look at him. "It wasn't—" You stop. Try again. "God. What a cliché. What a complete, embarrassing—" Another stop. "It wasn't his fault."

He waits.

"It was mine."

"You gave yourself those bruises?"

It isn't a question. He says it without inflection and waits for you to hear yourself try to contradict it.

You shake your head, eyes closed. "You know why it was my fault."

"I don't."

"Because of what I did." Smaller now. The smallest he has ever heard your voice. "What we did, Jack."

3 Months Earlier

The wind off the river is cold enough to bite, and you've been up here long enough that you've stopped noticing.

Pittsburgh spreads out below you in lights, all of it blurring at the edges the way things do when you've been crying long enough to be embarrassed about it. You're gripping the railing with both hands. Not because you might do anything — just because it's something solid, and solid is what you need right now.

"Fuck." You look down at the city below. "What a shitty night."

"I agree," a voice calls out from behind you and you jump, turning fast enough that your hand slips on the rail.

There stands Jack Abbot. Your attending for the past two years, the man who has pulled you back from the edge of your own worst moments more times than either of you has ever acknowledged out loud. He looks at you the way he always does — like he's already finished reading you and is deciding what to do with the information.

"You found me." You let go of the railing with one hand and swipe at your face, the gesture too quick to be subtle and both of you know it.

"You're in my hiding spot."

"That's why I came." You turn back to the city. "Felt close. Comforting. In a twisted way."

A pause. Then the sound of him crossing the roof, stopping a few feet to your left. He leans his forearms on the railing and looks out at the same skyline.

"Nothing bonds people like mutual—" he glances at the long drop below, "—ideations."

Something between a laugh and a sob escapes you before you can catch it. It surprises you. You hadn't known there was anything left in you tonight that could still make that sound.

"We did good tonight," you say, once you've got yourself back.

"You did great tonight." He doesn't look at you when he says it. That's how you know he means it. Jack's compliments always land sideways, never straight on, the way the most honest things usually do.

You glance at him. His face is closer than you expected, the city light catching the lines around his eyes, the grey at his temple. You look away before he can catch you looking.

The wind moves through your hair and you think about the girl — eleven years old, the pink shade of her sneakers, the way her mother's hands looked when you had to stop working. You think about standing in the hallway after and pulling out your phone because that's what you do when something guts you, you call someone who is supposed to care. The call going to voicemail. The text that came back twenty minutes later: busy, what is it. You typing nothing, never mind,because you had learned somewhere along the way that the answer to what is it should never actually be the thing.

"I thought after two years the death would get easier to carry," you lament.

"It doesn't get easier." A shrugs. "But you get stronger. There's a difference."

"Doesn't feel like it tonight."

He shifts slightly, his arm brushing yours, and neither of you moves away from it. A jacket sleeve against a jacket sleeve. You are both pretending it is nothing and doing a reasonable job of it.

"You did everything you could for that kid."

"That seems up for debate."

A stillness comes over him, sudden and total.

"Is that his take, or yours?"

You don't answer fast enough.

"Because there is a significant difference," he continues, voice even, "between you genuinely second-guessing your work and you repeating something back to me that someone else said."

You look out at the lights. "He had a point."

"He had an opinion." He stops, then continues against his better judgement. "And I've found that his opinions are, more often than not, bullshit."

"Jack—"

"Sorry." He doesn't sound sorry. His jaw is set like he's been holding this in far longer than tonight. "But this is not the first time he's pulled this shit, and I am so fucking tired of having to convince you that you are a fantastic doctor — because a man who assists one elective surgery a week in cardiothoracic questioned your work on an active trauma case. At what point do we stop calling that a difference of opinion?"

"Jack—"

"I'm not finished."

You close your mouth.

"You walked into that bay tonight and made twelve decisions in forty seconds and every single one of them was correct." He takes a breath and points back toward the stairwell, toward the ER eight floors below. "I watch you every shift. I know what good looks like and I know what you look like and those two things are the same thing, and I need you to hear that."

You don't know what to do with what he just said. You turn it over carefully, as if it's precious and breakable, and you hear yourself sigh: "He's not wrong that I could've considered the—"

"Stop." Barely a word. More like a direction. "Please. Don't."

"I'm just saying—"

"I know what you're doing." He looks at you then, straight on, the full weight of it landing somewhere you have never entirely learned to hold. "You're making it all smaller so it fits somewhere you can live with it. You've been doing that for a long time."

The truth of it settles somewhere beneath your sternum and stays there.

You look back at the skyline. He doesn't look away from you and you feel that too…his gaze steady at the side of your face, patient in the way he is with things he has decided matter.

"I don't know how to be angry at him," you admit, very quietly. "I don't know how to do that and still go home."

You might not know how to be angry at Tyler — at the man who has spent a year making you smaller in increments too subtle to name, who comes home every night and makes that feel like something you should be grateful for, who questioned your medicine in front of people who respect you and then kissed you on the cheek like he'd done you a favor. You might not know how to hold any of that without it falling apart in your hands.

But you know this.

You want to stay here. In this specific cold. In this specific quiet. Next to Jack. You want it the way kids want things they've already been told they can't have — with the grief already built in, like the wanting and the losing are the same feeling and always were.

You don't let yourself look at him. You watch the lights and you breathe and you tell yourself it's the bad day, the dead girl, the exhaustion that comes from holding yourself together for eight hours with nowhere good to put it down.

You are almost convinced.

"Then stop."

You turn. "What?"

"Stop going home to him." Jack turns so his back is against the railing now, facing the rooftop door instead of the city, shoulder to shoulder with you. Not looking at the skyline anymore. Looking solely at you. "If you don't know how to be angry at him and still go home, then stop. Going. Home."

You look at him. You mean to say something practical — something about leases or history or the sheer exhaustion of dismantling a three-year relationship — but you look at him and he is looking straight back and whatever you were about to say dissolves before it reaches your mouth.

His gaze drops. Just briefly. A fraction of a second, barely a movement at all... and then comes back up.

"Jack." You hum his name far too carefully. You can hear it yourself.

"I know." He looks away first, jaw set, a muscle working in his throat. He doesn't apologize or walk it back. He won't give you the out of pretending he didn't just look at you like that. "I know all the reasons. You don't have to list them."

"Then why are you—"

"Because someone should say it. Because you have spent well over a year letting that man convince you that you are lessthan what you are, and I have watched it, and I am not going to stand here and tell you it's fine." He shakes his head. "It's not fine."

"You don't know everything about it."

"I know enough."

"You know what I've told you."

"I know what you haven't told me too." Quiet, certain. "I've been paying attention for a lot longer than you think."

That moves through you slowly. The knowledge that he has been watching closely enough to see the things you've been careful not to say. That you have been seen — in this way, at this depth — for longer than you realized.

It should feel like too much. It doesn't. That is the part that frightens you.

"I can't just—" you start.

He eases closer by barely an inch, the kind of movement you could both agree was nothing if you needed to. His voice drops, rougher than it was a few minutes ago. "I just want you to know that you have somewhere to go. When it gets to a point where you need somewhere to go."

When. Not if. When.

The wind moves between you. The city holds its shape below, indifferent to both of you, to the charged and impossible distance between your bodies.

You understand what he is not saying. You've been pretending not to understand it for a long time…months, maybe. The knowledge that has been waiting just below the surface of everything for a night cold enough and honest enough to finally bring it up. He is not talking about a couch. He is talking about something neither of you has named and both of you have been building slowly, out of late nights and long silences and the way he always seems to know when you need someone to hold the line for you.

"Jack, you don't—"

"I know what I'm saying."

"Do you."

"Yes."

You are close enough to see the catch in his breathing, his eyes moving over your face like he's memorizing something he isn't sure he'll get to keep. The cold has reddened the tips of his ears. His shoulder is warm against yours. A warmth you became aware of a long time ago and have been carefully not thinking about ever since.

Then his hand moves. The backs of his fingers, barely, against the back of yours on the railing. Not a hold. Not even quite a touch. The suggestion of one. The question of one.

You don't pull away.

He stays exactly where he is, close and still and god, so warm, and lets you decide — lets you have the choice, which is so entirely like him that it cracks something open in your chest that you are not prepared for. Jack has always done this. Given you the room. Let you come to things yourself. Never pushed. And you have spent two years calling it professionalism, the ordinary warmth of someone good at his job.

You have been lying to yourself for two years.

"Oh god help me," you gasp, and you shake your head once like you're still arguing with yourself, like there's still a version of this where you make the sensible choice —

And then you surge forward and kiss him.

And god help him, he kisses you back.

It isn't tentative. That is the thing that ruins you completely, the thing you will turn over in your hands for months afterward in the dark. You half-expected careful…expected him to hold something in reserve, to kiss you the way a man kisses someone he knows he shouldn't, apologetically, with an exit already built in. But he doesn't.

His mouth is warm and sure against yours and he kisses you like he has thought about this, like the thinking has been going on longer than either of you would be comfortable admitting, and the certainty of it — the sheer unguarded certainty — makes your knees go weak beneath you.

There you stand… you on one side of the railing, him on the other, the city yawning open behind you and the rooftop solid behind him. Yin and yang. Two people facing opposite directions who somehow found the same point. It should be awkward, the geometry of it, the railing between you like a reminder of everything else that stands between you. It isn't. It is the least awkward thing that has happened to you in longer than you can remember.

You lose your balance — at the cold, at him, at the dizzying vertigo of finally doing the thing you have been not-doing for months — and his arm moves on instinct, that big certain arm, curling around the front of you, pulling you back and against him in the same motion, anchoring you to the roof, to him.

Instinctively you grip his bicep. Your fingers find the muscle there and hold on, and he registers it…you can feel the slight tension move through him when you tighten your grip. He pulls you fractionally closer in a way you will think about later, all alone, when thinking about it is all that's left.

He sighs against your mouth and you inhale it like he's breathing air into you that you haven't been able to find on your own in years. Like your lungs have been working at half capacity and you didn't know it until right now, until this, until him.

His breath is uneven and knowing that…knowing you did that to him, to this composed, careful man…does something to you that you have no language for.

Then —

"Babe! Someone mentioned you might be up here."

The voice hits you like cold water from a height up above.

You break away so fast the railing bites into your hip and you don't care, your hand coming up to your lips before you catch yourself and drop it, heart slamming. Jack's arm is still half-around you. In fact, there's no world in which he could have unwrapped it fast enough and he does the only thing available to him, which is to make it look like nothing at all.

"Whoa, careful there." His voice comes out even. The voice of a man catching a colleague who nearly lost her footing, nothing more, and you could kiss him again just for that — for the instantaneous, instinctive cover of it — except that is exactly the problem you are currently trying to survive. "Watch your step."

The door swings wider.

Tyler steps through it.

He is, as always, immediately the most put-together person in any room or in this case, any rooftop. Jacket still crisp from a day that broke you down to the cellular level. Not a single hair out of place. His eyes move in one clean sweep: you first, then Jack, then back to you, running the math with the focused efficiency of a man who does not enjoy variables he didn't introduce himself.

"Hey." His smile arrives. Pleasant. Practiced. The one that has never quite reached his eyes in a way you stopped mentioning a long time ago. "Didn't know you'd have company up here."

"Oh my god, hi—" The performance costs you the last of what you had. Your face does what it needs to do: warm, a little sheepish, surprised in the right amounts.

"What are you doing up here." Not quite a question. You have become, over three years, fluent in what lives beneath the pleasant register of Tyler's voice.

"Decompressing." You gesture vaguely at the city, at everything that is not Jack or the specific place you were standing ten seconds ago. "You know how I get after a bad outcome."

"With your attending."

"She was already here when I came up," Jack says. Unhurried. Carrying exactly the right amount of mild inconvenience, like he'd been hoping for five minutes alone and found the roof occupied. You have no idea how he's doing it. "I startled her and shit, she nearly lost her footing on the wrong side of the railing." He looks at you, and the look is perfect, just the right measure of attending-to-resident, nothing underneath it that anyone could name. "You should come back to this side."

He offers his hand.

You take it and duck under the railing. His grip is strong, but brief and entirely professional, released the moment you're clear, and you feel the loss of it in the half-second before he lets go. Then his hands find his pockets and he looks at Tyler the way he looks at people he has already fully assessed and found unsatisfied with his explanation.

Tyler's eyes moves between you. Slower this time.

"You okay?" Soft. Solicitous. The version of him that shows up in front of witnesses.

"Fine." You brush your jacket down. "Cold. I should have come in earlier."

"Yeah." Something passes across Tyler's face that isn't quite an expression…a small calculation, something filed away for later when there's no audience. You know that look. You know what it means for home, for the temperature the apartment will be when you walk in. "Probably should have."

Jack glances between you. One second, maybe less. You feel it anyway. Precise, even now, even with Tyler standing six feet away.

"Good work tonight," Jack says to you. Plainly. The way he's said it a hundred times at the end of brutal shifts. It is the most ordinary thing and yet it feels like a hand steadying something that keeps threatening to tip within you.

You nod. You don't trust your voice for anything beyond that.

He heads for the door. Stops with his hand on it, not looking back. "Get some sleep."

Then he's gone. The door falls shut and the rooftop is just a rooftop again, cold and normal, and Tyler is watching you with that quality of attention that has never once felt like the same thing as being seen.

"Ready?" he asks.

"Yeah," you say.

You follow him to the door. You don't look back at the railing, at the city, at the place where you were standing when everything was different.

You already know exactly what it looked like from the outside. Two colleagues on a rooftop. Nothing more.

You know what it felt like from the inside too.

Jack walks in for the night shift and checks the docket. Everyone scheduled is present and accounted for except —

He looks up. Lena is already watching him. She sets her hand flat over the tablet, drawing his attention to her.

"She's here."

His eyes move across the floor. A sweep, automatic. Nothing flags.

"What do you mean."

"She's here." A subtle tilt of her head toward the far end — bay marked empty, curtain drawn, lights off behind it. Something cold settles in him. His grip on the tablet adjusts without his permission.

"She doesn't want anyone knowing," Lena adds quietly.

He shifts his weight. "What—"

"She'll want to tell you herself." Her hand finds his arm for a moment and then releases it. She holds his gaze long enough that he understands the rest of it without her having to say it: it's bad.

He doesn't look for him. He doesn't need to. The man who's supposed to show up when something goes wrong — the one who goes home to you every night and apparently cannot manage even that one thing — his absence is already a fact, already filed. Of course he isn't here. That stopped surprising Jack a long time ago.

He sets the tablet down on the counter. Walks toward the bay at the far end of the floor at the pace of a man with no particular destination. Nothing worth noting. Nothing that would draw attention.

The curtain gives under his hand.

The light from the corridor falls across you in a thin strip. His eyes take a moment to adjust, and then they don't need any more time at all.

The bruise runs along your cheekbone. Not fresh...no. A day old at least, maybe two, already settling into that yellow-green at the edges that means the body is doing what it's supposed to, healing whether or not the person inside it is ready to. You're sitting slightly angled on the edge of the bed, one arm held close to your ribs in the prideful way people hold themselves when breathing has become a calculation. He reads all of it in under four seconds.

Then you look up.

And then you look away.

That is the thing that finishes him. Not the bruise. Not the careful architecture of how you're holding yourself together. The looking away...because you have never looked away from him. Never once in all the years he has known you. Not when he was telling you something you didn't want to hear, or when you were exhausted and half-wrong and arguing with him anyway, not even in the moments that should have made it impossible to hold his gaze. You always looked straight at him. And now you don't, and the absence of that one ordinary thing lands in his chest like a finding he does not want to have made.

He lets the curtain fall closed behind him. Pulls the chair from the corner. Sits close enough that you could reach him if you wanted to, not so close that you'd have to, and waits.

"I didn't—" Your voice breaks on the second word. You cover your face with your hands. "Shit."

He starts to move and then stops himself. Whether you want to be touched right now is a question he cannot answer for you, and getting it wrong in either direction would cost something neither of you could afford. The restraint itself costs him something he doesn't want to name.

"I feel so stupid." Into your palms. "I feel so fucking stupid."

"Don't." He looks down at his own hands. He doesn't trust his face right now. "Please don't do that."

A long breath. You lower your hands but don't look at him. "It wasn't—" You stop. Try again. "God. What a cliché. What a complete, embarrassing—" Another stop. "It wasn't his fault."

He waits.

"It was mine."

"You gave yourself those bruises?"

It isn't a question. He says it without inflection and waits for you to hear yourself try to contradict it.

You shake your head, eyes closed. "You know why it was my fault."

"I don't."

"Because of what I did." Smaller now. The smallest he has ever heard your voice. "What we did, Jack."

3 Months Earlier

The wind off the river is cold enough to bite, and you've been up here long enough that you've stopped noticing.

Pittsburgh spreads out below you in lights, all of it blurring at the edges the way things do when you've been crying long enough to be embarrassed about it. You're gripping the railing with both hands. Not because you might do anything — just because it's something solid, and solid is what you need right now.

"Fuck." You look down at the city below. "What a shitty night."

"I agree," a voice calls out from behind you and you jump, turning fast enough that your hand slips on the rail.

There stands Jack Abbot. Your attending for the past two years, the man who has pulled you back from the edge of your own worst moments more times than either of you has ever acknowledged out loud. He looks at you the way he always does — like he's already finished reading you and is deciding what to do with the information.

"You found me." You let go of the railing with one hand and swipe at your face, the gesture too quick to be subtle and both of you know it.

"You're in my hiding spot."

"That's why I came." You turn back to the city. "Felt close. Comforting. In a twisted way."

A pause. Then the sound of him crossing the roof, stopping a few feet to your left. He leans his forearms on the railing and looks out at the same skyline.

"Nothing bonds people like mutual—" he glances at the long drop below, "—ideations."

Something between a laugh and a sob escapes you before you can catch it. It surprises you. You hadn't known there was anything left in you tonight that could still make that sound.

"We did good tonight," you say, once you've got yourself back.

"You did great tonight." He doesn't look at you when he says it. That's how you know he means it. Jack's compliments always land sideways, never straight on, the way the most honest things usually do.

You glance at him. His face is closer than you expected, the city light catching the lines around his eyes, the grey at his temple. You look away before he can catch you looking.

The wind moves through your hair and you think about the girl — eleven years old, the pink shade of her sneakers, the way her mother's hands looked when you had to stop working. You think about standing in the hallway after and pulling out your phone because that's what you do when something guts you, you call someone who is supposed to care. The call going to voicemail. The text that came back twenty minutes later: busy, what is it. You typing nothing, never mind,because you had learned somewhere along the way that the answer to what is it should never actually be the thing.

"I thought after two years the death would get easier to carry," you lament.

"It doesn't get easier." A shrugs. "But you get stronger. There's a difference."

"Doesn't feel like it tonight."

He shifts slightly, his arm brushing yours, and neither of you moves away from it. A jacket sleeve against a jacket sleeve. You are both pretending it is nothing and doing a reasonable job of it.

"You did everything you could for that kid."

"That seems up for debate."

A stillness comes over him, sudden and total.

"Is that his take, or yours?"

You don't answer fast enough.

"Because there is a significant difference," he continues, voice even, "between you genuinely second-guessing your work and you repeating something back to me that someone else said."

You look out at the lights. "He had a point."

"He had an opinion." He stops, then continues against his better judgement. "And I've found that his opinions are, more often than not, bullshit."

"Jack—"

"Sorry." He doesn't sound sorry. His jaw is set like he's been holding this in far longer than tonight. "But this is not the first time he's pulled this shit, and I am so fucking tired of having to convince you that you are a fantastic doctor — because a man who assists one elective surgery a week in cardiothoracic questioned your work on an active trauma case. At what point do we stop calling that a difference of opinion?"

"Jack—"

"I'm not finished."

You close your mouth.

"You walked into that bay tonight and made twelve decisions in forty seconds and every single one of them was correct." He takes a breath and points back toward the stairwell, toward the ER eight floors below. "I watch you every shift. I know what good looks like and I know what you look like and those two things are the same thing, and I need you to hear that."

You don't know what to do with what he just said. You turn it over carefully, as if it's precious and breakable, and you hear yourself sigh: "He's not wrong that I could've considered the—"

"Stop." Barely a word. More like a direction. "Please. Don't."

"I'm just saying—"

"I know what you're doing." He looks at you then, straight on, the full weight of it landing somewhere you have never entirely learned to hold. "You're making it all smaller so it fits somewhere you can live with it. You've been doing that for a long time."

The truth of it settles somewhere beneath your sternum and stays there.

You look back at the skyline. He doesn't look away from you and you feel that too…his gaze steady at the side of your face, patient in the way he is with things he has decided matter.

"I don't know how to be angry at him," you admit, very quietly. "I don't know how to do that and still go home."

You might not know how to be angry at Tyler — at the man who has spent a year making you smaller in increments too subtle to name, who comes home every night and makes that feel like something you should be grateful for, who questioned your medicine in front of people who respect you and then kissed you on the cheek like he'd done you a favor. You might not know how to hold any of that without it falling apart in your hands.

But you know this.

You want to stay here. In this specific cold. In this specific quiet. Next to Jack. You want it the way kids want things they've already been told they can't have — with the grief already built in, like the wanting and the losing are the same feeling and always were.

You don't let yourself look at him. You watch the lights and you breathe and you tell yourself it's the bad day, the dead girl, the exhaustion that comes from holding yourself together for eight hours with nowhere good to put it down.

You are almost convinced.

"Then stop."

You turn. "What?"

"Stop going home to him." Jack turns so his back is against the railing now, facing the rooftop door instead of the city, shoulder to shoulder with you. Not looking at the skyline anymore. Looking solely at you. "If you don't know how to be angry at him and still go home, then stop. Going. Home."

You look at him. You mean to say something practical — something about leases or history or the sheer exhaustion of dismantling a three-year relationship — but you look at him and he is looking straight back and whatever you were about to say dissolves before it reaches your mouth.

His gaze drops. Just briefly. A fraction of a second, barely a movement at all... and then comes back up.

"Jack." You hum his name far too carefully. You can hear it yourself.

"I know." He looks away first, jaw set, a muscle working in his throat. He doesn't apologize or walk it back. He won't give you the out of pretending he didn't just look at you like that. "I know all the reasons. You don't have to list them."

"Then why are you—"

"Because someone should say it. Because you have spent well over a year letting that man convince you that you are lessthan what you are, and I have watched it, and I am not going to stand here and tell you it's fine." He shakes his head. "It's not fine."

"You don't know everything about it."

"I know enough."

"You know what I've told you."

"I know what you haven't told me too." Quiet, certain. "I've been paying attention for a lot longer than you think."

That moves through you slowly. The knowledge that he has been watching closely enough to see the things you've been careful not to say. That you have been seen — in this way, at this depth — for longer than you realized.

It should feel like too much. It doesn't. That is the part that frightens you.

"I can't just—" you start.

He eases closer by barely an inch, the kind of movement you could both agree was nothing if you needed to. His voice drops, rougher than it was a few minutes ago. "I just want you to know that you have somewhere to go. When it gets to a point where you need somewhere to go."

When. Not if. When.

The wind moves between you. The city holds its shape below, indifferent to both of you, to the charged and impossible distance between your bodies.

You understand what he is not saying. You've been pretending not to understand it for a long time…months, maybe. The knowledge that has been waiting just below the surface of everything for a night cold enough and honest enough to finally bring it up. He is not talking about a couch. He is talking about something neither of you has named and both of you have been building slowly, out of late nights and long silences and the way he always seems to know when you need someone to hold the line for you.

"Jack, you don't—"

"I know what I'm saying."

"Do you."

"Yes."

You are close enough to see the catch in his breathing, his eyes moving over your face like he's memorizing something he isn't sure he'll get to keep. The cold has reddened the tips of his ears. His shoulder is warm against yours. A warmth you became aware of a long time ago and have been carefully not thinking about ever since.

Then his hand moves. The backs of his fingers, barely, against the back of yours on the railing. Not a hold. Not even quite a touch. The suggestion of one. The question of one.

You don't pull away.

He stays exactly where he is, close and still and god, so warm, and lets you decide — lets you have the choice, which is so entirely like him that it cracks something open in your chest that you are not prepared for. Jack has always done this. Given you the room. Let you come to things yourself. Never pushed. And you have spent two years calling it professionalism, the ordinary warmth of someone good at his job.

You have been lying to yourself for two years.

"Oh god help me," you gasp, and you shake your head once like you're still arguing with yourself, like there's still a version of this where you make the sensible choice —

And then you surge forward and kiss him.

And god help him, he kisses you back.

It isn't tentative. That is the thing that ruins you completely, the thing you will turn over in your hands for months afterward in the dark. You half-expected careful…expected him to hold something in reserve, to kiss you the way a man kisses someone he knows he shouldn't, apologetically, with an exit already built in. But he doesn't.

His mouth is warm and sure against yours and he kisses you like he has thought about this, like the thinking has been going on longer than either of you would be comfortable admitting, and the certainty of it — the sheer unguarded certainty — makes your knees go weak beneath you.

There you stand… you on one side of the railing, him on the other, the city yawning open behind you and the rooftop solid behind him. Yin and yang. Two people facing opposite directions who somehow found the same point. It should be awkward, the geometry of it, the railing between you like a reminder of everything else that stands between you. It isn't. It is the least awkward thing that has happened to you in longer than you can remember.

You lose your balance — at the cold, at him, at the dizzying vertigo of finally doing the thing you have been not-doing for months — and his arm moves on instinct, that big certain arm, curling around the front of you, pulling you back and against him in the same motion, anchoring you to the roof, to him.

Instinctively you grip his bicep. Your fingers find the muscle there and hold on, and he registers it…you can feel the slight tension move through him when you tighten your grip. He pulls you fractionally closer in a way you will think about later, all alone, when thinking about it is all that's left.

He sighs against your mouth and you inhale it like he's breathing air into you that you haven't been able to find on your own in years. Like your lungs have been working at half capacity and you didn't know it until right now, until this, until him.

His breath is uneven and knowing that…knowing you did that to him, to this composed, careful man…does something to you that you have no language for.

Then —

"Babe! Someone mentioned you might be up here."

The voice hits you like cold water from a height up above.

You break away so fast the railing bites into your hip and you don't care, your hand coming up to your lips before you catch yourself and drop it, heart slamming. Jack's arm is still half-around you. In fact, there's no world in which he could have unwrapped it fast enough and he does the only thing available to him, which is to make it look like nothing at all.

"Whoa, careful there." His voice comes out even. The voice of a man catching a colleague who nearly lost her footing, nothing more, and you could kiss him again just for that — for the instantaneous, instinctive cover of it — except that is exactly the problem you are currently trying to survive. "Watch your step."

The door swings wider.

Tyler steps through it.

He is, as always, immediately the most put-together person in any room or in this case, any rooftop. Jacket still crisp from a day that broke you down to the cellular level. Not a single hair out of place. His eyes move in one clean sweep: you first, then Jack, then back to you, running the math with the focused efficiency of a man who does not enjoy variables he didn't introduce himself.

"Hey." His smile arrives. Pleasant. Practiced. The one that has never quite reached his eyes in a way you stopped mentioning a long time ago. "Didn't know you'd have company up here."

"Oh my god, hi—" The performance costs you the last of what you had. Your face does what it needs to do: warm, a little sheepish, surprised in the right amounts.

"What are you doing up here." Not quite a question. You have become, over three years, fluent in what lives beneath the pleasant register of Tyler's voice.

"Decompressing." You gesture vaguely at the city, at everything that is not Jack or the specific place you were standing ten seconds ago. "You know how I get after a bad outcome."

"With your attending."

"She was already here when I came up," Jack says. Unhurried. Carrying exactly the right amount of mild inconvenience, like he'd been hoping for five minutes alone and found the roof occupied. You have no idea how he's doing it. "I startled her and shit, she nearly lost her footing on the wrong side of the railing." He looks at you, and the look is perfect, just the right measure of attending-to-resident, nothing underneath it that anyone could name. "You should come back to this side."

He offers his hand.

You take it and duck under the railing. His grip is strong, but brief and entirely professional, released the moment you're clear, and you feel the loss of it in the half-second before he lets go. Then his hands find his pockets and he looks at Tyler the way he looks at people he has already fully assessed and found unsatisfied with his explanation.

Tyler's eyes moves between you. Slower this time.

"You okay?" Soft. Solicitous. The version of him that shows up in front of witnesses.

"Fine." You brush your jacket down. "Cold. I should have come in earlier."

"Yeah." Something passes across Tyler's face that isn't quite an expression…a small calculation, something filed away for later when there's no audience. You know that look. You know what it means for home, for the temperature the apartment will be when you walk in. "Probably should have."

Jack glances between you. One second, maybe less. You feel it anyway. Precise, even now, even with Tyler standing six feet away.

"Good work tonight," Jack says to you. Plainly. The way he's said it a hundred times at the end of brutal shifts. It is the most ordinary thing and yet it feels like a hand steadying something that keeps threatening to tip within you.

You nod. You don't trust your voice for anything beyond that.

He heads for the door. Stops with his hand on it, not looking back. "Get some sleep."

Then he's gone. The door falls shut and the rooftop is just a rooftop again, cold and normal, and Tyler is watching you with that quality of attention that has never once felt like the same thing as being seen.

"Ready?" he asks.

"Yeah," you say.

You follow him to the door. You don't look back at the railing, at the city, at the place where you were standing when everything was different.

You already know exactly what it looked like from the outside. Two colleagues on a rooftop. Nothing more.

You know what it felt like from the inside too.

Jack Abbot was a man of routine, calm precision and sharp witt — That's why he liked the night shift (yes, his therapist said it was because he liked the dark but he liked to argue). He would arrive a little early, parking his truck in the spot that everyone knew to be his, go to the locker room to drop off his bag and then get a cup of coffee before finding Robby for shift change and debrief.

Today is different however — Today, Robby seeks him out before he can even get into the locker room. There is blood on his gloves and arms and while he wears the calm expression only years and years as a doctor can teach you, Jack can still see the lines of panic and despair cracking through the carefully put-up wall. "Robby?" Jack frowns.

"Hey, man, you, uh—" Robby stammers, rocking back and forth on his heels. He cut himself off with an akward clear of his throat, pushing his glasses back on his nose with one finger "Have you checked your phone today?" he settles on after a brief moment of silence, eyes cast down to bloodied ends of his shoes.

Jack wordlessly shakes his head, lips formed into a tight line, eyebrows furrowed in worry. "Not really. Kiddo went straight to a friend's house after school and so I took the time to finally build that make up desk I'm gonna surprise her with." he explains, cocking his head to the side with a smile so font that it was solely reserved for his daughter. Normally, Jack kept his personal life as far away from the hospital as possible — especially his pride and joy, his daughter, that he vowed to protect and love with his entire being when she was still so tiny, she fit perfectly in the palms of his hands — but Robby was as much family as the cat, his daughter had once found wandering their street and took in without a second thought.

Robby humms, swallowing against the thick lump forming in his throat — He knew what desk Jack was talking about; had spend an hour and two panicked calls to Dana at a furniture store with Jack picking it out after Tiny Abbot had briefly mentioned that she was saving up for a new table.

Jack always prided himself with the fact that he'd raised his daughter to be independent — She rarely asked for anything. If she did it was mostly for school and even then he had to remind her time and time again that he was her dad and it was his job to provide for her. She worked three shifts a week at a cafe just down the street from where they lived, had gotten her lisence as soon as possible and had even bought her car on her own (although Jack had put double the amount in her bank account as soon as he'd found out and refused to take it back.)

Still, Jack was a doctor. He fixed peole, he took care of people and his daughter was no exception to that. So when she ran out of her (ridiculously expensive) skin-care, there was a new bottle sitting on the vanity the next day and when she got her period (especially during an endometriosis flare-up) she would find a hot water bottle, her favorite chocolate and pain medication waiting for her on her bedside within minutes and when she wanted a new table to get ready at he would buy the best one and set it up for her without losing a word over it.

"Jack, before I say anything else, I promise she is okay." Robby says calmly, his eyes wide with thinly veiled worry. Jack's jaw tenses in a split second, body rigid with a sudden paralysing fear "There was a crash—"

It's at that moment that Jack's world comes to a screeching halt before tilting on its' axis "Robby, she's all I have left." he says unnecessarily like if he could will her to be okay with the sheer force of his hope.

"I know." Robby nods — and he does. He knows, because everyone knows that after the death of his wife all Jack breathed and live for was his daughter. "She's okay. I swear. I took over her entire care. She has a broken leg, a minor concussion and lots of cuts and bruises but with lots of rest and care, she'll make a quick recovery." he explains. Jack is a doctor, but right now he is a dad first and so Robby explains it to him like he was just the parent of another patient.

Jack's jaw ticks and there is a faint tremor in his hand but Robby doesn't comment on it — He knows that after losing his wife, Jack was panicked if she as much as breathed wrong "She is awake." Robby continues "Dana's got her bundled up in the blanket you keep here for your naps and Langdon gave her his phone to rewatch New Girl. She is okay. We just couldn't reach you and I didn't want you to freak out when you see her name on the board."

Jack nods; an ever-growing motion "Okay, okay, okay... The leg. Is it a clean break? Did you do a head CT? Did any of her cuts get stitches?" he rambled, eyes narrowed and hands clasped together — the face of a doctor.

Robby shook his head, putting a firm hand on Jack's shoulder "Be her dad. Not her doctor."

Jack nodded wordlessly; the lines of being a dad and being a doctor blurred in front of his eyes — He treated car crash victims every single day. A broken leg and a concussion were trivial in comparison to the injuries he was used to treating but this was his daughter. His lifeline, his achilles' heel, his heart and soul and the idea of seeing her in a hospital bed had bile rising in his throat "Where is she?"

"Still in South 6, but Dana is trying to pull some strings to get in a room upstairs. You know how she got that woman wrapped around her finger." he explained, eyes crinkling at the corners as he gave Jack a tentative chuckle.

Jack huffed out a breathy laugh at that. Of course he knew — He knew because every morning when he came back from work he saw the growing stack of tupperware that he just kept adding onto everytime Dana held out a box with baked goods or a homecooked meal so the kiddo doesn't starve when he showed up for his shift. He knew because that one time she had a dance at school and he had tried (and miserably failed) to curl her hair, it had only taken a three-words message — Need help ASAP — for Dana to show up at their house with a bag of beauty products, some jewellery and a bottle of wine for which Jack had tried to tell her off but Dana had merely told him to pull the stick out of his ass. He knew because that one time he had a single mother come into the ER about to give birth, he had told her it takes a village and he had thought of Dana and Robby.

"She bled a lot." Robby continued "There was a gash on her face and you know how it is with head injuries... they just bleed an unnecessary amount." he huffed, starring down at his bloody gloves before pulling them off with a shake of his head. "She got all stitched up and Dana helped her get cleaned up."

Jack hummed, muscular arms crossed in front of a broad chest and head tilted upwards by an inch — He looked stern, disciplined and all like the doctor he was but Robby could see the way his eyes blinked furiously against the tears now brimming just beneath his waterline and the way his hand gripped his own bicep with a little too much force "Gonna put my bag away and then check up on her."

Robby nodded, putting one hand on Jack's shoulder, feeling the tense knots under his fingers "I'm taking over your shift tonight." he says simply. Jack openes his mouth to protest but Robby just shakes his head "This as much for you as it is for her. She still needs her dad every now and then, no matter how big and independent she gets."

Jack nodded jerkily — He rolled his shoulders one last time and then he was off; long, purposeful strides towards South 6, barely aware of the throbbing of his prosthesis or Robby following him a step behind. The curtains were pulled shut and for a moment Jack wondered if he hated or loved that he got a moment longer to collect himself; a moment longer to take a deep breath in and calm the trembling in his fingers.

She was propped up in the bed when he finally found the courage to step in — buried under the unfamiliar terror that had taken over all of his senses. Her left leg was in a cast and elevated, the army blanket he kept in his locker for the times he once again spend too much time at the hospital wrapped around her and the sweat jacket Robby always wore loosely hanging from her thin shoulders. Jack's entire body sagged at the sight of her.

Her eyes were half-lidded, focused on the phone in her hand but she looked up when he entered, "Dad..." she breathed shakily and for a moment she wasn't the sixteen years old that prepared breakfast for him after every shift and ducked away from even a pat on the back, but the tiny six years old that crawled into his bed every night, curling up on his chest because that was the place where she felt safest. There was a moment where just blinked at him blearily before a sudden wave of terror washed over her face, sitting up so fast Jack could only hope she didn't tear any of her stitches "Oh my god— dad! I'm so sorry! I was driving carefully and all, the man just ran the red light, the car is fucked but I'll pay for it, I swe—"

Jack didn't know if he wanted to laugh or sob. His daughter — his baby; the light of his life — could have gotten killed today; taken away from his side just like wife had been taken away from him and all she cared about was the car "Kiddo." he breathed "I couldn't give less of a fuck about the car right now. Are you okay?" he stressed, stumbling forward to cradle her thin face in between calloused hands.

"I'm okay, I'm okay. she nodded immediately "Robby took care of me, you don't need to worry."

Jack did laugh at that — a broken, wet chuckle "I always worry. I'm your dad, that's my job. I'm sorry if I didn't do a good job and if I made you feel as though you had to be independent because if there is one thing that will always be true it's that I will always be here to take care of you."

Don't worry my ass, he grumbled under his breath as he pulled up a chair with one hand while the other one fussed with the blanket wrapped around her "Are you warm enough? I can get you another blanket or I'll ask Dana to make you a hot water bottle, I'm sure we have one lying around. I can also get you more painkillers if it get's too bad, just tell me—"

"Dad." her voice cut through his rambling. His fingers stilled where they were uselessly pulling up the blanket again. "I'm okay." she smiled softly, one trembling hand lifting before she closed it into a fist, kissing the fist tenderly and then rubbing it against her sternum — Something her mom used to do when she was too sick to be visited and the only time they could see her was through a visiting window looking into her hospital room.

That means she loves you, Jack had explained to an actually tiny Tiny Abbot back then and three year old Tiny — bless her heart! — had mimicked her mommy's actions.

Jack swallowed harshly around the stubborn knot that had formed in his throat. He wanted to say so much; wanted to tell her how if she died he would go to the next bridge and jump, how he loved her so greatly and so fiercely he would've pried her out of her car with his bare hands and given her every organ she needed if that meant she was safe.

"I love you." he settled on instead, but Tiny smiled and Jack just knew she knew.

“Please, c’mon…” you mutter as you rapidly press the elevator button. your phone buzzes again as Jack texts you for the millionth time that evening with all his texts along similar lines of,

Where are you?

You’re late.

Are you okay?

What’s going on?

the doors finally open and you’re faced with Jack,

“Where the hell have you been? I was about to drive over and check on you.” he looks relieved but his tone is full of concern,

“I’m sorry, my alarm didn’t go off.” you enter the elevator dripping,

“My alarm didn’t go off? Are you serious?” Jack scoffs,

“Yes, Jack, my alarm didn’t go off this morning.” you reiterate again, this time with a snappier tone.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…” he mumbles,

“Just get some new scrubs and check in with Lena,” he leans over to quickly kiss the top of your head. the elevator doors open and the usual chaos of the ER welcomes you,

“Love you. I’m glad you’re okay.” Jack says as he steps out first, heading back towards the ambulance bay. it’s quick but it’s a small reminder that he was more worried about your safety than upset that you were late.

despite the small gesture, the night doesn’t stop there. right after you change into dry scrubs, Jack is quick to call you to an incoming trauma,

“Justin Andrews, twenty years old, got t-boned by a drunk driver. Looks like the windshield glass cut him open— he was unconscious when we got there. Heart rate ninety-two, BP eighty over fifty.” one of the paramedics call out as they roll the gurney in. the other is applying pressure to the open wound,

“What about the other guy?” Ellis asks,

“He’s right behind.” another set of paramedics come rolling through the doors with the second gurney,

“Shen, stay here, I got the other guy.” Jack says as he moves towards the trauma room next door,

“Let’s start transfusing o-neg and page OR.” Ellis calls out. as you move to dial the OR, the patient suddenly flat lines.

everything moves so quickly you’re unable to process Shen moving to grab the defibrillator pads,

“Clear!” he calls out. you see Mateo moving to recharge again as nothing changes. Shen tries again but still no change. you hear your named called by the attending, locking you back into reality,

“Start compressions,” you pass the phone to a nearby nurse and get into position,

“Where the hell is ortho?” Shen asks. Jack watches from the other trauma room as Henderson intubates his patient,

“They said they’ll send someone down, I don’t know.” Shen curses under his breath in response. Ellis works to stop the bleeding while you compress down on the patient's chest. you let out a deep breath as he stabilizes, just in time for Ortho to come in. Jack walks back in, checking on everyone and the patient. you give him a quick nod as he walks back and your patient is rolled out.

you take a deep breath as you exit the trauma bay. it’s not long until Lena notices you and flags you down,

“Can you pick up a few more? You were late today and you gotta catch up somehow.”

“Thank you for that reminder again.” your response comes off more sarcastic than intended but Lena doesn’t care. she hands you a tablet and sends you on your way.

𝜗ৎ

you’re a bit slower than usual that evening. by now you would’ve had a handful of patients to look after but between being late today and the car accident trauma, you’ve been dragging your feet. Shen catches up with you as close the curtain on your patient,

“Hey, so since you were late—”

“Thank you, Shen, you’re only the hundredth person to remind me today.” you cut him off, glaring at the attending. he chuckles in response,

“Would you be able to let the dad of our car accident patient know that his son is in surgery? He’s waiting with Kiara, one of the social workers.” you nod and pass him the tablet,

“Thank you! Don’t be late next time!”

you approach Kiara who stands in front of the closed door,

“Dad is inside. I have to warn you, he’s a bit cathartic so he might not have the most logical thinking right now. I’ll be here and so will security in case anything escalates.” you smile and nod before entering the room. Kiara introduces herself first then introduces you,

“Hi, Mr Andrews, I’m one of the doctors who worked on your son. He was in critical condition when he came in but we were able to stabilize him and he’s headed up for surgery now.” you sit down on the chair across from him,

“Surgery? No one mentioned anything about surgery, can I see my son?” you already notice him beginning to get more irritated,

“I’ve been in car accidents before and I’ve never needed surgery. Where is he?”

“I’m sorry, you can’t see him right now. We needed to operate on him to make sure all the glass is removed and he heals properly.” he stands up suddenly, towering over you. in the corner of your eye, you notice Kiara flag security,

“He’s just a kid, I didn’t consent to him having surgery.”

“You don’t need to, he’s legally an adult.” you remain calm despite him getting more frustrated by the minute. he kicks the coffee table in anger before grabbing the plastic cup of water and throwing it against the wall.

from outside the small room, the yelling can be heard throughout the ER. Jack stops mid conversation with Lena as it gets louder by the second,

“The hell is that?” Jack says, forgetting whatever he was saying previously,

“Dad of the car accident patient is here. I think your girlfriend is handling it.” Lena says. she understands when he removes himself from the conversation without saying anything. as Jack is about to enter, the door suddenly flys open. security comes out with Mr Andrews in hand,

“Lousy fucking doctors!” he yells out. Jack looks inside the room to see the table flipped over and chairs on their sides. you stand tall in the corner of the room but he can easily tell you’re terrified. he wants to hold you, make sure you’re safe and tell you it’s going to be okay. before he can even make eye contact with you, you’re already brushing past him and out of the door. Jack follows behind, quickly trying to catch up with you,

“You have a second?” he walks alongside you, guiding you towards the empty staff room.

“Are you okay?” Jack starts,

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know… You were late this morning, that dad was throwing shit around, you look like you haven’t eaten either,” you take a deep breath, rubbing your hands on your temples as Jack lists every mental note he’s made of you that morning,

“Why don’t you take it easy? If you want, I have a drunk bride-to-be on a bachelorette trip to the ER? She’s in north two—” you cut Jack off as you get more and more irritated,

“I don’t need special treatment just because I’m your girlfriend, Jack!” you say louder than intended. Jack takes a second before responding,

“Hey, what’s going on?” his voice is soft as he reaches his arms out and grabs your shoulders. you brush them off and you take a step back,

“Nothing! Fuck, I just need you and everyone to get off my ass.” Jack stays quiet. he takes a deep breath in, thinking through his next words before continuing the conversation,

“Go take a break, get some air.” his tone is firm and steady,

“I don’t need a fucking break.” you scoff,

“Yes you do and I am telling you, as your attending, to go take a break.” the brief softness he had was gone. he was done with trying to speak gently with you as your boyfriend and now was instructing you as the shift attending.

Jack hated using his role against you— he always viewed the two of you as equals but he knew you needed a breather. as you left the break room, he began doubting himself and how he spoke with you. was he being too hard on you? was he not being gentle enough? Jack’s not one to overthink but in that moment he couldn’t help it, especially since he didn’t know how to help you.

you practically ran towards the bathroom, locking yourself inside. you paced back and forth as much as you could in the small bathroom, taking deep breaths in and out. this entire night has been incredibly unkind— you were practically begging to whoever was listening that your shift would just end. you’ve got tough skin, you can handle the chaos of the ER, the pressure, the yelling, all of it— tonight it just kept building though, and it hasn’t stopped. your eyes weld up quick and before you know it, there are tears streaming down your face. you stop pacing as they fall, trying to wipe them away. your breath gets shallow as you try and swallow each sob that tries to escape. a loud pound at the door snaps you back into reality,

“You okay in there?” you hear Jack call out,

“Yeah, I’ll be out in a sec!” your voice cracks slightly as you wipe your face quickly. you splash some cold water on your face and turn to open the door,

“Sorry, just needed a second.” you say with a big fake smile. he can see right through you but he isn’t sure whether he should apologize or comfort you first. before Jack can make a decision, you squeeze past him and head back towards the nurses desk.

you don’t stop moving after that. you pick up another three patients making sure to keep yourself as busy as possible. the adrenaline is keeping you from breaking down and if you keep moving now, you can deal with your tears later when you’re home. Jack feels his age especially when he can’t keep up with you like this, or maybe you’ve gotten too good at avoiding him tonight.

the morning shift rolls in and you continue to stay on your feet, even through handoffs,

“… GSW to the left shoulder, bullet went straight through, surgery wants to admit him overnight just in case,” you say as you pass the tablet to Mel. she does a quick wave to the patient before following you out,

“Okay, that’s everyone. Have a good shift, Mel.” you say as you grab your things from the workstation,

“Oh! Wait, don’t you wanna say bye to Doctor Abbot?” she says motioning towards him as he walks out of the trauma bay. you look towards his direction and briefly make eye contact before looking back at Mel,

“No it’s okay, I’ll see him next shift anyways.” she gives you an empathetic smile before you leave. usually you make an effort to say goodbye to everyone, but tonight your goal was to just get out quickly and hide under the covers of your bed.

the drive back to your apartment is silent, with the occasional sniffles of you trying to hold back more tears. you get home shortly after 9 AM and quickly jump in the shower. the hot water washes away most of the stress from the day and you finally feel your body relax. a loud knock on your door disrupts your attempts at destressing,

“Coming!” you yell out. you begrudgingly open the door to see Jack at your doorstep. he’s got a bag of groceries in one hand and flowers in the other,

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, hello to you too.” he responds as he lets himself in. he already knows his way around as he drops the bag and flowers onto your countertop, pulling out a pot from your drawer cabinets. you shut the door and follow him to the kitchen,

“You didn’t answer my question.” Jack stops what he’s going and turns to face you,

“I’m trying to apologize. I know you were having a tough night and I think I was being too hard on you and I’m sorry.” you give Jack a soft smile,

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry. Fuck, I was having a terrible day and I took it out on you. All I wanted was for one thing to go right but it kept getting worse and worse.” Jack pulls you in as you ramble on. you feel yourself melt in his arms and you’re suddenly forgetting everything that happened during your shift. he grabs your face to look at right into your eyes,

“You’re going to go to bed and when you wake up, there’s gonna be dinner ready for you.” his voice is soft and gentle,

“And we eat together?” you ask. he hums in agreement before giving you a small kiss,

“Now go to bed, I’ll be here when you wake up.” you walk towards your bedroom,

“Shouldn’t you also get some sleep?”

“When have I ever done that?” Jack quips. he blows you a kiss before you shut your door and climb into bed.

𝜗ৎ

the apartment is quiet when you wake up. it’s a little after 3 PM and the light from outside is peaking through the sides of your blackout curtains. the smell from whatever Jack was cooking seeps into your room and you can’t contain your smile. outside your bedroom door there are two plates on the kitchen table covered in tinfoil, along with the flowers he brought in a vase. in the living room, Jack has an arm over his eyes as he lays on your couch. he shuffles around, slowly waking up once he hears the door to your bedroom open. his ability to fall asleep anywhere combined with being a light sleeper is a habit he still hasn’t shaken since his military days,

“Good morning.” he says as rubs his eyes. he moves to put his prosthetic back on after.

“Hi.” you say, moving to sit beside him on the couch,

“Sleep okay?” he asks as he kisses the top of your head. you nod as he leads you to the kitchen. Jack puts on some soft music in the background and lights a candle while you unwrap the tinfoil,

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” you ask in awe of the perfectly cooked meal,

“I’ve always been able to cook like this. I just haven't had anyone to cook it for since, y’know.” you smile as he gestures to his plate.

“Thank you again for everything, especially today.” you say as you reach your hand out to grab his.

“Of course. I’d do anything for you.” Jack gives your hand a soft squeeze as means every bit of what he said.

Action, banter, and tactical cuddling… a GhostSoap trifecta if you ask me 💥